The Road from Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

The Road from Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

This is the story of an  American family that lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and it takes place mainly during the time of the 1930 in the depression years through the outbreak and hardship of World War II. So I really think this could be called modern American history but it is not a dull history book. Far from it. it is full of interesting happenings.

The author has previously written another book called Gap Creek and this book continues from that one so probably I should have read that one first so I would have a better idea of the characters in the book. This really didn't worry me as the characters are well drawn and past history of the family is noted in passing.

The main character is called Annie Richards Powell and at the start, she is a young teenager and one who certainly knows what she wants out of life. She has two brothers  and a sister, and a very hard-working mother and father. Life is hard in the mountains and the writing shows their hard life during the depression.Life has always been hard and so they manage as best they can. Troy, the younger brother, is the golden boy of the family, the  mother's baby and a few years younger than Annie. Much of the book also deals with his life during the war and his subsequent death and the effect it has on his family especially his mother.

This is a well-written book and easy to read. The author keeps the reader's attention and by the end of the book you know these people well. I enjoyed reading it and it taught me a lot about that time in History. 

Visit from A Stranger

Visit from A Stranger

We have lived in our present house for almost 8 years now. During that time we have seen all manner of birds and animals visiting the area and walking through our yard. Possums, skunks, lizards, geckos, armadillos, rabbits and squirrels and the occasional raccoon. Birds are plentiful too and vary throughout the year. We like it that way and it makes for very interesting viewing and discussion.

Today as we were sitting watching the birds feeding at the birdfeeder, I looked up and there on top of the workshop high on the roof was a stranger indeed. It was a Road Runner. Now we often see these prehistoric looking birds running along country roads and we usually see them running as fast as they can. And they certainly can run fast. I've read that they can reach speeds of 20 mph and so they prefer to run rather than fly.

So it was quite a surprise to see the Road Runner up on a roof and to try and figure out how he came to be there. We watched him for a while as he  walked around on the roof and even spent time  sitting looking  just like a  weathervane.
Then as quick as a flash he took off and flew in short bursts with hops in between, landing on some of the near branches of the trees.
They have very small wings in comparison to their size so it's no wonder they prefer to stay on the ground.

An interesting bird. I hope he returns.

See What I Found!

See What I Found!

Shirley & Mike 1984

This is just what friend Vincent said as he came in the door the other day. In his hand were two old photographs that had been taken somewhere in 1984. The only reason we know that is that it's written on the back of each photo. Where it was none of us could remember.

Vincent is in the process of moving and so he is doing the onerous task of checking through his belongings and sorting and clearing which one does when one moves. He said he had found these photos inside an old book.

We all looked at them and had a good laugh but we couldn't think where they had been taken and the background gives us no clue. But don't we look young! I guess someone must have cracked a funny joke to make me laugh like that just as my photo was being taken or maybe I just didn't know it was being taken. We all remember when Mike had curly hair but this looks extra curly. I can't believe looking in the mirror now at my graying brown hair that it was ever that dark.

This is why it's important to at least printout some photos of the many we take now so you can lose them in all your things and then one day in the future find them, remember and have a good laugh.

The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price

The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price

Sometimes for a change I like to read pure fantasy. It makes a change from reading historical novels or mystery, detectives or biographies and so I choose a science fiction novel. You have to be very selective with this type of novel and I like the kind that start in modern day society and don't go overboard with scientific facts and weird stuff.

This book starts out with the sudden ending to the world and only a small group of people are saved by a mysterious unknown force. They are very mixed group: two argumentative sisters, one who is a doctor and the other an actress; a cartoonist who seems to be the leader of the group; two teenagers and a dropout young man of Asian descent. They are in a state of shock and cannot figure out what is happening to them. (What a surprise!) Two super beings appear who seem to be their saviors and have all kinds of strange powers. They refer to the group as the Silvers and seem to know what is going on and more importantly why but don't seem to want to tell.

Even though the reader knows this is pure fiction, you get drawn into the story with all the suspense of a modern mystery and you want to know what will happens to these young people. I found it very entertaining to read and could see how this could easily become a motion picture film. It would have many technical events and be quite fun to watch.

The first phone call from heaven by Mitch Albom

The first phone call from heaven by Mitch Albom

I recognized the author of this book as I had read "Tuesdays with Morrie". I can't say I enjoyed that books very much but I did see the film as well and I could see what the main point of the  book was and maybe when I read it I hadn't taken it in well.So I thought I would give this new book a try.

In this small town in Michigan various people start getting calls on their phone supposedly coming from a recently departed relative or friend who is now in heaven. The voice on the phone is definitely the voice of the dead person. Most of the people that receives the calls are extremely happy to get them and start telling their stories. Only one of the people Sully. a discredited pilot who had a  crash, has doubts.

Soon the news spread and the inevitable happens. The media descend on the small town with all the traffic, fuss and commotion that brings. Sully, the person who has doubts about these calls,that  his wife who has recently been killed in a car accident is calling, decides to investigate these calls especially when his young son is depending on his mother  to calling him again.
Of course the churches of all denominations get involved as do the police and local business community.This has put the little town of Coldwater on the map!

The ending comes as quite a surprise but I won't say anything about that.You will have to read it to find out how this story ends.

I did find this book interesting especially as it brought many questions to mind and became quite a mystery. It is easy to read and well written.

Painted Bunting painting

Painted Bunting painting

The other day I wrote a blog on a painted Bunting bird that I saw at our feeder and I wrote somewhere on the blog that this bird being so colorful' just begged to be painted.
So that's just what I did. I painted this one in water colors as I thought the colors would be brighter. This is how it came out, not as bright as I would've liked and maybe acrylic paints or even oils would do it justice.

Then Mike took a photo of a painted Bunting that I had painted from a photo. That's almost a tongue twister.

Goodbye Little Lucky

Goodbye Little Lucky

It is always sad when a pet dies, and even more so when an old pet dies.
Lucky came to our house when she was a very small kitten. She was a foster kitten and the original intent was to find her a new home. She was a pure black kitten in a litter of many colored kittens and gradually the other kittens had found new homes and we were left with Lucky. She only had one application for a new home but that came when I was away on vacation and because I like to see where my foster pets would live, I waited until I came back to check on the applicant. As I expected the applicant had already found an another kitten.
 Time passed and Lucky quickly grew and so we decided to keep her as part of our pet family. She joined in with the other cats and was no trouble as she had grown up among them and they accepted her easily. She was a sweet, gentle cat who loved to play and love to follow you around the garden.  Her special effect was to climb the tree slightly ahead of you and then run down along the path until she came to the next tree. Quite a game.She would win every time.

Lucky like to be indoors with her family of people, dogs and cats but she also liked to explore the great outside.When she was about 6 to 7 months old she took her first traveling trip. We lived in a fairly rural area at that time so didn't worry about her for the first day or so as we knew she would come to eat but the days passed and no one had seen Lucky. I feared we had lost her. About six weeks past and one day as I was feeding the cats, who should come in but Lucky. She was quite unconcerned, a little thin, and then continued to stay around the house for at least most of the time.

The sunny spot - always a favorite place.

She went traveling again when we moved house. We thought she was pretty well established in the new house and yard before we let her out but again she disappeared for about six weeks. This time I felt she may be trying to go back to the old house but realized that was just too far. Then again just after we had almost given up on her, she came back and continued with life and being part of the family. From that time on she seemed more wary of some of the other cats.

Life continued and before we realized it 17 years had passed and little Lucky was beginning to look her age. She gradually began to lose weight and ate little. One day I noticed she was bumping into walls and chairs and was not going outside at all. I checked her eyes and the pupils were large and it was obvious that she had gone blind. Poor Lucky could not understand. We try not to move furniture and to put her food in the same place but she was clearly unhappy. She sat more and more in one spot and then a couple of days ago started having trouble with her back legs. I knew the end was not far away. She kept to her favorite spot under a chair and I put her food close to her.
I decided that I would arrange to have her put down after the weekend but on Sunday, Lucky made her own decision. She did not move from this spot, ate nothing and slept. I would give her sips of water from a syringe and I would hear a plaintiff "meow" as if she was saying thank you. I stroked her and told her we would miss her. Next time I went to give her water I realized her spirit had past on to begin another journey.

We will certainly miss this gentle little creature who gave us such pleasure during her life.
Goodbye little Lucky.

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

This book is written by the best selling author, Khaled Hosseini, who wrote the best-selling books, The Kite Runner and A 1000 Splendid Suns so when I picked it up at the library I was expecting to have good read. I had enjoyed the previous two books very much.

Like his previous books this one also takes place in Afghanistan, or at least it starts in Afghanistan but mostly it is about complicated family relationships. It starts with a poor Afghanistan family and how that family evolved through the next three and four generations. The book starts in 1950s.

You are drawn quickly into the story when you hear of the love of a brother for his younger sister. Sadly the younger sister is adopted by a wealthy couple and moves away from the family. This is to give her a better chance at life but the brother is never told this and so just does not understand. He does not know where she goes to live. Her uncle works for the wealthy couple and becomes one of the main characters in the book. After a breakup of the marriage, the mother who is French takes the young girl and goes to live in Paris.

From there the story gets complicated. Marriages, divorces and friendships come in quick succession and the story moves back and forth throughout the book between France, the USA, Greece and also back to Afghanistan. As life goes on the people in the book lived their lives, have children and we follow some of the children in their lives as well. At the very end of the book the brother and sister  now senior citizens, are finally reunited again but in very trying circumstances.


This book is very hard times to read. It is emotional and hardships occur within the families which until you read about them, you don't realize that these things happen. It's also quite complicated to read because of the many characters and the switching between the stories. I felt that times that it would've been helpful to have a family tree /friendship line drawn out somewhere at the beginning of the book so you could keep all the characters in your head.

I did not enjoy this book is much as the of the author's previous two books but it was well written and overall a good book.

A Visit from a Painted Bunting

A Visit from a Painted Bunting

We had a pleasant surprise the other evening while we were sitting in the summer room watching the birds coming to our bird feeding area. We have recently set this up and have been spending quite a while seeing the different kinds of birds that will visit during the day and in the evening.

Our main visitors are surprisingly enough a flock of Cardinals. I called them that because usually you only see a male and a female but this is obviously a family as some are so obviously babies and beginning fledglings. At first it seemed as if the adult birds were feeding the younger ones as they perched on a nearby shelf. All could fly but the younger ones not so well, still very fluttery. Gradually over the last week or so, all the young ones have been visiting the bird feeders and often we will get four or five on one feeder. They act just like children scrabbling for the seed and pushing  each other out of the way.

Another little bird that we are amazed about is a little hummingbird. We know these birds are somewhat aggressive to other hummingbirds and we see this little guy chasing another one constantly but it was quite a surprise to see it chasing off some of the nuthatches on the adjacent feeder. They obviously came too close to his feeder.

We were very surprised the other evening when a very small multicolored bird came to feed. "Why it's a  Painted Bunting!" Mike said. These little birds are brightly colored but you don't often see them. They are here in Texas during the summer months and then migrate to Mexico in the winter. They like areas where there are many bushes to hide it and we certainly have those around. We hope that this will be the start of many visits from the little bird and hopefully his family.
The photo was taken by  friend  Kathy I think , last year but it just begs to be painted. I shall have to try it.