Ro can write

I just finished reading Rosie O'Donnell's memoir. I bought it on an impulse at the grocery store late last night when I was without anything to read in the bathtub , and I finished it in 3 hours when I got home. It's a truly surprising and well-written little book. You can read my review at the book's page on Amazon.com

Today's theme was "no power." I drove Henry and Jane to school only to discover that there was some sort of blackout on campus, so the school was letting out for the day. Not good since I was supposed to spend my day writing about the power industry for the TVA website I am working on. All the content is due by Earth Day and I am a bit behind. I had planned to work all day. After an unsuccessful attempt to take Elliot to his riding lesson (his instructor was late and I had to give him his lesson), I took all the kids back home only to be greeted at the door by a guy informing me that he would be cutting our power off at that very moment because Chris had forgotten to pay the bill. He refused my offer to write him a check on the spot and proceeded to turn our power off as I frantically attempted to call Chris at work to tell him to go take care of this right now. As I was using our cordless phone, I was cut off just as he answered. So I had no computer upon which to write about electric power and I had a house (without air conditioning on the first super hot day of the year) full of cranky children who kept wanting to let the remaining coolair out of the fridge. Chris arrived home at lunch time and apologized profusely. He called the electric company on his cell phone and they promised to have our power turned on by the end of the day. Then he took us all out for Indian food at the yummy Sitar buffet in the a converted Captain D's with lots of air conditioning. The power at our house finally came back on at around 5 pm.




I grew up in a totally un-air conditioned (or adequately heated) old farmhouse. My sibs and I would often sleep on the front porch on especially hot nights. The first time I ever experienced air conditioning on a regular basis was in my college dorm. I became an AC junkie and I swore that I would never go back. Today reminded me of just how hot a house in Tennessee can get when it is 90 degrees outside and no electricity is available for ceiling fans.



Tonight I will be writing many, many articles on the wonders of electricity and I will be very cranky as I do it.

I've started my recommendations page with the books, music, websites, blogs, people, etc that I think are worth checking out. If you have suggestions for me, send 'em along to kgranju@yahoo.com.

This is a rather gruesome set of relatively recent photos posted at the NoSpank.org website of kids in Tennessee after being "paddled" at school. If you proceed to the bottom of the page, you'll see a link to the correspondence between Tennessee state officials and the head guy at NoSpank.org. They want him to take the pictures down. He wants them to stop beating kids at school. I plan to write the Tennessee Dept of Education a letter. And yet again, I am glad that I am able to choose the school my children attend rather than being forced to send them to whatever public school happens to be closest to my house...

Look at this neat-o picture I found on the Web of my grandmother, Nancy Anderson, with Elvis in Las Vegas. My grandmother was an editor with Photoplay magazine (the People magazine of its day) for a number of years and also did a lot of freelancing for major magazines. She and Elvis were very fond of one another, in part because they were both transplanted southerners working in Hollywood. These days my grandmother stays busy chasing after great-grandchildren, attending DAR meetings, and volunteer-tutoring the wives of Japanese businessman in Bell Buckle, TN.