Common Sense & More
From Behind-the-scenes Photos from Classic Movies by Andy Monzant, msm.com: Esther Williams underwater in Jupiter’s Darling (1955):
Headline from nypost.com: “State Department to allow denial of immigrant visas to those with health issues, including obesity.” Sensible.
Excerpt from a foxbusiness.com article by Maria Lencki: “After three rejections, New York and New Jersey finally granted permission for the $1 billion underwater pipeline that will expand the delivery of natural gas from Pennsylvania to the New York City area, adding enough capacity to power over 2 million homes.” Hopefully this is the beginning of a sane energy policy that brings consumers much needed relief.
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Born and raised on the Bayou, Andre DuBus (Doo-Boo) served six years in the Marines, then earned an MFA from the University of Iowa. His first novel, The Lieutenant, was published in 1967. He is known more for short stories and novellas. I just finished a collection, Selected Stories, a large paperback. I skipped four of the longer pieces. It is the kind of subject matter I like best: depiction of the bittersweet mystery of life. I particularly enjoyed two of the 23: Cadence, which details a small man’s determination to make it through boot camp, and A Father’s Story, which relates the lengths to which a loving dad will go to help a child through a dire situation. Overall, I found the prose dense, past midpoint on the scale of difficulty. Throughout, characters struggle with Catholicism. Many stories are set in rural Massachusetts as well as Louisiana. Two deal with minor league baseball. It seems everyone in the collection is a smoker, a real turnoff for someone like me who has always found the practice disgusting. There is also an abundance of drinking, short of alcoholism, another adult pleasure from which I refrained. In fairness, while having difficulty with certain works these days I wonder if it is due to age or carelessness on my part rather than the fault of the author. 161 users at Amazon have rated Selected Stories, forging to a consensus of 4.4 on a scale of five. I’ll go with three… In 1986 Dubus suffered an accident while aiding stranded motorists on a highway, leaving him a quadriplegic and in chronic pain. He continued writing, hosted weekly workshops at his home, and produced essays on suffering and spirituality. I tallied eleven works of fiction in his name, two of non-fiction, including Broken Vessels, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His story Killings was adapted to the screen as the critically acclaimed In the Bedroom (2001). We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004) is based upon two of his novellas. Married twice, he was a father of six, including novelist André DuBus III (House of Sand and Fog). He succumbed to a heart attack at 62 in 1999. Facts from Grokipedia and Wiki, photo from Google Images:
From the article mentioned above. I doubt anyone needs an explanation:
Too windy, not enough sunshine to take the bite out of the cold, so I passed on the book shop. Looking forward to tomorrow’s session.
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