Blog
Last Sunday I had the pleasure of hearing Nancy Pearl, the author of BOOK LUST and MORE BOOK LUST give a speech at the American Library Association Conference. She talked about her lifelong love of reading that started in the library in her town when she was a girl.
It's been a while since I have written, which is not to say that there have not been thoughts knocking around in my head. Thus the title of this blog...Ramblings. I have collected all the bits of paper I have been scrawling notes on and I am going to jot them off here.
When I was in first grade my teacher was Mrs. Falk. I was terrified of her. She was strict --- old school kind of Catholic school strict. We would sit in chairs according to "our ability" (at the time ability was what you did work wise). And yeah, I was first row, first seat. She was very intense (a term I use now, but never knew then) about learning and being perfect. Totally stressed me out (a term I use now...then I just said I had a stomach ache). That said, she loved to encourage children to read.
I unwind by cooking. Discovering a new recipe or a new cookbook can be as relaxing for me as a great swim or long bike ride. This weekend I decided to explore Rachael Ray's 30-MINUTE GET REAL MEALS.
So this morning I woke up and saw the Georgia bride who disappeared while jogging was safe and sound in New Mexico. Here were my first thoughts:
1) Is Saturday Night Live in reruns, or will they be handling this tonight? I think of SNL a lot when things like this happen.
The Mystery Writers of America held its 60th Anniversary this week, which culminated in the Edgar Awards ceremony last night. I think the best way to share this event is to write it like a travel diary. Sooo here we go.
There are weeks when very public moments of sadness occur at the same time as personal ones. While the world was watching the worldwide coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul II, a number of us in New York were hearing of the untimely death of a former colleague, Elizabeth Crow, who we had worked with at Mademoiselle magazine when she was Editor-in-Chief.
For the last few seasons a show has been running on NBC called American Dreams. It ran on Sunday nights at 8 till a few weeks ago when it was moved to Wednesdays in the same time slot. It was one of the few shows regularly watched by me and my two sons. For those of you not familiar with it, it was set in the '60s and chronicled a family's world during these turbulent times. The show looked at Kennedy (both John and Bobby), Vietnam, the Pill, racial strife, psychedelic drugs and just about every other "issue" of the time. I enjoyed the show as a look back at a time that I lived through.
This week confirmed my thought that the umpteen cable channels available 24/7/365 are hindering our opportunity to actually get the news in a timely manner.
This story started last Saturday. I walked into the kitchen and a News Flash was on the Fox News Channel. There was a press conference on and the words BTK Killer were on the screen. Serial killers intrigue me in books; they do so even more so in real life and I assume BTK is a serial killer. So I stop to watch. Even though I never have heard of BTK before.
I have been a Simon and Garfunkel fan for years --- an ardent one. Since I was 13 my life has had a running score under it of songs from the duo, and both of the artists solo. I hear a song and it quickly brings back where I was at the time when I first heard it. I have some pretty vivid memories of lying on a tweed couch in a room in our house in a room that we called "the study" listening to S&G while wearing HUGE headphones.
