Random Thinking

Michel’s dad died yesterday. He had been ill for a long time. He died peacefully in bed at home which was what he wanted.

Pop was a good guy and he always got along very well with everyone. He will be greatly missed.

Life is a series of mistakes connected by failures to learn from them.

— Me

The House at Riverton
by Kate Morton

It’s 1999 and Grace Bradley receives a note from a movie producer. A film is being made about a suicide that occurred in 1924 at an estate in England called Riverton where Grace worked as a servant. Grace is suddenly confronted with the memories of what happened that night and the secret that she has been holding for 75 years. Grace was only 14 years old when she started working at Riverton just before the First World War started. Over the course of the book, we learn about her life and the lives of the Hartford family, especially the two young girls Hannah and Emmeline, over the next 10 years culminating in that night in 1924.

Kate Morton has written a very entertaining novel. She cleverly intertwines the story of 98 year old Grace Bradley remembering the past and 14 year old Grace Bradley experiencing it. Morton creates characters that are interesting but at the same time their mistakes are frustrating but make them seem more human. Morton’s characters live life as a series of mistakes connected by failures to learn from them. Morton creates wonderful imagery with her writing and it is easy to see that her degree in English Literature was not wasted.

The story is enjoyable but not perfect. Many questions are raised and ignored. Why did Robbie wait so long to contact Hannah? What happened at Riverton while Hannah and Grace were away that led to Mr. Hartfod’s death? Why did Grace keep her secrets from Hannah? At the same time, Morton does a wonderful job with foreshadowing to pull the reader further into the story to find out why this happened or what did this clue mean? Overall, this is a wonderful book that I am glad to recommend.

Tags: books, review, The House at Riverton

When I see you sky as a kite
As high as I might
I can’t get that high
The how you move
The way you burst the clouds
It makes me want to try

When I see you sticky as lips
As licky as trips
I can’t lick that far
But when you pout
The way you shout out loud
It makes me want to start
And when I see you happy as a girl
That swims in a world of magic show
It makes me bite my fingers through
To think I could’ve let you go

And when I see you
Take the same sweet steps
You used to take
I say I’ll keep on holding you
My arms so tight
I’ll never let you slip away

And when I see you kitten as a cat
Yeah as smitten as that
I can’t get that small
The way you fur
The how you purr
It makes me want to paw you all
And when I see you happy as a girl
That lives in a world of make-believe
It makes me pull my hair all out
To think I could’ve let you leave

And when I see you
Take the same sweet steps
You used to take
I know I’ll keep on holding you
In arms so tight
They’ll never let you go

Copyright 1992 - The Cure
Robert Smith, the leader of The Cure, is often considered the icon of Goth because of his depressing music and lyrics. He says that he is really a happy person but just writes depressing songs. When he was a teenager Smith once wore a black velvet dress to school for the shock value. He has been married to his high school sweetheart, Mary Poole, for 20 years.

Dick Cheney explains what he thinks about the opinion of the American public:

Q: Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting, and they’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So?

Q: So — you don’t care what the American people think?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No.

Interview of the Vice President by Martha Raddatz, ABC News
March 19, 2008

Everyone has heard by now that Rev. Wright has expressed his fear that perhaps AIDS was developed by white people to kill black people. This is, of course, absurd, but Rev. Wright is not speaking from racism. He is speaking from fear. Rev. Wright grew up when white people treated black people like dirt.

It was in 1972 that the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male ended. The purpose of the study was to observe the progression of syphilis in untreated patients. When the study started in 1932, there was no cure for syphilis but a cure was found with the development of penicillin and by 1947, syphilis treatment was routine, effective and safe. But not for the black men in the Tuskegee study. They were denied treatment and their disease was allowed to continue to ravage their minds and bodies. It ended in 1972, not because the government decided that allowing a treatable disease to remain untreated was immoral, but because a whistle blower found out about the study and reported it to the The Washington Star and The New York Times. Rev. Wright was 30 years old.

When I was a child, black people in the south were denied educations. They were forced to use separate rest rooms from white people. They were denied the vote. Rev. Wright experienced this first hand so his feelings are understandable, at least to me. Obama has said that the issue with Rev. Wright is a generational one, that Obama has had different experiences in the US but that he can understand how people of Rev. Wright’s generation feel.

It is now time to move on from this issue. The office of the POTUS and the future of the US is too important to be spending so much time on what is a non-issue.

This is too funny…

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He wanted to attend the opening of the creationist movie, Expelled. So he and friends and family head to the Mall of America where… well, read it yourself!

I told this to Beth but for some reason she wasn’t interested. Paris Hilton is looking for a new best friend. And she is so desperate to find someone (or she wants to make some money) that she is going to have a program on MTV to help her find a new BFF.

You can sign up to be Paris’ friend at her website. Twenty lucky finalists will be selected and will move into a house to live with Paris where you will have the opportunity to learn “normal girl stuff” like shopping, fashion, makeup, and going around with no underwear on. I assume the format will be like Survivor and contestants will be eliminated by binge drinking and driving drunk into a car loaded with paparazzi.

So if you think you have what it takes to be Paris Hilton’s BFF then I feel sorry for you go to the website and sign up. By the way, I am fairly certain that this is mentioned in the Book of Revelations as being a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

Tags: stupidity, Paris Hilton, the apocalypse, MTV

Only 24 hours left for me to brag that I live in the state with the stupidest governor. Client 9 is officially out tomorrow.

Tags: Eliot Spitzer, stupidity, Client 9

For 50 years, it has been the site of a place to eat. It’s just about a mile from our house and I have been going there all my life. When I was a little kid it was a Howard Johnson’s. My mother worked so she used to take me there sometimes when she was too tired to cook.

When Howard Johnson’s got out of the restaurant business, it turned into a diner and has been a diner ever since. I remember going there in my high school days after a fun Saturday night of hanging with my buddies. And it wasn’t just any diner… it was the best diner in the area, and Long Island is noted for its diners.

This is all that is left today. The diner is being torn down to make way for another corporate store that makes every town in the USA look like every other town in the USA. In this case it is a Walgreens drug store. There is another Walgreens about 2 miles away from this one. There is a CVS across the street. And there is a Rite Aid across the other street.

As the sign says, Walgreens is coming soon. Too soon for me. Losing a great diner for another impersonal corporate chain store is just not an improvement as far as I am concerned. So what favorite store, restaurant, or bar of yours was pushed out by a corporate super store?

Final note: Does every diner have the same slogans on their signs? Steaks, Chops, Seafood and Baking Done on Premises.