kentnotes

2011-02-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

Every winter I look out the window at a table in the back yard to see how much snow has fallen. After worrying about whether we'd get a white Christmas we finally got more than a dusting on January 21.

The picture above shows the table on January 22.

The picture on the right is on February 2.

Three days later the table is almost completely covered.

Finally on February 11 it's out of sight. The snow pile at the end of the driveway is getting bigger, too. I would estimate the snow to be about three feet deep.

Yesterday, February 17 it was a little warmer. In the afternoon it got up to 43 degrees and the melting started. Now I can see my table again. This was taken at 1 o'clock today. When Ichecked the thermometer at 6:45 this morning it was 37 degrees.

This was taken three hours later. I may put out the patio furniture tomorrow.

2010-10-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

I read 14 books since August sixth (last book post) but only 4 are worth recommending; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larssen, South of Broad by Pat Conroy, Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly, and One Shot by Lee Child. I just picked up The Lion by Nelson DeMille which I'm sure will be very entertaining.

2010-08-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

I just read the third (and last) book of Steig Larssen's. A terrific book like his first. A friend who read it and loaned it to Julie advised keeping a list of the characters for reference, an excellent suggestion. Larssen names every character whether they appear once in a sentence or throughout the book. Hollywood is making a movie of the first book (and, most likely, the others) but I'd like to see the Swedish version.

October 15: I just saw the movie, Swedish version, and it was great as expected.

2010-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's been many months since I've been here. I've been afflicted with sloth. By popular request (one) I'm going to attempt to publish my reading list so far this year. I can't lift my spreadsheet into this blog so will list some of the better stories.

When the Light Goes,
Texasville, and
Rhino Ranch by Larry McMurtrie
Appaloosa,
Brimstone,
Resolution, and
Blue Eyed Devil by Robrt B. Parker - a series of four westerns with Virgil Cole
Any Spenser novel is a fun read.
The First Rule by Dennis Lahane - his Joe Pike novels are pretty good
Lou Boldt series by Ridley Pearson - they're all "page-turners"
Joe Pickett series by C. J. Box - Pickett's a WY game warden
Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly - an LAPD cop
The Desert Queen by Janet Wallach - non-fiction about Iraq's beginning
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley - 11 year old detective, entertaining
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski - great story for a dog lover

Other favorite authors are; David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, Stieg Larssen, and Peter Mayle.

2009-12-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

We have spotted some wild turkey in the past but today set a record. Julie looked out the bathroom window and saw not a partridge in a pear tree but a turkey in our crab tree.

Later I went to the front of the house and watched a parade of 24 turkeys go out the driveway, turn right, and head for our neighbors.
I couldn't get all of them in the picture because there was one independent type who turned left.

2009-12-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

I use a table in the backyard to indicate snowfall for the winter. We received our first measurable snow on December 4th, three inches. Eight more fell on the ninth as shown in the first picture. On the thirteenth we got three more inches shown in the second picture.

2009-12-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

"Good books ruin you for enjoying bad books." This is a quote from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which I think is very true.

2009-12-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

I just finished resding The Guersing Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It's a very entertaining, informative, and "feel-good" book. It's written in the form of letters between the heroine, Juliet, to and from major and minor players in the story. It reads as non-fiction and it is easy to forget that it is a work of fiction. I recommend it for all.

2009-11-15T11:08:00.000-08:00

Here is our crabapple tree in the spring and fall. Below is a picture taken on December 14 with three turkeys in the tree shaking berries to the ground.

2009-11-10T06:02:00.000-08:00

More books since September 27:
The Murder of King Tut non-fiction by James Patterson.
False Pretenses by Catherine Coulter.
Traffic non-fiction by Tom Vanderbilt
Uncivil Seasons by Michael Malone.
Cold Fire by Dean Koontz.
Loitering with Intent by Stuart Woods.
Tailspin by Catherine Coulter.

The two non-fiction books were the best.

2009-11-10T05:48:00.000-08:00

We spent the last week in October in Colorado with Tracy and family and with Sam, Amy and Max who came down from Montana. As you can imagine many pictures were taken including a few by Tracy's apprentice Leslie. The object in her viewfinder were Nana and Pop.
Pretty good, huh?

2009-10-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

Netflix flicks seen since 9/27:
Australin with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. Not bad but too long.
The Italian with Russian actors. A Russian orphanage sells a ten year old boy to an Italian couple but before he can be delivered he escapes to search for his birth mother. My Russian's a little weak so I used subtitles most of the time.
Only Human with unknown (but good) actors. A Jewish girl brings her Palestinian fiance home to meet the parents. The family is loaded with characters which made for a funny movie.
Sharpe's Rifles a UK series (14 episodes). This is the first of the series which was good enough to order the second.

Books read since 9/27:
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Grayson. An amusing bird-watching competition to see who gets the opportunity to ask a particular woman to the annual ball in a small town in Kenya.
Devil's Corner by Lisa Scottoline. An Philadelphia Assistant U.S. Attorney is involved in a drug case in the worst part of town. Not bad.
Nothing to Lose by Lee Child. This is another "Jack Reacher" novel. Jack is a 6'5" ex Marine MP who is a superman and can talk his way out of any situation he can't fight his way out. It was entertaining until the end when Child turned political (a bed-wetting liberal).

Maine 9/20/2009

2009-09-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

Julie and I were invited to spend a couple days with an IBM friend from the sixties in East Blue Hill, Maine. There were actually a few others who lived in the town. This is their guest cottage which provided excellent comfort and accommodations.

These are our hosts, Connie and Ralph, on a tour of the Blue Hill harbor in Ralph's boat (one of only 105 of its type built in the Brooklin, Maine shipyard, the wooden boat capital).

The next day Julie and I drove over to Mt. Desert Island to tour around Acadia National Park. This is Northeast Harbor one of many that look alike to the untrained eye (mine).

We took a 12 mile hike (or was it a 1/2 mile) on Ship's Harbor nature trail to get an up close and personal view of the flora and fauna.

It was a relaxing mini vacation and Julie was able to visit five or six gift shops (all on plastic).

2009-09-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

More books since September 4.

The Associate by John Grisham. This is a good story about a law school graduate who is blackmailed into joining a prestigious law firm to spy on another law firm. Fortunately there are no courtroom scenes.

The Body of David Hayes by Ridley Pearson. The author is always good for a "page-turner" and this one is that but it has too many twists and turns that distract from the story. It's not his best.

Nightlife by Thomas Perry. Catherine Hobbes is a Portland, OR detective trying to track a killer who changes identity seemingly at will. The killer kills only when it is inconvenient to let a paricular person live.

Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson. I lke Pearson even if he occasionally misses (see above). This one is the latest of his Killer series with Sun Valley sheriff Walt Fleming. Walt has to deal with all sorts of problems and distractions with family, love-life, FBI, etc. while trying to solve a crime.

Brimstone by Robert B. Parker. This the third and last of a western series (Appaloosa and Resolution) with Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. These two know each other so well they can converse with one-word sentences. Everett is the narrator and he's like an old western Spenser (see below).

Chance by Robert B. Parker. I finished Brimstone during the first day of a three-day mini vacation in Maine so I picked Chance off the shelf of old paperbacks at our host's guest cabin and started reading. It was vaguely familiar but I've read so many of Parker's Spenser novels that I wasn't sure I'd read it. I didn't remember how it ended so I finished it. I went into my "Books Read" list and discovered that I read it last May.

2009-09-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

A late-'30s-era London governess hired to work in the home of a high-profile nightclub chanteuse gets a taste of the good life when she is assigned the task of sorting out the singer's many unseemly affairs in a period comedy staring Frances McDormond.

A thirtysomething single mother whose boundless potential was squandered through a series of failed relationships and a misguided effort to help her younger sister succeed in life finds the fruits of her labors finally coming together.

When a young Vienna Music Conservatory student and aspiring composer accepts a job as a copyist for Ludwig von Beethoven, she soon finds her destiny forever interlinked with that of the legendary classical musician. This is rated R for sexuality...there is none, it's more of a comedy because Ed Harris is wild as Beethoven.

2009-09-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

This is a complicated story of espionage in China during WWII. Director Ang Lee relieves some of the confusion with explicit pornography.

2009-09-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

This movie tells the true-life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former cello prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Jamie Foxx does a great job of portraying one afflicted with schizophrenia.

2009-09-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

Books read since September 4:
The Associate by John Grisham. About a Yale Law School graduate who gets blackmailed into joining a prestigious law firm so he can spy on them for another big law firm. If he doesn't a video of an undergraduate gang-bang will be published. Lots of other twists and turns.

The Body of David Hayes by Ridley Pearson. He's one of my favorites bu this one didn't quite make it. Same idea as The Associate only this time it's a video of a one night affair that would ruin the life, career,etc. of the wife of a well known detective on the Seattle PD will be published if she doesn't help steal $17million from her bank where she's an officer.

2009-09-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

Julie and I had a fun weekend with Dave, Tina, Luke and Kajsa at the beach.

Julie took Luke to Baker Hill for a tour of the golf course.

2009-09-10T05:23:00.000-07:00

Amy has a new venture with a blog, http://www.montanafortune.wordpress.com, which I hope is successful. I've never been fond of pyramid schemes but they work for some, I guess.

2009-09-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

I read the following books since August 21:

When Will There be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (another UK writer). Atkinson’s latest novel is the third to feature Jackson Brodie, although the author says she “never thought of it as a trilogy. I just thought of it as three books with the same character moving on and evolving, I think, so that by the end of book three, Jackson is in a very different place to what he was at the beginning of book one.” And while Atkinson is herself moving on with her next project — an unrelated novel featuring two female characters at a murder mystery weekend — she does hope to return to Jackson Brodie one day. But for now she feels that the end of When Will There Be Good News? is a “good place to leave him, because he needs to recover, I think, from all kinds of things that have happened to him.”

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. Joy is not the first emotion one would expect to feel while reading a long Swedish crime novel that deals with misogyny, sex trafficking, police corruption, and a handful of explicitly gruesome murders. Yet The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second novel in Stieg Larsson's internationally bestselling Millennium series, turns a reader inside out with a joy that can't be squashed, not even by the grim knowledge that the 50-year-old author died suddenly in 2004 after finishing three books and will publish no more.

Resolution by Robert B. Parker. A greedy saloon/hotel/bank owner threatens the coalition of local ranchers in the town of Resolution, pitching two honorable gunfighters, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, into a make-shift war that'll challenge their friendship —and the violently shifting laws of the West.This is the second of a series of three (so far), the first being Appaloosa. Virgil and Everett are such good friends that they could finish each other's sentences or thoughts. Parker portrays the West as it probably was, there were no good guys and bad guys, everyone was, to some extent, bad.

2009-08-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

In an article publshed in 1975, Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, who observed that the experience of Communism had shown that "the only universal medicine (Marxists) have for social evils-State ownerswhip of the means of production-is not only perfectly compatible with all the disasters of the capitalist world-with exploitation, imperialism, pollution, misery, economic waste, nationalhatred, and national oppression, but it adds to them a series of disasters of its own: inefficiency, lack of economic incentives and above all the unrestricted rule of the omnipresent bureaucracy, a concentration of power never before known in human history."

2009-08-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

Movies recently viewed:
Downfall - about the last days of Hitler. Produced, directed, and acted by Germans and very well done. Hitler is depicted (rightly so) as an evil monster who has lost his mind.

The Station Agent - about a midget whose only friend has died and willed him an abandoned railroad station house in rural New Jersey. An excellent movie examining relationships. Very entertaining and a welcome relief from car chases, CD, murder, etc. Highly recommended.

2009-08-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

Books read this week:
Deal Breaker by Harlan Coben - not bad but not his best, can't recommend it.

Small Vices by Robert B. Parker - a typically good "Spenser" novel, I'll always recommend Parker.

2009-08-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Julie just showed me a letter in the Wall Street Journal from Grorge Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee (seed) Co., from which I took the following, "[I]n this world of iPhones, PCs, Twitter, 200 cable channels, and over the top home entertainment centers, the garden suddenly appears as something new and delightful: a multidimensional, interactive realm of flavor, nourishment, fragrance, pleasure, beauty, recreation, sanctuary and self-realization."

2009-08-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

I'm considering terminating my website, kentnotes.com, and just using this blog for my thoughts, etc. I just checked the Usage Statistics for my site and figure that I was responsible for most of the visits. My visits usually involve adding the latest books I've read and the Netflix movies I've seen, nothing that can't be done on a blog. I'll post this on the website and see if I get any comments.

2008-11-18T14:42:00.000-08:00

We spent a delightful two weeks with Tracy, Jerry, and the twins, Leslie and Kadel during the last two weeks of October. Sam, Amy, and Max drove down and spent five days with us (Sam and Amy did most of the driving, Max was map-checker). The weather was beautiful (low 70s) and the grandkids provided non-stop entertainment. I'm sure Sam needed a rest when he returned to MT. There are more pictures on Picasa.

2008-11-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Barack Obama. I hope the characters in Congress of both parties don't screw it up.

14 carrots

2008-10-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

Julie has put to bed her vegetable garden which was, again, a good provider of produce, carrots being one item. I title this picture 14 carrots showing a small number of the close to 100 that came from the garden. Many of our friends and neighbors are enjoying fresh carrots this fall. Fortunately I like carrots.

What do you believe in?

2008-10-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

It appears that higher education has a powerful positive effect on paranormal beliefs (pseudoscience, cults, and superstition). Two years ago two professors published a study in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer showing that,while less than one quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students. I know that colleges and universities are hotbeds of liberal thought but what else are they teaching?

kentnotes

2008-10-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try using Google's blogging system. Not sure how it works yet, I'll experiment for a while.