Favorite Author Fridays - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes had her first novel accepted for publication when she was 14. I first read her story, "In the Forests of the Night" several years ago and have since read all her 'stand alone' novels. Just this past summer I read the first book in her Kiesha'ra series and I loved it so I can now fully recommend her. Honestly everything she write feels very simple and just flows easily until you're completely surprised you're done.

Bibliography (ones in red I've read and loved):

In the Forest of the Night
Demon In My View
Shattered Mirror
Midnight Predator

Kiesha'ra series:
Hawksong
Snakecharm
Falcondance
Wolfcry
Wyvernhail

Conservation

So I'm in a Conservation Biology class this semester. It's interesting since that's what I planned to major in for quite a while. This class isn't amazing- the teacher is a little dry and seems interested in not passionate about the subject- but it does make me think sometimes.

Today we discussed anthropocentric versus ecocentric views of nature. It literally was one of those instances where I realized that honestly people think completely differently from me (a lot of them in fact).

An anthropocentric view of nature says that animals and nature are important because of how they relate to humans. This is the view of many Christian faiths (man's dominion over the animals, animals & plants are here for the use of man), the Forestry service, most government agencies and the majority of corporations. It's even the view of the 2nd great Conservation Movement in the US, the Resource Conservation Ethic, which said, "Nature is to provide the most good to the most people for the longest period of time".

An ecocentric view of nature says that nature has intrinsic value, whether or not it is valuable to humans. This is the view of several Eastern faiths, the Sierra Club and most 'tree-huggers'. It was the view of the 1st great Conservation Movement in the US, the Romantic/Transcendental Conservation Ethic, led by Emerson, Thereou and Muir. This said, "Nature is spiritual".

I had noticed the results of these two schools of thought but hadn't actually separated them out in my head. When I get information from the HSUS (Humane Society of the US) they give two sets of reasons for everything they're asking. When they were trying to get laws enforced about humane slaughtering practices they gave the ecocentric view of the horribly mistreated animals and the anthropocentric view of the higher risk of disease found in the meat of these animals.

Even in my class, Conservation Biology, you would expect most people to be ecocentric but I don't think they were. These were Ag students moving toward Wildlife Management careers, which is very anthropocentric.

One question our instructor brought up was to ask what were the ethical implications of eradicating a species. What about small pox? Small Pox has been essentially eradicated except for a few specimen in Bio-Warfare labs in the US and Russia. He asked if we had the ability to destroy these last specimen from the world (knowing the implications of a whole generation not immunized against them) would we do so?

The strongest anthropocentric thinkers will say of course. The risk to humans is too great to not do so.

The strongest ecocentric thinkers will say of course not. Every species has a right to be alive. Who are we to purposefully destroy one?

So this is my question to you. Would you destroy small pox?

Politics...Ewww!

So I've pretty much decided not to talk politics on this blog because it causes such contention but I thought this was pretty cool to see who you're views agree with. You might be surprised. Candidate Match Game

Once

This weekend Nate and I watched the movie Once. I really liked it. All the acting was really understated and it reminded me of my time in Australia, where they were speaking English but I still couldn't understand most of what was being said, but overall I loved it. As a modern musical, obviously the music was the highlight. They won an Oscar for the song Falling Slowly but I think this one was my favorite. I need to get the soundtrack!!! Laura had a copy but I never got it burned. Sad!

Glen Hansard - Lies



Oh well, what the heck...here's Falling Slowly too.

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova - Falling Slowly

blog change

yes i changed my blog colors- or really i just scrambled them. let me know if it's hard to read.

***Ok I changed it again. I didn't love my original colors just messed around but I really needed something different. I think I like it...

matchbox twenty

This is one of my favorite all time albums. I didn't like it when I first got it, but then somehow it ended up the only CD in my car for a couple of weeks and I began to love it. I wish I could put every song up here but then most of you would think I was even more ridiculous about music then you do now.

matchbox twenty - you won't be mine

Hmmm Picture

I just found this pic on Josie's Blog and Flickr from the Mitchell family reunion. I can't decide whether I like it or not. On one hand my legs look pretty skinny and you can't tell I probably hadn't showered in days. On the other hand...do I always look at my husband like that???



PS One of the very best things about family reunions with either side of Nate's family is that there are tons of kids and babies around that you can just take. It's almost like they don't want to hold their own kids. It's wonderful!!! No trouble baby fix and then the ability to hand them back when they get fussy. Ahhhhhh.

Fitzpatricks...

I decided since I already did a supremely long blog today I'll save this fun for next week. Keep guessing...

Favorite Author Fridays- Louise Rennison

A couple of years ago I took Young Adult Literature, and I immediately knew my true calling. It was now my eternal duty to read all young adult books and then recommend them to every young and old adult around. I'm serious! I love young adult literature! By my count of the 6 authors I have blogged about, 3 1/2 are young adult authors (Kelly Armstrong gets to be 1/2 and 1/2).

Let me list the reasons I love them so much:

1. Normally the language and questionable scenes are way less (notice I bold-ed normally, some can be much worse than adult books).
   
2. They don't try to impress you- Sometimes I honestly feel as I'm reading an adult book that the author is trying to show me how smart he is, or how many big words he knows. I don't mind big words but I do mind when they're so obvious that they draw my attention.
3. They're funny- Seriously even the real downers are usually pretty funny since even if they don't mean to be you can still laugh and rejoice you're not a teenager anymore.
4. Their authors are way cool!- For real. I never cared about authors until I became serious about young adult books. I honestly don't care about the life of Ernest Hemingway. It doesn't affect my reading of his stories one bit. But young adult authors are way fun and use this new fangled internet things to keep in touch with their fans. I can talk to some of my favorite YA authors easily- I just shoot them an email.
5. They are brave in facing real issues- Just like the young adults these books are about, the books themselves actually touch real issues mostly, in my opinion, not exaggerating them.
   

So enough of my nonsense here's Louise Rennison!!!!

Louise Rennison is from England. Half of the fun of her books is that I honestly don't know most of what the characters are saying. It's like when I was in Australia and my boss wanted me to take with me the... I wasn't sure. Eventually through him walking over to it, I realized he meant the trash can, which he was apparently calling the 'wheely bin'. Seriously.

Her books are written in journal style from the perspective of Georgia Nicholson who we meet as a 14(?) year old. She is dumb. Not in a stupid way but in a way of everything revolving around her and seemingly simple things blown way out of proportion. So pretty much a teenage girl (hey I can say it, it hasn't been that many years). Boys, of course, are a topic thoroughly explored and honestly it's just hilarious.

In one scene in the first book, Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging, (PS Angus is her cat) Georgia goes to a snogging instructor (read sneaky teenage boy). While this seems ridiculous to us a girl in my YA Lit class swore this was not unusual in Britain. She grew up in Ireland and had her first kiss from a snogging instructor. I know!!!

Anyway, the boys in my YA Lit class hated it. They all thought it was worthless and dumb but I have rarely laughed so hard. I read it aloud to Nate when we were engaged and honestly couldn't get through a part, I was laughing so hard.

The 8th book just came out and I read it and loved it. Nothing can be as good as the first but they're still funny. Here's the snogging scale:

The New and Improved Snogging Scale

.5	sticky eyes (Be careful using this. I’ve still got some complete twit following me around like a seeing-eye dog.)
1	holding hands
2	arm around
3	goodnight kiss
4	kiss lasting over three minutes without a breath (What you need for this is a sad mate who’s got a watch but no boyfriend.)
4.5	hand snogging (I really don’t want to go into this. Ask Jas.)
5	open mouth kissing
6	tongues
6.5	ear snogging
6.75	neck nuzzling
7	upper body fondling – outdoors
8	upper body fondling – indoors (in bed)
Virtual number 8	(When your upper body is not actually being fondled in reality, but you know that it is in your snoggees head.)
9	below waist activity (or bwa) (Apparently this can include flashing your pants. Don’t blame me. Ask Jules.)
10	the full monty (Jas and I were in the room when Dad was watching the news and the newscaster said, “Tonight the Prime Minister has reached Number 10.” And Jas and I had a laughing spaz to end all laughing spazzes.)

I would recommend these but caution against some questionable content- adults are much more likely to take offense than teens.

Bibliography:

Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging
On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas
Dancing In My Nuddy Pants
Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled by His Furry Shorts
Love is a Many Trousered Thing

Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzpatrick

Teaser photo...

I think I'll blog about this tomorrow but for now here's the pic.



What do you think it's about?

I'll give you a hint...it reminds me of my snuggly and this song:

Barry Louis Polisar - All I Want Is You

Garden

fuzzy picture of a yellow tomato

So let me tell you a bit about my garden. This year I tried several different things because I'm not really good at keeping plants alive and I figured I'd see what would survive and make next year worth it.

And I did find out what I could keep alive and what I couldn't. My number one problem was weeds. I kept forgetting to go out and pick them so they'd get really bad. We tried using newspaper (which is apparently what Grandpa Bennion did) but I don't think I buried it far enough cause it just dried up and blew away.


Grandpa Bennion- gardener extrodinaire

I also didn't do a whole lot to the soil before hand. I really should have done some testing and applied some fertilizer but I didn't make much of an effort (we just took a couple of shovel-fulls from Nate's folks compost pile).

But some of it did come out much better than I expected. The tomatoes for example were amazing as you can see above. Oklahoma is perfect for tomatoes. So beautiful!!! Too bad Nate won't eat them. :(

Anyway so here's what I grew and how it turned out:

• spinach- wonderful! it's an early spring plant (or at least just colder weather). It did great in the early part of the year but went to seed once it got too hot. I'd really like to try some more salad greens next year.

• sugar snap peas- very well. these did fine early on but when it got too hot they wilted. I would like to try something more structured for them to grow on next year and a shade device, which I hope will extend their life a little.

• yellow squash- very well for a while and then these weird white and black spider/aphid things ate them all. Must find out what they are and destroy them!!!
  

• zucchini- never got off the ground, eaten by the same things as my yellow squash

• butternut squash- never got off the ground, eaten by the same things as my yellow squash

• watermelon- over taken by weeds, never produced

• cantaloupe- overtaken with weeds, never produced

• corn- got to the perfect ripeness when we were on vacation and didn't get picked so went bad. WAY SAD!!!

• tomatoes- I planted 4 kinds

• beef steak- big and beautiful but not amazing. They love the sun so maybe they haven't hit their stride yet. The rainy weather isn't helping
• roma- my best and earliest producing. I love them! I wish they got a little bigger but overall they're super yummy
• yellow (low acid)- these things are so beautiful. I wish pictures did the justice. They look amazing on the plant. And really good and sweet
• 4th of July- not overly impressed. These were the last to produce and are medium sized red tomatoes, I'll probably skip them next year.

And just for fun a picture of one of our kittens attacking a tomato I dropped in the kitchen. It was way funny.

Balance???

So on Saturday I got up early and read, then cooked breakfast (egg scramble with zucchini, spinach, mushrooms, olives and cheese- and tomatoes on mine) and then made Nate get up and eat breakfast. He went back to bed and I read a little more and at least contemplated doing the dishes. After all this strenuous activity I felt I needed a nap. So Nate went out to mow the law and I went back to bed (it was my last weekend before school started again!!!).

A couple hours later Nate woke me up and to go stalk Lance, his brother-in-law. It seems Nate was driving by the local skate park and saw Lance there and wanted to go hang out with him. I asked (perfectly reasonably), "Is Emily there?" (Emily is Lance's wife and Nate's sister). Nate said he didn't know. I asked (again very reasonably), "Did Lance invite you to hang out or are we just stalking him?". Nate said we were just stalking him....well OK.


Emily and Lance- the tempters

So we went to the skate park.

It turns out Emily was there and had been the whole time, but apparently Nate only had eyes for Lance. So we chatted with them both. Then they talked me into sitting on the skateboard and going down the big ramp. The last (and really only) time I had ever been on a skateboard was in kindergarten and my 'boyfriend' would let me sit on his skateboard while he pushed me. So overall this seemed reasonable so I did it. I fell off the back a couple times before I got it right (wow I'm way fatter and less fit-able on a skateboard than I was in kindergarten) but it never hurt and I finally got it. Yes I am that cool. Oh, also I had the help of two 10 year oldish cute little black kids helping me.

So after that I went back to chat with everyone, pleased with my athletic skills.

Then they decided I could go down the smaller ramp standing up. Now I was riding high on my previous victory and so I agreed to try. WHY DIDN'T I REMEMBER I HAVE NO BALANCE??? I'm serious! I've been doing yoga for several years and last Spring took a class with a friend of mine, Aubrey. She had way better balance than me and she was like 8 months pregnant!

Anyway so I tried. The two boys giving me pointers again, even offering to catch me (as if their 75 lbs combined could break my fall). So I tried once, and fell. It didn't hurt so I got up and tried again. This time it hurt real bad!!! In fact, if I didn't think the 10 year olds would make fun of me I would have stayed on the ground crying. But I had my pride and so I got up and tried again and this time I made it!!! I went down the little ramp without falling. I'm practically a professional skateboarder.

So long story short, all this weekend and the beginning of this week my whole left side has been crazy bruised and I have been very whiny about it. What made it worse was that on Sunday when we went to pick up Nate's mom for church she had a crazy bruise around her eye. She was in her kitchen, slipped and since she had stuff in her hands hit her face first on the floor. Crazy!!!

So the moral of the story is...I'm not sure. That I should just expect that I'm going to be clutzy the rest of my life? Not to trust lance and Emily? Don't stalk your brother-in-law?

30 Seconds to Mars - !parental advisory!

Ok so I had promised myself I would do a real post before posting another music video but I had to indulge myself a little this morning. Apparently 30 Second to Mars is being sued by their label, Virgin Records, for failing to deliver the 3 records required by their contract. Way Sad!!! I have a huge emo crush on Jared Leto, starting way back in the 90's when he was in My So-Called Life. This is one of my favorite videos of theirs (come on let yourself be emo enough to think he's hot) patterned after The Shining.

I am putting an advisory on this one! It is a little rocked out for some of you and has one scene in the video that, if you understand it, could be rather questionable.

30 Seconds to Mars - The Kill


***** Quick note on the Shining- While I understand this video and it has much more meaning for me since I've seen the Shining, I am not recommending it. I first saw it when I was in 3rd or 4th grade because my baby sitter looked through my folks videos and said "Oh I've heard of this, it's a good kids video" and then proceeded to leave the room to talk on the phone to her boyfriend or something. We were left alone to be totally traumatized and fear Jack Nicholson for years without knowing why (PS I have a similar fear of Tom Petty and the Mad Hatter but that's a different story). I have seen this edited (as if for TV) and it was still scary but watchable- unedited it's totally not worth it and will probably scar you.

Gorillaz

So I just needed some old school fun. Do you remember when this first came out and it was all over the web? It was way modern and super cool. Keep your bass up real high for both of these.

Gorillaz- Clint Eastwood


...and now something a little more recent but still amazing.

Gorillaz- Feel Good Inc.

Favorite Author Fridays- Markus Zusak

Well I was gone for most of July and then when I got back the thought of trying to update everything on my blog got so overwhelming I didn't do anything. So here goes...



I read The Book Thief quite a while ago and loved it. It's from the perspective of a young girl living with a German family during World War II. It is amazing. It had tons of surprises and was definately very emotional (which I'm sure you expected form a novel about that era).

Markus tells of why he wrote the book on his webpage:

"When I was growing up, I heard stories at home about Munich and Vienna in war-time, when my parents were children. Two stories my mother told me affected me a lot. The first was about Munich being bombed, and how the sky was on fire, how everything was red. The second was about something else she saw...

One day, there was a terrible noise coming from the main street of town, and when she ran to see it, she saw that Jewish people were being marched to Dachau, the concentration camp. At the back of the line, there was an old man, totally emaciated, who couldn't keep up. When a teenage boy saw this, he ran inside and brought the man a piece of bread. The man fell to his knees and kissed the boy's ankles and thanked him...Soon, a soldier noticed and walked over. He tore the bread from the man's hands and whipped him for taking it. Then he chased the boy and whipped him for giving him the bread in the first place. In one moment, there was great kindness and great cruelty, and I saw it as the perfect story of how humans are."

That's how the whole book is- filled with 'great kindness and great cruelty'.

Had this been his only book I would have blogged about him earlier but he's written other books and I felt I needed to read at least one more before I could recommend him as an author, not just recommend his book. So over vacation I read his book, The Messenger. It too was beautiful and touching and, in places, very hard to read. I cried with joy and sorrow while reading it and was convinced Markus Zusak wasn't just a one-hit wonder.

I have had some problems finding copies of his other books so I'll probably just have to buy them off amazon or ebay but I can't imagine that I won't love them.

Here's his Bibliography:

The Underdog (1999)
When Dogs Cry- published as Getting the Girl in the US (2001)
The Messenger- published as I Am the Messenger in the US (2002)
Fighting Ruben Wolfe (2001)
The Book Thief (2006)