A Whingdingdilly, anyway. I have been off the posts now for too long, with several that need to be written to conclude some chapters of life, but when I realized that today is the anniversary of my very first foray into blogging I ditched all of those self-reflective essays in favor of something more fun, and a far more important anniversary: today is Bill Peet’s birthday!
Continue reading A Dilly of a BirthdayCategory Archives: Books
The Circus Ship
Recently a friend of mine posted they had dropped in on their child’s first grade class as the guest reader for the day. He read The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen. He mentioned it was one of their favorites so I hopped over to some used book sites to see if we could pick one up.
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Reading For Pleasure
In an effort to make good on the plans I had last year to make this a more active place on the internet and somehow manage to create shorter, more frequent posts I am sitting here looking at the 47 things I have written down to write about. This is the oldest one and one that keeps coming back to annoy me. The phrase “reading for pleasure.”
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Scratch the Head of Ranch Security
Back in March (2021) Texas Monthly published a feature article about John R. Erickson, the creator and ongoing author of Hank the Cowdog. Almost any schoolkid can tell you that Hank is the head of ranch security and Drover has a pain in his leg. But there is more to Hank’s (and Erickson’s) story. Much more.
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Live and Let Dry
My grandmother used to say “Nobody likes to do laundry, but everybody likes clean clothes.” I remember helping her wash and hang laundry when I stayed with them. These are just two reasons I loved Patric Richardson’s book Laundry Love (written with Karin B. Miller).
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Into The Deep
“The legendary explorer of the Titanic shares inside stories of danger, suspense, and discovery–plus previously untold stories about his own dyslexia and how it has shaped his life.
Best known for finding the doomed ship Titanic, celebrated adventurer Robert Ballard has a lifetime of stories about exploring the ocean depths. Now he gets personal, telling the stories behind his most exciting discoveries―including how a top-secret naval mission provided the opportunity for his Titanic discovery―and opens up about his private tragedies.
He frankly recounts the struggles he has worked through, rising to prominence as a scientist whose celebrity drew academic scorn. And he reveals the triumph and agony in the years after his Titanic find: While media around the world clamored for interviews, he grappled with the death of his 20-year-old son and the collapse of his marriage amid academic and military career demands. Finally, he addresses his late-in-life discovery of his own dyslexia, which he now sees as a gift that has shaped his life and accomplishments.
Twice a New York Times best-selling author, here Ballard partners with investigative reporter and bestselling author Christopher Drew to tell the dramatic and often surprising stories behind his newsworthy discoveries. Timed to appear as the National Geographic Channel airs a special documentary about Ballard’s explorations, Into the Deep will intrigue adventure lovers young and old.
Brilliant, insightful, and surprising, Into the Deep is the definitive story of the dangers and discoveries, conflicts and triumphs that have shaped the remarkable life of an American hero.”
The Game is Afoot
Sherlock Homes – The Exhibition recently opened at the Science Museum Oklahoma. A few days before the public opening I was invited to a pre-opening event and got to run through the exhibit with an exhibits colleague from the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. It’s a wonderful little exhibit with an added interactive component that puts a notebook in guests’ hands and puts them on the case. You then move through the exhibit learning about botany, ballistics, blood-spatter, and even things that aren’t alliterative.
My Voyages with Doctor Dolittle
Do they give awards for trailer editing? This one was done really well, it revealed nothing, didn’t give all the best parts, and even kept some things unknown. At least the first one did, I didn’t see the official second trailer until I was putting together media for this post.
Under the Tenfluence: Books
I finally tracked down my last missing Prehistoric Zoobooks, but have not had the time to put them in a proper post, it is still on the list though. I am working more on my dissertation at the moment and with a new routine at home due to the arrival of my son at the end of June things are a bit up in the air with anything that isn’t deadline/need-based driven. To that end though here is something that I am retrofitting for a full post that was done in a series on Facebook. It was one of those “10_____ that influenced (or some other verb) me” chain tags that go around from time to time. I usually ignore them, but this one came an a time of reflection on my own habits and what I was writing about early American readership so I decided to take something flippant and approach it in a way I could use it for a blog post. In fact, for people starting out blogging or online journaling these types of lists may provide a nice ease into the pool.
R.B. Shead: Art Director
If you have been following along, you will recognize the crescendo of this Shead story has taken over my posts and summer research. It is hard to think of anything else I could add to what I’ve discovered so far save just adding to his already herculean numbers of completed pieces of art. Following the magazine covers that were part of his enormous portfolio and utilizing the interlibrary loan services at my library I secured a few copies of the Specialty Salesman Magazine.
