|
This Week in Books, January 7, 2018
Happy New Year everyone, hope yours is prosperous.Guess what I found under the tree! The Lawdog Files - African Adventures 'D Lawdog' Castalia House, 2017 This is Lawdog's second volume of personal stories, beginning with his childhood memories of growing up in Africa. Like his previous work, this is a collection of short stories, making it an ideal book for the coffee table or the water closet. To sit down and read this book in one sitting would be like taking a chocolate/chocolate chip cheesecake with dark chocolate/kirsch shavings and a coarse granulated sugar/graham cracker crust with a hint of cayenne (or cinnamon, however you roll) and eating the cake in one bite. It also makes the book tough to review without giving away a chunk of the content or the punch line of a story. All I can say, is one story had me laughing so hard my wife shook her head and asked what was so funny. I recounted the story, and she asked, "Well, isn't that dangerous?" Yes! "Boys." There are other stories and musings about life, some whimsical, some serious, some funny only after the fact. The dove hunting stories had me laughing, but if you have never been dove hunting Lawdog still tells the story, and all of his stories really, in such a way that you will get it. I believe other Rantburgers have read this work, would you recommend this book (without giving away spoilers)? I sure do; it is available in both electrons and tree gut. This Week in Emergency Preparedness I really do not have much to add to winter considerations at this point. And really, you are either (a) considering yourself prepared, or (b) hoping the Fates are not knitting for a couple more months. Probably more helpful would be suggestions from our friends in the Northeast. My first question would be, isn't this last storm what y'all call a Nor'easter? Sure, snow in Florida is a bit odd, but a winter storm with the weatherhead wailing about 30mph winds and 5" of snow, yeah bad stuff, but not Snowzilla or whatever the gin heads were screaming about. ZMG! swksFF, temperatures will be 100+ with 50mph+ winds! Yeah. We call it July. My point, I guess, is that if the media is going to bring out the meteorological equivalent of Green Helmut Man for normal weather in order to match the intensity of real dangerous events, it will be tougher and tougher to rely upon that report. Even worse, a lot of the weather winnowers are convinced, or put on that face, that they are absolutely correct. About got me the other day when a surprise fog ended my plans quite quickly. When you are driving 50mph and you have two seconds from spotting oncoming traffic to passing it (IF they had their lights on. One white car with no lights was past me before I saw it), that is dangerously thick. Add all the side road traffic (it was a cow day). Cold weather, humidity, no wind, near a front - I was not surprised there was fog. I turned out of it as soon as I could turn around safely. The fog contributed to a vehicle fatality that morning. No warnings from the previous night's weather report. So know your weather. Posted by: swksvolFF 2018-01-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=505214 |