New White House Web Site

The President Obama Administration already has a new White House Web Site deployed. It is filled with good information about their plans. It is worth poking around on to learn a bit about what may happen.

Borrow those books, save a buck!

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Brian Williams says it so well.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Send the word forth

I am adicted to Crash Hot Potatoes, I have given name to the sickness and may perhaps start my recovery. On a late-night forray into Stumbelupon, I hit a site where the picture below grabbed me by the eyes and demanded my attention.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks is the site and besides the wonderful recipes, the site has great photography as evidenced above. The recipe for Crash Hot Potatoes is simple, well illustrated, new (to me), and takes the humble red potato to a place it has never been.

I know, this is going way past the point where good form dictates it should -- they are JUST potatoes, after all; but that is the point, these spuds are not JUST potatoes, they are something sensual, creamy but crispy, earthy but heavenly, naughty but nice -- sorry, I've got to slowly back away from the keyboard and go check the oven, the next batch might be ready.

Christmas Tree Lighting Festival

Saturday night, December 6th, we held our second tree lighting party. I think about 300 people attended the event and we marked it down in our success column. Julie Hildebrand leads the task force of staff and library Friends that put this event together for our library. A lot of time and effort went into making it a success and I think it was worth it.

I thank all who helped!

Death of Tony Hillerman

I do not remember the circumstances of my first reading of a Tony Hillerman mystery except to say that I liked it and went looking for another. Over the years I have purchased both paperback and hard bound copies of many of Hillerman's mysteries and I have given them to many friends who had yet to discover this gem of a series. Last night I counted my collection and I own ten Hillerman books, representing nine titles with Listening Woman appearing twice.

Mr. Hillerman died October 26, 2008, at age 83. He wrote 18 books in his Navajo mystery series beginning with The Blessing Way in 1970, and concluding with Shape Shifter in 2006. The mysteries feature Navajo Tribal Policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn, and Officer Jim Chee, usually separately but often crossing paths with Leaphorn as the respected but feared mentor to the younger, brasher Chee. The books cover nearly 30 years and have the older Lt. Leaphorn being widowed and retireing but still involved in solving mysteries usually with the help of Jim Chee. Thief of Time strikes me as one of the more interesting of the series if for nothing more than the singular scene of jumping frogs tethered with fine nylon fishing line to prevent their escape.

The movies that have been made using the Hillerman novels have not done justice to the books, in my opinion. I was disappointed in the films when I saw them. Hillerman's writing carries a skillful handling of the outdoor scenes on the huge Arizona/Utah/New Mexico Navajo reservation, argueably some of the most beautiful in America. Anyone who remembers John Ford's cinematic use of Monument Valley knows the area covered by the Navajo Reservation, and Hillerman uses it well.

Here is a wonderful essay that reviews each of the Navajo mysteries by Mr. Hillerman. Check out the sidebar review of the Skinwalkers movie, produced by Robert Redford.

If you have not read Tony Hillerman you might start the serier with Listening Woman rather that the first book The Blessing Way, Hillerman did not consider his first book as his best but that is arguable at least. This series presents police procedurals with unique settings, likeable characters, insights into Native American culture and how that culture has fared over the last hundred years or so. I think people will be reading these books for a long time.

Here is a three segment documentary titled Tony Hillerman: The Art of the Mystery from YouTube.

Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall

I can only guess at the pronouncement of these names. I remember seeing their books on the shelves of libraries for years but I never once picked one up. They are a wife and husband writing team and they jointly wrote ten mysteries set in Sweden. I think I was put off by the difficulty of the names and my conclusion that someone who sound so foreign could not possibly write a book that would hold my interest, but boy was I wrong.

Last Sunday, as I was leaving Wichita I made my usual stop at Barnes & Noble for a large coffee to go for the 100 mile plus trip back to this corner of the prairie, and I saw a copy of Roseanna by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall being offered at half price with the purchase of another book of greater or equal value. Having been bitten by the Swedish mystery bug some while ago, I picked it up. The edition in my hand had a "New" introduction by Henning Mankell plus a glowing comment by Michael Connelly on the back cover. The book was first published in 1965 with the wife and husband writing alternate chapters. It took a little bit of faith for me to trust Mankell and Connelly on the power of this nearly 50 year old writing to still be readable, relevant, and interesting. They delivered the goods.

The book introduces Swedish Detective First Grade Martin Beck, whose angst-ridden character carries through the 10 book series. These are police procedurals from the days before cell phones, fax machines, email, computer databases, wire taps, and the host of electronic survelience devices police rely on today. I thought it might matter but it did not, the story is not "old-timey" because of these missing items, if anything the story is stronger because of the reliance on ingenuity and doggedness to get the job done.

The story in Roseanna opens with the discovery of the nude body of a young woman found during the dredging of a canal used by cruise ships during the summer months. No clues are found. But through hard work the woman is traced to her roots as a librarian from Lincoln, Nebraska (somewhere in the middle of the United States) and the story takes off. This was one of those rare books that from the first sentence I knew I had chosen well and that my interest was in the hands of masters. I am purchasing as many of the ten books in the series as I can find available. This writing team and their skill have earned their place on the "must read" lists of mystery readers, you won't be sorry. The books will be available for check-out mid-December.

The titles in the Martin Beck series are:

1. Roseanna (1965)
2. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966)
3. The Man on the Balcony (1967)
4. The Laughing Policeman (1968)
5. The Fire Engine that Disappeared (1969)
6. Murder at the Savoy (1970)
7. The Abominable Man (1971)
8. The Locked Room (1972)
9. Cop Killer (1974)
10. The Terrorists (1975) The husband Per Wahloo died before this last mystery was finished and Maj Sjowall finished it alone.
    

Mongolia? You gotta be kidding me...

The Shadow Walker by Michael Walters is a murder mystery set in Mongolia. It is a good read, with well developed and likable characters, a diabolical serial killer, mutilations, political intrigue, and a moon-like setting.

Over the past few months I have been to North Korea, Laos, Thailand, Sweden, France, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Japan, France, and who knows where, following some of the best mystery writing being done. Michael Walters is a Brit with roots in oil, broadcasting, and banking and he has written a convincing story that left me wanting more. The main character, Nergui is the former head of the Serious Crimes Team promoted into a position with National Security. Nergui teams up with Drew McLeish from England who is sent to help investigate the murder of a British National. A fast-paced investigation covers some interesting territory in this mostly unknown (to me) Asian country.

Give it a go, you might like it too.

Do you need a new ear worm?

They did it again. Here is the whole song. It is Bruises by Chairlift.

Pleasurable shades of Dick Francis

For decades Dick Francis has been delivering good stories and they always concern horse racing. The stories, settings, horses, characters, and plots are always different and compelling and those of us who have appreciated them over the years are reminded of the advancing age of Francis and the need for a replacement for his skillful stories. John McEvoy may be the replacement.


McEvoy's latest, Close Call is set in Chicago with a side trip to Ireland, and concerns the struggling horse racing track Monee Park where Jack Doyle takes over PR for the heir who is dedicated to keeping the park alive until legalized slots can provide the cash flow needed to meet the competition of legalized casinos. A Seabuscuit-esq racer contributes to the plot as do some nasty Southside louts. A very respectible third outing featuring Doyle. Earlier works in the series were Blind Switch and Riders Down.


I was up way too late last night reading Close Call and I look forward to the next one.

Leave your opinion at the door

Well, not exactly the door but just inside the front cover.

At the suggestion of a patron who had seen the idea used at another public library, we have begun putting a "What did you think of this book," slip in the front of new books. The sheet lets readers rate the book and leave their initials if they so choose.

Over the years I have noticed that a lot of readers put their initials somewhere in our books so that there is a reminder left behind to tell them that they have already read a book.

Our hope is that those who feel the need to leave notice behind so they won't waste time with a book already read will use the new inserted sheet as the place for them to leave their initials as a reminder.

Whatever. If you read a book and want to share your opinion of the book you now have a place to do it.

Library Security

Yup. There are now security personnel at the library. Valuable funds drained off of our budget that could have gone for books and programs. But safety and security are important too.

Part of our mission at the library is to provide a safe place for children and adults. The library needs to be safe and to seem safe with a minimum of intrusion on the intellectual pursuits of visitors. We had lost the ability to provide a safe atmosphere and so we have brought in a security firm to patrol the library in the afternoons when we are most impacted by youngsters too full of energy for the confined space of the library.

We have lost some adult library users over the issue of library security and we hope that by word of mouth they will learn of our added security and come back. All of our patrons are important to us.

Ten best mystery novels

I am still on this topic. My personal list is fluid.

1. City of Bones, Michael Connelly
2. Eight Million Ways to Die, Lawrence Block
3. L.A. Requiem, Robert Crais
4. Killing Floor, Lee Child
5. Death of a Red Heroine, Qiu Xiaolong
   
6. Listening Woman, Tony Hillerman
7. The Dogs of Riga, Henning Mankell
8. Night Passage, Robert B. Parker (Jesse Stone not Spenser)
   
9. Open Season, C. J. Box
10. New Hope for the Dead, Charles Willeford

That's my list for today. I am going to keep Willeford on the list because I still enjoy reading his four mysteries. They are hard to find but worth the effort.

I will be making room on the list for some of the new authors that are coming along. As I noted in my last posting, Calumet City was a terrific story and it won't be long until Charlie Newton takes up residence on many "Favorite" lists.

Disagree? Who and how? Let me know.

If I only had a brain

It is not often that I want to insist that others do something but I do now. GO TO TED AND SPEND SOME TIME. Lectures, demonstrations, performances, and talks by inventors, artists, physicists, philosophers, physicians, writers, and the gifted are offered. None are more that 18 minutes and many are shorter. Most are shorter than one might wish because the presenters are important thinkers talking about important things. They are the people you hear about and read about and if you rely on television sound bites for information you will not get the message that is available.

Go to TED and look into the possibilities, I dare you.

A taste: Jeff Han: Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design



They are not selling anything, nothing is asked of the viewer you can just go there and spend some time learning. Have fun.

Best I've read in years

Dark, gritty, action-filled, and fast. This one got me on page one and I could not stop reading it. Great plotting, good story, excellent dialog, Charlie Newton got it right the very first time (eighth novel, first published.) It rolls along better than a movie.

I'll be passing this one on to my mystery reading friends, Patti Black has a story to tell. This first novel does not end as though it is the first in a series but if Charlie Newton is asking opinions, my vote is for more.

What about those teens at the library?

I think this is a question some regular library users might be asking at the dinner table. Recently a couple of teens caused some heads to turn when they threw fist-sized chunks of concrete into the building from outside, through open front doors. The two boys in question had been asked to leave the building and library property because of a loud and ongoing disturbance in the building. Their response, once outside the building was to throw these potentially damaging chunks of concrete into the building. Luckily no one was hit by the objects. This is perhaps the low-point in dozens and dozens of difficult confrontations with teens over maintaining order in the library and protecting library property from damage.

Over the course of our time in our new building we have welcomed people from all corners of the Independence community to the library. Most are happy with what they find and use the facility in a reasonable manner but not all. The police have been called to the library multiple times to help with the orderly removal of groups of teens when events and emotions escalated to a level where physical harm seemed close at hand.

Positive and constructive efforts to engage teens have been fruitless.

Some regular library users are reluctant to come to the library because of the uproar that may breakout as teens act out unruly behavior. I think we have lost some customers who have been intimidated by them.

In spite of our tight funding I am asking the Library Board to authorize me to hire security guards to help protect the public, library staff, and library property from those who are unable to control themselves. What a time we live in.

Sandra Dallas

Want a good book? Try Sandra Dallas she writes a good story. I picked up Tallgrass when it came through on the new book cart. In Tallgrass, Dallas sets the novel during WWII in eastern Colorado at a Japanese internment camp which I had not known existed. A child from the camp is murdered and a farm girl from near the camp tells us the story of what happens. Part historical novel and part mystery, the story is engaging, the characters well developed, and the plot kept me turning the pages and wanting to read more by Dallas.



I looked to our fiction shelves to see what we had and I was pleasantly surprised to find a good selection of well-circulated books. I have no excuse for missing this interesting author except that I keep my interest in mysteries at the forefront of my reading priorities.


Jane Smiley called Dallas "A quintessential American voice."


In reverse order, her novels are:

• Tallgrass
• New Mercies
• The Chili Queen
• Alice's Tulips
• The Diary of Mattie Spencer
• The Persian Pickle Club
• Buster's Midnight Cafe

Dallas has character references between several of her books which makes for an interesting link between them. She doesn't use the same characters over and over, but the references are to earlier times and to the children of earlier characters - it is fun to watch for them as one moves through the books. Quilting is another element in her books and she makes it interesting. She has an excellent ear for dialog, and her historical detail rings true. My favorite is probably The Diary of Mattie Spencer and I have passed my recommendation on Dallas along to many readers.


My experience was that once I began one of these books I couldn't wait to get back to the story and I was sorry to have it end. You may enjoy them.

Six word novel, fifty word explanation

Attempting a six word novel is a seductive idea to which I yield:

• Turning sixty-five, adulthood dangerously near.
• Saigon. Smell of burning diesel fish.

One blogger, Bookie, bent the idea and came up with offering six word summaries or descriptions of novels she had read, with amusing and insightful entries.

• Year of Wonders - The plague sucks. Screw the minister.

• Life of Pi - I was lost at sea with a tiger. or was I?

GreasyGranma offered these.

• Big-Bang, Little Star
  Flash in the pan.
• Love Forever.
  Forgotten, Never.
  You're Clever.

Give it a shot and post to Comments.

I was so happy!

Someone sent me a photograph of the parade in downtown Lawrence celebrating the return of the 2008 NCAA Basketball Champion Team, the University of Kansas Jayhawks.

What a sight!

What a game!

What a series!

A mystery in black and white

Ok, here's the hook, the first-ever bank heist in North Korea with one of the robbers mowed down in the street outside the bank by an off-course bus, but wait, there is no body, and what about the beautiful Kazakh bank manager. Two weeks after the heist, the case lands on the desk of Inspector O, (but do THEY really want it solved, or not?) O ponders the corundum as he again considers plans for a never to be built book shelf for his office. Ok, the pace is slow and things are seldom as they seem but it is North Korea after all.

This is a solid proceedural written by James Church, who claims to have been an intelligence agent who now uses a pseudonym. At first glance I might have passed on this one but the pace and language of the first few pages sucked me in and I enjoyed it.

This is the second Inspector O mystery. The first was A Corpse in the Koryo, released in 2006. Glenn Kessler reviewed this one for The Washington Post and wrote:

"But the book has also caused a stir among Asia specialists because it offers an unusually nuanced and detailed portrait of one of the most closed societies on Earth -- North Korea. Much like Martin Cruz Smith's novel "Gorky Park," which depicted life in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s through the eyes of police inspector, "A Corpse on the Koryo" provides a vivid window into a mysterious country through the perspective of its primary character -- Inspector O."


I think the point he makes about the book is why I took to Hidden Moon, it was a peek into one of the most closed societies in modern times.

Remember Marshall McLuhan?

Back in the 1960's, The Medium is the Massage was hot and all the talk. If you could work a McLuhan quote into a college paper it was guaranteed an A. Here are a few I found on the Internet. His earlier The Gutenberg Galaxy was pioneering in the fields of oral culture, print culture, and media studies. (Wikipedia)

We owe Marshall McLuhan for the phrases, "global village," and "surfing," ("...to refer to rapid, irregular and multi directional movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge.") (Wikipedia)

He is very quotable ...

• The story of modern America begins with the discovery of the white man by The Indians.

• Money is the poor man’s credit card.

• We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

• Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is managed by men with Newtonian goals.

• The road is our major architectural form.

• Today the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business.

• All advertising advertises advertising.

• The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

• Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.

• Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighborhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away.

• “I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.”

• I don't know who discovered water but it certainly wasn't a fish.
  

• " ... as we transfer our whole being to the data bank, privacy will become a ghost or echo of its former self and what remains of community will disappear."

I would love to have heard his take on the "information" we are supplied by the government and the major news organizations today.

Poetry Alive!®

At 4:00, Tuesday, April 1, 2008, the touring troupe of Poetry Alive!® will again bring their performance skill to our library. The performance is a fun one and might jump-start an interest in poetry in any of the adults and children who attend.

This is what they have to say about themselves:

WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT POETRY ALIVE?

We are a Poetry Company. Using the rich heritage of the bardic tradition of long ago, we bring high-intensity poetry performances into the classroom. The Poetry Alive! actors have memorized hundreds of poems—from the classics to the popular to the contemporary.

Those poems, presented in engaging and memorable ways, become the connection to enhanced reading and writing skills. In short, we bring poetry to life, by engaging students to the learning process. Poetry Alive! has become the reading, writing and performing connection.

Be there or be square.

A single, famous book each

Help me out here. Offer up the names of authors who are known for a single work that became famous and who never published another book. Several come to mind.

• Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, but nothing else that was published. According to Ron Charles there were 50 million copies published. According to Wikipedia Sewell wrote Black Beauty in the last years of her life while confined as an invalid. She died five months after publication, but long enough to see the book succeed.

• To Kill A Mockingbird was Harper Lee's only novel. She is rumored to have a couple of other things written but not published. The film staring Gregory Peck and adapted by Horton Foote, is a perennial favorite and an Oscar winner for Peck. I use this book as the 'starter' for book discussion groups as it seems easy for most people to relate to and to talk about. The story resonates for nearly everyone for some reason. Lee is also known as the research assistant to Truman Capote during the time he wrote In Cold Blood although he did not credit her for that.

• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell has sales of about 28 million copies and is the only novel published by Mitchell in her lifetime. The book won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for literature and won a record number of Oscars.

Do you know of any other entries in this odd category?

The Fifth In A Series of Mysteries

Bill Powell, writing in Time's The China Blog, recommends Red Mandarin Dress and compares Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen to Martin Cruz Smith's Arkday Renko stories.

Red Mandarin Dress, An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong is now on the shelves. It is the fifth book featuring Inspector Chen and set in 1990's Shanghai. The series progression has been:

• Death of a Red Heroine (2000)
• A Loyal Character Dancer* (2002)
• When Red is Black (2004)
• A Case of Two Cities (2006)
• Red Mandarin Dress* (2007)

* Owned by Independence Public Library

Being Chinese and having been born in China, Qiu Xiaolong has the chops to pull back the curtain and reveal to us the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and show us the society that has resulted. Although he now lives and writes in St. Louis, the author was born and raised in Shanghai. As Powell points out in The China Blog, Qiu is writing in English which is his second language.

The Wall Street Journal named his first book, Death of a Red Heroine (2000) one of the five best political novels of all time. Their listing was as follows:

1. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (1876)
2. Shelley's Heart by Charles McCarry(1995)
3. Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong (2000)
4. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1941)
5. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

This list is not of my making and is going to force me to take up some dusty books to see what I have missed. At any rate, they have put this newcomer in heady company with his first outing. The novel was also picked as an Edgar Winner for a first novel.

I apologize for letting this one slip by me until now. I for one, look forward to a new (to me) author. We will see about picking up the three that we do not own at this time.

This interview features Qiu Xiaolong talking about Red Mandarin Dress:

Guest Blogger Robin Acker, M.D.

If Amelia Earhart was alive today, she could only be proud that a recent survey (USA Today, Feb. 4, 2008) of teenagers from the 50 states named her the 6^th most famous American (not counting Presidents) since the days of Columbus.

Now more than 70 years after her disappearance, researchers may be closing in on the final whereabouts of Earhart and the Lockheed Electra in which she was lost.

Since her disappearance in 1937, thoughts of Earhart’s last hours have been the focus of numerous articles, books and movies. Gradually, the theories have coalesced into three main groups:

1. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ditched their plane in the sea and floated some time before drowning. This is the official opinion of the US Navy.
2. Earhart managed to land somewhere, but she and Noonan were never found and they subsequently expired.
3. Whether after ditching in the sea or finding land, Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese soldiers, and died either due to dysentery or by execution.

Although theories one and three seem to have been the most popular, I, and a group to which I belong (TIGHAR), believe that the evidence points most strongly to the second.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery got into the “Earhart game” (as Barney Fife might have put it) a little more than a year after it was formed in 1987. The founder, Ric Gillespie, initially believed that there was no hard evidence that could justify a search for Earhart and her plane. But when two members of TIGHAR, knowledgeable of “old school” celestial navigation, told Gillespie the implications of her final radio transmissions, the head of TIGHAR was hooked.

For myself, I learned of Earhart when I was 10 years old in 1966, growing up in a town of about 4,000 in central California. Though I wasn’t in an enrichment class, we were blessed with a teacher who was indeed gifted. She encouraged my interest, which gripped me for years, but by April, 2007 had grown dormant. Dormant, that is, right up until my wife casually mentioned one day, “There’s something here in the news about Amelia Earhart.”

A few weeks later, I found myself the team physician on TIGHAR’s fifth major expedition to tiny, uninhabited Nikumaroro of the Kiribati nation, doctoring an epidemic of seasickness on the five-day motor-sail voyage to the atoll, a piece of land almost directly on Earhart and Fred Noonan’s last described line of position, some 300 miles southeast of their intended destination of Howland Island. Niku is just as hot as one would expect from a lava rock baking just 4 degrees south of the equator.

Why do we believe Earhart and Noonan died on Nikumaroro? Both Gillespie and Thomas H. King, chief archaeologist of TIGHAR, have written books that lay out the evidence quite nicely (Finding Amelia and Amelia Earhart’s Shoes, respectively). The notion that Earhart and Noonan ditched in the ocean doesn’t stand up to the fact that well-documented radio broadcasts received in the days after her loss virtually had to come from Earhart, whose plane was incapable of broadcasting from water. And while anecdotes have indicated a Japanese military capture, Earhart’s last transmissions to Howland were so strong that Coast Guardsmen ran out of the radio shack to look up in the sky, a circumstance unexplainable if the Electra was more than a thousand miles away.

Pursuing a site first explored on earlier trips, in 2007 we continued work on a section that appears to match contemporary colonial records of a skeleton discovery in 1940. The section, stained by the detritus of multiple campfires, has borne evidence of one or more castaways, including American-manufactured bottles from the 1930s, clumsily opened clams, and now the most recently confirmed substance--early 20^th century cosmetic.

As laboratory testing continues on other items found on the island in 2007, I and other TIGHAR members have our fingers crossed for a major breakthrough that could lead to the mystery’s resolution, and finally bring Earhart and Noonan home.

Thanks Robin for this fascinating article on your Amelia Earhart experience.

Something about the Amelia Earhart story resonates with many people. The above story came to me out of the earlier blog postings about our Friend's annual meeting program of Ann Birney portraying Amelia Earhart. Interest in the story of Amelia Earhart will continue. -- Pete

The Hearts of Horses

Every once in a while I come across a plain, good story. This book is one of those where I recognized early on that it is going to end long before I have had my fill of the characters and the story.

Molly Gloss has written four or five earlier books, some juvenile or intermediate and some stories and poems. Her latest, The Hearts of Horses is described on Gloss's website thusly:

In the winter of 1917 many of the young ranch hands in this remote Eastern Oregon county have been called away to war. When 19-year-old Martha Lessen shows up at George Bliss's doorstep looking for work breaking horses, George glimpses beneath her showy rodeo costume a shy young woman with a serious knowledge of horses, and he hires her on. Martha's unusual, quiet way of breaking horses soon wins her additional work among several of George Bliss's neighbors, and over the course of the winter she helps out a German family whose wagon and horses have tipped off a narrow road into a ravine; she gentles a horse for a man who knows he is dying—a last gift to his young son; and she clashes with a hired hand who has been abusing horses with casual cruelty. Against the backdrop of a horrifying modern war, Martha gradually comes to feel enveloped by a sense of community and family she's never had before. And eventually, against her best intentions to lead a solitary cowboy life, she falls in love.

Molly Gloss lives in Portland, Oregon and has won numerous literary awards. Her book Wild Life was chosen as the 2002 selection for, "What if all Seattle read the same book?"

Our library currently owns:

• The Hearts of Horses (2007)
• Jump Off Creek (1989)

I will look into purchasing more of her work.

The loss of downtown merchants

DeFever-Osborn Rexall Drug Store closed last month. There was a wildfire rumor then notice in the afternoon Independence Daily Reporter. Steve DeFever gave employees one week notice that the store was to close. Steve sold the store to Walgreen's so they could acquire his prescription files and customers. The historic orange neon sign for the store projected 90 degrees from the building and would be seen from both direction on Penn Avenue for many years. It is now dark.


When I visited Independence to be interviewed for the library director's position my son visited with me to access prospects and my staying power moving from metropolitan Palm Beach County Florida to small-town Kansas. The first impression we both had as we drove into town that August of 2001 was positive, bolstered in-part by the busy downtown commercial district. After dinner with the library board and selection committee at John's Kitchen and Pub, I met with them again the next afternoon. At noon that day, my son and I had gone to the lunch counter at DeFever-Osborn Drug Store for soup and sandwiches.

The drug store bustled both at the prescription counter and at the lunch counter. A dozen stools faced what had started as a soda fountain before 'pop' came in cans and teenagers ordered cherry-limeades that came in glasses not styrofoam cups from Sonic Drive-In. There were two or three wooden booths between the lunch counter and the prescription counter for coffee drinkers and newspaper readers. Steve had hung lots of historic photographs in the store and he actually had a better collection than the library. I borrowed a couple from him to copy for our files.

I was in Walgreen's the other day to get a prescription and saw Steve working there behind the counter as I waited. I won't say that I liked the line and the wait. I think I liked looking at the old photos at the old store better.

Across the street from DeFever-Osborn was Calvert's Department Store. They announced their closing in the same article that announced the drug store closing. I may write more about that later.


So, in one month two downtown landmark stores closed. It is tough for merchants in small towns as Walmart and city malls take customers away.

Robert B. Parker talks about his books

He is six books ahead of publication, a good interview.



His latest, Stranger in Paradise, is a Jesse Stone and is a good story, made for a TV movie. Tom Selleck does a good job in these moody procedurals to my taste. This is the eighth novel Parker has written using the Jesse Stone character. They are:

• Night Passage (1997)
• Trouble in Paradise (1998)
• Death in Paradise (2001)
• Stone Cold (2003)
• Sea Change (2006)
• Blue Screen (2006) *
  
• High Profile (2007) *
  
• Stranger in Paradise (2008)

Adding to the fun, Parker includes Sunny Randall in Blue Screen and High Profile and promises to include her in future efforts.

Explaining the book to a new user ...

It is obvious that I spend too many evenings at the computer. The evidence is clear. Anyway, it's my life and the results can be fascinating. I offer the following as proof. (Thanks Stumbleupon.com.)

How cool is this?