Angler's Inn

http://www.lunkers.com/anglersi.htm
My daughter Nicole, her husband Michael, my son Scott and I ate at this restaurant today.

Dinner and a Movie - October 2009

Alice, Colson and Leona brought dinner and Nicole and I furnished the movie. Its a definite romantic comedy chick flick but we loved it. And Leona and I didn't even need to sit the box of kleenex between us.

Book Of The Week

Midwives 

by 

Chris Bohjalian

Amazon.com Review

Oprah Book Club® Selection, October 1998: On a violent, stormy winter night, a home birth goes disastrously wrong. The phone lines are down, the roads slick with ice. The midwife, unable to get her patient to a hospital, works frantically to save both mother and child while her inexperienced assistant and the woman's terrified husband look on. The mother dies but the baby is saved thanks to an emergency C-section. And then the nightmare begins: the assistant suggests that maybe the woman wasn't really dead when the midwife operated:

Did she perform at least eight or nine cycles as my mother said, or four or five as Asa recalled? That is the sort of detail that was disputable. But at some point within minutes of what my mother believed had been a stroke, after my mother concluded the cardiopulmonary resuscitation had failed to generate a pulse or a breath, she screamed for Asa and Anne to find her the sharpest knife in the house.

In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one on trial--the prosecuting attorney and the state's medical community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all, an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981. Through it all, Sibyl, her husband, Rand, and their teenage daughter, Connie, attempt to keep their family intact, but the stress of the trial--and Sibyl's growing closeness to her lawyer--puts pressure on both marriage and family. Bohjalian takes readers through the intricacies of childbirth and the law, and by the end of Sibyl Danforth's trial, it's difficult to decide which was more harrowing--the tragic delivery or its legal aftermath.

Narrated by a now adult Connie, Midwives moves back and forth in time, fitting vital pieces of information about what happened that night like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into its complicated plot. As Connie looks back on her mother's trial, she is still trying to understand what happened--not on the night of the disaster--but in the months and years that followed. --Margaret Prior

(I finished listening to this book on audio last week and really enjoyed it.  Click on the title and author's name to learn more.)

Movie Night

Tonight I cooked dinner for Mark rather than going out and after dinner we watched the movie I had rented. I had listened to the book on audio last summer and we discussed the book at BAM. I wanted to watch the movie too. Now I want to listen to the sequel on audio! And oh - dinner was meatloaf, roasted veggies and apple cobbler.

Celine Dion and Elvis Presley

From my email bag tonight.


For those
> of you that didn't see the show, Celine Dion appeared
> to walk out and stand next
> to Elvis as the two sang a duet of the classic "If I
> can Dream." It was like he
>
was raised from the dead. Everyone has been asking how it
> was done.
> Entertainment Tonight said it was a
> hologram.
>
> Estimated cost of this was
> said to have been $50,000
> to $100,000, and it is said it took months and months
> to create. Prior to
> the performance, Celine practiced with an Elvis
> impersonator. However it was
> done, it was totally amazing. She sounded great singing
> with
> Elvis. It really does look for the entire world to see
> that Elvis is actually
> standing there; in his 20s live on stage singing along
> side Celine Dion in front of the live American Idol
> audience.
> Watch and
> listen to the audience going berserk, as they=2
0themselves
> think they are actually
> seeing Elvis right there in front of them. Modern day
> technology brings
> Elvis
Presley back to life in front of your eyes.
>

you done stomped on my heart

I am in Chp 11 in my A&P book and having trouble concentrating today. Chp 11 is the heart. When I was a teen and a group we were around the camp fire we would sing this song and make great fun of it.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - TRAILER

After a nice dinner at our favorite Italian Restaurant, http://www.casarestaurants.net/main-menu.aspx#pesce
(I had Tilapia con Granchio)
Mark and I went to see the newest Michael Moore movie. Not much can make me laugh, then cry, then laugh again quicker than Michael Moore can.

Book Of The Week

Amazon.com Review
The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death--a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence.

Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II--an essay that is as timely today as it was then--to a painfully funny short story about three Army privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war, to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. Also included are Vonnegut's last speech as well as an assortment of his artwork, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut. Armageddon in Retrospect says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the writer.

(I received this book as a gift and enjoyed listening to it.  It was very thought provoking.  In fact I had to stop after almost every story and take awhile to think it through.)