Matchbooks from Chattanooga

How many of these places still exist, and how many have changed in some way?

The Hotel Patten building still exists, but it became apartments for the elderly.  Chattanoogans, let's update this list.  One down, fourteen to go.

Why we left Oprah's book club

"The biggest obstacle we've had to deal with as a group was the reformatting of the Oprah book club website.  We ended up losing years of books discussions.  It was really disappointing."

Chris of Chrisbookarama wrote that for the Book Club Exchange on Booking Mama's blog back in December of 2009, and I found it.  Oprah was originally on AOL, where I was known as BoJacobs in her discussion groups (my profile picture was that animated orange cat GIF above).  We, too, ended up losing years of discussions.

Actually, we had more than one Oprah group.  Some us read and discussed at least two or three books every month, with groups reading different additional books besides Oprah's book club picks.  We lost years of several discussion threads.  One of my groups on Oprah called ourselves "Book Buddies," so that's what I called our new primary online book club.  Here's the very first post on Book Buddies, and you can read in the comments the excitement from people in our various Oprah groups, as well as some who were new to our group.  (I tend to invite everybody I know.)

Another of our Oprah groups discussed books set in countries "around the world," which became my Book Around the World blog.  Our Essencia Island became a private blog for the Book Buddies to party with each book's characters ― or as I said at the top of the blog, it was "a place for Book Buddies to relax and party."  This pleasant sunset scene is at the top of the blog.

Gerry also commented on the shock we all felt when Oprah just threw us away:

"I was truly shocked to see Oprah delete us all.  Oh well!  Time to move on.  Bonnie I love the blog."

Teddy agreed with our assessment:

"I'm glad you set this up. I am fed up with Oprah as well and have moved the Classics Club book discussions to Yahoo groups. I can't beleive Harpo deleted all of our book clubs without prior notice and there will be no way to retreive our old messages. Thats unaceptable in my books!"

We no longer trusted Oprah and moved our book groups to new places.  Book Buddies is my own online book club, where our discussions will live on until Blogger (now Google) decides to throw away what we wrote.  See the sidebar of Book Buddies for a list of books we discussed between 2007 and 2016 before interest died out.

TBT ~ 2/4/77

Today is 2-4-16, making this 39 years to the day since I knew I would not stay any longer in a particular job than it took for me to find another one.  I spent much of that work day writing "bj received 2/4/77" in the top right corner of papers plonked in stacks on my desk by my then-boss.  Papers dating back months.  One I remember had on it a note from my boss telling me to have [another employee] attend a meeting in December.  December!  That long-past month.  It wasn't that I objected to doing the work, although I was not a secretary.  It was simply that I didn't intend to be blamed for meetings missed and jobs undone because the appropriate people were not notified.  Was he trying to deflect the blame to me?  So I dated each page, showing when I received it.  My boss sometimes reeked of alcohol when he arrived at work at 8:00 in the morning and obviously had not been doing his job.  Papers — obviously (again) — had been piling up on HIS desk for weeks.  Nay, for months.  Nothing ever came of those meetings missed and jobs not accomplished, at least nothing I ever knew about.  But the date was indelibly imprinted on my mind by repeatedly writing "bj received 2/4/77."

Oh, right.  You want to know how long I stayed after that.  I finished the project I was working on at that place and started a new job in May as an editor of an in-house publication, making half-again more than the job I left.

TBT ~ my grandchildren

Back row:  Brandy, Kendall, Cali

Front row:  Chase, Jamey, Kenzie

This was about 1994.  Cady, my 7th grandchild, was not born until 2000.