College Girl

Here are some interesting articles that I found online this week.

Global

In a fascinating article, the Times of India reports that young girls who are being pushed towards marriage before legal age are refusing, and citing the desire to further their education as a reason. Studies done in India on the subject of child and teenage marriages carry shocking results. One found that “45 per cent of women– currently between 20-24 years– were married before the age of 18.” Another stated that “16 per cent of women, aged 15-19, were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey. It was also found that more than half of Indian women were married before the legal minimum age of 18, compared to 16 per cent of men aged 20-49 who were married by the age of 18.” Reasons for early marriage of girls include poverty – the desire to remove a person from the family’s responsibility – and the higher desirability, and thus lower dowry, for young girls.

The issue of illegally early marriage and childbirth is much more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas. It results in a lower educational level for women, a greater risk of complications in childbirth, and a higher rate of infant mortality. Due to the sexual activities of the older man in the marriage, these women are also put at a greater risk for STDs. The article states that “An analysis of the HIV epidemic shows that the prevalence of HIV infection is highest in girls between 15-24 and peaks in men between five to ten years later.”

The New York Times had a story of success against this system: a woman born into an “untouchable” caste in India, married young, yet who today had her own business and is self-sufficient.

National

The Star Telegram reports on local student support for the D.R.E.A.M Act, which would “provide a path to citizenship for college students who came to this country as children, have been in the U.S at least five years, and have not been in trouble.” The Act would allow these students, among other things, access to Federal student loans and the ability to be legally eligible for work once they graduate.

Due to budget shortfalls, many states are cutting back on programs that offer home-care services for people unable to take care of themselves, who otherwise would likely end up out of their house and in a nursing home. Proponents of home-health argue that this move will not actually save states money, as the patients will be more likely to end up in hospitals or nursing homes, at the state’s expense. Some states, including Texas, have frozen the level of home-health services, even as demand rises.

By the end of the next few weeks, the vast majority of states will have adopted a set of national education standards. Texas has stated it is not interested in participating in this drive to even the standards for students across the country, while lowering the cost for states in developing their own set of normative levels.

Finally on the National level, the Senate passed a bill which would increase unemployment pay to Americans who had been out of work and looking for more than six months.This move comes at a good time, as unemployment insurance claims jumped this month.

Local

The City of Fort Worth is taking a break on a decision regarding a federal grant that could be used to build Fort Worth a public streetcar system. Many residents feel that a streetcar system would provide low-cost, attractive public transportation  – a major plus for the city. The city is unsure of whether it can provide matching funds to accept the grant and pay for the streetcar system, which is estimated to cost 80 to 130 million dollars. There are also concerns regarding funding for other transportation projects in the city.

Also, several people spoke about how the Directions Home program, the City of Fort Worth’s year-old homelessness prevention program, had positively impacted their path to self-sufficiency. Fort Worth, facing a budget shortfall, is unsure of whether the program’s funding will be maintained at its current level. So far, the program has aided 322 people in finding places to live, not only giving them a “key to a door” but a major step towards self-sufficiency.

And, since I’m writing this, we couldn’t go without some

Health-related news:

The ongoing battle to eradicate polio has been plagued by setbacks, including a large outbreak in Tajikistan and new people being infected with a mutated version of a live virus given to immunize someone else. The live-virus vaccine is safe for the person administered to but, if the contained virus later mutates, could affect a small number of other persons, infecting them with the disease. Fear of the live-virus vaccine, which is cheaper than other polio vaccination forms, could cause serious setbacks in the race to eliminate this terrible disease, which causes paralysis in some cases. In the U.S, the age of the iron lung was ended quickly with Jonas Salk’s 1955 discovery of an effective vaccine.

I come to believe that all of society is one big mechanism for taking my money. Sad fact is that I don’t have very much to begin with, and most of it was begged off of willing parties (parents, grandparents, the federal department responsible for student loans). And then, I walk out into the world, and watch as my paltry sums are taken, as I am positively stripped bare of any resources by the world around me. The editor said it makes one reconsider being a deadbeat. After all, when your standards are so low, there’s no need for Turtle Wax ($3.29), new socks ($5, but no holes!), or car repairs ($∞). And knowing that somewhere someone is getting rich off of all this? Not priceless. I’d like to meet the fool who realized they could charge an extra $3 to every moviegoer for making the thing “3D.” Biggest scam ever. Probably one of the most successful. Or the people who sit around in cubicles, trying to figure out where to strategically place all the items in Target so that it would betray the laws of the universe to get out of there for less than fifty dollars  a purchase.

There are stores on every corner, from gas stations hawking cold soda to mega-big-box-stores to places where one can apparently drop thousands of dollars on a new couch. There are internet shops, and mail-order catalogs, and people asking for donations at stop lights. It’s like the whole world feels like Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer: “There’s a lot of money out there, I’m trying to get my hands on some…We’re living in a material world and I’m a material girl. Or boy.”

And it’s not just about filling one’s desire to fill their house. Or having something to do on the weekends that involves ice cold AC. It’s about living up to a standard. Not just a standard of living – yes, I admit, I think that hot water and clean sheets and towels and fresh fruit are pretty necessary for my well-being. But what about the side  that I have to keep up? Like the cell phone. It’s not just that without it, I couldn’t communicate with my sister as much. It’s that…who doesn’t have a cell phone? Can you imagine having to ask someone to borrow their phone every time you needed to get a ride, or check on an appointment, or get back to your mother to let her know you’re okay? What about if you showed up at your classes wearing shoes that were that side of usable condition – would people notice? Or the car – yeah, I suppose I could ride my bike. In the 100 degree weather. Or make up some scheme to take the bus, thereby increasing my commute time by an order of magnitude. But really? I’m no fanatic.

I admit, again, a lot of the things that I spend money on are pretty discretionary. But sometimes I feel like it’s just part of a system. A money-extraction process that has convinced us to do things a certain way – a way that fills others pockets. Remember Star Trek VI? “Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean we must do that thing.” Yeah, my friends and I can scrounge up a small pile of money and go out to eat. But why couldn’t we combine efforts and make our own dinners? Sure, we’d lose on convenience, and it might mean moving a bit out of the comfort zone…

But remember – the system is all about keeping you in the comfort zone. It’s like the matrix. Where you are just happy enough not to get up. Just complacent enough to not change the channel. Where the AC is nice, so you’ll browse a bit longer. But  I’d like to be able to go out without feeling like I am suffering from a slow fiscal hemorrhage. And I know, we’re not supposed to care what people think. Who gives a care? But we do care what others think. We can’t just wander off with a machete, hacking a trail in some weird direction, with our peers looking quizzically down the dark path we have forged, some raising eyebrows, some just walking off, and maybe a few tentatively following. Or maybe we could. Just a little. So what do you think? Could we bend the rules a bit? I don’t mean to start wearing sandals we made with home-grown grass, or swearing off commercial entertainment, or making the thrift shop our sole provider. But, instead, realizing that the world is out to get our money. And thinking, maybe, just today, that we won’t let them have it that easy.

At some point during the first grade (right about the same that that, chasing my older sister around the kitchen with a sharpened pencil in my hand, I managed to implant a piece of graphite in my hand that can still be seen lurking underneath my epidermis), my parents started making pizza every Saturday night. I don’t know where the idea came from, but they began this habit, and have yet to stop – to the benefit of us all.

During third grade, when we lived in Toronto, our neighbor, a recent immigrant from Austria, gave us a recipe for dough, and we bought a set of round pans dotted with holes in the bottom at a nearby Italian goods store (the same place we bought the Mezzzluna, to be discussed later). My parents started using less sauce and cheese, and the practice of making a “kid pizza” (cheese and pepperoni) and an “adult pizza” (meat, and  nasty little things known as peppers, capers, mushrooms, and olives, with the occasional artichoke) began. And thus it has been. Over time, more persons in the family became okay with eating such oddities, and now, perhaps as more of us reach adulthood, the mature person’s pizza is more popular.

Usually, well, back before certain teenage boys proved themselves to be very irresponsible and got the privilege revoked, this meal was our one chance at soda for the week, as we would down a two liter bottle of Coke, Dr. Pepper, or similar sugary beverage. Sometimes a salad accompanies the meal, especially nowadays, when six cups of flour does not give rise (pun unintended, but still funny) to enough pizza dough to satiate everyone without an accompanying dish.

Nowadays, my stepfather makes the pizza. He drags some child in to grate a chunk of mozzarella, and another is coerced into cutting up the salad. Mr. Cassella figured out that it is worth the extra time to cook each pizza alone, at 525 degrees. The dough is rolled out just before it is bedecked with toppings and placed on one the above-mentioned pizza pans. Once it is done – a state determined by eyeballing through the glass and then peeking into the oven, while trying not to get your face blasted off with hot air – it is set to cool; then, it is slid off of the pan onto a cutting board, and sliced with the mezzaluna, a half-moon shaped knife with two handles that also minces fresh herbs very well. Then, it is slid back onto the pan, placed on the table, and each person gets two slices each, no more, and please do not fight to the death for any extras. Or at least don’t do it at the table.

This tradition is an important one in the family, perhaps simply because of its longevity.  All the younger children in the household began their understanding of week days through the regular existence of “Pizza Night” and ‘Church Day” – Saturday and Sunday, respectively.  Usually we are all home that night, it’s not something to miss. My stepfather has turned pizza cooking and delivery into a sort of art, and if there is one Cassella tradition that I intent to continue, aside from, of course, insane road trips and Toll House chocolate chips, it is this one. In fact, as many of my friends can tell you, I have had pizza night for them several times. Don’t worry guys, you won’t be in the desert for too long: I plan to have it again for you right after I get back from Cali.

Why this tradition is so important is somewhat ineffable. I suppose there isn’t anything special or profound about it, just the fact that we’ve gathered together, every week, for nigh on decades, to have the same recipe, and it’s still good. I have memories of pizza night in every house we have lived in since first grade, I have almost memorized the recipe myself. Perhaps it’s just that the food is so good, and how could it not be after so many years for the recipe to be perfected? Perhaps it’s just that, over the years, after eating so many slices, they have a special place in my heart. Or maybe it’s just that this is our thing. We are the Cassellas. We eat pizza every Saturday. It’s really good. We’re cool like that.

I think I made this pizza a few weekends ago.

Hello!

Today I went to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which is just outside of Santa Cruz. The entrance is off of Highway 9, a rather poorly marked road that winds along beneath a roof of tall trees as it basks in green light. The park is one of several devoted to redwoods in the Santa Cruz area, and is the southern-most of the many of such along the northern California coast. I poked around the Visitor Center, which had just emptied itself of about forty third graders. There, I learned a great deal about Sequoia sempervirens, or the Coastal Redwood, which is one of three types of redwoods currently known, along with Sequoiadendron gigantea, or the Giant Seqoia, which is found in the Sierras, and Metasequoia, which was found in China.

Coastal Redwoods live along the coast, surprisingly. The Redwood is a thirsty tree, and is able to survive the dry summer months due to regular fog along the coast. In fact, the Redwood ecosystem obtains 25 to 50% of its moisture from fog. Thus, Coastal Redwoods exist in a narrow band 25-40 miles wide along the northern coast of California, and up into Oregon, where fog is plentiful in the summer.

Redwood Sorrel on the forest floor.

The Redwoods are adapted for the capture and containment of fog moisture. The needles low on the tree are flat and large; fog condenses on them and drips down to the roots. The needles up towards the canopy and smaller and fatter, and function to contain moisture in the forest and avoid too much evaporation.

Other plants in the Redwood ecosystem have similar adaptations. The Redwood Sorrel, a bright green ground cover plant, will curl its leaves down like an umbrella when touched by sunlight. This allows the plant to trap moisture below its leaves.

Long ago burned-through Keebler arch.

The bark of these trees, which is seven to twelve inches thick, is red from the presence of tannic acid (named because it was used in early tanning work). The acidity level and thickness repels encroachment by insects or fungi. Furthermore, the bark also contains a lower than normal amount of pitch and flammable resin. This makes the tree resistant to fires. Furthermore, if burned, the cambium layer of the tree will grow over the damaged tissue. Some trees at the park had been burned through, but survived on, with a large arch in their middle, through which one would expect a pack of Keebler elves to come dancing at any moment.

Sempervirens translates “always living.” The tree obtained this name because it commonly reproduces by budding new trees, often in a circular formation, or “fairy rings,” from its rootstock. These clones can live on, even if the original tree dies. The roots of the original tree will live on to sustain in the younger progeny.

The floor of the forest is surprisingly open and flat.

Interestingly, despite being the tallest tree known to man, the coastal redwood has rather shallow roots. However, these roots are dense and intertwine with the roots of neighboring redwoods, giving the trees the ability to resist falling during storms and other stresses. However, when one of these giants does fall, it serves as a long lasting micro-habitat, where insects, lizards, fungi, ground plants, and even other trees can grow and live.

The budding system of making new Redwoods is dominant. Few Redwoods grow from seeds, because it is very difficult for a seed to penetrate the duff, or thick layer of sticks and needles on the forest floor. The duff can be up to two feet thick; seedlings must grow roots down into the soil below to capture water and nutrients.

The "duff."

Coastal Redwoods are huge. After twenty years of existence, a redwood is about thirty feet tall; however, it has just gotten started. After this point, it will grow two to six feet a year, increasing an inch or so in girth. I believe the tallest today are close to 300 feet in height. Redwoods are also old; the oldest specimens at the park are 1400 to 1800 years old, according to the park’s website.

I believe this was one of the tallest ones.e

My adventure with these magnificent tree involved a mile-long walk along a trail through the oldest growth in the forest. It was like entering another world, a trip through time and place. I was amazed that, with ocean miles off on one side, and farmland miles off on the other, and a city, and roads, and forest, there was in the middle this grove of nearly eternal being. I was calm, and happy, standing alongside these giants of nature, these elders of the wood, these magnificent beauties.

Looking up at the canopy.

I arrived last night in California. Rudy gave me a ride, and we had a riotous time on the way to the airport laughing at stories about our respective childhoods. I put my head down and prayed during takeoff, and, what do you know – I made it! – and even during the slight turbulence at the beginning of the flight, with prayers and closing my eyes and imagining friends next to me, I survived. As we sailed over the lights of DFW, I said farewell, I shall return. Then, I watched Juno.

This morning, I looked out my window to see some palm trees, then took a jog around the neighborhood in the morning cool and mist and clouds. The bulk of the day was spent in car with my dad, driving from southern California, up the 5 freeway, across to the 101 and the 1, past Monterey, around the bay, and up to a little seaside town called Capitola, which is just south of Santa Cruz. There are lots of tall trees, and the winery my father is bottling at, Soquel, is up a winding and forested and narrow road. That road has all these unique little houses, nestled in the greenery, with some old and some new cars sitting outside them.

The winery had a view of the ocean, lots of roses, and much greenery. Pictures follow:

Grape vines in the foreground, and the ocean in the distance.

Roses. There were many of them in the courtyard of the winery.

Clouds. I like this picture quite a bit.

My father had to set up the bottling trailer, so I sat down and read the first few chapters of Nicholas Nickelby, and looked up many words in my dictionary. I was quite contented, especially after the sun made a note-worthy appearance and I took the pictures above.

Now I am in a hotel room, listening to Sarah Harmer and writing. Tomorrow, I may go down to the beach, or to downtown Santa Cruz. However, I just discovered that mere miles away there are three separate state parks with redwoods; one of them apparently has a good trail, a nature center, and a bookstore. I just might have found what I’m doing tomorrow.

Until next time, I am, yours, etc. etc.

Oh the humanity!

Here I am to harp again in one of my many rants (targets of which include but are not limited to: school, stress, the opposite sex, bad food, shallow thinking, and of course, airplanes).

I am flying out to California on Wednesday, which is merely the day after tomorrow. I am in somewhat of a panic about this. I wish I could find I way to express my abject and consistent fear of being in a large tin can which – after filling up with men in business suits having “important” conversations on tacky phones about LAN connections and conventions and ways to blow their company’s travel budget, gum-smacking beach blondes holding only a designer purse and the latest edition of Cosmopolitan, seedy-looking characters with odd baggage who seem to always stare, older women carrying a massive leather reticule full of every odd and end known to man, including the obligatory Dean Koontz novel and a picture of their grandchild, and little families with grape juice in sippy bottles, a diaper bag, and a father looking so domestic you stare with raised eyebrow – I will enter, backpack in tow, cell phone in pocket, death wish ostensibly on brain.

Because, you see, it’s not that I “don’t like” flying. It’s not that the airport “stresses me out” or that the whole traveling process drags on longer than a petition for money in church, or even that, as makes the most sense, I don’t particularly like the idea of hurtling through the air like sardines packed into a can and lobbed with all one’s might into the sky, hitting several miles high – “this is your Captain speaking, we have now reached our cruising altitude of six miles up from the ground, a hundred miles from your home, and several million light years from anything you hold sacred, comfortable, or real. So sit back, have a small plastic cup filled with some watery carbonated beverage that is, of course, complimentary, and enjoy the ride,” because who doesn’t like looking out the window and seeing an entire state in one glance, and knowing that if anything went wrong they would turn into a fireball, and, best yet, knowing that they have no control of whether that happens, and, if it doesn’t, knowing that they will find the aforementioned sardine can falling back down in a beautiful arc and somehow gracing the runway with the greatest of ease, which, every time it actually works and a plane lands without smashing into a billion bits, is in the world according to Tonia, the greatest miracle since the Wedding at Cana and maybe since the invention of Penicillin, but don’t quote me on that?

Speaking of pharmaceuticals, the fact that I will most definitely be under the influence of some highly tranquilizing substances (and trying to find a dosage between hiding in the bathroom as the plane leaves and walking onto the wretched thing and then passing out in a Sleeping Beauty slumber that would not allow for things like breathing or, even worse, grabbing my little oxygen mask should I need it at some point during the flight that we experience a drop in cabin pressure) does not change my fear – no, my all-consuming HORROR that this will happen. After all, what happiness is there greater than the anticipation of the event itself, and what fear is there greater that of facing a situation which held that wondrous feeling in it before?

Just knowing that this is going to happen a few days down the road clutches at my gut, it wrenches my soul, it shakes my fragile little body and says “WHAT THE HELL were you thinking?” It sends frigid little vibrations down my bouncing legs and to my clenching toes, it knocks a million little holes into the brain that made this absurd decision…after all, I am not a bird; I belong with my feet firmly clamped onto terra cognita, as they are now, but as they will not remain forever…because I will go through that blasted metal detector, as bleary eyed and self possessed security people question my legality, my integrity, and even my right to be there, as I slip my shoes back on, and gather my bag, and collect my ID, and check the boards to find my flight, and close my eyes, and drift away.

And then, after passing over my boarding pass to a woman either smiling like she just won a place on “The Price is Right” or who is glaring at you like you’re some insipid stowaway cockroach, and after walking down the uneven, echoing jetway, like some misbegotten member of the nobility walking to La Guillotine, I will place my things down, sit in a seat a thousand other grimy humans have rested in, I will turn off all portable electronic devices, and clutch the armrests, hoping that the soft plastic that covers them is intact and that my seat partner doesn’t hog them, and, as the plane cants down the runway, picking up speed, and then as that horrid, sickening feeling that betrays my higher sensibilities consumes my little body as I leave the ground and we canter off into the sky, in man’s most unnatural invention ever, I will pray, and chant in my head, and close my eyes and count, and wait, wait for it to be over, then upon landing I will kiss the ground, and swear never to repeat the experience, and race through Ontario International, down the escalator, into the baggage claim, and out the doors into the warm, sweet, southern California night, while I chatter with my ride and secretly, inside, plot a way back home that doesn’t engage such awkward means.

One might wonder what an industrious, workaholic student does when she has several weeks with absolutely no commitment, quite a bit of studying exhaustion, and an empty house.

Well, let me tell you…

I have worked in the garden, or rather, the front yard, which I have turned into a garden in several places:

Note the pretty, unfinished path. That is a hose, not a snake, though I saw one at the Botanical Garden the other day.

My herb garden. Basil on the left, and some cilantro and "Thai Basil" (don't ask, my stepfather asked me to plant it). Ah, more pretty red path.

The vegetable garden. Those boxes were built by my grandmother's husband last spring for my mother.The area to the back, behind the boxes, was totally filled with plants - quite a jungle - and had to be cleaned out. It took me about two days to get that area neat enough for planting.

Peppers and more tomatoes in the front-most box, cantaloupes on those little hills behind (A insisted on them) and berries up against the fence.

Garden beans, with their little poles all set up. These I grew from seeds. I am quite proud of their progress; I wasn't so sure about the whole seed business and had little faith it would work. The cantaloupes were from seeds also.

So, several huge piles of vegetation put by the curb, quite a bit of sweat, and some increased muscle mass later, the yard is looking good.

However, I only did that about half of the days so far, maybe less. Other times I have..

Made appointments to see old teachers:

"P^2" is a nickname for one of my teachers from high school.

Printed out all of the pictures from the Spring Break San Francisco trip at CVS, and even bought a little book to put all 120 of them in:

Any of my fellow nerds, note the 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene on the top right!

Organized my file box…

Well..."organized" meaning I put all the stuff I had stashed on the top in appopriate files or spaces in the box.

Spent a rather lot of money getting various pieces of art and posters framed at Hobby Lobby; also got a matte and frame for this postcard from the Villa Borghese; it turned out pretty nice:

They just don't make 'em like they used to, hmm?

Oh, and I began to re-read Sense and Sensibility (note: not on the reading list. Hehe…)

Gotta love the sisters Dashwood.

Aaaand I made a CD with all of the OChem lecture recordings from this semester for Charles…I will drop it off at the lab at TCU where he works later (he’s always there).

Good times.

PS: To estivate is to “pass the summer in an inactive or resting state.”

Yesterday I received some very sad news. One of my classmates, Sri Vempati, died in a car accident this past weekend.

He was a fellow Biochemistry major and pre-med. He was a brilliant student – a triple major, who somehow managed to carry a near double-load of classes.

The last time I had a real conversation with him, I was sitting in the foyer of Sid Rich (the main science building), and he noted I was always sitting there studying. I was eating lunch, and responded that actually, on this occasion, I was not studying, but reading the New York Times, which wasn’t very interesting that day.  We joked around a bit, and talked about our upcoming finals, our classes for next semester. Then it was off to the last session of lab – he often tried to get a rise out of me, and we would occasionally get into a heated debate about the value of certain virtues (or the existence of such at all). Mostly, he enjoyed his success at getting a rise out of me, and I steamed and stomped and rolled my eyes. He just laughed. He was always smiling, sometimes a bit of a devilish smile, but so all the same.

He sat in front of me in Cell Bio, and was the person who always asked the “so what if this went wrong?” or “so how does that happen?” question, which to fully explain would take quite some time. In Organic Chemistry, he often questioned the reactions, and pointed out every place that things didn’t make perfect sense. Einstein would have been proud, as Sri was a great follower of “the important thing is not to stop questioning.” For thus he did. He wanted an explanation, and had the brain to see through any loopholes in it. His was the most curious type of intellect.

He was energetic, too. A few weeks ago, I saw him at the Student Research Symposium, dressed in slacks and a tie, gesticulating with great air as he described his research poster, which depicted a chemical reaction. Other times, I was shooed away from his post at the Computer Information desk in the library, by his supervisor, who was not okay with me standing there while he talked about a chemical spectra.

This is a great loss for his family, his friends, for TCU, and for whoever would have come his way in the future.

I wrote about the human response to loss last July. I said that we react in different ways, and that sometimes, we cannot feel or react at all. If there is one occurrence in life that humans are particularly ill-equipped to deal with, it is the passing of someone very young. Someone with potential, who had all sorts of things ahead of them. We hardly know what to say, what to do, and we feel that such a thing is tremendously difficult. One could say that when someone dies young, the natural procession and cycle of life is aberrant. When things happen so out of order or at the wrong time, it does not compute right, it isn’t right. It is a tragedy.

The end of life is both an unknown quantity and is irreversible. Humans have a hard time grappling with both of those. As children, we are scared of the dark. I remember sobbing uncontrollably when, at the age of four or so, a helium-filled balloon I had been given at the Meals and Wheels office floated away into a light blue southern California sky. The fact that it would not come back, and nothing I could do could change that, was a shock. When someone leaves forever, it is a shock, and we do not know where they are. They are lost. And we will make our own journey thence before they are found.

I put forth my most sincere condolences to Sri’s family, and his other friends and peers at TCU. The chancellor stated in the official TCU email regarding this tragedy that “we are all diminished by a loss like this.” I agree. I don’t like to say it, as he was so full of life, and energy, and took everything on full force, approaching life with what can only be described as gusto, but…rest in peace, Sri.

This afternoon I did what any sensible person would do on their sixth consecutive day off, and organized my entire library.

The next step, obviously, was to make a reading list. Follows are books that I own, which I have not yet read, and intend in some way to actually read at some point. The list is incomplete, for your sake.

Fiction:

- Agnes Grey (A. Bronte)

- Jane Eyre (finish) (C. Bronte)

- O Pioneers! (Cather)

- The Awakening (Chopin)

- Mountain Ice (Derouin)

- Nicholas Nickelby (finish) (Dickens)

- Short Stories (Dostoevsky)

- The Seven Sisters (Drabble)

- A Light in August (Faulkner)

- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Austen and Grahame-Smith)

- The Same Kind of Different as Me (Hall)

- The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Hemingway)

- The Kite Runner (Hosseini)

- The Ambassadors (James)

- Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak)

- The Tale of Genji (finish) (Shikibu)

- Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

- Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

Some Non-Fiction:

- Autobiography (Benjamin Franklin)

-Oracle Bones (Hessler)

- Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi)

- Marie Antoinette (finish) (Fraser)

- Napolean’s Buttons (Le Couteur)

- Plagues and Peoples (McNeill)

What do you think? Have you read any of them? Recommendations? Words of caution? I do not intend to read them all, but I would like to read a good few over the summer.

Note: Not very realistic. I do the majority of my iPod listening through my dock, not through headphones.

Wait – Tonia is sharing her favorite music on her blog? Never! Or, making a list? So out of character…

Play Count:

179 - Hotel California (The Eagles)

98 – Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin)

89 – Kiss Me (Sixpence None the Richer)

88 – The Long and Winding Road (The Beatles)

80 – Viva La Vida (Coldplay)

78 – Walk On (U2)

75 – The Lakehouse (Rachel Portman, The Lakehouse Soundtrack)

75 – Mailbox (Rachel Portman, The Lakehouse Soundtrack)

75 – The Melody of a Fallen Tree (Windsor for the Derby)

74 – Lo (This Time Around) (Helen Stellar)

An explanation? Well, once J, little sister, left Hotel California on all night. So that explains at least sixty of those. I’ve also listened to it many, many times. Also, she may have done the same during the day once with Immigrant Song. Then again, I’m pretty sure she just loves Immigrant Song. She has listened to most of the Viva La Vida. But yeah, other than that, I have no recourse.

To make it worse, the last time I cleared out my iPod and reformatted it (last summer), The Lakehouse had 98 plays.

So yeah.

The Melody of a Fallen Tree is from the Marie Antoinette soundtrack.

Lo (This Time Around) is from the Elizabethtown Soundtrack.

And U2 basically just rocks. So do the Beatles.

All of those Kiss Me plays were within the past six months, and don’t count all the times I have listened to it in my car on a CD, or the times I made V play the intro on his guitar.

And since I love sharing songs, as you may have noticed, those links take you to YouTube videos of the songs.

Enjoy the irony of that set of songs sitting together. I do.

Now that shameless self-abuse and sharing of musical taste has been done yet again, I hope I still have your readership. As always, leave any questions, comments, complaints, etc., below.