My Weekly Update and Memorial Day, We Remember.

The Stars and Stripes displayed for the Memorial Day Celebration 2016

Memorial Day. A day to remember our war dead.

Weather: Beautiful. Sunny skies and temperate temperatures making it very pleasant to be outside.

Memorial Day: Yesterday Don and I attended a public ceremony to honor American heroes, the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their military service. It was a moving ceremony with several speeches by politicians, appropriate songs sung by the Pierce College Chorale, and a naming ceremony where all military personnel from Puyallup who lost their lives in any conflict from WWI through the Iraqi and Afghanistan conflicts had their names read out and wreaths were placed by the War Memorial in their honor. We remember.  During this part of the ceremony a thought struck me, what will happen when this generation dies off? Who will remain to carry on these traditions? It seems really obvious by the average age of attendance that the young generations in our country are not interested in participating in these types of events. Sigh.

We remember. We are grateful.

Disturbing news out of California: Graffiti artists spoil a Vietnam Memorial Wall right before Memorial Day. A community comes together to clean it up.

Long weekend: We had both Friday and Monday off work for the long Memorial Day week-end. Opting to stay home meant getting a few things off our "to-do" list. I've finished reading five books, four of them I've been working on for a while. Carly and I got outside and deadheaded the rhododendron bushes. Don and I pulled up a dead azalea bush and planted a few annuals for some summer color in its place. Right now Don is outside playing with his new birthday gift, a saw. He is making tomato cages. Friday nights we went to a Mariner's Game in Seattle. our team lost (boo) but we still got a great fireworks show afterwards (yay.)

Currently reading:

• Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley. A young adult book dealing with mental illness, panic attacks, and friendship.

Completed this week (and I am feeling very accomplished by this list):

• Lit Up by David Denby...the subtitle says it all: One Reporter, Three Schools, Twenty-Four Books That Can Change Lives.
• The Art of X-Ray Reading by Roy Peter Clark...another book about the value of reading, especially reading the classics. This book then focuses on what a writer can learn from these books to make his/her writing better.
• Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling by Tony Cliff...a graphic novel set in the 1800 with a female character who is like Indiana Jones.
• Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune by Pamela Turner...a real life Samurai who lived in Japan over 700 years ago. He is still a hero today!
• The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry...The Crusades, The Inquisition, Mystics. Europe in the thirteenth century. Love, love, love this book. (Audio)

Up next (or what I have waiting for me at the public library, not sure if I will get to everything):

• The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge, YA/print.
• We are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson. YA/print
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Audio.
• Circling the Sun by Paula McClain. Audio.
• Unbecoming by Jenny Downham. YA/print.

A confession and a promise: I seem to have taken an inadvertant hiatus from writing books reviews for the past several months. I am something like 15 reviews behind where I want to be.  I promise to do better going forward and shall attempt to write at least shot reviews of those past books I missed. When I finally got around to counting them up the other day, I was very shocked at how behind I am.