The above picture is a shot of my husband and our boys watching “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” on DVD; based on an YA book series by Rick Riordan.  I never heard of this series until my husband brought the DVD home.  The movie itself was just OK — the acting wasn’t very deep (but what can you expect when a Zac Efron lookalike is picked as the lead).  But, I did enjoy the Greek mythology aspect of the movie.  So did my younger son, who kept peppering me with questions throughout the beginning of the movie.  Until I pulled out my copy of “d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths” and plunked it into his lap (again, see above picture).

I don’t plan on featuring children’s books on this blog, but I can’t resist mentioning this one!  When I was in elementary school, about the same age (4th grade) as my younger son is now, I borrowed “d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Mythology” over and over again from the library.  Eventually (after a year or two, maybe?) I stopped, but I always had a fond memory for this book.  In fact, sometime after I graduated college, I bought my very own hardcover edition of this book.  At that time, it was 20 dollars, a lot of money for a book…yes, I attended college a thousand years ago! 

Currently, the full list price for the book in hard-cover is $29.95; it’s also available in paperback.  When you think about it, a $9.95 increase in price over the time of approximately 20 years, isn’t all that bad for a 192-page large hard-cover book.

Originally published in 1962, this book was written and illustrated by a married couple, Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire.  According to the inside flap of my book, they both met in Munich where both were studying art.  Ingri grew up in Norway and Edgar was the son of a portrait painter.  And, according to wikipedia, Edgar was once a student of Matisse.  As a kid, I adored the illustrations in “d’Aulaires” Book of Greek Myths”, along with all the stories. I still do.

I apologize for any difficulty your computer might have if these pictures are large, but I wanted to be sure the details showed well.  Here is one of my favorite illustrations, of Aphrodite:

Not all of the illustrations are in color; the ones that are not colored are either in sepia tones or black and white.

Below are the illustrations for the story of Eos (the dawn), who was the mother of the four winds. 

As the book goes:

“One morning as Eos looked down on earth, her eyes fell on a young prince waking from his slumber.  He was so handsome she could not take her eyes off him, and she wanted him for her husband.  But how could she, who was a goddess, be married to a mortal whose life span was so short?

As soon as her morning duties were done, she went to Zeus and persuaded him to grant eternal life to the young prince, whose name was Tithonius.”

But alas, Eos had forgotten to ask Zeus to grant eternal youth to Tithonius also!  In the above illustration, you see what happens.

“He shrank to a tiny, wizened old man, yet he could not die, for he had been given eternal life….he went on withering and shriveling till at last he turned into a grasshopper, chirping for all eternity”.

Ahh, both sad and funny at the same time.

It is easy to see why this book has been a classic ever since publication nearly 50 years ago.  Strangely enough, I have never read any of the d’Aulaires’ other books, several of which were based on Norse stories and myths, and children’s biographies of Abraham Lincoln and others.

It’s nice to see my younger son enjoying this book.  Next time I’m looking at children’s books at either the library or bookstore, I’ll try to remember to look for their other titles.  I have a feeling that “d”Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths” would still stay my favorite of their works.

Disclosure:  As already mentioned, I own this book.

How about you?  Do you have a favorite book from childhood you’d like to mention?  Have you (or your children, if any) ever read anything by the d’Aulaires?

First, the miscellany and then FreeVerse.  I know that this is the reverse of this blog title, but the title “Some Miscellany and FreeVerse” didn’t sound as good to me!

My kids are out of school in a couple weeks:  May 21st is their last day.  Those of you who are moms know that the last few weeks of every school year becomes very hectic.  I’ve been doing a lot of running around; and also this week my husband is out of town.  I haven’t gotten much reading accomplished, or much else, accomplished — although I am trying to keep up some kind of exercise routine.  Bathing suit season is around the corner, after all — although that is hard for me to believe, since it is still so cool here (in fact, we had over an inch of snow on Sunday).

Today, when I was at the store yet again for errands, I spotted the latest version of M and Ms.  Pretzel M and Ms.  I bought a bag.  I sampled a few, saving the rest for my kids to see what they think.  They’re okay; not as good as the real thing of chocolate-covered pretzels.  My favorite kind of M and Ms are the peanut butter ones, and I also like their premium chocolate mint ones (comes in a fancy box).  What’s your favorite?

Okay, now for this week’s FreeVerse, which is hosted by Cara at Ooh…Books!  The haiku poems I’m sharing here are from “The Essential Haiku:  Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa”, edited by Robert Hass (1994, Ecco Publishing).  Since I have actually finished reading this book from beginning to end, reading this also qualifies for the “Clover, Bee and Reverie” poetry challenge.  My first book completed for this challenge (I tend to jump around from poetry book to poetry book without sitting through from beginning to end of each one).

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716-1783), and Kobayashi Issa (1763-1837) were and are considered masters of the haiku.  This book introduces the reader to each master, and includes several (about a hundred each) haikus by each one.  Additionally, writings (letters, essays) by each are included. 

Basho says:

“Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter”.

Do you agree or not?

Now, here are some haiku I liked from each master:

By Basho:

     A bee
staggers out
     of the peony.

By Buson:

     Calligraphy of geese
against the sky –
     the moon seals it.

By Issa:

     Under my house
an inchworm
     measuring the joists.

By Issa:

     Under the evening moon
the snail
     is stripped to the waist.

As you can see, these haiku refer to natural elements, as most haiku do in this collection. It is amazing how much can be said in just a few syllables. 

I recommend “The Essential Haiku” for those who want to enjoy this form, and to learn about this ancient Japanese tradition; and also to learn more about the three men who were considered masters at this form.

Disclosure:  “The Essential Haiku” was purchased new.

Also!  Don’t forget to vote for your favorite blog post during the National Poetry Month Blog Tour!  Voting ends May 15th.  And, it’s not too late to enter my give-away  of a poetry chapbook (deadline is this Friday May 7th).

The kids in front of the Grand Canyon

We returned home from spring break yesterday afternoon.  After endless loads of laundry and other post-vacation things that we’re still catching up on; I’m attempting to get back into Blog World!

Places we visited during spring break:

Santa Fe, NM (including Loretto Chapel with its’ mysterious staircase)

Sedona, AZ (loved the warm weather, sunshine, and scenery)

Grand Canyon, AZ (south rim)

Mesa Verde, Colorado  I first saw these ancient Native-American ruins as a kid, and was awed now, as I was then.

Durango, Colorado (we stayed in an historic hotel – pretty cool place, and town)

We also tried to visit Four Corners, but it was closed — and is supposed to be until this summer.  I don’t know if we will ever have another opportunity to be in four states at once .

For the most part, we enjoyed nice, warm weather.  We had to deal with snow during our last few days of vacation (back in Colorado), but that is Colorado for you.

Books read during vacation (therefore, reviews of these will be coming soon!):

“The Hakawati” by Rabih Alameddine (finished)

“I’m a Stranger Here Myself” by Bill Bryson (finished)

I’m currently halfway through “Emotional Geology” by Linda Gillard.

Books bought during vacation (you didn’t really think I could take a vacation without buying any, did you?) :

“Matisse, Father and Son”, by John Russell.   An used book picked up from a table in front of a book dealer in Santa Fe.  Since it was closing time and they were carrying the tables back in, I didn’t think to take note of the name of the store.

“Brighty of the Grand Canyon” by Marguerite Henry.  My very favorite book of hers when I was a kid.  My daughter encouraged me to buy it.  Bought at, you guessed it, the Grand Canyon’s bookstore.  I’ll probably read it before my daughter does.

“The Soul Would Have No Rainbow if the Eyes Had No Tears, and Other Native American Proverbs”, by Guy A. Zona.  A little book picked up at the Mesa Verde gift shop. 

“New European Poets”, edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer.  While walking downtown Durango, could not resist going into this indie bookstore, Maria’s Bookshop.  Apparently, they have been in business for about 25 years.  Their poetry section had a good selection for such a bookstore; and I didn’t get to look at the rest of the store.  Be sure to check out this bookstore if you are ever in Durango (until then, take a look at their website).

“East is East”, by T. Coraghessan Boyle.  Picked up at Milagros Coffee Shop at our final stopping place, Alamosa, Colorado.  All profits from this coffee shop goes to charities, and they offer used books for sale on shelves around the shop — proceedings from these book sales also go to charities.

Spam comments deleted today after not being at WordPress for over a week:  411.    The most common attempted landing spot is my blog post about “My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead”, a short-story collection edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.  Apparently, the word “mistress” is too enticing for those who try to advertise viagra, or….ahem…webcam services.   If any potential spammers are reading this (and many obviously don’t read the posts; based on their comments), don’t waste your time trying to leave spam comments!

Book blog posts waiting to be read in my reader:  653.  So, forgive me if I find myself skimming and not leaving comments on blog posts done over the past week.  If there are any posts (including your own) that you want to be sure I don’t miss, please do let me know.

Days needed to return back to the real world:  Who knows ?  Vacation was fun and relaxing, and I hated to see it end.

Have a great week, everyone!

Today is a good day.  It’s my younger son’s 9th birthday.  I made cupcakes for him to take to his class this morning.  We’ll celebrate more with his cake and presents when everyone is home.  However, the 3rd grade P.E. program is tonight, so we’ll have to try to get all that done before we have to go there. 

Other good things happened today!  I had my hair done; the only day my hair artist could get me in before we leave for spring break this weekend.  Nothing like a fresh haircut and color!

Then, after that, I went to the library to pick up some holds.  As always, I went over to their sale shelf to see what was available.  I came away with some bargains!  Usually, I can find one or two there at each visit; but I found a lot today!  I normally don’t blog about books that come into my home; because I never really know when I’ll get to reading them.  But, I can’t resist sharing my deals.  Sorry I don’t have time to put up pictures up of the covers; I’m writing this blog post while the cake cools and need to start the frosting as soon as I get this up.

I found:

“The Best of Young American Novelists” by Granta.  I just did a quick search of who/what Granta is; and they are a literary magazine that publishes in trade paperback form.  This is Number 54 (1996); their current issue is Number 109.  I’ll have to go back to their website and read more about them.  But, anyway, Number 54 features authors such as Sherman Alexie, Jeffrey Eugenides and Edwidge Danticat.

“City of Thieves”, a novel by David Benioff.   I’ve heard a lot about this one, and actually am not sure about it; but the price was right!

“House of Sand and Fog”, a novel by Andre Dubus III. 

“Spring Snow”, a novel by Yukio Mishima.  I read several of his short stories years ago, but never one of his novels.

“On Chesil Beach”, a novel by Ian McEwan.  I read his novel,  ”Atonement”.

“In a Perfect World”, by Laura Kasischke.  I’ve read a couple other of her books and some of her poetry.  Did I ever mention that, when we lived in Michigan, my son and her son attended the same school and same cub scout pack?  I never really got to know her though – since we were a part of all that for just a few years;  and it was usually my husband attending the cub scout meetings anyway.

“The Septembers of Shiraz”, a novel by Dalia Sofer. 

“Joe Jones”, a novel by Anne Lamott.  I’ve only read “Bird by Bird” by her, and have wanted to check out her other works. 

“Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister” by Gregory Maguire.  I still haven’t read him, although I have “Wicked” in my TBR.

“Paris to the Moon”, by Adam Gopnik.  He writes about his experiences living in Paris.  It’s funny, but I promised Soft Drink  yesterday that if I found a France related book in my TBR, I’d join her World Party reading challenge.  I still don’t know if I have anything “French” in my TBR; but if I don’t, I can read this.  I’ll do a separate write-up about  her challenge as soon as I can.

All these books are trade paperbacks.  Technically, it should have cost me a total of $2.50, but I put $3.00 in the payment box.  Not a bad deal, huh?

Well, I better go and mix up the frosting.  I hope to catch up some more on reading blogs, and responding to comments on this blog, throughout this week.  

Have a good day!

Have you read any of the above books?  If so, what did you think?

Last year at about this time, my younger son wrote his thoughts about Thanksgiving dinner, which I found amusing (see post here).  He was in second grade then; which means this year he’s in third grade.

Recently, he brought home a paper he wrote that discusses what books are.  I’ve noticed the quality of his writing has changed since last year!  Here is what it said (without mis-spellings as seen in the picture above):

“A book has a cover.  A book can have a hard cover or a paperback cover.  There are different kinds of books.  Non-fiction and fiction are the kinds of books.  There are different reasons people read books.  People read books to either make them smart or get a good laugh.  Books have lots of words in them.  Chapter books have lots of pages.  Lots of people read books.”

Lots of people do indeed read books, in spite of  there being bemoaning about the apparent decline of reading.  I’m never alone whenever I’m in a bookstore or a library — there are always other people milling about among the shelves.   There are at least thousands of book blogs out there, as well! 

Speaking of book blogging, I have not been very active this month; and I know I won’t be doing much blogging this week, either – I’ll have a house-full of guests for Thanksgiving.   Family will be staying here all this week .  

I’m still reading “Kristin Lavransdatter, Part II:  The Wife” and “Poetry for Dummies”.  I plan to snatch reading moments here and there this week.  I  hope you all do, too; and be sure to enjoy these reading moments when you can get them!

The Cadet Chapel at the United States Air Force Academy  is probably the most famous building on their campus, which was built in the 1950s, and the architecture of the chapel, and the rest of the campus, reflects this time era.  Lots of glass and metal.  The above picture is the front of the chapel. 

My family and I got to see this, and the rest of the USAFA campus, this weekend.  My cousin’s wife’s sister’s son is a first year cadet there; and not only that, our family is going to be his sponsor family this year.  If you look closely at the picture of the front of the chapel, you can see some of us looking up at it.  I’m in blue, my daughter is in a white shirt and blue skort; our cadet (in uniform) in the middle with my husband on his right-hand side.  My younger son is standing over to the side, wearing a yellow shirt.  My older son took the picture.

Below is another  shot of the chapel, later in the afternoon.

We had been invited by our cadet’s parents to join them (and my cousin and wife, who were also visiting) to a football game during the weekend, which was also Parents’ Weekend.  The football game was very lopsided– Air Force beat Nichols State 72-0.  One tradition about Air Force football is that every time their team scores, a group of cadets must come out on the field and do push-ups equalling to the team’s score.  Therefore, by the end of the game, the total number of push-ups were several hundred!  Below is one of the times they had to to push-ups.  I’m sure there were a lot of tired arms after the game; they probably got more of a work-out than the football players.

We enjoyed getting acquainted with our cadet and his parents, and seeing my cousin and his wife again after several years.  They all spent some time at our home as well.

We also had an opportunity to visit with Phil’s cousins–one was in the area and the other who recently moved to an area not too far from us; we enjoyed very  good food when they BBQed last night.

So, that was our fun-filled Labor Day Weekend!  Hope you all had a good one also.

I can’t believe how much time has passed since I last blogged.  My parents were here for a few days, then we spent a week in California with my husband’s family.  Then we were getting ready for back to school, which started today!  My kids are now in 8th, 6th, and 3rd grades.

Now  I have to get used to a new routine, which will now include exercising more and being more serious about aural rehabilitation (post-cochlear implant; it’s been 7 months since activation).  The rest is business as usual!

I have a lot of book reviews I hope to catch up on over the next few days.  I’m not sure yet how I’ll deal with reviewing them all.  Some books were great; some not so great.  Stay tuned for what I think of these books.  So, the books I’ve recently finished are as follows:

“An Equal Music” by Vikram Seth

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”  by Truman Capote (I’d like to see the movie version before discussing this one)

“The Last Queen” by C.W. Gortner

“Self” by Yann Martel

“A Hundred and One Days” by Asne Seierstad

“Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri

“Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill

“Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides

“How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry” by Edward Hirsch

“Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout

We’re back from our week-long sightseeing trip through South Dakota and Wyoming.

I keep thinking:  Should I put up any pictures?  If so, of what?  We took so many; my husband actually put up 125 pictures in his facebook album!

I’ve decided to put up just one.  Here it is:

The reason for our trip was that our older son was attending a boy scout camp (not far from Crazy Horse Memorial), so this is one of the few pictures that has all three of our kids in it.  We saw Mount Rushmore during his free day away from camp.

On the other days, we did a lot of sight-seeing.  Some of the sights we saw were (and in no particular order):

The Presidential Wax Museum.  Younger son enjoyed this–he is a presidential buff.  All presidents are represented, but not very realistic looking.  We also spent an evening in Rapid City, which has statues of nearly every U.S. president on various street corners.  Younger son loved this also.

A Minuteman Missile Site.  An interesting remnant of the Cold War.

The Dakota Badlands.  I have heard about this, but had no idea what it looked like.  Until now.  It was very impressive!

Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.  They say various wildlife, including snakes, live at the top.  What I want to know is how the snakes got there?

Crazy Horse Memorial.  We were there on the night of  only two night-time blasts that are scheduled per year (the rest are day-time blasts).

We saw lots of prairie.  Even though I brought several books with me on vacation, I picked one up there, “Great Plains” by Ian Frazier which does an excellent job of describing and explaining some of the things we saw.  I’ll try to review this book soon.

It’s good to be back home, though!  Even though we got the news this morning that a mountain lion has been seen roaming and hanging out in our neighborhood.

My daughter, who has been dancing since she was 3 years old, once again made it through another dance year, ending with the spring recital yesterday.  Of course she did great!  She performed in two dances– a contemporary one danced to the song “Come Together” by J. Cocker; and a character dance, to the suite of “Don Quixote”.

In the above picture, that’s her and me post-show, and she is still in her Don Quixote costume.

Congratulations !!

My sister and I had a fantastic time in downtown Denver last weekend.  I know if we had more money and more time, we would have been happy to stay longer!  The downtown area is very visitor-friendly. 

We stayed in a hotel on 16th street, which ended up being a good choice.  16th street in the downtown area is closed to cars.  There are buses going up and down the street, but other than that, that street is for walkers only.  There were printed maps for ease of finding whatever you wanted within walking distance .  This came in very handy when I realized I forgot the wine I had planned to bring, and we needed to locate a nearby wine seller.

As we walked from our hotel towards the Denver Art Museum, we happened across a fairly large street fair and walked away with new bracelets on our ankles.  It was fun browsing through all the different booths!

Neither of us took very many pictures.  I took a few at the Denver Art Museum  (better pictures of “Fox Games” is at their website).  Here are some of those pictures:

A portion of the "Fox Games" installation by Sandy Skoglund

Native American Art

Asian Art: elephant with wonderful expression

There are many restaurants to choose from.  For dinner Saturday night, we ate at an Indian restaurant with delicious food.

Much shopping available, including the Tattered Cover bookstore, but we managed to stay out of the shops this time.  Except for a candle shop–I bought a couple and lit one for “aromatherapy” in our room as we enjoyed wine late into the night.  We were worried the sprinklers might go off, but they never did .

Overall, we had a great time.  Lots of talking, eating, and drinking .  What more could we ask for?  To read my sister’s point of view of the weekend (including our Friday night, spent in my town), read her account at Sister’s Weekend In Colorado.

Hope we do something like this again soon!