Happy Veterans Day

Special Thanks to all who gave their lives or are giving their lives so that we may live free...

In celebration of our armed forces here is an excerpt from my grandfather's journal as he left New York harbor on his way to serve as a Chaplin to an Army Battalion in France in 1918.

What mingled emotions come as the great drama of life unfolds! Here we are on board the U.S. President Grant bound for "somewhere in France..."

We have left old New York far behind. How hard it is to see the glorious harbor for the last time- for perhaps years! How one does love one's country when leaving it under such conditions as these. It stands for life as each one delights to live it, for happiness which comes through the great normal channels of divine ordination; for service unto others as God gives us opportunity. The men have been silent, thoughtful and serious. They realize also what it means. Yet not one of us would be elsewhere.


Anon,

Nancy

Amazing Animal Pix

Check out these amazing photos of a pride of lions, a mama lion in particular, who are trying to save a lion cub who's fallen into a ravine.

http://animaltracks.today.com/_news/2011/09/27/7974512-cliffhanger-can-a-mama-lion-save-her-cub

Found this on Pinterest.com, So Cool

  From the San Francisco Chronicle, a female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was so weighted down by the traps that she struggled to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was freed, the divers said she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

Wonder how many copies it sold?

So ready...

Review: The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry is set in the community, a place where everyone dresses the same, lives in similar houses and life is free from unemployment, disease and war.

This utopian society is not without it's flaws. And as the story begins, we are slowly shown the cracks in this carefully constructed society.  Young Jonas, age 11 is about to experience the Ceremony of Twelve. It is the last of the ceremonies in the community. They occur each December. At age nine, the youngsters receive their bicycles, at age one, the babies are given a family. At age 12, the kids are given a career path.

At the ceremony, Jonas finds out he is to be the Receiver of the community. The Receiver is the one person who has access to how things used to be before they formed the community--it's memories, it's history, all locked up in this one person. As one Receiver ages, another one must be trained. Jonas will be that person. As the Receiver, he can ask questions that other members of the community cannot and the members must tell him the truth. That's when things start to fail. Jonas asks what happens when someone is released from the community. The current Receiver, known to him as The Giver shows Jonas a video of someone being released. Jonas learns later that it was the Giver's daughter. It is this knowledge that changes everything Jonas thought he knew about the community and leads to him choosing a difficult path...

The Giver won the Newbery when it was released in 1994--way before the trend of dystopian fantasies. Lowry first shows us the structure of the community --it's sameness, by showing everyone eating the same thing, wearing the same clothes, even riding the same bicyles. Then she unpeels the layers like you would an onion--slowly, carefully. The community seems slightly creepy in it's concise functionality, making it more and more dysfunctional. You root for Jonas to ask the right questions and make the right decisions. The writing is straightforward, there is no navel-gazing, no flowery words. The language is simple and clean much like the community itself. I found the book to be slightly disturbing and didn't like it at first. But upon further reflection, I believe this was Lowry's intent. We shouldn't like a society that eliminates individuality. We should celebrate our differences not suppress them.

Anon,

Nancy

Next up: The Penderwicks

June is Adopt A Shelter Cat Month

My Favorite Shelter Cats!