Just in: Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger has died at age 91 in New Hampshire. The author’s son, in a statement from the author’s literary representative, says Salinger died of natural causes at his home, reports AP. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

Author J.D. Salinger dies at age 91 – USATODAY.com.

have been wanting to do more frequent blogging – i realized that there are several blogs i read daily and while i enjoy them, none have earth shattering news each day – but i enjoy the daily life they let me see… and also instead of reading maybe i could write too so am going to start with a lot of little items to catch up.

the saints game on Sunday – wow, first, i never watch pro football (actually never watch football) and yet how could i not with NO being a big part of my life (i am from South Louisiana) and Katrina (sister and cousins live/d in NO) and well, its a great story – to win the first one after 43 years and with the fifth year anniversary coming up.  it was actually an exciting game – i thought each team played very well – too bad for favre with that intercepted pass which put the Saints in possession and that was it.. after that it was a tidal wave to the end with that amazing field goal !  who dat? indeed!

knitting – still working on finishing up xmas and dec/jan bday presents.  unfortunately between the beg of dec to the mid of jan i have a BIL bday, Channukah for two nephews, Christmas (four sisters, two bil, one parent, one nephew), a sister bday, and three nephews bdays (dec, and jan – one day apart)  WHEW – next year i really need to start planning and knitting earlier – or maybe i will have more money and can buy presents.  however this year that was not an option as cash is scarce right now.

so the current WIPs include hats for three nephews (one done, one almost done, one to do), scarf for BIL (about 1/4 done), hat for one sister (not started), bday/xmas present for another sister (90 percent done) and two bday sweaters for two nephews and a bday vest for the third nephew

and then there is valentine’s day coming up..  yikes!

not to mention my own projects (a couple of sweaters) which are stewing away.

health – of course last week i was thinking how great it had been that i had not been sick for months – and wham!  i think i picked up a cold at a pizza/games place where my nephew’s bday party was held – all those games and all those hands including little ones handling everything.. even tho i am religious about washing my hands.  but by the weekend a full blown cold had settled in – and then something really weird happened on Sunday – i was cooking some sausages in one of my small cast iron skillets – and didn’t pay attention to the fact that they were almost done – so the drippings started to smoke really badly. 

now i have to backtrack to add that about two weeks ago i sealed (with caulk and insulating tape) all the ancient drafty double-hung full-of-cracks windows in the apt (except the bathroom window which is newish and efficient) and while i could tell the difference i hadn’t realized that it was that airtight… until all the smoke from the pan started filling up the kitchen – i quickly opened the bathroom window (its next to the kitchen – the apt is a converted cold water flat) and then the back door – but it must have permeated the apt much faster than i thought – in about an hour or two i had the worst asthma attack i have had in years.  (there is NO vent over the stove, its an old apt).

i kept going outside to get clean air (it was a bit chilly and felt good but i couldn’t stay out for long as it was rainy, drizzly and chilly) and took bronchaid (my go to for helping with attacks) i ended up taking a second dose four hours later .  however this attack went on thru the night until 6 am the next morning.  i eventually had to open the bathroom window all the way and turn on the fan in the den and sleep on the sofa with the fan blowing. 

i found an article on the web that talks about cooking fumes and asthma:

When it comes to cooking with asthma, the key is to keep cooking fumes at low levels. “Any kind of combustion produces gases and particles that can provoke respiratory disease, including asthma,” says Gregory Diette, MD, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology, Center for Global Health, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Md. “Cooking is just one of many forms of combustion. The particles that are small enough to make it down into the airways and into the lungs and some of the gases, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2), can also trigger asthma symptoms.”

Cooking With Asthma Control in Mind

and then on Monday, i woke up with a deep hacking cough and that is still with me – along with a bit of sinus infection.  i am hoping it is not turning into bronchitis… yuck.   needed a nap yesterday and today .

(Roger Federer just changed shirts after a bathroom break after losing the first set – oh that was a nice shot!)

well, off to try to sleep with this hacking and will watch the rest of the match later (don’t tell me who wins!) and then next post will share about my poor cat and his accident (and no, its not Emil).

“We are proud to announce that the two biggest stars in our firmament, Kay’s dog Olive and and Ann’s cat Kermit, have joined forces to raise money for Haiti.”

“If you have a blog, and your pet would like to be a part of this celebrity blogathon, please consider drafting Snowball or Rover or Inky the Gecko and blogging the link (here it is!) to the Times’ list of charitable organizations this weekend. “

NY Times List of Charities

Emil the Siamese, Isolde the crazy teenager, Katie the elder and Tristan (recovering from a hit and run accident ) all join Olive and Kermit in supporting your efforts to contribute to Haiti.

Powered by ScribeFire.

“My own experience and development deepen everyday
my conviction that our moral progress
may be measured by the degree
in which we sympathize with
individual suffering and individual joy.”
–George Eliot

all images from THE BIG PICTURE

Powered by ScribeFire.

Haiti Relief

Powered by ScribeFire.

Mystery novelist Robert Parker dies at 77 – Local News Updates – The Boston Globe
Posted using ShareThis
By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff

Robert B. Parker, whose spare, eloquent sentences turned the tough private investigator Spenser into one of Boston’s most recognizable fictional characters, died in his Cambridge home Monday. He was 77.

Robert B. Parker (AP file photo/2006)

Publishing 65 books in 37 years, Mr. Parker was as prolific as he was well-read. He featured Spenser — “spelled with an ‘s,’ just like the English poet,” he said — in 37 detective novels. He also wrote 28 other books, including a series each for Jesse Stone, the police chief of fictional Paradise, Mass., and Sunny Randall, a female PI in Boston.

His latest book is “Split Image,” part of the Jesse Stone series, and is due out next month, his agent, Helen Brann of New York City, said today.

Mr. Parker’s marquee character became a TV series, “Spenser for Hire,” starring Robert Urich. “Jesse Stone” became a TV vehicle for Tom Selleck, and “Appaloosa,” his 2005 Western, was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris.

“He was a master of the genre, as many have noted,” said Brann, who has represented Mr. Parker for 42 years. “And he was the most fun, the most real, highly intelligent, witty, down-to-earth, warm, endearing guy I’ve ever known. I adored him.”

Mr. Parker died at his writing desk, Brann said. Tests are pending, she added, but it appears that Mr. Parker suffered a heart attack Monday morning while his wife, Joan, was out of their house.

“She saw him early in the morning, went out for her exercise, came back an hour later, and he was gone,” Brann said. “He was at his desk, as he so often was.”

Pounding out up to five pages a day, Mr. Parker kept a pace few could match. Pressed for his secret, he made it sound simple.

“The art of writing a mystery is just the art of writing fiction,” he told the Globe in 2007. “You create interesting characters and put them into interesting circumstances and figure out how to get them out of them. No one is usually surprised at the outcome of my books.”

Perhaps, but millions of readers around the world raced through book after book.

In addition to his wife, with whom he shared a sprawling house in Cambridge walking distance from Harvard Square, Mr. Parker leaves two sons, David and Daniel.

Man of Mystery

From Boston Herald

Powered by ScribeFire.

Edge of the World
Scotland’s Hebrides, islands both stern and sublime, have taught centuries of artists, scientists, poets, and travelers to treasure the wild.
By Lynne Warren
Photograph by Jim Richardson

Michael Robson fell in love in 1948—with a place he’d never been.

An illustrated magazine swept the young boy’s imagination from the familiar domesticity of his English home to the wild islands that rise in jagged ranks off Scotland’s northwest coast. As soon and as often as he could, first on school holidays and later on breaks from work, Robson surrendered to the call of the Hebrides, making long journeys from the mainland by steamer and bus, by small boat and on foot, venturing from the mountains of Skye to the moors and sea lochs of Lewis and Harris and even farther, across miles of ocean to a rocky speck of land where the last permanent settlement had been abandoned a century before.

Hebrides — National Geographic Magazine

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Craft Hope for Haiti Etsy shop is now open! There are some amazing handmade items in the shop. Please support Doctors Without Borders by either donating a handmade item or shopping in our Etsy store.

Our Etsy shop will benefit Doctors Without Borders, with 100% of the proceeds going to them. The medical need in Haiti right now is acute. The Doctors Without Borders existing facilities are so badly damaged, they are no longer functional. Post-earthquake medical care will be from tents. So far they have treated 1,500 people – 500 of them need immediate major surgery. There are no facilities to do this in Haiti currently. An inflatable hospital should be arriving in Haiti today.

The shop will remain open as long as we have donations to fill it up! Thanks to everyone for spreading a little hope to those in Haiti.

Update: There is currently a 24 hour turn around time on things getting listed. We are listing as fast as two mamas possibly can.

Iwill have a button for you to put on your site within the next few minutes!

via crafthope.com

Rumors abound that new Leonardo da Vinci painting has been found in Boston

By Sarah Kaufman
Thursday, December 31, 2009; C01

Is the world about to gain another Leonardo da Vinci painting?

The multitasking Renaissance genius who produced the most famous portrait in the world — Mona somebody — left us only 10 to 20 other paintings. Yet if current whispers bear out about a picture in Boston, that number may increase by one more. Art experts say it’s the equivalent of stumbling upon a surprise Shakespeare play or a lost Homeric epic.

At this point, we have only a tantalizing mystery — perhaps the unspooling of a new Da Vinci code — dangling on the slender thread of secrets and a handful of clues that emerged this week:

— The Washington Post receives a tip from a source who wishes to remain anonymous that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has in its possession a painting believed to be by the Italian master, and is in the process of authenticating it. Were it deemed a true Leonardo, such a painting would be only the second one in all the Americas. (The first hangs here, in the National Gallery of Art.)

— We put a call in to Frederick Ilchman, the Boston museum’s Renaissance curator. Does he have such a painting? “Can’t tell you anything about it, sorry,” he says, before hanging up. (Do we detect a yes in that click?)

— We try Katie Getchell, the museum’s curatorial deputy director, who says through a spokeswoman: “We don’t comment on works that the MFA may be studying or considering for acquisition.” Asked if this meant that the MFA is, in fact, studying a possible da Vinci painting for purchase, spokeswoman Dawn Griffin says she can say nothing more.

— We ask Renaissance painting expert Miguel Falomir Faus if he knows anything about the painting. He tells us in an e-mail that he had lunch Tuesday with New York University art history professor Alex Nagel in New York, “and he talked [to] me about the new da Vinci.” Faus adds, however, “I have not seen the work (I don’t even know its subject).”

— Nagel, for his part, further stirs the pot with his own e-mail to us: “How can I comment on a painting I haven’t seen? Do you have a photo?”

No, we don’t have a photo. We have an imagination, though, and it’s taken off for some beautifully lit marbled hall, where we stand before a swirl of pigment — a plump infant? another half-smile under almond eyes? — from the enchanted left hand of da Vinci himself. The man who changed the course of Western painting with his exquisite skill, warmth of feeling and boundary-pushing. We didn’t need Dan Brown’s breathless bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” to cast this artist in tantalizing shadows. They were already there.

Rumors abound that new Leonardo da Vinci painting has been found in Boston.

It’s hard not to feel helpless looking at the horrific photos beaming from Haiti … and the endless coverage (albeit good it overwhelms me after awhile).  However we can all help…

ETA  Apartment Therapy’s List of WHERE TO DONATE

1.  Yarn Harlot’s KNIT SIGNAL
Read about Yarn Harlot’s Call to action 

2. Designers & Knitters & Yarnies for Haiti Relief

check out this blog post where Kristen Rengren has posted the designers and ETSY  members who are donating money thru sales.

3.   Groups Accepting Donations

Unicef USA

Doctors Without Borders

Red Cross

WorldCare

List of charities from the BBC

Habitat for Humanity Haitian disaster response

Save the Children: Haiti

text “HAITI” to “90999” and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross, charged to your cell phone bill.” (probably US cell phones only)

Yele (or, alternately, Yele)

Oxfam America

Partners in Health

Ebay has added an option to donate $1 from your auction to disaster relief for Haitians.

List of secular aid organisations posted in the Ravelry Atheist and Agnostic Crafters Group

Powered by ScribeFire.