Banned Books Week

My goodness I almost forgot that it's Banned Books Week -September 24 - October 1! Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to increased book challenges, Banned Book Week is now an annual event. Since 1982, more than 11,000 books have been challenged.

If you feel like reading a banned book, below is a short list to get you started. These are all classics which have been repeatedly banned. If you're interested in the reason why they were banned, you can read about it here. There are a number of my favorite books on this list. What are some of your favorite banned books?

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
1984, by George Orwell
 Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
 Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
 Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
 Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
 Animal Farm, by George Orwell
 The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
 As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
 A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
 Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
 Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
 Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
 Native Son, by Richard Wright
 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
 Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
 For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
 The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
 Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
 All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
 The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is fun!

If you have a smartphone that can read these things, aim it at this one. It will take you to my blog! Since you're already there you may not notice the difference but it's pretty cool anyway. Go to QR-Code Generator and input a url, text or a phone number and you can create your own label!

A Poem for Monday

Saint Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

  Galway Kinnell

Bits and Pieces of Stuff

I found an interesting blog called Letters of Note that is "an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos." Recent posts include a letter from Frank Sinatra about crossword puzzles, one from Audrey Hepburn to Henry Mancini praising the Breakfast at Tiffany's soundtrack and my favorite, some notes from Johnny Cash.

NPR article titled Can Computers Reconstruct Your Dreams?  Brave volunteers spent hours in an MRI machine (I say brave because I hate those machines), watching movie clips. A computer was able to reconstruct, with varying degrees of accuracy, what the volunteers had watched. Researchers speculate that eventually this technique could reconstruct images generated by the brain rather than outside images. I thought this was pretty cool. I'm wondering if the success of the images could be dependent on the individual?

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you;
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want;
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth between
the door sill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

  Rumi

 

I use Google Reader to track and organize all the blogs I follow. Here's my latest statistics:

From your 267 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 4,483 items, clicked 231 items, starred 26 items, and shared 82 items. Since November 19, 2008 you have read a total of 161,476 items.

Well I was impressed. My 267 subscriptions is down from over 500 I had at the beginning of this year. I realized that I had so much to look at that I wasn't taking the time to enjoy the ones that really mattered. I'd still like to cut it further but it's hard.

 

 

 

I took a bead class last Thursday and learned how to make a bird's nest pendant! It was a lot of fun and really gave me some confidence about making jewelry. Since the class I've made two more nests and four pairs of earrings. It's a lot of fun! 

Last, but far, far from least, is this item from the Sacramento Bee about the weather:  Temperatures are expected to drop a good 10 degrees this weekend as a Pacific Ocean low pressure system and the Delta breeze brings cooler air into the Central Valley.

Excellent news because I'm HOT!

What a Change!

It was a year ago that I took pictures of this house originally. Finally someone is fixing it up! The funny thing is that I took the 2nd pictures from similar angles. It wasn't by design, I guess I just stood in the same place. I still don't know how they are going to get to the second floor. I can't find any stairs!

A Lazy Sunday Morning

I'd have included a picture of me but I'm still in my pajamas!

Another Mostly Silent Sunday

Wow this week really got away from me! I've meant to post all week but I've been busy and tired. My boss is leaving for a 3 week trip to Kenya on Tuesday and work has been a little hectic. By the time I get home I'm tired so I've been relaxing and reading in the evening!

Yesterday I went to Berkeley and had lunch with my daughter & her boyfriend. We saw this car parked on the street and my daughter and I both pulled out our phones and began taking pictures. My first thought was that I'd put them on my blog today! We went to a bead store after that and had fun spending lots of money!

If you're unfamiliar with it, Dia De Los Muertos means Day of the Dead. It's a Mexican holiday for remembering family and friends who have died.

Mostly Silent Sunday

I found this at the Tattered Covered blog. It strikes me as excellent advice for most any situation!

Shameless Promotion

This post is about shameless promotion. But it isn't for me so I guess that's ok! I like to post my pictures here to share them and I'm actually behind in posting some. The weekend before last my daughter and her boyfriend were visiting and we went to the American River. I got some nice pictures I think but I've been lazy about getting them on here.

For a change I thought I'd share a picture taken by a professional! My brother, Stephen Texeira, is a professional photographer and took the picture below. It was taken at Say Hay Farms in Woodland, CA. I love farm pictures, don't ask me why, I don't have much experience of farms and I'm not really a farm type person (by which I mean I like to be sure I'm not stepping on anything when I'm walking!). Anyway I really enjoy looking at pictures! My feeling is that you can enjoy many things through photos that you'd never want to actually experience!

Stephen's specialty is wedding photography so if you or someone you know (in or near the SF Bay Area) is planning on getting married, you might want to contact him. Meanwhile check out the links and view some wonderful pictures!

Oh yeah. I should point out that I have not been paid for this endorsement. I'm expecting a large Christmas gift but that's it!