I’m not a fan of Steven King and haven’t read any of his books for years. But, I couldn’t pass this one up.  It seems to be getting rave reviews on Amazon and Good Reads.  I’ve not finished it yet but it is one helluva read … hard to put down.

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A Novel (P.S.)

In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry was the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed . . . and was never charged.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And now another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other "friend" to confront a past they’ve buried for decades.

The Last Child – A Novel

Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he’d been taught since birth to trust. No one else believes that Alyssa is still alive, but Johnny is certain that she is—confident in a way that he can never fully explain.
Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. It is a desperate, terrifying search, but Johnny is not as alone as he might think. Detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped looking for Alyssa either, and he has a soft spot for Johnny. He watches over the boy and tries to keep him safe, but when Johnny uncovers a dangerous lead and vows to follow it, Hunt has no choice but to intervene.
Then a second child goes missing . . .
Undeterred by Hunt’s threats or his mother’s pleas, Johnny enlists the help of his last friend, and together they plunge into the wild, to a forgotten place with a history of violence that goes back more than a hundred years. There, they meet a giant of a man, an escaped convict on his own tragic quest. What they learn from him will shatter every notion Johnny had about the fate of his sister; it will lead them to another far place, to a truth that will test both boys to the limit.
Traveling the wilderness between innocence and hard wisdom, between hopelessness and faith, The Last Child leaves all categories behind and establishes John Hart as a writer of unique power.

The Murderer’s Daughters

Lulu and Merry’s childhood was never ideal, but on the day before Lulu’s tenth birthday their father drives them into a nightmare. He’s always hungered for the love of the girls’ self-obsessed mother; after she throws him out, their troubles turn deadly.

Lulu had been warned to never to let her father in, but when he shows up drunk, he’s impossible to ignore. He bullies his way past Lulu, who then listens in horror as her parents struggle. She runs for help, but discovers upon her return that he’s murdered her mother, stabbed her five-year-old sister, and tried, unsuccessfully, to kill himself.

Lulu and Merry are effectively orphaned by their mother’s death and father’s imprisonment, but the girls’ relatives refuse to care for them and abandon them to a terrifying group home. Even as they plot to be taken in by a well-to-do family, they come to learn they’ll never really belong anywhere or to anyone—that all they have to hold onto is each other.

For thirty years, the sisters try to make sense of what happened. Their imprisoned father is a specter in both their lives, shadowing every choice they make. One spends her life pretending he’s dead, while the other feels compelled, by fear, by duty, to keep him close. Both dread the day his attempts to win parole may meet success.

A beautifully written, compulsively readable debut, The Murderer’s Daughters is a testament to the power of family and the ties that bind us together and tear us apart.

If you can’t afford to buy diapers, don’t have babies! 

Did these people ever hear of “cloth” diapers, tide and bleach?

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Tuesday introduced legislation that would allow federal block grants that states now use to subsidize child-care services to also allow for the purchase of diapers and "diapering supplies."

read the full article

Several months ago I ask my Mother if she still had any old stovetop coffee percolators and she found one! An old Corningware pot …. Classic Blue Cornflower pattern.

The reason I wanted one was because I had tossed all of mine years ago and when the electricity is off there is no way to make coffee.

This morning I decided to make a pot of coffee on the stove.  WoW …. the best coffee I’ve had in years.  Oh, and the aroma is just heavenly. I went outside to fill the bird feeders while the coffee was perking … opened the door to come back in and the smell was wonderful.

The one thing that I did wrong … it wasn’t quite strong enough or maybe I didn’t let it perk as long as it should have.  I haven’t made coffee this way for at least 35 years or longer.  When I first got married in 1967, I always made coffee on the stove.  Then in the early 70′s, they came out with the Corningware electric percolators and I had to have one.  Then it was on to Mr. Coffee and all the other brands that were hot sellers.

As of this morning I will no longer be using any drip coffee makers …. the old Corningware pot will be my choice.

The "blast from the past" has proven to be the best ever coffee!  Give it a try … you won’t regret it.  If nothing else, just do it for the aroma that fills your house …. it is "Coffee Heaven" for sure!

WORDPRESS

NEW YORK – Brute, a German shepherd, lay anesthetized on an operating table, his hairy chest under a plastic cover and his powerful paws taped immobile.

"Here comes the wire up the artery!" said Dr. Chick Weisse, who infused the dog’s cancerous liver with chemotherapy via a catheter at the century-old Animal Medical Center in Manhattan in an effort to "buy him some time."

Brute was home in days, the cancer at bay a while longer — perhaps eight months. The cost: $2,000.

Around the nation, veterinarians are practicing ever more advanced medicine on the nation’s 77 million dogs, 90 million cats and a myriad of other animals — treatments that vie with the best of human medicine. The driving force is "the changing role of the pet in our society," said Dr. Patty Khuly, a veterinarian at Miami’s Sunset Animal Clinic.

The bottom line for many people, she said, is that investing in a pet’s life "improves the quality of a human life immeasurably more than, say, buying a luxury car."

In a radiation suite at the Animal Medical Center, a black cat named Muka was undergoing a CT scan for a lung problem. A medical team hovered over the tranquilized animal, injecting contrast dye and poring over digital readouts to diagnose the problem: chronic pleural fibrosis.

The new, half-million-dollar Toshiba Aquilion — one of the latest, fastest 3D imaging scanners — was a gift from an owner whose pet was saved at the AMC, a not-for-profit research and teaching facility. The AMC offers 24-hour emergency care using once-unthinkable procedures like heart surgeries, MRIs and ultrasounds. It has a staff of 81 vets, including 27 certified in fields such as radiology, endoscopy, neurology, cardiology and oncology.

They train 18 interns and 24 residents, including two from Italy and one from Croatia this year.

read the entire article

Just checking out the new Windows Live Writer.

Can’t find a lot of new things but I haven’t really played with it very long!

Windows Live Essentials Beta … check it out.  The new Photo Gallery is pretty cool.

Google is a super dog-friendly company. It proudly names “company dogs,” like Yoshka (described as a “free-range Leonberger”) pictured above. Yoshka accompanies Urs Holzle, senior VP operations and Google Fellow to the Googleplex. Less senior staff are also allowed to bring their dogs to the office.

According to Google’s “Dog Policy”, one indiscretion too many on the Google carpets, or aggressive behavior, means Lassie will have to stay at home in the future. Strong bladdered and friendly canines are more than welcome across the campus.

Unfortunately, cats are not quite as welcome. Here’s an excerpt taken directly from Google’s Code of Conduct: “Google’s affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out.”

Research Annotate, Archive, Organize

• Online bookmark: Organize by tags or lists; Access from anywhere, anytime!
• Archive: Do not just bookmark! Archive pages forever! Make them searchable too!
• Annotate: Do not just archive! Highlight! Add sticky notes too!

Share Build Personal Learning Network

• Share your annotated pages with your followers on Diigo or elsewhere.
• Get a stream of interesting content by following others you like.
• Interact with others on content of interest.

Collaborate Create a Group Knowledge Repository

• Create a private or public group for your company, class, and teams.
• Share findings to the group — make it the second brain for your team!
• Interact on the web pages in-situ or in the group.

Give it a try …. Diigo

Linkletter died at his home in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, said his son-in-law, Art Hershey, the husband of Sharon Linkletter.

"He lived a long, full, pure life, and the Lord had need for him," Hershey said.

Linkletter had been ill "in the last few weeks time, but bear in mind he was 97 years old. He wasn’t eating well, and the aging process took him," Hershey said.

Linkletter hadn’t been diagnosed with any life-threatening disease, he said.

Linkletter was known on TV for his funny interviews with children and ordinary folks. He also collected their comments in a number of best-selling books.

"Because of Art Linkletter, adults found themselves enjoying children," said Bill Cosby, whose style interviewing kids on his own show in the late ’90s was often compared to Linkletter’s.

"An amazing fellow, a terrific broadcast talent, a brilliant businessman. An all-around good guy," CNN’s Larry King added about his longtime friend and frequent guest.

Asked what made Linkletter so appealing to audiences, King said, "He had an unusual voice, a twang to his voice that was immediately recognizable. And he looked like your favorite uncle."

"Art Linkletter’s House Party," one of television’s longest-running variety shows, debuted on radio in 1944 and was seen on CBS-TV from 1952 to 1969.

"On `House Party’ I would talk to you and bring out the fact that you had been letting your boss beat you at golf over a period of months as part of your campaign to get a raise," Linkletter wrote.

"All the while, without your knowledge, your boss would be sitting a few feet away listening, and at the appropriate moment, I would bring you together," he wrote. "Now, that’s funny, because the laugh arises out of a real situation."

read the rest of the article ……TV’s ‘People Are Funny’ host Art Linkletter dies