Nearest Book Meme

"At age thirty-one, he still listed his occupation as 'painter.' "

The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis,and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Edward Dolnick

Think American history, European history, Dutch history, art history . . . This is what I'm reading now (only about 125 pages into it) -- on top of the pile of other books I haven't read yet.



Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don't look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

From Stephen's Lighthouse

Plum Island

One cool Sunday afternoon in early October, I got the chance to spend a few hours at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, near Newburyport, Massachusetts.

I had just started out walking from the gate house area when I saw a fox -- as I watched for awhile, he pranced and zigzagged through the grass, looking up every so often.




In one of the pools along the road, I saw two juvenile mute swans. They ignored me and everyone else who stopped to take pictures.





The cloudy overcast skies made it difficult to positively identify these birds from their silhouettes.




There are several long, undulating boardwalks that stretch across the dunes area from the road to the beach

and back to the road again.





While there was still a lot of green, fall was beginning to show in the brown and bronze grasses.
There were quite a few other people out, some on bikes, some walking and jogging, others driving slowly along the road in their cars. But at the end of the road, just before I turned back, I saw this image -- a woman just sitting quietly at the end of a boardwalk, enjoying the fresh salt air and the peaceful ocean view.

Sunrise and chasing the waves

We make frequent visits to a friend in Hampton, NH. From the balcony of his condo on the first day of September, we had a great view of the gorgeous sunrise over the beach (and of course the utility wires -- pretend they're not there).

And then later in the day, as the light was fading, I took a walk along the beach. There were a few other people out there, some with their dogs, just quietly strolling along.

But parts of the beach were quite busy. The semipalmated plovers






and the sanderlings were chasing the waves and finding all those yummy little invertebrates in the wet sand.





The light reflecting off the wet sand made some interesting patterns.

Another Fall Day

These fall images are from October 6, along the Squam River in Ashland.

Celebrate Banned Books Week by Reading!!

And that is what I've been doing – reading.

Two books that I read recently are The Case of the Missing Books and The Book Stops Here, by Ian Sansom. They relate the hilarious adventures (and amateur sleuthing) of a Jewish, vegetarian librarian who moves from London to a small Irish town to run the local mobile library. Those are the first and third titles in the author's Mobile Library Mystery series, but somehow I missed #2 (Mr. Dixon Disappears) in the series -- so I will have to go back to the bookstore and find that one.

And then I came across Ian Sansom's website, which is just as much fun to read as his books. His "Preface" page was the first one that I landed on, and I loved what he had to say about reading, writing, and libraries:

" . . . I write because I read, and I read because I write, the two being pretty much inseparable in my mind, . . . I don’t know which came first, the reading or the writing, but I do know that I started reading because of libraries. . . . Libraries are places where you go to invent and reinvent yourself, or maybe just to use the toilet, if they have toilet facilities, and to find out how other people have reinvented themselves, and what they’ve written on the walls, and the desks, and in the books; they’re a wonderful hiding place, but also a way back out into the world. . . ." (http://www.iansansom.net/preface.html)

The importance of our right to read was brought home to me again when I received an email from the librarian at the high school (from which I just retired) – she is facing a formal challenge to one of the books in the library, a book written by an award-winning American author. She has my full support. She also shared this with me – Rain: An Original Poem, by Billy Collins

Remember, in order to keep our freedom to read, we must defend it.

Banned Books Week -- September 27 - October 4, 2008

A Fall Walk in Ashland

I took a walk in Ashland yesterday to add a few more pictures of fall in New England.





First, a view down Depot Street . . .








Then, looking over the bridge on Winter Street . . .









And finally, looking across Mill Pond . . .

First Day of Fall

Today is the first day of fall (it was official at 11:44 AM EDT) -- the most colorful season here in New Hampshire. I have already seen some leaves beginning to change color -- as you look at the mountains and along the roads, you can see random spots of yellow or red among the green trees. Here are a couple pictures of the early changes from another year.

This photograph was taken two years ago, almost to the day, along Meredith Center Road, from the shore of Wickwas Lake on a foggy morning.





And this view is the Merrymeeting Marsh area, at the boat launch along Route 11. We drove by there Sunday morning on our way down to Portsmouth and it looked almost the same as two years ago.

So now I just have to watch for more of the colors to come out over the next few weeks.

What Did You Read This Summer?

How many times did we hear this question when we came back to school in the fall? We asked this of our students and we asked our colleagues the same question, too. Now that I'm retired, I'm finally getting around to some of those books I've missed over the last year or two. So this is what I've read recently (with some of my comments) . . .

A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson) -- author's humorous account of his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail -- funny, delightful -- celebration of the wilderness and history of the Trail.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards) -- impact of choices and secrets on family -- emotional.

The Last Chinese Chef (Nicole Mones) -- romantic plot (American food writer in modern Beijing) intertwined with insight into Chinese culture and traditional imperial Chinese cuisine -- delicious.

The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway) -- siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s -- struggle to find meaning and humanity in time of war -- gripping -- emotional -- I need to read this one again.

Zoli (Colum McCann) -- story of a young Romani woman -- ranges from rise of fascism in 1930s Czechoslovakia, through Communist rule, to 2003 -- search for identity and home -- author brings Zoli and a little-known culture alive -- haunting.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows) -- British island of Guernsey, following the World War II occupation by the Nazis -- correspondence between a London writer and members of a book club on the island -- entertaining characters.

Girls of Riyadh (Rajaa Alsanea) -- young upper-class Arab women and their conflicts with cultural traditions -- light read.

Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen) -- human and animal members of the gritty world of a Depression-era traveling circus -- emotional -- could not put it down.

So what am I reading next? My "books to read next" pile is twice as high as the one in the picture -- so guess I'll get back to reading. Or maybe I'll head off to the book store first to get some more.

Hampton on Labor Day

We spent the weekend with a friend who lives in Hampton, New Hampshire. This was the sunrise over the ocean on Labor Day morning.A short time later, I took a walk along the beach and found these Semipalmated Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plovers were also out for a walk.The sandpipers were the hardest to get photos of in the early morning light -- they are very fast as they skitter across the wet sand, not even pausing very long when they find something.


The plovers were just as fast, but for some reason I had a little more luck with them.

Wildflowers

Daily Variety

Today's visitors included the hairy woodpecker . . .







and the white-breasted nuthatch . . .





as well as the chipping sparrow . . .

Feed Me, Dad!

It's been family time -- and noisy -- lately in the trees, especially when the kids decide they're lazy and hungry.

Today it was father goldfinch's turn to keep up with the youngster. Dad would spend some time at the feeder while the youngster waited impatiently in the tree. And when dad came up to the branch, the begging and wing fluttering started. I watched this cycle several times, until the youngster finally joined dad down at the feeder. The juvie grabbed some seeds on his own, but still tried begging -- and was ignored, until he returned to the branch again.

Black and White All Over

I added another "first" to my bird list this evening. Just as I started to step out to our deck to check the bbq grill, I caught a flash in the tree. My husband slowly handed me the camera and I was able to get a few shots as two black-and-white warblers jumped from branch to branch. The pair came back again a little later -- both times they came from the woods across the street, along with the chickadees and nuthatches.