Track changes on a blog

People who make it a practice to visit several blogs on a more or less regular basis usually do this in one of two ways. The simplest is to visit each blog every day or every other day. Well, now, on blogs such as mine this is probably best since I've been a fairly regular poster. If you check in every day you're likely to see a new post. If not, then the next day you're likely to see two posts.

But what about those blogs where the posting is very erratic - every day for a week then nothing for two weeks, then a 5 day break, a 3 day break, 4 posts on the next day... You get my drift. For these blogs I find the best thing for this is a blog tracker. A good one that I use is http://www.blogarithm.com/ It's free and easy to use. You have to register with a username and password. Then it's as simple as copying and pasting the URL (address) of the blog you want to track onto the blogarithm form. I don't know if there's a limit but it is probably bigger than the number of blogs you want to keep track of.

Power when you need it

Recently Carolyn said to me as she was leaving for work, "Arnold, could you keep an eye out for the keys to the red rocket?" (Red Rocket is her name for the Honda Civic that Steven deeded back to us when they bought Richard's old pickup truck. I had such a busy day that I barely thought about the missing keys, let alone actually look for them or find them.

When Carolyn got home, I asked if she had looked in the car itself although I could think of no reason to drop keys in there. Going out to the Civic with a flashlight and my keys, we quickly discovered that she had indeed left the keys in the Civic... in the ignition switch ... with the switch turned to Accessories. She managed to drain the battery completely.

Fortunately, I thought, we have these battery power packs so we don't need to use jumper cables. I pressed the power check on each of these backup batteries and got no reading on the most recently purchased power pack and barely a flicker on the other, older one.

Fortunately, Carolyn could make do with the white van instead of the red rocket so we could plug in the power packs. After charging overnight, they were up to starting the Honda's engine which could then charge up the original battery.

I guess the moral to this story is that even backup batteries aren't very helpful if you don't keep them charged. Or maybe the moral is, keep more than one backup battery even if one of them is inside another car.

Speaking of Faith - book review

Krista Tippett, who wrote Speaking of Faith, must be an extraordinary person. She is able to speak and write about a highly sensitive topic with very opinionated people who are not used to their opinions being questioned and still come off sounding like a mild-mannered reporter or, even better, a good friend. For those familiar with the PBS series "Speaking of Faith" this will not be news nor will Ms. Tippett be unfamiliar as she has written, hosted, and produced this series intermittently from 2000 and weekly since 2003.

With this book Tippett appears to want to lower the temperature of the whole debate around religion, especially the fundamentalist flavor, while raising the visibility of spiritual needs and resources. The book is peppered with humor and insight. For example she writes, "I define a fundamentalist as anyone who not only has the answers for himself, but has them for the rest of us, too." Later in the book she explains that "There is a profound difference between someone saying 'This is THE truth', and hearing someone say 'This is MY truth'. It is easy to disagree with the opinion or doctrine of another but much more difficult to disagree with his experience. Thus, Tippett spends a lot of time on experiences and little on dogma.

She points out the vast differences in how different religions came to be and how impossible or impractical it is to apply the template of, say, western Christianity to, say, mid-eastern Islam. We know little of Christ except from the Bible and his history is hundreds of years prior to Mohammad. What we know of Christ centers almost entirely around a 3 year ministry followed by his brutal death at the hands of the Roman empire (albeit with encouragement of the ranking Jews). Mohammad, on the other hand, is documented by the Quran as a husband, father, prophet, general, friend, poet, in short -human. "Proof texting" an irritating but well-worn practice in Christianity, is new to Islam, says Tippett.

Rather than separate religions and ideologies between liberal and conservative or radical and moderate, Tippett sorts them our into the categories Mean and not-Mean and most of us have no trouble knowing what she means. One of my favorite quotes from the book which Tippett quotes from Yassi Klein Halwvi: "You can't outhate a fundamentalist. He will win."

An excellent book if just for the calming and reassuring spirit it evokes. You CAN be religious and faithful without stirring up hatred and starting World War III. I'm going to have to watch the PBS series of the same name to see if it is as good.

When will I die?

We've all given some thought to this question, haven't we? I was thinking about it a little more than usual recently because I had been looking over the idea of buying a pre-paid cremation funereal. There are at least two active cremation centers in Sacramento so I was trying to see if there was a significant difference between them. But that's another story.

In my Internet wanderings that day I came across a Real Age and Longevity Calculator that is sponsored by Poodwaddle, a web portal company. To use this calculator you simply enter your age and then slide a control button up and down in response to a couple dozen questions such as the one pictured here.

The end result shows your "real age" and estimated longevity. It's always nice to see the latter number larger than the first. And in this case much larger. As you can see, this calculator shows that I'm over 6 years younger than the calendar says and I'll last another 20 years or more. Try the calculator and see what it says for you.

New rain gauge

There comes a time in a product's life when it just isn't worth keeping it. Our old rain gauge has seen it's last rainy season. If you click on the picture and look at a magnified view of the old rain gauge (on the left) you will see that the plastic is barely transparent now. This made it really difficult to see how much rain had fallen even if we put coloring in the water.

And speaking of visibility, the old gauge used the top of the rain collected as the measuring line and an inch of rain meant pretty close to an inch of water in the gauge. The new gauge has an orange float that will rise with the water. Also, the top is like a magnifying glass in that water which falls inside a collecting funnel 96 mm in diameter but then drops into a tube considerably smaller. Since the tube is 46 mm in diameter, an inch of rain doesn't raise the float by just 1 inch. It raises it by more than 4 times 1 inch. Can you figure out exactly how many inches it would raise?

Another countdown

The other night we had Edward, Tiffany, and the boys over for after-dinner desert with Steven and Lisa. The boys were really hyper, like they had something to tell us but couldn't. Finally they blurted out something that made no sense to us, or at least to me. Seeing our frustration, Tiffany said, "Well, we thought you should know that you're expecting another grandchild."

What a surprise! We knew that Ed and Tiffany have been talking about another baby but they were having trouble figuring out where in their busy career schedules another baby would fit. With Tiffany having just gotten her B.S. degree and having just been accepted into a two year graduate program in Speech Therapy, it looked like it would be at least 2 years away. On the other hand, the clock is ticking both for her and the rest of the family. They were concerned about the new baby fitting in with the family and not be 10 years younger than the older boys. I think they finally decided that there was no "perfect" time to have a baby. Children rarely come at "convenient" times. So they decided to leave it to God's will, fate, luck, or whatever you believe in. And it didn't take long for "it" to happen. Tiffany says she's not been sick yet and hopes this pregnancy will be different from her previous ones.

They're already discussing names even though the little one will not make his/her appearance until late Spring next year. I believe they're trying to construct a name out of pieces of names significant to the family sort of like what they did for Tim's middle name which is made from the first initials of four men in the family.

So congratulations are in order for Ed and Tiff.

Apple Hill adventure

With Steven and Lisa in town, we decided we'd make an early trip to Apple Hill. It isn't REALLY early since many of the apple ranches open up to the public the week before Labor Day. But it seemed earlier in the season than we usually get there.

We picked a perfect day! The sky was cloudy and it was drizzling when we pulled into the parking lot at High Hill Ranch. Nothing like a little drizzle to keep the tourists away. It stopped drizzling a few minutes later and, although we weren't very warm, we stayed dry for the rest of our excursion.

Apple Hill had the usual assortment of artistic vendors but our first stop was at a hat makers booth where both Carolyn and Lisa selected and bought hats to keep their ears warm while making the perfect fashion statement. I selected a couple of belts at the next booth. Losing weight does have some associated costs.

Carolyn also found a necklace she really liked, made out of a 1949 silver dollar that had been gold plated in places and carved out in other places.

Before having our lunch and leaving for home, Carolyn picked a few apples (the easy way).

We also dropped into the Fudge Factory where this magnificent chocolate carousel horse reigns over the front lobby. Makes your mouth water just to think about it.

Dark Cosmos - book review

Dark Cosmos, In Search of our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy by Dan Hooper is one of those books that I read with wonder and excitement while understanding about 10% of the content. It's not the author's fault either. There have just been so many changes in physics since I was in college that I keep trying to apply my old knowledge to these new ideas and coming up short.

According to Hooper, observations of our universe indicate that about 70% of the mass and energy that should be observable is energy that has not been detected. Scientists are calling this "dark energy". A majority of the remaining 30% of the universe is "dark matter", so-called again because it has not been detected. While there are some candidates for dark matter such as the neutrino, there is only speculation about how the dark energy can exist undetected.

Hooper does claim that "skepticism is one of the most important qualities a scientist can have". Since the existence of dark matter and dark energy depends upon our observations and the current theory of gravity, it may be that that theory needs to be modified in certain cosmological situations. In fact, one group has done that with a theory called MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND for short. This theory comes closer to predicting no dark matter or energy but does not eliminate them.

It's exciting to read about the latest developments in cosmology, especially with a writer who can write about such things in very understandable terms.

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast - book review

My heart sank as I saw the book on the New Books shelf at the library. Someone had used the title I thought I'd use someday for a book I hadn't even started to think about. The title Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Lewis Wolpert refers, of course, to the conversation between Alice and the White Queen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass". The White Queen has just been telling Alice that it isn't that hard to believe impossible things but it does take some practice. The Queen then says by way of boasting a little, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

These days when we're asked to take so much on faith, from weapons of mass destruction in Iraqi hands to non-political firings directed (or not directed) from the White House, it is important to consider what exactly does belief consist of and why are some things more easy to believe and some people easier to convince.

Wolpert has written a fascinating book that would be even more fascinating if it were organized and edited better. Although he has a topic for each chapter, some of the subchapters are more important than several whole chapters. The entire chapter on health, for example, is a rambling discussion about anecdotal medicine and how little science was used to improve medicine until just the last 100 years. And how, even now, there is as much spent on non-scientific "cures" than on ones developed or proven effective by science. He claims that cultures want reasons and causes but not necessarily truth or reliability.

Wolpert would have us believe that believing is a necessary trait that evolution selected for as humans began to use tools. Belief in cause and effect allowed humans (or proto-humans) to build complex tools and design complex cultures because of their ability to believe, to see the end result from the beginning inputs. Animals, he claims, have little or no such ability. Wolpert's case would be stronger if he didn't himself admit that his "analysis is speculative and my evidence weak".

The book tells us that it is somewhat of a fortunate accident that the Greeks invented science as a method for getting and proving causal effects thus giving human belief systems something better to use than trial and error. The latter works but approximately at the same pace as evolution.

I would like to see Wolpert team up with Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett to develop a really good book about the evolutionary origins of belief.

Horowitz Accuses UCSC Of Being Too Un-American

I've been accused of being a communist sympathizer because my kids went to UC Berkeley. Now it looks like I should have been more worried about my youngest son who decided to go to that hotbed of liberalism UC Santa Cruz. Of course, how many political lectures he would have gotten in Chemistry is a whole 'nother question.

Go banana slugs!

A happy grandchild

Nothing says "I love you" better than a picture unless it is a video clip of a grandson laughing. Gavin is only 4 months old but already has discovered the way to worm himself into grandpa's heart. Here you hear Philip, his father, talking to him in Japanese while his mom Jenny patiently holds little Gavin. Do you think Philip might be telling a good joke?

Blog feedback

Sometimes when I'm writing this blog I feel like singing the line from the musical "1776" from General George Washington's letter to Congress "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?" And about that time I see one or two comments to a blog entry and know that at least a couple of you are reading the blog.

I have another tool that helps me know that someone is there and that is the Sitemeter. This handy tool captures bits and pieces of information about people who visit my blog. When someone visits the blog, Sitemeter tracks the time entered, the total time spent looking at the blog, the number of pages viewed, and roughly where in the world they're visiting from. It then summarizes that information in a weekly report. That way I know, for example, that somewhere between 13 and 33 people log onto my blog every day with an average of 19 and they view an average of 24 pages or about 1.5 pages per login. The report also tells me what time of day people are looking at my blog. Not surprisingly, you all are reading my blog sometime between 4:00 in the afternoon and 10:00 in the evening. I also know that based on their Internet addresses my blog visitors come from all over the world although 90% are from the United States.

Last Saturday I had an interesting visitor. She or he dropped into my site at 5:30 in the afternoon and stayed until 8:00 (2 1/2 hours!) while viewing almost 80 pages. Those of you who visit regularly easily beat that in total but I can't imagine spending that much time at one sitting. And as near as I can tell, he or she didn't leave any comments.

Thank you for reading my blog and especially thanks to you who comment with additions or corrections.

Beach clean-up day

One of the problems in having a far-flung family with one piece of it close by and the rest several hundred miles away, is that I do tend in this blog to use pictures of the local grandchildren more than the others. I'm sure their exciting events are used disproportionately as well. For that reason I'm delighted to be able to highlight some of the southern Californians in our family.

According to an article in the Long Beach Press-Telegram

"Small armies of environmentalists and beach lovers are expected to comb coastal sands Saturday and bag tons of debris dumped along the city's shoreline.

It's part of the 23rd annual California Coastal Cleanup Day, considered the largest volunteer program of its kind.

Long Beach is expecting more than 1,600 volunteers who will be rolling up their sleeves for the workout between 9 a.m. and noon, said city program coordinator Meaghan O'Neill of the El Dorado Nature Center."

What made the article especially exciting for our family was that the Press-Telegram managed to take (and publish) some pictures of Jessica (below), and Staci, Libby, and Perry (above) in action actually cleaning up the beach.
If I had some first-person accounts of the event, I could include those on this blog.

Thanks and a handshake

For the past five years I have been the Executive Secretary in our ward, serving with three very different bishops. Given the duties that I ended up with, a better description of the job would be "appointments and agenda secretary". For the early morning meetings on virtually every Sunday, I was responsible for preparing a one-page standard agenda and make enough copies for all attendees to have one. Then, during the week I was to take calls from people needing to meet with the bishop and try to schedule those on Wednesday evening of Sunday afternoons. It was about the level of volunteering that I felt comfortable with.

Then last night a member of the stake presidency called Carolyn and me to ask us to meet with him this morning. That sounded like pretty important stuff and we wondered which of us was due for a new calling. Turns out it was just a short meeting for the President to thank me for the past five years of service and to warn me that I would be released later this morning. Much as I appreciate the gesture, I think I would have appreciated less tension and formality. He could have broken the news over the phone last night and we all would have slept better.

I was, in fact, released this morning as was Carolyn. She was "thanked" two weeks ago by our bishop so we really did expect this morning's meeting to be important for her than for me.

A New Restaurant in Carmichael

Carmichael has a new restaurant in the building that formerly housed a Wendy's, then a real estate office, then Cops Donuts. Based on our experience last night, I think this one might be around for a while. According to the Sacramento Bee's Mike Dunne in his "That's the Ticket" column:

Sacramento's surge of seafood restaurants will get another new player this summer when Morgan Song extends his Maritime Seafood & Grill concept to Carmichael.

Song, who owns or is partner in Maritime Seafood & Grill restaurants in Woodland and Redding, as well as Old Post Office Seafood & Grill in Vacaville, says he is hoping to open the Carmichael branch of Maritime Seafood & Grill in late June or early July. The restaurant will occupy the site of the former Cops Donuts at 6440 Fair Oaks Blvd.

Song, whose odyssey as a restaurateur began in 1975 in San Francisco when he took a job as a dishwasher after arriving from his native Korea, says he is spending $800,000 to remodel the structure on top of the $1.4 million it cost him.

The food was wonderful, the service great, and the prices .... just a little more than we're used to paying. For the two of us to get out of there without having any desert or liquor cost us just over $80. Certainly okay for a 40th wedding anniversary but probably not for our usual Friday night dates.

After an appetizer of a warm, spiced pear, Carolyn had the shank of lamb while I had herb encrusted swordfish. Those descriptions don't do the food justice but I can't remember the almost poetic descriptions in the menu. In fact, I was hoping they had the menu posted on their website like they have for the Redwood restaurant but no luck. The portions of the side dishes could have been a little more generous but at least we weren't uncomfortably full at the end of the evening.

The restaurant has been open just over a week but according to the Maitre d' it has been a "soft opening" so the staff could work out all the kinks in the system without the added pressure of a full house every evening. I predict that once word gets around, they will have all the customers they want.

Spanish textbook

I certainly sympathize with students, especially full-time students, about the cost of their textbooks. For the Spanish class that Carolyn and I are taking, we had to pay $60 each for our texts which is almost exactly what we paid for in tuition. And because they are write-in work books we won't be turning them in at the end of the semester for whatever paltry sum the bookstore buys them back.

On the other hand, I am amazed at what constitutes a decent textbook nowadays. This one came with the working textbook as I mentioned and also an answer key to the end of unit notebook exercises. There were two CD's. one with videos for each of the lessons and a second with audio files of between 8 and 12 exercises and pronunciation practices. And, if all that weren't enough, there is an Internet website dedicated to resources and additional exercises for each lesson. A really impressive collection of learning aids.

Sweet Potato Queens - book review

The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn't Actually Do, but Could Have, and May Yet by Jill Conner Brown is not the first book she has written. But it is the first one she has labeled fiction. My guess is that she got so close to the truth that she had to label it fiction and even include in the title the clear message "we didn't do it!"

The book is a mix of "Revenge of the Nerds" and southern-fried "Sex in the City". Four girls (and Geraldine) who are from the wrong side of the town and therefore not accepted in the "in" crowd, form their own club and have so much fun doing it that they form life-long friendships. These friendships are literally lifesavers as each of the group goes through her own personal crisis and is rescued or at least comforted by the other Queens.

I happened to listen to the book on the CD version which is read by the author Ms. Brown. I think that contributed greatly to my enjoyment as she really put herself into the story twice: when writing it and then when reading it.

The Sweet Potato Queens have a regular float in the Jackson, Mississippi annual St. Patrick's Day parade as well as hundreds of affiliates in the U. S. and around the world who participate in their own local parades and sometimes visit Jackson to give their support to the Boss Queen Jill Conner Brown.

The final act of this book includes recipes for dishes that Jill would like to serve at the "Rest In Peace" Restaurant she warns she'll open one of these days. There you'll eat all the good food that you usually have to wait for until someone dies and they hold a funeral. Even if you don't read her book, check out her web page at http://sweetpotatoqueens.com/ or check out one of her "non-fiction" books.

Hookah, line & sinker

This was definitely a first for me. When Eve's Market opened, we could tell that it was a little different from other grocery stores. While many of the products and brands were familiar to us, many were not and there seemed to be more "natural" andn "organic" selections than we were used to seeing. But when I walked into the store today and saw the "Manager's Special" (pictured above), it was definitely a first. Not the first hookah I've seen although it is probably the first one in that shade of purple. But it was the first I've seen in a neighborhood grocery store. Maybe I should check the produce section for other unusual items.

The Big Book of Irony - book review

Jon Winokur's "The Big Book of Irony" is one of those books that is just exploding with tidbits that make you want to interrupt your reading and share what you've just read with a friend, a neighbor, or well, anybody.

Ostensibly the book is about Irony - what is is, what it is not, how to recognize it, and how to use it properly. But the problem with irony is that it is the statement of one thing while being understood to mean the opposite, that opposite meaning being the intent all along. Thus, the title of this book implies it is a "big" book when, in fact, it is quite small, which was the intent in calling it, ironically, a big book. One easily ends up in verbal or visual loops and stands a good chance of mistaking coincidence for irony or irony for sarcasm.

One of my favorite quotes in the book is from Bronislaw Malinowski:

I once talked to an old cannibal who, hearing of the Great War raging in Europe, was most curious to know how we Europeans managed to each such huge quantities of human flesh. When I told him the Europeans did not eat their slain foes, he looked at me with shocked horror and asked what sort of barbarians we were, to kill without any real object.

The book includes examples of visual irony such as flame decals on a mini-van or Michael Jackson's multiply-defaced face.

It has a section of ironic events reported in the media such as the executive at the Salt Lake Tribune in charge of implementing cost-cutting measures who was himself fired, reportedly as a "cost cutting measure."

It even includes a self-test to help you measure your own irony potential but it, of course, is also ironic in that both the highest and lowest scores indicate the same thing.

Definitely a fun book to have on your bookshelf or to give to an English major.

Brotherly love - sisterly sign

Carolyn recently received this sign in the mail from Keith and Sue. It appears to be one of those gifts out of the blue because we can't think of any occasion it represents. But then Keith and Sue are likely to do such spur of the moment things, especially if it's a nice gesture such as this.

Thanks, Keith and Sue.

p.s. It took Carolyn approximately 10 seconds to find a place on our kitchen wall to hang this.

Pig Candy

We don't normally share a treat with the ward choir that practices at our house every Sunday but this time we did. The pieces just flew off the plate. The treat was inspired by a Book on CD I recently listened to and for which I expect to do a review shortly.

Pig Candy is described in the book "The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn't Actually Do, but Could Have, and May Yet" but the book doesn't give the recipe. I had to do a Google search.

Author Jill Conner Browne gives us the recipe for Pig Candy here. It is made solely from bacon and brown sugar and is easy enough for me to bake. I did find one recipe that suggested adding chili pepper to the brown sugar coating. The only thing I would add is that it really helps to use a cookie baking pan lined with aluminum foil and to place the bacon on a wire rack on that foil while cooking. That way the excess grease and melted brown sugar drop away from the bacon. These drippings tend to scorch so you want to keep them away from the pig candy. The candy should be cooked as crisp as possible without burning. The brown sugar picks up any atmospheric moisture but then the candy won't stick around long enough for that to be a problem. For anyone who likes a sweet salty taste these are almost too much.

Forty years

The bible says that Moses and the Children of Israel wandered in the desert 40 years before they were allowed to enter the promised land. Makes me appreciate even more the 40 years my sweetheart and I have spent together enjoying each other, our children, and this "promised land" we've lived in.

Recently, Carolyn and I discussed what we'd like to do for our 40th anniversary. After all, it seemed like a pretty important date. But we realized that we've been celebrating for the past several years - going places, doing things, eating out, renting movies, watching shows, spending time with kids and grandkids. What more could we do to make our 40th anniversary any better than almost any day we spend together?

We decided to "bank" our celebration and take it the next time we want to do something and don't have an excuse. We'll just "celebrate our 40th". And if we find more than one such celebration, you'll just have to excuse our poor memory while we "celebrate our 40th" once again.

Renaissance Society - Fall 2007

The new academic year for the Sac State Renaissance Society seminars began today. The mini-seminars and forums (fora??) don't begin until next week. This semester I selected a sort of Film Analysis seminar during which we'll watch a number of foreign films (the sort you usually only see at art theaters and having English subtitles) and then spend a little time discussing the film, the technique, the director, the subject, or why it was even chosen.

We saw our first film which was "Buena Vista Social Club". That sounded to me like a group of Disney movie buffs getting together to discuss the old days. Instead it was about a reunion of some Cuban music greats who get together to perform a couple of concerts in Amsterdam and then a final one at Carnegie Hall. The music, according to those who seemed to know, was classic Cuban at it's height just before Castro's takeover. But in addition to the music the film included some great scenes of Cuba, especially Havana, showing just what a marvelous, old-world city still exists even though their economy and the US embargo prevents any significant maintenance or restoration.

Three to get ready and four to go

We have season tickets for two theater seasons - the Davis Musical Theater Center in Davis and the Chautauqua theater in Carmichael. It is a good 30 to 35 minute drive to Davis and 3 to 5 minutes to Chautauqua. We usually try to go to a good restaurant just prior to the show as it makes it more of a nice outing.

Can you guess which theater we've always been on time for and which one we often just run in before curtain time?

We did it again two weeks ago. We took a couple of good friends with us to see "Leading Ladies" at the Chautauqua. A new Mexican Restaurant called El Palmar has just opened in the area and the first time we went there it was crowded but service was still excellent. We decided to try there again. This time there was again a huge crowd but this time it was over 45 minutes before we were seated. The service was also a little slower than the last time we were there. We asked for the check early as well as some take home boxes. They were just closing the auditorium doors as we picked up our tickets and went through the entrance to find our seats.

We were soon caught up in the action of the play, a lovely farce with two Shakespearian actors dressing in drag in an attempt to inherit a large estate and kick start their acting careers. We didn't let the close call of our arrival detract from the enjoyment of the play.

Imperfect Thirst - book review

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage
Do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding;
It may be your freedom from this optical illusion
Is due to the imperfectness of your thirst.
----- Sohrawardi

So reads the epigraph at the beginning of Imperfect Thirst by Galway Kinnell. This is a small book with rather large poems. And they're the kind of poems that make you want to go back and read them again and again to see if you've gotten all the meaning out. Sort of like going over a corn cob a second or third time because you just can't stand to miss one juicy kernel.

Kinnell uses words like a skilled mechanic uses wrenches and screwdrivers. Each word is exactly the right one even if it is so obscure that you haven't seen it since your SAT tests. It is the right word. The pictures he paints with these words make you think you know him or that he knows you. It's creepy. It's emotional. It's fun.

I'm going to look for more from this guy.

Link +

My Tuesday morning responsibility is to be a "picker" for the Carmichael Branch of the Sacramento Public Library. Pam Brown and I spend about 2 hours pulling books off the shelves that have been requested by one of the library patrons. Usually the requestor is a patron of one of the other Sacramento County branch libraries but it can also be a patron of the Carmichael Branch. We usually have to find and pull 160 to 200 books which are listed 6 to a page on a printout we get each Tuesday morning. I think we have the largest list of all the days because the Carmichael library is closed on Monday so we're really picking 2 days worth of requests.

Lately, in addition to the printed lists of 160 to 200 books, we've been getting bright green sheets, one book per page. These represent the newest addition to the library services called Link +. Our county library system has joined 48 other libraries in the state to provide the same service. So now I can request a book not just from the 27 other branches of the Sacramento county library system but throughout the state. Most of the other participants are universities but a half dozen are large cities such as Berkeley or Riverside.

What's a sawbuck?

I've known since I was a kid that a sawbuck was a $10 bill and a fin was a $5. But I had no idea how limited that usage is or even how it came about. I had heard about the Spanish doubloon being the basis for the American dollar and also being divisible into 8 pieces - hence the term "pieces of 8" in pirates' tales and songs. Two of these pieces would be a quarter doubloon or quarter dollar. That's where we get 25 cents being 2 bits. Four bits was also heard in my childhood but I haven't heard it lately.

When Carolyn and I were dining at the Buckhorn Grill, there was a little sign on our table (and all the others as well) advertising sawbuck wine. I expected it to be $10 wine but in fact a glass costs $6.95 and a bottle $20. Seems to me that someone is a little unclear on the concept of sawbuck. Sort of like Jack in the Box's $6 hamburger which sells for more or less but never exactly $6.

Anyway, the best I could find on the Internet was that a sawbuck was either a rack for cutting rough wood, as illustrated above, or the Railroad Crossing sign. Both have a big Roman numeral X, signifying 10. A $10 bill would thus be related. It's a pretty tenuous connection.

For a $5 bill, the connection is finf, Yiddish for 5. Thus, to call a $5 bill a fin is just a minor corruption of yiddish.

There doesn't appear to be the same consistency for naming a $20 bill or higher but back when sawbuck and fin were common, $20 bills weren't.

Visitors from Southern California

We are delighted in being able to host Eric and Gail Buschman for a couple of days this Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately Mr. Weatherman wasn't able to predict a pause or break in the heat spell that we've had this past week. (I think this is our 5th day over 100 degrees so far with three more forecast.) But they did make a good decision about exploring some of the caves in the Gold Country area. The caves stay pretty much at the same temperature (58 deg) year round.

Steven and Lisa also dropped in for the weekend so we had a double bonus.

Carolyn and I decided to pass on the cave visits since we didn't know how serious the young kids were going to be about cave exploration. I could just see myself getting stuck on my belly between two caverns or slipping on the mud in the cave passageways and not being able to get back up.

When the group got back, we headed downtown for a tour of the Capitol and Old Sacramento. We got there too late to see the Capitol and by then the temperature was over 104 and we weren't excited about walking around a hot, dusty old town. Instead we ended up walking around Fremont Park, close to Carolyn's work where Chalk It Up was holding a fundraising sidewalk artist event.

Here are just a couple of the pieces of art we saw.


After just a bit more driving around and admiring the houses in the area, we drove over to Ludy's in Woodland for some of the best ribs, sandwiches, and BBQ sauce in the area.

Buenas tardes

"Buenas tardes. Me llamo professora Evans."

So greeted us our Conversational Spanish instructor as the semester began for American River College. When Carolyn and I had pulled into the parking lot of the Ethan Way extension campus we weren't sure this class was going to carry as there were only three other cars in the lot. However, by the time class was to start 15 minutes later there were about 25 students ready and waiting. The Ethan Way extension campus appears to be primarily for computer training with most of the classrooms equipped with computers at each student desk. Ours is one of the exceptions. But in any case, the building is well cared for and the instructor's video projector is probably going to work better than a similar setup on the main campus might.

Professor Schroeder-Evans led a very energetic first class as she covered the ground rules, the grading schedule, her syllabus, and even the various styles of Spanish that exist and which ones she will teach. She intends the class to be close to immersion with less than 1% English spoken. She made the point in several ways that you don't have to understand 100% of what is said to get the gist of the content. Some of her classroom control "gimmicks" seem geared to a little younger crowd but if they work, who cares? For example, during classroom discussions, she hands out "fichas" or chips (really just poker chips) to those who participate. At the end of class you turn in your fichas and she records this in her roll as a way to track who is participating and how much. It has a small but significant effect on your grade.

The class will emphasize conversation and even on this first evening we were made to get out of our seats and wander around the classroom introducing ourselves to fellow classmates with the limited language that we picked up when Professor Evans opened the class with "Good afternoon. My name is Professor Evans."

Like our other evening class experiences, the student representation is older than the usual community college class. Everyone appears to be seriously interested in learning Spanish. This has every indication of being a good class experience.