Hilary Booth... of course!

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I just finished reading Bob Greene's Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. It's about a small town in Nebraska that decided to open up a canteen for US soldiers during WWII. The troop trains would stop for ten minutes and the canteen would provide coffee, sandwiches, cigarettes, magazines. The book is littered with remembrances of war veterans and canteen helpers and locals. It's about an America that's disappearing. It's also a love story about trains or at least how they impacted the small towns they passed through. The saddest parts of the story aren't the war stories as much as the disappearance of the train station. I heard about the book when I was temping at the SEC and Harvey Pitt, the then-chairman, mentioned the book favorably in a lecture. That's what I love about books. You discover them in interesting ways, whether they're recommended by a friend or spotted on a bookshelf. There are the books you have to read for class and there are the ones you kick back and read on a weekend.

I also read Irene Nemirovsky's "Fire in the Blood" which was short and unsatisfying. Given the author's tragic history, that criticism is hard to give. Who knows how that book would have turned out if she'd had more time to revise it? That makes me look at my own works with a different eye. If I left tomorrow, if I couldn't write anything more, what would I leave behind? A lot of unfinished ideas and convoluted plots. Theoretically it should galvanize me into working harder.

I read for enjoyment. I read for escape. But I also read for knowledge and history and understanding. I want to visit places I will never see. I want to pack my bags for that great adventure whether it's Narnia or Hogwarts or New York or wartime London. Reading is a tool, but it's a great joy too.

Found on little_details: For those researching 1930s-1940s era, the Library of Congress has a gorgeous Flickr set in color. This is a collection of just over 1500 shots taken by photographers working for the US Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information. The Library of Congress holds the original transparencies.

Today is D-Day, June 6th. Rat Patrol Radio is running their complete broadcast day again. I can't seem to get Live365 to cooperate with my work browsers, so I will have to wait until I get home to storm the beaches. Apparently they're rerunning the whole thing starting tomorrrow Thursday at 9am, if you didn't want to wake up today at 3am to catch the first rumors of invasion.

Sometimes my job is just fun.

One of the stories I'm indexing is on the B-17 Flying Fortress, specifically the "Sentimental Journey".

I get to look at pretty planes... for money even!

Yes, I'm silly. I'd like to think it's just the day before a holiday, but I think I'd be this way anyway.

I'm listening to Live365's Rat Patrol Radio. They're airing the Complete Broadcast Day for D-Day from CBS News. For the part I'm listening to now, it's mostly news reports interpersed with occasional music (lots of military themes), although they seem to have done some programming. The most fascinating bulletin for me was a report from wartime Washington describing my "sleepy Southern town" and how it really didn't wake up until about 8am. So much has changed alas. I believe the correspondent was commenting on a intersection at E street, but I couldn't remember the cross street. I'm also grabbing some OTR programs off the binary newsgroups.

Not Tinkers to Evers to Chance, but Frances to Ivan to Jeanne... Thinking very good thoughts towards the Florida coast and maybe farther up. The positively last thing the East Coast needs is yet another hurricane.

Finally got around to finish watching the ESPN's Poker shootout with the top ten players. Fascinating to watch a table with just the big guns, not any Internet players or amateurs mucking up the works. They certainly knew each other's quirks and ragged each other mercilessly. Phil Hellmuth should be "Hellmouth", given his penchant for mouthing off after he's been outplayed and outmaneuvered. Annie Duke knocked out her older brother again, and then proceeded to shock me by winning the whole thing. I kept thinking "Please let the girl not be the first one out". Instead it was the mostly unknown guy whose specialty was the big cash games.

CVS meeting went well. I was the only one who submitted a research report. I chose the Russian female fighter pilots in WWII, a topic I've been interested in for a number of years after stumbling over a book on the subject on one of my library assignments. I still haven't used the information for story ideas yet, although the bunnies have been lurking around the fringes. ladyofchulak survived her first critique session without incident. It doesn't get any less nerve wracking sadly. We had a long dinner afterwards to discuss a community idea we had, which prompted some interesting, maybe scary, plot noodling. I handed myself a crossover from hell that I'll be curious to see if I can write, both fandoms I've never attempted before.

Overdue: Library humor. Flash movie. Very silly.