Chattanooga Choo Choo ~ The General

"Chattanooga Choo Choo" could mean one of three things:

(1) The General, a locomotive we had on display at the L&N Station, now ensconced in Kennesaw, Georgia. See more photos here. This engine was on display at the L&N Station across from the Read House in Chattanooga until the 1960s, when it was taken back to the factory for an overhaul. We didn't get it back. "The General" was the one captured by Andrews Raiders during the Civil War, an event made into a movie a few decades ago.

ADDED, just for June: The train you probably remember, one now "parked" on the track behind the hotel (see #2), is not The General. Here's a photo of the one at the hotel, taken by someone tracking down the Chattanooga choo choo:

(2) A hotel named the Chattanooga Choo Choo on the site of what was Chattanooga's "other" train station. This one, called the Terminal Station, was where my dad unloaded mail from a train into a semi-trailer truck in the wee hours of a May morning. What happened next can be read here.

(3) The song "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" made famous by Glenn Miller, which I recently posted.

Here's another version of the song, music only. I like it! The lyrics are printed on that page, in case you are interested. "Chattanooga choo choo, won't you choo-choo me home?" Yep, Chattanooga is my hometown. Click to enlarge the photo.

Life as We Knew It ~ by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Title, author, copyright date, and genre?

Life as We Knew It ~ by Susan Beth Pfeffer, 2006, YA fiction

Summarize the book without giving away the ending
We experience a changed world through the journal entries of 16-year-old Miranda, who describes her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon. Scientists misjudged the impact, which was much worse than expected and caused the moon to move out of its orbit and closer to earth. (See how close the moon appears on the front cover, above.) Since the moon pulls on the earth and regulates our tides, its being closer to earth caused worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

What did you think of the main character?
Miranda (by whom I really mean the author Susan Beth Pfeffer) is a powerful writer! After reading only three chapters, I got online and emailed Dewey, who read the book recently: "Getting online just now, I found this science news: GIANT WAVES BREAK UP CARIBBEAN CORAL. 'Unusually large waves churned by an Atlantic storm system have littered the beaches of Barbados with broken coral in what could be a sign of damage to reefs across the region ... the coral took a heavy pounding ... swells of 15 feet ... flooding ..." I had also received a submission to Weekend Wordsmith from DaisyBug with a poem that mentioned the "crisp white moon." I asked Dewey, "What I want to know ... did an asteroid hit the moon last night? I'm afraid to go outside to find out." Yes, I really really got into the story. Can you tell? I closed the email to Dewey by quoting from page 43 of the book:

Uh-oh. The lights are flickering. I hope we are not about to lose

Which character could you relate to best?
Oh, yeah, the characters. Miranda, because she was the one recording her thoughts and feelings and discoveries. She did some "heroic" things in the book, but I liked that she wrote down what her college-aged brother had said:

One thing Matt did say to me was that no matter what the future is, we're living through a very special time in history. He said that history makes us who we are, but we can make history, also, and that anyone can be a hero, if they just choose to be. (p. 57)

Were there any other especially interesting characters?
Megan was a strong character, but I didn't like her at all. Megan was ostentatiously religious and decided she must "sacrifice" to please God. She was starving herself to death by giving away the meager school lunch provided for students after food became scarce. I felt exactly the way Miranda did during this exchange between the two girls, when Megan says:

"I don't want to be angry at God and seeing you makes me feel that way, just a little bit. So I can't see you again. I have to sacrifice our friendship, because I don't have much left I can sacrifice to prove to God how much I love Him."

"I hate your God," I said. (p. 184)

Were the characters and their problems believable?
Oh, yeah! So much so that I bought a couple of tomato plants to start a container garden, even though I live in a small apartment. Yep, you just never know when the moon may be bumped toward earth and there will be massive food scarcity. What's that? Did I plan a container garden before reading the book? Well, yes, but the book made it seem like an even better idea.

What was the book's central question, and how was it answered?
Could Miranda's family survive this indefinite period of scarcity? Would the world survive? I'm not going to give away the ending! Do you like happy endings? Maybe I should ask, do you like endings that aren't too awful? Go ahead and read it; you're safe.

Did you like the way the book ended?
I was getting an overdose of misery, but I didn't want to stop reading. The book pulled me along and made me feel I was there when "life as we knew it" was lost. Yet the ending felt forced and a bit unlikely. I'm not sure how I would have wrapped it up, though, so I won't complain.

What do you think will be your lasting impression of this book?
It compares in my mind with Jean Hegland's Into the Forest, rated a ten and one of my favorite books. Hegland speculates about what might happen when our unsustainable civilization finally collapses, but the characters in both books must decide what is really important and both books make readers ponder what matters most in the here and now.

How would you rate this book?
9/10
__________

UPDATE: Click to read the author's blog Susan Beth Pfeffer: Meteors, Moons, and Me.

The Measure of All Things ~ by Ken Alder

Title, author, copyright date, and genre?
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World ~ by Ken Alder, 2002, history

Summarize the book
Two intrepid astronomers set out from Paris, one north, one south. The French Revolution has started. Alder's history sounds like a novel. The two men are M. Delambre and M. Mechain, both members of the Academy of Sciences. Their measurements will help define the meter. Only after the meter has been announced does one learn that his partner made a mistake and tried to cover it up. The meter in is error. Feeling guilty drives one to the brink of madness, and the other has a decision to make. Which matters more, the truth or the appearance of the truth?

Why did you pick up the book?
Because it looked good and I like history. Because I wondered what transformed the world. Because "hidden error" tantalized me. And then I provided myself with a good "excuse" for getting the book: I could review it for the community's give-away paper which was publishing my book reviews. The summary above is the WHOLE review I was allowed back in March 2006. (Another one I reviewed for them was The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette; maybe I'll run across that review one of these days and share it with you, too.)

As a bookstore owner in the community, I was given a limited amount of space and a single column that would show the book cover (pictured above), the words "what people are reading," the book's title, and that teensy-tiny bit of a "review" you just read. Would my "review" make you want to pick up the book? I kind of like the last sentence: "Which matters more, the truth or the appearance of the truth?" You like it? Okay, then, I'll sell you my copy of the book for a mere $9 plus shipping. Oh, wait, I don't sell books anymore, do I? Nope, my used book store went out of business and I was no longer allowed to write (free) reviews for that (free) handout paper because I didn't represent a bookstore. (No, that still doesn't make sense to me. But now you know why I enjoy blogging.)

Was it a good book? Would you recommend it?
Yes, I do recommend it. It was fascinating to follow the two men as they triangulated their way toward each other along the Meridian of Paris, one working north from Barcelona and the other working south from Dunkirk. That triangulation map (left) gives you an idea of all the effort it took for them to do the map work. They would find elevated landmarks, like a building or a mountain station in the Pyrenees, and use those to get triangles in two or three directions. Their goal was to ascertain the exact length of the meter.

What did you like about it?
I love learning about things and how they work. One of the things I learned from reading this book was how the Borda Repeating Circle works. (That's it on the left. No, I'm not going to try to explain that here and, besides, do you think I learned it so well I could explain it to you two years after I read the book? Yes, I know I'm brilliant and all that, but not THAT brilliant!) Ken Alder made the book even more exciting by revealing some of the misery the scientists put up with, things like proving you weren't a threat during the French Revolution when you had been sent on this mission by a government agency! Sometimes that meant being delayed for months (no, that is not a typo). I was pulling for the good guys ... the scientists, I mean. And then came that error mentioned in the sub-title. When measurements must be exact, that's stressful in itself; when you realize you made a mistake, that adds to the stress. Why not just go back and fix the error? It wasn't that easy. And that's what made the book a thriller, even though much of it would seem boring to folks who read bestsellers. I had fun with it, though, and just look at how much of it I remember!

How would you rate it?
Rated 8/10, a very good book.

The Omnivore's Dilemma ~ by Michael Pollan

Title, author, copyright date, and genre?
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals ~ by Michael Pollan, 2006, nonfiction

Why did I choose to read this book?
My newest book club decided to do things a bit differently, choosing a monthly theme instead of all reading the same book. For our first meeting in March we decided to read about food, and I chose this instead of a novel like Chocolat.

Was it a good book? Would you recommend it?
The book was very well researched and well written, but so dense with information that I scribbled page after page of notes to myself and often had to take a break from the intensity of the book. I found myself needing breaks to mull over the what I was discovering. I'm sure I could have skimmed big chunks of the book and gotten the major part of what Pollan was saying, but I didn't want to miss any of it. And thus it was taking forever to read.

What did you like about it?
I like passages like the one I quoted on Wednesday here on this blog about Corn and grass. (Go read it ... I'll wait 'til you get back.) Here are some other good quotes I gathered:

"By replacing solar energy with fossil fuel, by raising millions of food animals in close confinement, by feeding those animals foods they never evolved to eat, and by feeding ourselves foods far more novel than we even realize, we are taking risks with our health and the health of the natural world that are unprecedented" (p. 10).

"The calories we eat, whether in an ear of corn or a steak, represent packets of energy once captured by a plant" (p. 21).

"Government farm programs once designed to limit production and support prices (and therefore farmers) were quietly rejiggered to increase production and drive down prices. Put another way, instead of supporting farmers, during the Nixon administration the government began supporting corn at the expense of farmers. Corn, already the recipient of a biological subsidy in the form of synthetic nitrogen, would now receive an economic subsidy too, ensuring its final triumph over the land and the food system" (p. 48).

"[O]ur food animals found themselves ... leaving widely dispersed farms in places like Iowa to live in densely populated new animal cities. These places are so different from farms and ranches that a new term was needed to denote them: CAFO -- Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. ... Raising animals on old-fashioned mixed farms ... used to make simple biological sense: You can feed them the waste products of your crops, and you can feed their waste products to your crops. In fact, when animals live on farms the very idea of waste ceases to exist; what you have instead is a closed ecological loop -- what in retrospect you might call a solution. One of the most striking things that animal feedlots do ... is to take this elegant solution and neatly divide it into two new problems: a fertility problem on the farm (which must be remedied with chemical fertilizers) and a pollution problem on the feedlot (which seldom is remedied at all)" (pp. 67-68).

What did you dislike?
That there's just too much of it. That all those quotes above are from only the first 68 pages out of 450 pages! There's so much more I want to tell you about the book, like the grass farmer (yes, grass farmer) who rotates his cattle every day onto new forage so they don't destroy the grass that feeds them. Like his bringing in the chickens a few days later to eat the grubs that are growing on the cow patties, thus cleaning up the area before the cattle are rotated back onto that same plot of grass, thus keeping his cattle healthy without resorting to antibiotics that get into us and our children because "you are what what you eat eats, too" (p. 84). Think about that again: You are what what you eat eats, too. And even so we haven't gotten to part three of the book, where Pollan describes gathering your own food.

Tell us whatever you thought.
I think it's a necessary book, an important book, a long book.

Rated: 7/10, good

My NEW book rating guide

Updated 3-24-14 to add one caveat:  These numbers from 2008 are all based on how much I personally enjoyed the book.  I can't judge for anyone else, so my ratings are completely subjective.  As a matter of fact, if I re-read a book, my opinion may very well change, based on what's going on in my life at that point.

10 ~ Loved it!!  Couldn't put it down!!
9 ~ Excellent!
8 ~ Very Good
7 ~ Good
6 ~ Above Average
5 ~ Average
4 ~ Struggled to finish, but not worth it
3 ~ Annoying ~ a waste of time
2 ~ Poor ~ one I abandoned
1 - Pitiful!
0 ~ Awful!!  Don't bother

* DNF ~ Did Not Finish ~ discarded the book as a total waste of time

Updated 3-29-19:  For a few years I tried eliminating anything below five (5/10) by using "Nah" as a rating.  I tried "Not My Cuppa" (with "tea" implied) a few times.  Now I'm back to my original numbers because I just finished a book that needs that three (3/10) rating.

Climate change

Look at the UPDATE at the bottom of this post...
__________

Dear Bonnie,

Global warming is a problem of unprecedented magnitude and that's why we've launched the largest mobilization campaign ever. Actions by individuals like you will be the driving force behind this campaign and our ultimate victory. We're going to succeed, but I need your help today.

More than 825,000 people have already joined us, but if leaders in business and government are going to make stopping climate change a priority, we need you to urge your friends to get involved today.

We need to grow to 1,000,000 members by April so we can send a loud message that we want action now. Ask all your friends to add their voices.

Thank you,

Al Gore
____________________

My response

Climate change is an urgent issue that requires immediate solutions. That's why I've joined with Al Gore and others around the world who want to halt global warming. Let's be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

We need to send a loud message to leaders in business and government that they must make it a priority to stop climate change, now. That's why I'm asking you to get involved today:

http://wecansolveit.org/onemillion

Together, we CAN stop global warming.
__________

March 28 UPDATE ~ another email from Al Gore:

Last week I asked you to get your friends involved in our campaign to stop global warming and you responded: more than 70,000 people have joined in the last week alone. That's simply amazing and shows that there is immense support behind our call for solutions to the climate crisis. Today we are just 76,000 short of reaching our goal of 1,000,000 members by April.

You can help put us over the top. Right now I need you to share this with everyone you know and ask them to get involved.

More than 924,000 people have already joined us, but if we are going to succeed we need to reach 1,000,000 by April.

With your help, we'll reach this goal and send a powerful message to the world. Please ask your friends to get involved today:

http://wecansolveit.org/onemillion

Thank you,

Al Gore

Why Women Should Rule the World ~ by Dee Dee Myers

I haven't read Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers, but it sounds like a book I would enjoy.

Dee Dee Myers was the first woman ever to be White House Press Secretary, and she was only 31 at the time. She says:

"I wasn't the first woman to be the first woman, of course. I stand on the shoulders of the countless others who stuck their necks out -- and sometimes got their heads knocked off -- for going where no woman had gone before. Not all of them were trying to advance the interests of the sisterhood. Still, because of them, those of us who followed have had more, different, and better opportunities. I know I have."

This book explores the trials woman have faced throughout history to achieve opportunities in places where their presence was once denied. Filled with anecdotes from her tenure in the White House, Myers provides a fresh take on the achievements woman have made in all aspects of public life.

Take a look at BookTV's After Words program with Dee Dee Myers and Dana Perino, the only two women to hold the office of White House press secretary, discussing the new book, Why Women Should Rule the World. You'll have to click on the 3-20-08 "After Words" link.