Thanks for all your hard work Karen! Can't wait to read it in its entirety. Jodi-

My dad's mom was from a farm in Minnesota. They raised horses. Several kids all together in one bed in the upstairs room. She loved the country and her home with the stream running through the pastures. My dad's dad lost his parents young. His dad was a tailor. Both their parents had come over from Sweden. My grandfather especially never forgot that his parents came over to escape religious persecution for being Baptists. Both grandparents always celebrated their Swedish heritage. My grandmother spoke Swedish with all her brothers and sisters. At the end of her life, when she had memory loss, she said she wanted to go back to be with the Swedes ( Minnesota ). They had things from Sweden all over the house and my grandma always had blue and gold curtains and fabrics for slipcovers. They asked me to make them a big Dala horse with the house numbers on it for the gate. I remember the two Victorian portraits of my grandfathers parents over the Victorian organ that was in the family room. We loved to play that organ as kids. Grandfather also had the china and a writing desk from his family when they came to America in the 1800s. Grandma always loved gardening and had a flower garden everywhere they lived. They started out in Minnesota, moved to Maryland, Indiana, and then out to California. The happiest day my Grandma had according to my dad was when her brothers and sister came over during WWII and they were all together again. Both brothers were in the army then and my grandpa worked as a radar specialist and sometimes flew in the large bombers. My grandmas brothers helped my grandpa build the first house they had in So.CA My grandma had a big garden then and it was packed full of flowers. I was a toddler then but I still remember all the flowers and the hand poured cement walks. Grandpa also built a little pass through door in the wall from the kitchen into the family room so grandma wouldn't have to go around. She always loved to bake. Later, they moved out to Riverside county. They had a bigger property and grew all kinds of fruit trees and grapes and every kind of vegetables. Grandma canned them all even though she had a market right down the road. She had all kind of little figurines and things for the kids to play with in the yard. We liked to make out little farms with the toy animals and give them rides in the old wagon she used to move plants around in. Grandpa had a room he added on to the garage where he had his electronics equipment. After the war, he was involved with the space missions. He loved radios, anything electric and my dad got him an Apple computer when they were first available. He was on the cutting edge of technology even into his nineties. I remember dad said he could fix anything. He was always going over to a neighbors house to help with electical or plumbing or carpentry. That's what neighbors were supposed to do. He had a woodshop in the garage and he built all our garage cabinetry and shelving and all our kitchen cabinets and a big kitchen island. He removed all the kitchen cabinets from their last home and replaced them with custom ones. If his body hadn't worn out, he'd still be doing it. Grandma always had pets. She loved them and I don't remember a time when she ever scolded them ( or us) . My sister said that grandma could make a good dog out of a bad one. She never was sophisticated and had an 8th grade little schoolhouse education but she had a kind heart and would always be there for a friend or neighbor in need. Her three kids all went to college but she never boasted about it. Any kind of flattery embarassed her in fact. She loved crafts and had a little room full of scraps and buttons and trims where she would sew. We spent hours in that room going through it all just for fun and on holidays she let us make valentines and ornaments and all kinds of Christmas decorations. We got together every Sunday for dinner and afterwards watched Lawerence Welk, Wild Kingdom, and Disney. I remember my cousins came over too and especially during the holidays. Two of my cousins moved to Virginia but they came to spend the summer with grandma in CA. She loved Virginia too and sometimes she lived there with my aunt for a month in the summer. After my grandpa passed away, she moved to my aunt's in Virginia and saw my cousins and their kids all the time. She loved kids and babies and all kinds of animals. She loved the seasons in Virginia and sent me pictures and fall leaves.

Hi all, I also recently "discovered" Hakan Nesser and have read the first 6 (or was it 7) titles in his Van Veeteran series. While I like Van Veeteran as a character, as someone said, chess, fine music and wine, with a fair smattering of philosophy, I found that the series got more disturbing as it went on. Darker, more crude. I have not requested any further titles from the library as the last one put me out of sorts. I need a break. Just finished reading This House is Haunted by John Boyne. The blurb claims it to be a "Dickensian ghost story". I think not. It was spooky and dark yet neither gory nor graphic. I think it more of a Victorian style, but Dickensian is much too much praise. It was a fun read, albeit slightly predictable, for the season of All Hallow's Eve. Speaking of ghosts, I also read the latest by Simone St. James, The Other Side of Midnight. The main character is a psychic and she was hired to solve the murder of another psychic. It was okay, not as good as her first two books; The Haunting of Maddy Clare and An Inquiry into Love and Death. I second and third the praise for both Geraldine Brooks and her spouse, Tony Horwitz. I read everything he wrote and most of what she wrote. (I like his stuff much more, if you are curious.) Now reading Six Questions of Socrates by Christopher Phillips. He is the head of the Society for Philosophical Inquiry. In this book, he poses the six questions of Socrates to different demographic groups, in different countries and shares the differences and similarities. I am only on page 23 and find it fascinating. The six questions are: What is virtue? What is piety? What is good? What is justice? What is moderation? What is courage? He simply goes to a public area and starts chatting. Soon there is a Socratic circle discussion going on and wow... nary a cell phone nor a google search in sight. The conversations sound just amazing and I am quite jealous I have not yet stumbled upon one. PAM

I don’t remember keypunch cards with utility bills! The first time I, personally, had anything to do with them was when I went along with my husband-at-the-time to keypunch his cards for him when he was taking programming—Fortran—in school. Then, when I was registering for some classes myself (early 70s!), at registration you went around to the different “tables” and picked up a “card” for whatever class you were registering for—and turned them in—with your money!—when you were done! My, my, my! How times change! But I had NO idea they went back to the 1800s! Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what the “original” “punch” cards looked like! Regarding the Western Expansion—and allotments! The Nez Perce were one of the first tribes forced into allotments. Allotments—The Dawes Act of 1887—was the last really huge land-grab by the U. S. government. Alice Fletcher, who was made an Indian Agent and sent to the Nimi'ipuu [Nez Perce] reservation to enforce allotments said this of the Act when the Nez Perce tried to resist having their lands allotted: “The work must be done for them whether they approve or not.” The Dawes Act was one more attempt to “civilize” the American Indians, and while it was being debated, Congressman Henry Dawes, author of the act, once expressed his faith in the civilizing power of private property with the claim that to be civilized was to "wear civilized clothes...cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property." During allotments more than 70 percent of the Nez Perce Reservation land, as it had been defined by the Treaty of 1863, passed from tribal control, reducing the total acreage of the reservation from 756,960 acres to 175,026 acres by 1895. Speaking of ALL the tribes: Between the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887 and its repeal under the New Deal in 1934, allotment continually deprived Indians of many of their remaining lands. The outright sale of "surplus" lands—parts of reservations left over after allotments had been assigned—and the subsequent sale of allotted lands themselves, shrunk the Indian estate from about 150 million acres before the Dawes Act to 104 million acres by 1890, to 77 million by 1900, and to 48 million by 1934. By the time of its repeal, according to one study, two-thirds of the Indian population was "either completely landless or did not own enough land to make a subsistence living." [Much of the land allotted to individual Indians was the most barren land, without water, that no white people wanted, and after the allotments, many Indians, unable to survive on “their” land, were forced to sell it to buy food in order to keep from starving—for a time at least. Ultimately, they wound up with nothing—no land OR food!] From a website: The numbers of acres lost to allotment, how much money changed hands in the process, and the means by which Natives became citizen-owners of lands on which their ancestors had lived for centuries are vexed and dismal topics. These abuses happened because the federal government approved a law designed to extinguish entire cultures. Under the alibi of enlightened and charitable reeducation, the Dawes Act stipulated procedures for merging individualized Native subjects into the American body politic and erasing their histories while documenting the entire process in state-sponsored institutions of memory. [Most of the Tribal Peoples of North America trace their ancestries back for thousands of years, not hundreds of years, and archaeological records support this!] In resisting being forced onto the newly created Nez Perce reservation in 1876, Hinmatóowyalahtqit (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt)—Chief Joseph—made this statement: Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours. Digit, since “your territory” is up in Nez Perce Country, and you’ve mentioned them around here a couple other times, If you’re interested, I could email you links to a couple video documentaries about them—their “run for freedom” in 1877. Let me know if you’d be interested. (And if you found any good historical newspapers with “Nez Perce news,” I’d be interested in links to them!) Skybird