Books by A. R. Casavant

I did the drawings A. R. Casavant used in his books on Precision Drill.  The red and white one was the first (1957), and here's another of his many books (1959):

Mr. Casavant taught marching band and concert band at Chattanooga High School (my high school).  I played glockenspiel in the marching band and bassoon in the concert band.  (I also played bassoon in the orchestra, but that was taught by Jay Craven.)  Even before I graduated from CHS in 1958, I worked for Mr. Casavant's ARC Publishing Company, sending out copies of his books to people who ordered them.

I did a search online to see if I could find any of Mr. Casavant's books, and I did!  Here's what I found:

• The Online Books Page (at UPenn), where you can see the book page by page.
• Phalanx Drill Movements (on Amazon, not currently available)

And here's a two-page pdf-file about his life, followed by a snippet:

• A. R. Casavant - 2007

"During his tenure at City High, A.R. Casavant developed a style of marching drill that would become known as Precision Drill. ... Between 1959 and 1979, Casavant authored forty texts on drill techniques, including Precision Drill and the Exhibition Marching Series."

I had to look up "bell lyra," the label used in the book for the instrument I played; we called it a "glockenspiel" when I was in the marching band.  I found online that "a form of glockenspiel is called a bell lyre, bell lyra, or lyra-glockenspiel.  The bell lyre is a form of glockenspiel commonly used in marching bands.  One variation is played vertically and has an extendable spike that is held on a strap."

Yep, that last one sounds like what I played, whatever you call it.  Would you like to hear (and see) the City High School band playing while marching on the field?  I posted that in 2011, HERE on this blog.

Sunday with Dewey

The Dewey Decimal System has a national day.  Who knew?  Not I.  I was putting together my usual Sunday Salon post, happened upon this illustration, and decided to write about it because of that third column.  Yeah, take time to read it; click to enlarge the photo.  Here's an illustration that "proves" next Saturday is Dewey Decimal System Day:

When my children were little, I used to take them once or twice a week to the public library on McCallie Avenue in Chattanooga.  That was long before the "new" library was built on Broad Street, where one of my girls worked when she grew up.  Anyway, the children's books were on the lowest level and mine were on the next floor up.  They were eventually so well-known by the librarians and so familiar with their department, that I was able to leave them to browse while I went upstairs to find some books for myself.

It reached the point that they would come and find me when they were ready to go home.  And they knew exactly WHERE to find me.  I'd be in the 100s and 200s section.  Can you tell that my first degree was in Philosophy and Religion?  Well, that degree actually became a double major, when I expanded into the 800s and added English Language and Literature.  Here's part of my library loot that reflects a current interest:

The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread ~ by Caitlin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall, 2019, psychology, 280 pages

Why should we care about having true beliefs?  And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them?  Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs.  It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter:  false beliefs will hurt you.  But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not?

The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know.  If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.

It's a library book, so I'm calling it "library loot" for this "Sunday Salon" post.  Use the chart above or the one below to try to figure out what category it's in.  What do you think?  I decided "psychology" sounds about right to me.  My library lists it as 153.74

I want to share one more thing:  I was very surprised when I read the Wikipedia article List of Dewey Decimal classes that many are shown as "Not assigned or no longer used."  Hmm, this ole world is in even more flux than I realized.  (Flux = defined as "continuous change or movement.")

I'll spend next Saturday (Dewey Decimal System Day) reading.  What about you?

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Adopt little black panthers

Adopt black kittens...they are like panthers, but little ones.

The words were translated by my friend Sharon, who shared the picture.

Clawdia, 'til next time   >^..^<

Beginning ~ with a letter

Beginning

The letter to Isabel Gibson arrived on a Tuesday, which had always been the unluckiest day of the week.  Tuesdays were meant for accidents, disappoint-ments, and bad news.

The Bookstore Sisters: A Short Story ~ by Alice Hoffman, 2022, fiction (Maine), 36 pages, 10/10

Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting.  She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine.  Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again.  But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels herself drawn to the past.  After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island.  What she finds there may forever alter her path — and change everything she thought she knew about her family, her home, and herself.

Favorite passages from this short book

• Lupines are mentioned three times (pages 5 and 31).  I smiled each time, remembering that Miss Rumphius, the main character in a children's book by the same name, went around scattering lupine seeds.  See them on that book cover?  Click the title to read about Miss Rumphius.
• I loved that the name of the bookstore in the book is the Once Upon a Time Bookshop (p. 5).
• I agree with the character who realized too late that "words that have been said cannot be unspoken" (p. 10).
• I loved the names of their "mother's most beloved baked goods" (pages 23 and 29):  Never Get Lost Oatmeal Cookies, Orange You Glad Cake, Sin No More Cinnamon Rolls, Fall in Love Fruitcake, and I Must Be in Heaven Chocolate Brownies.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Hands full of love ~ for Throwback Thursday

Here's an old photo of me with my great-granddaughter Raegan.  I was leaving my daughter's house to drive home to St. Louis in 2014, and I made the sign for "love."  Raegan did it, too, and then she wanted us to make the sign with both hands and touch our extended fingers.  This stamp shows the "I love you" sign a bit more clearly.

Thursday Thirteen

Thursday Thirteen is a meme where we make a list of 13 things on this 

day on a topic of our choice.  The only rule is to write about 13 things.

  

1.  The fog was so heavy when I woke up last Saturday that the sun looked like the moon behind thin clouds.  I could look right at it and see only a disc like these elevator buttons.

2.  When I opened my kitchen blinds, I couldn't see Walgreens across the street.  I could only see a slightly darker fog where the building should be.  That's Walgreen's at top left.

3.  I decided it's once again time to click on WindowSwap, which "opens a new window somewhere in the world."  That site lets me travel all over the world.  Where to, today?

4.  Oooh!  I got a video looking from a cable car window in Innsbruck, Austria.  We passed other cars going up the steep mountain as we rode down.

5.  "Francesca's Golf Cart Window" on WindowSwap was lots of fun as she drove us around a neighborhood in Virginia, looking at fall foliage.

6.  Speaking of windows, this photo of Clawdia from 2015 shows what our view toward the south used to be, before construction began on our new building.

7.  I like this saying:  "Be the reason someone smiles today."  Let's all smile today.

8.  Buffalo got seven feet of snow a few days ago.  This photo was posted by Jackie McGuinness on her Junk Boat Travels blog last Saturday.

9.  I've decided to do a Gratitude Jar from this Thanksgiving to next.  I wrote about gratitude in 2021:  "You can 'rewire' your brain to be happy by simply recalling 3 things you're grateful for every day for 21 days."  I'll try to write down three (or more) things each week for a year and save the slips of paper in a big jar.

10.  Cluttered desk quote (first published in 2018).  My desk is also cluttered. 

11.  I went out to eat with a few people on the Crown Center's bus on Tuesday, but they all went shopping in the shopping center instead.  I ate alone and decided I won't sign up for something like that again, unless a specific friend also goes.

12.  I did have leftovers to bring home, so I ate the rest of that meal the next day.

13.  If I can get my iPhone to send the photo of my desert to my email, I'll add a photo right here for you to see.

Exhausted

I love that somebody came up with a whole sentence in the word EXHAUSTED:  "Haste has exhausted us."