The Grand Cleanout - December 2014

About 150 books and tapes left the house this week - donated to the local Friends of the Library charity for their used book sale. This is what they looked like in boxes filling the trunk of my car.

Previously I had been keeping travel and cook books as references but now I am using the internet more than books. When I travel I want the most current information rather than a book several years old. Doing a quick search for recipes on my tablet is easier than looking through the cookbook shelf; I put the tablet on a stand on the counter once I choose the recipe.

I kept the travel books that were very specific to a place I enjoyed…and cookbooks from Moosewood - a restaurant we enjoyed while my daughter was in college.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 5, 2014

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How Did This Ancient Civilization Avoid War for 2,000 Years? - This article linked well to the Paradoxes of War course I am taking right now….one of those little serendipities of life. There are hints of other cultural norms that were so different from our own that we can’t quite fathom how they worked.

Oklahoma earthquakes induced by wastewater injection by disposal wells, study finds - I saw a story about the Oklahoma earthquakes on the evening news that featured a home owner from Prague, OK whose house had been badly damaged. I have a family connection to the area: my great-grandparents farmed in the area and my one of my grandmother’s first memories was of their house blowing away. They worried about tornadoes rather than earthquakes. I’m glad there are studies being done to understand why the dramatic increase in earthquakes is happening….and help us make better decisions about wastewater disposal.  On the positive side for Oklahoma, at least they had data available that could be used to determine the problem. Now the question is - what action will result? And what about China’s Dirty Pollution Secret: The Boom Poisoned Its Soil and Crops? Both of these instances seem to be cases where the price of ‘development’ is becoming unexpectedly high - and maybe it is going to get higher over time.

Chemist with Visual Flair Answers Burning Food Science Questions - A high school chemistry teach in the UK has a flare for chemistry info graphics. The ones collected in the NPR post are about food but he has others at his open web site: Compound Interest.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #69 - I have to include one of these periodically. Which is your favorite? Two near the end are mine: the egret and peacock (and I can't resist including one on my own peacock pictures with this post).

Why Online School? Why Full Time? - A survey to find out why parents and student use online schools full time. The two reasons are “want a change from their local school” and “require or want greater flexibility.”  The survey was of parents of students of Connections Academy, an online school.

Slow media - Sometimes the alternative to ‘fast’ is what we need!

Ancient baby boom holds a lesson in over-population - A case study from the American southwest: farming and food storage resulting in high birth rate until there was a drought which caused the crash.

4 New Energy Maps Show A Lot about Renewables - Wind, solar, biomass and geothermal…the US has a lot of potential.

New study from population and development review finds flaws in mortality projections - There is good news and bad news: The good news is that the decline in cigarette smoking will almost certainly result in longer-living older populations. The bad news is that current public policy around the world has not included that change in mortality projections (i.e. governments are underestimating the number of older people for the next decades…and were already struggling with the shifting demographics).

50 States, 50 Spots Natural Wonders - From CNN. There are a lot of natural wonders is virtually every state I’ve visited….too hard to pick just one…but fun to think about.

3 Free eBooks - March 2014

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for March 2014: birds, insects and flowers. I am anticipating spring!

Gould, John. The Birds of Europe. London: R. and J.E. Taylor. 1837. Five volumes are available on the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, and volume 5. A few years ago I saw an exhibit of John Gould’s bird prints (large books) in a museum in Tennessee….and made a note to check the Internet Archive for any scanned versions of his work since the exhibit only displayed a small portion of the volumes. It was such a pleasure to finally browsing through these books online.

Fabre, Jean-Henri; Stawell, Rodolph, Mrs; Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander; Detmold, Edward Julius. Fabre's Book of Insects. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. 1926. Available on the Internet Archive here. The illustrations by Detmold are the draw for this book.

Galeotti, Henri); Funck, Nicolas; Morren, Edouard. L'Horticulteur practicien; revue de l'horticulture franaise et trangre. Paris: A. Goin. 1858. Two volumes are available on the Internet Archive: 1857 and 1858. The illustrations of rich with color and detail of flowers….it’s like touring a conservatory online. I picked the forsythia illustration because it reminded me of how disappointed I that our neighbor’s forsythia is likely to have a hard time this year since the deer have eaten all the tender parts. It might not manage any blooms at all!

Book Quote of the Month (about Grandmotherhood) - March 2014

It’s our mothers who teach us how to live in the world. And we think forward through our daughters, if we are mothers, and beyond them to their daughters. - Roxana Robinson in her essay for Barbara Graham’s Eye of my Heart

I enjoyed every essay in this book written by grandmothers about their view of themselves in the role. Each was a learning experience having not been thrust into that role yet in my own life. All of the essays had some positives --- but every single thing was not rosy. Relationships are complex.

The book reminds me of my relationship to my grandmothers and my relationship to my mother as she became a grandmother to my daughter. I remember the good times and have to think hard to remember ones that were not positive in the end. I am surprised to realize that my grandmothers were about 20 years younger than I am now when they became grandmothers and that my mother was a grandmother by the time she was my age (although only a few years younger). My generation waited until relatively later to have children.  I have known 5 generations of my family (2 great-grandmothers, 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 3 siblings, 1 child) already; because we are living longer, many people know 7 generations in their lifetime.

Another realization - the role of grandmother is something we are granted rather than choose - a role to savor if it happens. This book provides look into the many ways ‘savoring’ is done.