ŷ������

Alias, that short history on WWI sounds good. We have seen very, very many monuments and memorials to soldiers of that war here in the UK. I know far too little about it, unfortunately. If that's a good one, please let us know.

I have been reading a book i read about in the English version of La Monde when we were in Paris. If i recall correctly the author, Svetlania Alexievetch, was a Russian poet. Due to some weirdness, i cannot get an exact link to the book i am reading, although this seems to be it, despite the different title. I'm not positive i recorded the name correctly, btw. ANYway, the title now is The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlania Alexiavetch.

/book/show/4...

It is about interviewing Russian women who were trained in all aspects of the war during WWII, including being snipers. Her intro is curious--50 or so pages about her emotions and actions to get these women to talk with her. I'm still in the intro but like it thus far.

Madrano wrote: "Alias, that short history on WWI sounds good. We have seen very, very many monuments and memorials to soldiers of that war here in the UK. I know far too little about it, unfortunately. If that's a..."


Will do. Apparently the author had other "short" history books.

James L. Stokesbury

About the Author

James L. Stokesbury is the author of A Short History of World War I, A Short History of World War II, A Short History of the Korean War, and A Short History of the American Revolution. Before his death in 1995 he was a professor of history at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

I think i may have looked at the one on the American Revolution a few years ago. Why i didn't get it, i can't tell you. Good niche market he had there. Personally i prefer that to "The American Revolution for Dummies" or such.

Nearly finished with Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, an ebook library download. Incredibly depressing how much of NYC history has been lost, only in the past decade or so, for gentrification purposes.

John wrote: "Nearly finished with Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, an ebook library download. Incredibly depressing how much of NYC history has been lost, only in the past dec..."

"But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone with a price tag only the one percent can afford."

Rents in the outer boroughs are through the roof. Truly the middle class renter is being forced out. :(

Around two weeks ago, in Gibraltar (one of my vacation day trips), while walking next to the Casemates, I found a lovely antique shop hidden in them and it had a great selection of second-hand books.

I bought Jamaica Inn and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, as well as a book on the Falklands war I can't find here. While browsing, I had a chat with a lovely Yorkshire lady who hasn't been living in England for the past 50 years (she lived in Spain and Gibraltar and maybe somewhere else I can't recall). I loved the whole experience.

Samanta wrote: "Around two weeks ago, in Gibraltar (one of my vacation day trips), while walking next to the Casemates, I found a lovely antique shop hidden in them and it had a great selection of second-hand book..."

So many second hand books stores have closed in NYC. :(

It sounds like you found a gem, Samanta.

We have a lot of them in Zagreb, and you can always find a few temporary stands around the city (mostly the centre).

Interesting sounding book, John. Thanks for the title. Alias, i'm sure you have seen many, many changes growing up there.

Samanta, your bookstore visit sounds delightful. We have randomly met people here in the UK whose dreams to spend their retirement elsewhere in the EU have been extinguished, thanks to Brexit. One hopes those already overseas can stay, if they desire.

The lady in question (who voted to stay in EU because of the border with Spain, but would have otherwise voted out) said that she doesn't think much, if anything, will essentially change. Let's hope for the best. :)

I hope she is right, Samanta. People we've met here are worried about many aspects, particularly that the Irish Republican Army will become active again. This would be a major step backward.

Earlier i mentioned The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, which i am reading. I misstated a few things. I thought she was a poet but is a journalist who is helping to create a new way to share history, personal interviews. And i didn't realize that she is the winner of 2015 Nobel in Literature.

The following is an article about the book, . Please also check out the photo gallery of some of the interviewed Russian women.

Again, this is the GR link to the book but the title and edition sound as though this is about it's earliest version.
/book/show/4...
In the article I found this, which called to me, "In the days of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, she has said, she would probably have written fiction. But today, when things happen so fast that the human mind cannot absorb them, “there is much that art cannot convey��. A “writer, reporter, sociologist, psychologist and preacher��, she sees the world as a chorus of “individual voices and a collage of everyday details��.

It's the comment about things happening quickly, as well as the fact we learn about them quickly, which intrigued me. The intro in the book is 40-50 pages and sometimes seems poetic. She struggled with how to approach the women and her own thoughts on presenting their stories. It pleased me because some of her musings are similar to mine, particularly as we travel and visit historic sites.

From the library today I picked up

Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time---Andrew Forsthoefel

A memoir of one young man's coming of age on a journey across America--told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the way.

Life is fast, and I've found it's easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I'm slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.

At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen." He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide.

In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn't know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself.

Ultimately, it's the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level.

A couple of weeks ago we met a man along Hadrian's Wall who is walking around the world. He'd been on the road 5 months. You could just tell there is a book in store by the way he talked. Fortunately for him there are many, many walking paths across the UK. The book you shared about sounds good. Thanks.

Madrano wrote: A couple of weeks ago we met a man along Hadrian's Wall who is walking around the world. He'd been on the road 5 months.."

Wow!

Funny you should mention Hadrian's Wall, as my current audiobook Tabula Rasa has its construction as an immediate backdrop of the story! Travel narrative is my favorite genre, so mention of these types pf books much appreciated.

Two recent trips to the library find the following unread items in my possession:

A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim's Hajj of Defiance

Jackdaw Cake: An Autobiography

The End of the Story

The Tomb in Seville: Crossing Spain on the Brink of Civil War

An Island in Greece: On the Shores of Skopelos

Margherita Dolce Vita

Roads to Berlin

Without anyone putting a hold, I have nine weeks (two renewals) to get through them!

John wrote:
" Margherita Dolce Vita
by Stefano Benni, Antony Shugaar (Translator)

Stefano Benni's enormously popular and distinctive mix of the absurd and the satirical has made him one of Italy’s best-loved novelists. .."

Thanks ! I am not familiar with this author but I like to read books set in Italy. I have a list in the BNC --Folder- New Book Releases & Book Lists -- Thread:Books set in a particular country
For Italy Books.
/topic/show/...


I'm going to check out Stefano Benni

Sounds interesting Alias. Let us know how you like it.

The only fiction I can recall having read set in Italy would be Cooking with Fernet Branca, which I found hilarious, but it's not for everyone.

Alias Reader wrote: "From the library today I picked up

[book:Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time|3..."

Sounds like a great story. :)

Barbara wrote: .
Sounds like a great story. :) ."

Barbara, I hope I can fit it into my reading schedule. I really need to read more and spend less time on the computer.

For sept.
I am almost finished reading and enjoying
Being Nixon: A Man Divided-Evan Thomas
I tend to look up a lot of things on the web while reading so it's taking me some time to read.

My subway read is Bitter Is the Wind--Jim McDermott
It's only around 250 pages and a paperback. So it's easy to carry.
It's the authors first book and I am quite impressed.

For my library group Sept read I need to read
Small Great Things--Jodi Picoult
A very timely read about racism.

So when I am going to fit the walking book in I don't know. Hopefully there are no holds so I can renew.

Great titles, John. I'm going to tell my husband about that mystery. He likes historically framed mysteries very much. At the risk of sounding as uninformed as i am, we were surprised to learn about Antoine's Wall, which is the most north the Romans built. The wall was really one of their deep trenches which were so well erected they are still quite tall. Most of the few rock structures are gone but those trails/roads are easily seen and well preserved.

I went to the library to drop off a book. Of course I had to checkout the new book shelf. I saw the new book by Paula Poundstone - The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness.

Even though I have more than enough on my book plate, I had to take this one home as the last book I read by her had me laughing out loud. There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say.

I'm happy she has found success again, this time in writing. It's neat to have such works in hand, as opposed to trying to remember lines from a comedy monologue. I hope this one equals the first for you, Alias.

Madrano wrote: "I'm happy she has found success again, this time in writing. It's neat to have such works in hand, as opposed to trying to remember lines from a comedy monologue. I hope this one equals the first f..."

I sometimes catch her on the NPR radio program Wait Wait Don't Tell me. She still tours with her comedy act, too.

Alias Reader wrote: "I went to the library to drop off a book. Of course I had to checkout the new book shelf. I saw the new book by Paula Poundstone - [book:The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search ..."

Paula is hilarious!

I forgot she is on radio. This comes from rarely listening to radio any more. Alias, every time you mention it, i realize why--in the past i only listened to it in the car. Now i just listen to CDs. My loss.

Madrano wrote: "I forgot she is on radio. This comes from rarely listening to radio any more. Alias, every time you mention it, i realize why--in the past i only listened to it in the car. Now i just listen to CDs..."

I only listen to NPR and a local 24 hour news station. For music, I generally listen to CD's, Amazon music or my iPod. Music on the radio seems to be loaded with way too many commercials for me.

Speaking of CD's, my CD player that I keep in the kitchen stopped working. It was a Sony. It played tapes, and also had a good radio.

I looked on Amazon for something preferable under $50. However, so many of the reviews all state issues with the CD player quitting on them after a short time. I really don't want to pay over $100. :( Anyone have an expensive CD player with radio they can recommend ?

In this day and age why is a simply CD player so difficult to make?

Alias, we had that problem when my mother-in-law's CD player died. She used it for her line dancing, so borrowed one from the center while she searched. Ultimately she purchased one from a thrift shop she trusted which also offered returns up to 90 days.

Thanks for the feedback, deb. I guess I will get a less expensive one and just cross my fingers that I get lucky and it lasts for more than a few months.

Good luck!

I have been reading "The Painted Queen", 20th in the Amelea Peabody mystery series, which are generally set in Egypt in the 1920s or so, featuring archaeologists. /book/show/1...

Most of the series was written by Elizabeth Peters /author/show..., who died in the midst of the 20th. Her good friend, humorous mystery writer Joan Hess, /author/show..., was asked to complete it. What i'm reading now, based on my pleasure in reading all of Hess's series.

After I began reading i realized there is a reason i didn't have a single Peters mystery featuring Peabody--i disliked it when i first tried one in the 90s. It's a bit tough to explain why but i'm going to try. Amelia Peabody is a smart woman, suffragette and expert in her field. She is married to an Egyptologist with a supposedly comic temperament who bowls men over for little reason. The language, which didn't sound particularly authentic annoyed me to the point i stopped reading.

Hess has continued this form, of course, which is fitting. However, it still annoys me but i'm determined to see it through, which tempers my annoyance. It's quite likely that Hess just hasn't been able to capture the spirit but since i disliked the series from the original, i cannot be sure.

I'm wondering if anyone here has read the series? Was her husband always this way? Honestly, it makes Amelia seem kinda pathetic that she'd marry such a bluster-full man. To be fair, i have little patience for many historic mysteries and attempts to recreate idioms and sentence structure of the era is a major reason. There is a tv series, from Canada, i think, called The Murdoch Mysteries and they rub me wrong for the same reason.

There's more to this one, though i've yet to figure out what else bugs me. Maybe that's because the mystery is improving as i get to know the characters, etc. not sure. Does this sort of thing bug anyone else here?

I liked Hess' Claire Malloy series, never read a Maggody book. Stopped listening to her Peabody ones later in the series.

We're supposed to approve of her late-Victorian husband's treating her as an (intellectual) equal. A bit disconcerting as the narrator made him sound exactly like King Friday XIII from Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

LOL, John. You nailed it as far as characterizing her husband! Well done. Good point about the way he appreciates her mind. This late in the series it's mentioned but easy to overlook.

As for Hess, the Maggody series is a mixed bag for me but i get restless waiting for another Claire, so read them. Prior to theses she wrote a couple of mysteries as Joan Hadley, wherein the MC was male. They were not humorous but nicely told.

John wrote: "I liked Hess' Claire Malloy series, never read a Maggody book. Stopped listening to her Peabody ones later in the series.

The Maggody books are my favorites from Hess. Mostly they crack me up...."

My library group selected for our October read.
I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else

Beloved stage and screen actor Danny Aiello’s big-hearted memoir reveals a man of passion, integrity, and guts—and lays bare one of the most unlikely success stories ever told.

Danny Aiello admits that he backed into his acting career by mistake. That’s easy to see when you begin at the beginning: Raised by his loving and fiercely resilient mother in the tenements of Manhattan and the South Bronx, and forever haunted by the death of his infant brother, Danny struggled early on to define who he was and who he could be. Shoeshine boy, numbers runner, and pool hustler were among the first identities he tried on. After getting into trouble on the streets, he enlisted in the army at seventeen, served in Germany, and was honorably discharged. Later, as an unemployed high school dropout raising a family of his own, Danny was burdened with serious depression by the time he landed a job as a bouncer at a Hell’s Kitchen comedy club. Taking to the stage in the wee hours to belt out standards, Danny Aiello found his voice and his purpose: He was born to act. Performing in converted churches and touring companies led to supporting roles in such films as The Godfather: Part II and Moonstruck, and an Oscar nomination for his role as the embattled Salvatore in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. For a guy who had never set foot in an acting class, this was supreme validation for being an outsider who followed his heart.

In a raw and real chronicle of his gritty urban past, Danny Aiello looks back with appreciation, amusement, and frank disbelief at his unconventional road to success. He offers candid observations on working with luminary directors Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, and Robert Altman, among others, and a vast roster of actors, including Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Madonna, Cher, and Lauren Bacall. He opens up about friends he loved, friends he lost, and the professional relationships that weren’t meant to be. Above all, Danny Aiello imparts a life lesson straight out of his own experience to anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider: It’s never too late to become who you want to be, to find happiness and fulfillment, and to embrace the winding road to get there

Aiello's title reminds me of a sweet short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., titled "Who Am I This Time?" It was made into a presentation starring Susan Sarandan and Christopher Walken. . Good show. ANYway, thanks for info on the book from DA.

Barbara, that Maggody series can get very funny. Her mom and her best pal are too close to my own kinfolk. :-)

I am trying to buy less books. Really I am ! LOL

However, I decided to buy a book that I borrowed from the library. It has so many passages that I want to underline and re-read. The book is on mediation but I think the advice applies to many aspects of my life. And since I was ordering it I figured I might as well get the authors other book. :)

Mindfulness in Plain English---Henepola Gunaratana

Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha's Path

This weekend I'm planning on tackling the following library book which has folks waiting for it, so it can't be renewed: The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit.

From the library I also have actress Mary Louise Wilson's My First Hundred Years in Show Business: A Memoir, which I have started, but put aside.

John wrote: "This weekend I'm planning on tackling the following library book which has folks waiting for it, so it can't be renewed: The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit--
==============================================
John, I am looking forward to your thoughts on The Land Where Lemons Grow.

I'm currently reading The Italians---John Hooper

If I didn't own the book the first few chapters would have caused me to throw in the towel. I am interested in the history of Italy and the various groups that fought there for dominance and the ultimate unification. Also I am interested in contemporary Italy. This book covers these topics. So I should be enjoying it. However, the book is written so poorly that it was hard to follow. The reviews on Amazon note the same problem with the beginning chapters.

After the unification chapters he discusses contemporary Italy and the book does get better. Though I feel the author makes wild generalizations that I find dubious. I've never been to Italy, so my thoughts are just my feeling. It's not a book I would recommend buying. I would say get it from the library.

I hope you find lemons better.

I recall having liked Hooper's book when I read it a while ago. I have looked through Lemons in advance just to see whether I think I could get into it, and it seems to be a lot more interesting than just a dry discussion of produce. Optimistic!

This book was on my TBR list so I purchased it when I saw it on sale for the Kindle. $2

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948~~~Madeleine K. Albright

Drawing on her own memory, her parents�� written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly-available documents, former US Secretary of State and New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring.

Before she turned twelve, Madeleine Albright’s life was shaken by some of the most cataclysmic events of the 20th century: the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, the Battle of Britain, the attempted genocide of European Jewry, the allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War.

In Prague Winter, Albright reflects on her discovery of her family’s Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland’s tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exile leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong.

Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind, a journey with universal lessons that is simultaneously a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history. It serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past, as seen through the eyes of one of the international community’s most respected and fascinating figures. Albright and her family’s experiences provide an intensely human lens through which to view the most political and tumultuous years in modern history.

I've read and enjoyed Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King

So when I saw the kindle edition of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling--Ross King for $2
I decided to get it.

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statue David four years earlier, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with challenging curved surfaces such as the Sistine ceiling's vaults. The temperamental Michelangelo was himself reluctant: He stormed away from Rome, incurring Julius's wrath, before he was eventually persuaded to begin.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the fascinating story of the four extraordinary years he spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling, while war and the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. A panorama of illustrious figures intersected during this time-the brilliant young painter Raphael, with whom Michelangelo formed a rivalry; the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus; a youthful Martin Luther, who made his only trip to Rome at this time and was disgusted by the corruption all around him. Ross King blends these figures into a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Italy, while also offering uncommon insight into the connection between art and history.

I've really liked the books i've read by King, Alias. Oddly, the only one i own is the one you just purchases. Still, i haven't read it, though. (Or is that so odd, i wonder?) His book on the Florence Dome, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, was very good. The Monet book sounds good but i'll read the Pope's Ceiling before ever tackling it.

And i am dancing the jig! Now that i'm on my home computer (desk top), i can link to books and authors for ŷ������. Happy! Happy!

John wrote: "This weekend I'm planning on tackling the following library book which has folks waiting for it, so it can't be renewed: [book:The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit|20..."

Bumping the thread to say that Lemons was interesting, especially the last couple of chapters.

Thank you, John !

I never really associated Italy with citrus. Then I remembered what I keep in my refrigerator. Sicilia. It's a product from Italy and it's a small container that lemon juice. They sell it organic and non.


Have you heard that there was a recent nuclear accident of some type in Russia? I mention it because it is affecting Italy. Which makes me worry about food from there.

A Radioactive Cloud Wafts Over Europe, With Russia as Chief Suspect

LONDON �� Scientists across Europe have been puzzling about a phenomenon that seemed laden with mystery and menace in somewhat uneven proportions �� a concentration of radioactive pollution caused by a nuclide called ruthenium 106.

Official monitors in France and Germany concluded that, based on weather patterns, the contamination detected since late September had emanated from southern Russia or from Kazakhstan.

“The most plausible zone of release lies between the Volga and the Urals,�� the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety said on Nov. 9. Jean-Marc Peres, the institute’s director, told Reuters that the geographic area could indicate a spillage in Russia or in Kazakhstan.

On Oct. 8, the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection said, “Russia must be assumed to be the region of origin of radioactive release�� �� a suggestion that was denied by Rosatom, the state company that runs Russia’s nuclear industry.

According to a statement from Rosatom, “None of the enterprises of the Russian nuclear industry has recorded radiation levels that exceed the norm.��
“One of the countries in the eastern part of the European Union�� was more likely to be the source, Rosatom added, noting high radiation levels over Italy, Romania and Ukraine.

Nonetheless, the presence of the little-known substance raised unease that a threat to European health might be building �� hardly surprising in light of the West’s broad palette of other worries about Russia’s intentions, including the crisis in Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, and the Kremlin’s activities in cyberspace.

On Wednesday, one of Britain’s top security officials, Ciaran Martin, warned in a speech that, over the past year, Russian hackers had undertaken far more persistent attacks on his country’s energy, telecommunications and media industries than previously acknowledged.

Two days earlier, Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of “seeking to weaponize information, deploying its state-run media organizations to plant fake stories and photoshopped images in an attempt to sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions.��

In matters of nuclear threat, of course, European memories are framed by episodes such as the catastrophic accident in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union; and, 20 years later, the lethal poisoning in London of a former K.G.B. officer, Alexander V. Litvinenko, with polonium 210, a rare and highly toxic isotope.

With such considerations in mind, the detection of elevated but unexplained levels of ruthenium 106 by monitoring stations in Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland raised alarms.

Slowly though, as the levels retreated, the fretting eased.

German and French nuclear security agencies concluded that the pollution had not threatened the health of Europeans or the environment in which they live. “These low levels of radioactivity do not pose a health hazard to the population,�� the German radiation protection office said on Nov. 10.

The French institute reached similar conclusions, but said the amounts of ruthenium 106 released at the source of the accident were significant. If contamination of this magnitude had occurred in France, it said, the authorities would have ordered protective measures for people living miles around.

The nuclide, which does not occur naturally, is used for a variety of purposes, including as a therapy for cancers and as an energy source in satellites.

According to European scientists, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations�� nuclear watchdog, has investigated whether the pollution could have been caused by a satellite falling back to earth, but concluded that there had been no such event.

Nor, according to the French and German radiation protection agencies, could the pollution have been caused by an accident at a nuclear reactor, because only ruthenium 106 has been detected and such a spillage would have released other nuclides. That left two potential sources, the French agency said, “either in nuclear fuel-cycle facilities or radioactive source production.��

Jean-Christophe Gariel, a senior official at the French agency, said, “We’ve done our job with the European data that was available, but we cannot go further for now.��

Referring to Russia, he added, “Maybe we’ll be able to answer more questions when the country concerned by the issue comes up with more precise information.��

He said that when he spoke to his counterparts in Russia last week, they had not been able to explain the origins of the contamination. “We showed them a document detailing our scientific approach. They told us that our results were coherent and correct, but that they were not aware of any event that could have caused that.��

In a telephone interview, Mr. Gariel said French experts thought the two most likely explanations were that the ruthenium 106 originated in a facility treating used fuels, or that it came from a plant producing ruthenium exclusively.

In any event, the French agency said in a statement, ruthenium levels had been decreasing since Oct. 6 and the nuclide was “currently no longer detected in Europe.��





Here is another article with a map.

Interesting article. I haven't heard anything about this previously. Russia saying, "“None of the enterprises of the Russian nuclear industry has recorded radiation levels that exceed the norm.�� Reminds me of their lack of veracity with Chernobyl, as it apparently does with Europeans. I'll be keeping my eyes open on this topic.

As to what i'm reading now, it's a book mentioned on one of the lists Alias shared last month (i think it was, maybe Sept.) The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone. I've learned plenty about a place in Illinois called Riverbank run by wealthy George Fabyan. What an establishment--i'll want to learn more after finishing this book. However, the book is about William and Elizebeth Smith Friedman, one of the earliest US code breakers. The author uses peculiar similes but it's not tough to ignore those bits. The story pulled me in.

No, I had not heard of this Russian cloud before.

Now that I have finished reading about lemons, I have started actress Mary Louise Wilson's My First Hundred Years in Show Business: A Memoir. It is loosely structured around her one-woman show "Full Gallop" about the life of Diana Vreeland. Early days yet, but she's living in New York in the 50s, running into many actors who at the time are getting their start, later to be big household names, Barbra Streisand for one. Not at all name-dropping, but that's just the way it was for her. By the way I have seen Wilson's show, which was absolutely terrific!

Sounds good, John. The casual mention of people who went on to big names reminds me of what i liked best about Patti Smith's Just Kids.

I picked up three from the library.

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment--Robert Wright
This is a NY Times bestseller.

A Meditator’s Practice Guide to The Mind Illuminated--John Yates
Someone I follow on FB recommended this one.

The Ballet Lover's Companion--Zoë Anderson
This looks like a book to dip in and out of.

Alias, that second one sounds as though it would be ideal for the age in which we find ourselves in this country presently.