It’s finally Friday, I got my urgent project finished, and now it’s time to celebrate! So come hang out on the patio for a cocktail, music, and good times with friends…
Welcome to the outdoor patio at the Frog Pond Cafe:
And look, GracieDog is already here:
*Can I get you a drink? I’m having my favorite “happy buzz drink”…
4 parts Absolut Citron
2 parts Cointreau
1 part fresh squeezed lime juice
2 parts cranberry juice
Shake and strain into a chilled martini glass (or reasonable facsimile) and garnish with a lime wedge
And how about some music? I know Zander likes Groove Salad, and here’s a link to a live stream from my local radio station.
And my happy story for this week:
Well, he and I both got a big surprise! He won awards for language arts, math, and social studies! I am so proud of him, because he has had a really challenging year (my ex-husband has some serious alcohol-related legal troubles), and he went ahead and had a good year anyway! Not bad for a guy who was “evaluated” in first grade for not knowing how to write lowercase letters on the first day of school! </proud mama babble
So, come on, tell us all what’s happening in your life? What good stuff happened this week, or why are thankful it’s over? Any fun plans for the weekend?
And as Sven Triloqvist likes to say, “May the 4s be with you…”
for everyone to play on. Please unrecommend the earlier diary!
And a question: what books and CDs have made their way onto your short list of favorites lately?
Who has time to read a real actual book, when I take time away from computering, it’s to either lay down on an icepack and rest my eyes or to meander through the garden. I swear that’s this only time I leave my computer, <smile>
But I am trying to read again the Oversoul SEven series by jane Roberts, a great spiritualistic book by the way.
Oversoul Sven? 😉
You amy very well be one, an oversoul that is Sven, but in this case it is seven….You should read it/them Sven, its sold at amazon.com…
The reissue of Alan Shorter’s “Tes Esat” has definitely been a personal fave as of late – some old-school late 1960s-early 1970s free jazz blowouts on that whole cd.
The Revolutionary Quartet’s “And Now…” which came out last October has also been getting a heavy rotation on my office cd player – definitely on the avant-garde jazz tip, but these cats tend to have a quieter, more open feel to their music. They’re also unabashed lefties, which is an added bonus as far as I am concerned. 🙂
I can’t get enough of Jurassic 5’s “Power in Numbers” or Antipop Consortiums “Arrhythmia” – those albums were released a couple years back, but are still fresh.
Books: Ward Churchill’s “A Little Matter of Genocide” and Phil Freeman’s “New York is Now: The New Wave of Free Jazz” are definitely on the list.
What new books? is this an extension of the Patriot Act? 😉
I’ve been rereading ‘Charts of Philosöphy’ because it’s a fast way to look smart. I also had to pull out ‘Decision and Control’ by Stafford Beer, to answer some questions about OR ( Operatational Research).
I am listening again to ‘A Kind of Blue’ Miles Davis, because it seems such a transitional record. Thanks to my daughters I’m listening to (UK) Kasabian and Finnish band Egotrippi.
Kind of Blue is one of my favorites.
I’ll have to check out Egotrippi.
If you need any help with translation….. 😉
I may need that help sooner than you think. It’s not on Itunes, and I am having a hard time finding any mp3s on the Egotrippi site (partly because I can’t read it-LOL!)
Go to <musiikkia> (top menu) and select <AUDIO> = selection of MP3 tracks comes up
Oh, and then select <kopioi> (to copy) that will downloiad your MP3
Thanks! I like them, even if I can’t understand a word…what does Sina Vain mean?
Sinä väin means ‘just you’
Music wise I’ve been on an alt-country/indie rock kick lately. I’ve been listening to all sorts of newer stuff like Mike Moore, Virgil Shaw, Gold Cost Refuse and Matthew Carlson, and a whole bunch of other amazing stuff. God bless bands who put MP3s out on the net.
If you want to check out any of the bands I metioned you should go to Garageband.com or Epitonic.com, and search there. Both sites offer free MP3s for down-loading.
I’ve also been on a Neil Young kick lately, and have been checking his catalogue out of the library album by album.
Bookwise, I’ve been really bad about geting any reading done lately. But I picked up a couple novels at the library, and am going to try to start on them in the next day or so.
Well, these days my CD collection has been hijacked! I’m taking my little sis to the Vans Warped tour on Sunday, and I’m trying to at least get a little familiar with some of the bands that will be there. Not exactly my cup of tea (it’s alternative/ punk), but I can tolerate it.
Oh, the perils of being a good big brother…. 🙂
But just think, you’ll be idolized forever! (I had a good big brother myself)
Books: Mary Wollstonecraft: A New Genus by Lyndall Gordon, Wild Dogs by Helen Humphreys, Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka
CDs: In Blue by Karrin Alyson, Worldes Blysse by the Medieval Babes
You know I can’t decide which I like better at this cafe —
the artwork on the walls
or
the view out the window.
Andi – you may be an absolute whizz with the server, but ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka’ puts you fair and square in the Anorak Brigade ;-9
gawd I feel really ignorant — I don’t why I would be a ‘whizz with the server’ and I haven’t got a clue what ‘the anorak brigrade’ is and I don’t know what your smiley means.
Please I am dreadful need of enlightment.
And I thought you were Andi who fixes the software here . sorry 😉
The Anorak Brigade members are basically Nerds. My smiley is a wink = two eyes, (one closed), a nose and a mouth smiling
Well, thank you. I feel much less ill-informed (at least about these specific things).
So now I want to know why you think ‘Tractors’ is a nerd book?
Um, my guess is that the server thing is probably referring to Andy (with a y), who is the tech person keeping the servers and everything running smoothly for BooTrib…
hey I like that just fine…it is the american version of the bluegrass version of the friday night tractor pull down at the fair grounds….:o)
Hello, all!
Books: I’m nearly finished with Becoming Justice Blackmun. Next up: either A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Wollstonecraft) or, if I make it to the bookstore tomorrow, Cinderella’s Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground by Maria Raha. I’m very excited about that one.
Musically, I’m celebrating my recovery from a two-day migraine by listening to anything LOUD. Just because I can.
is good.
Maria Raha sound Finnish. Raha = money.
Becoming Justice Blackmun?
It’s quite good, CabinGirl. It’s only 250 pages long, so there’s a lot of telescoping, but the treatment of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the Court regarding Roe V Wade is quite detailed, and interesting.
One quibble: the author summarizes the “liberal criticism” of the decision as weakly reasoned, which I was fairly well acquainted with; but she also notes that Laurence Tribe wrote a piece in defense of Roe, sometime in 1973 or ’74, and gives no detail at all. I’d have liked to know what line Tribe took.
I just finished Lyndall Gordon new biography of Wollstonecraft which I thought was excellent and if you haven’t it read I highly Frances Sherwood’s novel ‘Vindication’.
Oh, AndiF! I saw that upthread and was going to come back and ask what you thought of the biography, so I’m glad you mentioned it again. I nearly bought it the other day and then talked myself out of it as the to-be-read stacks beside my bed are getting precariously high, but now I may have to talk myself back into it. You know, since I’m going to the bookstore anyway. Twist my arm, why don’t you?
It looks like my public library has the Sherwood novel, so I’ll pick that up too. I don’t know much more than the basics about Wollstonecraft, but she must have been an incredible human being. She’s somewhere in my top five list of Famous Dead People I’d Love to Have Dinner With.
Yes, I think she is really fascinating. If you like reading more than one biography on a person, check to see if your library has Claire Tomalin’s Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Tomalin is, I think, one of the best biographers working.
If you like biographies of exceptional women who haven’t gotten enough attention, “Mad Madge : the extraordinary life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the first woman to live by her pen” by Katie Whitaker is another good read.
Okay, I can see I’d better rein myself in — when I go going on books, I have a hard time stopping.
Hey, don’t stop on my account! I collect book recommendations like other people collect tourist trap shot glasses. The Tomalin bio was mentioned in a review of the Gordon book in, I think, The Nation. IIRC, the reviewer suggested that the Tomalin is probably the best book out there on Wollstonecraft.
Putting the Cavendish bio on my list too — I know a little about her, mostly via Virginia Woolf, but she’s another that I’m sure would bear a closer look.
I am an obsessive compulsive reader and I read just about anything (except genre westerns and genre romance) so I am very versatile as far as book recommendations go. Are you mostly a non-fiction reader or do you like fiction, too?
And I like to get book recs too so what books would you like to recommend to me?
I probably read fiction and nonfiction in roughly equal proportions, but my tastes in fiction tend to be narrower. I have a wholly unreasonable and indefensible (on any grounds but eccentric taste) list of rules for fiction — i.e., I tend to avoid novels with children as central characters (exceptions, of course, for To Kill a Mockingbird and a handful of others). Oh, and I’m with you re: westerns and romance. Can’t get into most science fiction, either, though I’ve really enjoyed a few — I have a friend who’s heavy into sf and knows my taste, so I let her filter things for me.
In non-fiction, I’m all over the map, but I have a special interest in (non-military) history, biography, and what might be loosely described as cultural studies. Oh, and almost anything that’s reasonably well written regarding golden-era Hollywood — biography, industry history, cultural analysis.
As to recommendations, sticking with your theme of remarkable women, I’ll throw out two: Georgiana, by Amanda Foreman, a biography of the 18th century Duchess of Devonshire, and A Personal Autobiography by Christine Jorgenson, an American who became famous in the early fifties for undergoing sex reassignment surgery in Denmark.
I’ve read Georgiana and thought it was excellent. And I’m old enough that I remember Jorgenson. I never thought about reading her autobiography though.
I’m not much on hollywood books. About the only one I can think of is Molly Haskell’s “From Reverence to Rape”.
This doesn’t fit any category we’ve talked about (it’s a combination of memoir and natural history) but Jill Fredston’s “Rowing to latitude : journeys along the Arctic’s edge” is a wonderful read.
Who is Wollstonecraft? (I have a feeling I might not be the only one who doesn’t know!)
Well, I suppose today that she is best known as the mother of Mary Shelley but she was a political and social maverick at a time when women were barely let out of the house. She wrote a polemic called “A vindication of the right of women” calling for better education and political rights for women.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry for Mary Wollstonecraft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft
After about a week of spending time here, I now wonder how much I fit with the community. I feel completely uncultured in this talk about books and music. I just finished reading “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” because of my interest in adolescent girls, and it was wonderful. But maybe I’ll gain a little more credibility by saying that now I’m reading “The Teachings of Don Juan” (that’s right, I said reading, not re-reading). And as far as music, I’m in a total time tunnel, loving a radio station that plays the oldies. And my favorite of those is “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Just kidding, I know I’ll be accepted here, even with all my lack of culture.
Hey! There is nothing wrong with Suite: Judy Blue Eyes!
Not a thing.
One of the first concerts I snuck into (at the Mann Music Center) was CSN.
And I’m excited to read Dove (about the teenager who sailed around the world) so I can talk about it with my 10 and 12 year old boys. And I have secretly watmted to read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants…how was it?
Of course you fit in. We’re ALL dfferent. That’s what we have in common!
I can’t type worth a darn…
me either..I find it quite humorous for me to even try to read my own typing let alone my real writing. I am looking more like the dr’s that I work with each day..I have to break that habit soon….:o)
I really enjoyed it – and its a pretty quick read. As you probably know, it follows four 15 year old girls who are best friend through their first summer apart. They all have very powerful experiences and begin to develop their independence through the support they experience in their friendship. As many have expected, its kind of a “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” for teenagers. I plan to read the next two in the series and recommend that my bookgroup read the first one.
they’ll take anyone! 🙂
Had a heckuva time finding you guys in Part Deux; maybe a link to the new diary before you turn out the lights in the old one?
Thanks muchly…
Que linda me la traiga Cuba
La reina de la Mar Caribe
Cielo sol no tiene ninguna sangre
Y como triste que no puedo vaya
Oh va, oh va
excerpt from Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Written by Stephen Stills
Performed by Crosby, Stills & Nash
anyone who listens to C/S/N is always welcome here…
Hi and good to meet you…no matter what you read…:o)
Purpose of Political Forums and Blogs ?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/6/17/171311/453
Title of new diary I just put up, come on over there and discuss!!
The notion came up to see about giving diapers instead of toys at Christmas to some of the low income families we serve. So I “Googled” diapers, in search of pricing and sourcing info.
Seuss hit the nail on the head – “Oh the places you’ll go, the things you’ll see!”
First page on the list yielded some purveyors of baby diapers.
It also yielded a site to get diapers for your pet bird
http://www.birddiaper.com/
AND
Site For Adult Babies, Diaper Fetish, Adult Diapers, Infantilism …World’s largest site for adult babies, adult diapers, diaper fetish, infantilism, plastic pants and adult baby clothes. Diaper lovers enjoy adult baby games …
http://www.dpf.com/
I was just thinking this is the perfect diary series to have a tip jar and we should/coud make that a tradition…What do you think???
go here and help break the bat to help DFA publicize the Downing Street Minutes.
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/6/17/18630/5396
now that I’m drunk, what is this? The Froggy Bottom Cafe, that is.
Over the last few days, I’ve received a bunch of fours. Too lazy to add. I had TU status for about two days, but now it’s gone. Not that there’s anyone to zero, or a hidden comments section worth checking, but does the score degrade faster than it does at, say, dailykos? Just wonderin’.
Thanks.
I think you may have lost mojo due to site being down this week, otherwise it does not degrade here, Boo doesn’t have the same mojo system here…You need to get in a mojo thread to get some built up, so watch for the next one.
The hidden comments have disappeared, I think booman may have deleted them and we only had three.
Its an outgrowth of the Welcome Wagon diaries that we put up frequently for newbies to introduce themselves. Just a place to gather and talk to each other and to have a little fun. I just started this diary series this week and now we have a team to host the diaries on different days. Do you like it???
ahh. well, just like i expected. this place is trashed.. oh well at least there’s some midori left :::pulling up a stool:::: this place needs a house drink.. something green to honor senior frog.
sandwich too.. a green club sandwich? hmmm. yeah.. avocado. maybe grilled chicken.. something like that.or maybe something vegan…i must be hungry heh.
well lets get to work sweeping, then have a drinkie and raid the fridge.. after all..
it’s the weekend!!!!
or did you finish cleaning and head to the invite-only afterparty…. 🙂
My mother is now reading Booman Tribune of her own volition, rather than from the links I send her to important stories…do you think she saw my cocktail party here?
Should I encourage her to register and start commenting? :^) Inquiring minds want to know…
Yes by all means have your mother register. Mom of Cabin Girl, please do, we would love to have you post on this site. We have a lot of fun on this site and we have great conversations about all the issues you can ever imagine.