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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 15, 2021 23:45:52 GMT -5
I was lucky that my father was a voracious reader and took us to the Bookmobile each week, which was a place of wonder as a child, to where by the time I was a pre-teen, I gravitated to libraries and book stores. Similar situation for me. My mom was a schoolteacher, and started reading to me from birth. At age 4 I was reading at 1st grade level. At age 5 I had my own library card for the local public library. I would ready anything from comics to kid's books and beyond, due to the love of reading she instilled in me from an early age. I do remember that my 1st through 3rd grade teachers found it slightly problematic, because I would burn through the card assignments in the SRA box like nobody's business, and they would end up giving me crossword puzzles to do in my spare classroom time so that I wouldn't disrupt other children due to finishing assignments early.
That's spooky; I read most of that (soon as I saw Georgie the Ghost I could picture it). We also had a set of World Book encyclopedias and the Childcraft Library books. 5 people with one bathroom meant you had to be up early to get hot water in the bathroom and I was usually dressed and waiting on everyone else, before school (my dad taught junior high science and my mother had been a music teacher, before we came along). I would pass the time by flipping through the World Books, at random, looking for interesting articles. That opened me up to mythology, which dovetailed with my love of heroic adventure and I was reading about Achilles, Perseus, Bellerophon and Odysseus long before I got to high school and read Homer. We also had some books that came from parents Magazine Press, which sold via mail-order, including my all time favorite picture book, The King with Six friends, by Jay Williams and Imero Gobbato... It is a wonderful tale of a deposed king (his father was ousted, in a coup and he wandered the land), who encounters 6 men, each with a special ability, who he helps out of a predicament. in gratitude, they travel with him and come to a kingdom, where a beautiful princess remains unmarried. he vies for her hand and the king of this realm knew the wanderer's father, but he needs a man who can hold a kingdom, if he is to turn his realm over to a son-in-law. So, he sets a series of tasks for the king, which he accomplishes with the help of each of his friends. In the end, one of the friends points out, when a vizier suggests the wanderer had done nothing, that he had led the others and figured out how to use their special talents to achieve a goal, which was the mark of good leadership. Gobbato is an amazing artist and the book is a thing of beauty. I loved the story, as the group is like a sort of medieval Justice League, as one could turn into an elephant, another into a tree, a third into fire, one into a snake, one an axe and one a swarm of bees. It was embedded in my memory and, after years of trying to remember the title and hunting through used book stores in vain, I finally discovered the title, on this newfangled internet. I found a copy and have it to this day.
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Post by tartanphantom on Oct 16, 2021 0:00:00 GMT -5
We also had the Childcraft companion set for World Book, as well as the Junior Classics companion set for Collier's, which was basically the equivalent of Readers' Digest condensed versions of classic tales and stories (pictured below). I don't recall the Jay Williams book, but it looks like something that would have interested me back in the day.
One thing is for sure, I never lacked for good reading material as a child in the 1960's-'70's. To this day, I can still vividly remember the painted two-page spread of WWI and WWII aircraft in the World Book (see below). My life-long love affair with aviation history began with this illustration. Only much later did I find out that the painting was done by Robert F. Bollin, who painted dozens of Aviation pulp covers in the 1930's-1950's.
Also, I forgot to mention that I had my own personal first encyclopedia set at age 3-- the wonderfully illustrated 16-volume Golden Book Encyclopedia, which was pretty much designed for kids. I absolutely wore those books out to the point that they all have spine splits. Though the Golden Book set is long gone, I still have the Collier's Junior Classics set to this day. I can crack one open and the illustrations immediately take me back almost 60 years.
Apologies to all for going off topic in the R.I.P thread.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2021 8:32:39 GMT -5
RIP to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who passed due to COVID complications. He was 84.
-M
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Oct 18, 2021 9:41:13 GMT -5
Mark Evanier remembers Betty Lynn (Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show), who passed away on Oct. 16: Betty Lynn, RIP
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 18, 2021 9:48:15 GMT -5
RIP to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who passed due to COVID complications. He was 84. -M Just read that myself. How you remember him may be tied up in your own feelings on the war in Iraq, but I've always felt he was a stand up guy.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 18, 2021 10:04:02 GMT -5
RIP to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who passed due to COVID complications. He was 84. -M Just read that myself. How you remember him may be tied up in your own feelings on the war in Iraq, but I've always felt he was a stand up guy. This is one that's difficult. A lot to admire. A lot of problems. R.I.P. and my condolences to his family and friends.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 18, 2021 10:33:50 GMT -5
Just read that myself. How you remember him may be tied up in your own feelings on the war in Iraq, but I've always felt he was a stand up guy. This is one that's difficult. A lot to admire. A lot of problems. (...) Going back to his service in Vietnam. I won't say anything more to avoid getting this comment deleted.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 18, 2021 10:43:38 GMT -5
Just read that myself. How you remember him may be tied up in your own feelings on the war in Iraq, but I've always felt he was a stand up guy. This is one that's difficult. A lot to admire. A lot of problems. R.I.P. and my condolences to his family and friends. There certainly a lot of difficulties in his legacy, but at the same time he's one of those people that I just can't help but read about and think, "That's the American dream." Parents immigrated from Jamaica, grew up in the Bronx, went to public schools and a public college...and then became someone who defined American Foreign Policy. That policy may indeed be checkered, but the path to it is undeniably inspiring.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 18, 2021 11:24:24 GMT -5
I served in the Navy under Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; there is a troubled legacy even then; but, he was generally respected.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2021 11:26:43 GMT -5
Mark Evanier remembers Betty Lynn (Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show), who passed away on Oct. 16: Betty Lynn, RIPawww. . he always posted so many updates about her
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 18, 2021 11:26:50 GMT -5
Goodbye Thelma Lou. This came up elsewhere, about who was left of the "regulars" on the Andy Griffith Show and it mostly boils down to Ron Howard and Elinore Donahue, with a handful who appeared in more than one episode, like brother Clint, Richard Keith (Johnnie Paul Jason, in several episodes and Little Ricky, on I love Lucy), and Maggie Peterson, who was Charlene Darling, in several episodes.
I still recall her performance in the original Cheaper By the Dozen, as a young woman who dances with Clifton Webb.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,614
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Post by Confessor on Oct 18, 2021 16:31:56 GMT -5
The big news over here in the UK since Friday has been the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in an Islamic terrorist attack by a man of Somali background. Amess was stabbed to death during one of his regular constituency surgeries at a church in Leigh-On-Sea (basically a place where members of the public can meet their local MP). It's a really appalling incident and the general feeling over here is that regardless of your political persuasion this was nothing less than an attack on our democracy. I didn't really know much about Amess, but by all accounts he was a hard-working politician and was well-liked around Westminster. Full report here... www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58935372
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Post by impulse on Oct 18, 2021 16:43:27 GMT -5
That's awful. It's really jarring when someone so public who would think is protected is attacked and so brutally.
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 18, 2021 18:11:57 GMT -5
The big news over here in the UK since Friday has been the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in an Islamic terrorist attack by a man of Somali background. I've been hearing about that every day, and not just on the BBC World Service. It's big news here too.
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Post by Calidore on Oct 18, 2021 19:12:17 GMT -5
The big news over here in the UK since Friday has been the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in an Islamic terrorist attack by a man of Somali background. I've been hearing about that every day, and not just on the BBC World Service. It's big news here too.
Yep, heard about it here in Chicago. This is my first encounter with the term "constituency surgeries" also. I get that it refers to a meeting between a politician and his public (is it equivalent to what we in the States would call a "town hall meeting"?), but I'm curious about "surgery" specifically in this context.
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