Alterantive History Fiction

It's only been about 9 years since I last posted.  Is it possible to restart?


          Memorial Day weekend coming up & it is terribly hot here in middle Georgia.  I'm thinking it'll be a good time to read and read. 

          I'm off on an alternative-history reading kick.  It started with the "Ring of Fire" Books by Eric Flynt & others.  Fascinating starter idea . . . a whole town from West Virginia transported to 1631 Germany during its 30 Year War.  And what happens to history after West Virginia meets up with medieval times? 
        Now I'm listening to another of the series.  Very confusing trying to figure out what order these books are in; Flynt has used several co-authors and they go spinning off in all possible European directions it seems.  I'm on my second one, who knows where it fits into the series, The Baltic Wars. 
       But I've gone in other directions and thoughts with this, too.  I remember reading, decades ago, For Want of a Nail, a work of fiction written as a scholarly book, complete with footnotes, as the author imagines the world if Lee had won at Gettysburg.    


       Maybe even my favorite sf novel, Alas, Babylon, written in 1959, could be considered alternative history now since it imagines a world that suffered a 1960 nuclear "Day" when Russia and America attacked each other with nuclear weapons. 


          I'm reading an anthology now of alternative history stories (with each story followed by a historian's view of its likeliness).  Kim Stanley Robinson's story, "Lucky Strike", is well-known: the world if the strike on Hiroshima had not been accurate because of pilot scruples, had been seen then as a "demonstration of power" and how the  rather than the devastation it was.  
         And then, thanks to the power of the Internet and database searching, I came across a fascinating interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.  I read his novel, New York 2140, last year and have to admit I was plowing through, not truly enjoying.  But now, several of his books sound fascinating and I got off on a tangent with his musings about journal writing.  Says that Thoreau and Virginia Woolf were the best. 
          He keeps a "calendar", a 2 line record of his day and has for 20 years.  I've been thinking about that but have yet to try it, for even one day, much less a year. 


        

Books

A Wednesday post so topics are books and information searching . . .I've been on a non-fiction reading splurge for the past month.  First there was The Case for Books: Past, Present and Future; then Oliver Sacks' newest, The Mind's Eye.  And now I'm 100 pages into Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things.  The last one is a book I've started a couple of times before but now I'm really into it and think I'll finish this weekend.  I would recommend all three.
           At the moment, at work, I see a need to read something (a book?) about learning styles.  I was thinking learning styles and multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner) were the same thing -- maybe learning styles as the application means of the more theoretical multiple intelligence ideas.  But when helping a student with research, I saw that I was leading her astray . . . actually learning styles predate the idea of multiple intelligences.  It was harder than it should have been to find information in my library's catalog and databases about learning styles since the actual subject term was "cognitive style" and none of my library's many print and online reference books seem to have a good quick definition of the term.  Finally turned to google and was disturbed (but not completely surprised) to realize that wikipedia had that good general description of the term that I was looking for. 
          And here in middle Georgia, finally it looks a bit like November.  Most of the trees, including the gorgeous gold ginkgoes, have turned colors and more and more of the leaves are falling.  Husband's replanted outdoor chrysanthemums are in full bloom and fine looking.  Winter is not my favorite season so I'm holding onto the enjoyment of fall as long as possible . . .

            

Mountain Trips

                                                                          November 7, 2010
Life is too busy.  Is that an acceptable excuse?  I don't have a camera yet to take my own pictures of the things I want to talk about.  Whatever the reason, weeks have slipped by since my last entry.
         Husband and I spent several days in Cohutta Springs mid-October, making a day trip to Lake Conasauga in the Cohutta Wilderness Area and then another trip to Fort Mountain State Park.  We hiked up Grassy Mountain to its lookout tower and walked several nice short trails at Fort Mountain.  And what a treat to get to stay at the beautiful Cohutta Springs Conference Center, thanks to a friend.
         We camped 30+ years ago at Lake Conasauga.  I was a lot tougher back then.  It is the highest elevation Georgia campground.  Very beautiful and quiet there and quite a bone rattling drive in, about 45 minutes on a mountain dirt road. 
         Last weekend we were on Lookout Mountain at Cloudland Canyon State Park.  This weekend, gratefully, we were home when the first real cold air of the season blew in, complete with frost and freezing temperatures.  I'm still waiting for the gingko trees around home to turn to gold; so far they are all green. 
         I'll work on the pictures part of the blog but for now just want to get back to posting. 
            
            

Third Day

Okay . . . from yesterday, my picture of spider lily (imported from Google images) showed up fine on computer that I was posting from.  Today, it shows up as link, not picture.  I guess I should have saved to my desktop and then imported it, rather than importing directly from web??
              And why aren't my labels automatically showing?  Things to check on.  Perhaps I should actually read the Help screens. 
              Also I've decided I should have given more thought to what I want to cover in this blog.  I seem to have a third interest to add -- food & health,  specifically my plan now to feed us as much low sodium, low sugar, low fat food as possible for health reasons (diabetes, blood pressure for my husband). 
             I'm also much more conscious now of how time people must spend on their blogs -- the ones I read sound polished and organized and much more focused than I seem to be. 
           I wonder how often blogs are abandoned?  I came across a charming one yesterday that popped up on Google blog search when I was checking my own name -- but it only had one post, done back in August 2009.  I can see all sorts of research projects that could be done about blogging. 

Rainy Monday

Remembering yet one more log in is proving difficult!  I know I'm not suppose to have a cheat sheet of log ins and passwords but how else does one keep them all straight?  Probably "suppose to" have them all in a very secure online account instead of in a little notebook, right?
            So wonderful to have a rainy Sunday after weeks of relentless sun.  (And in the South, the sun is strong many months of the year.)  Looks like rain will continue on for a while today.
            So far I haven't been able to find my own blog doing searches on Google Blog finder so I definitely have the anonymity  that I wanted for this project.  One thing I've already discovered -- spell check isn't happening automatically as it does in Word and my spelling has definitely gotten worse as my reliance on spell check has gotten better.  Nowadays I just try to get close enough for Word to figure spelling out for me. 
          I've come across some beautiful and thoughtful blogs just from doing random searches on books and nature -- outlets for real creativity.  I especially liked the one about noticing something from nature every day:http://centria.wordpress.com/2009  -- I'd like to find a similar one that is within 100 miles of my home, to make me more aware of what I should be noticing in nature.  So . . . maybe a search project for myself.
         Crape myrtles fading here but no fall color signs yet.  Normally, we have hurricane lilies (also called spider lilies and naked ladies) blooming now but I've seen very few this year.  Most are red and look like this -- no leaves at all, just thin stem and dramatic flower -- wish the world had more flowers and birds and fewer stores. 
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First Post

Just wanted a place to record thoughts and happenings before they disappear from my memory . . . what I'm reading at the moment, the beauty of the moon (with Jupiter surprisingly bright next to it) last night. 

           I also want a place to experiment -- I've been enjoying popping in on other blogs, mostly ones related to books and nature.  I'm very much a text person in what I produce but I enjoy and appreciate visual images.  So let me see what happens with this.   The picture below is from my last big trip(way back in January), to Cayo Costa State Park in south Florida, where my husband and I "camped" in a primitive cabin.