Thoughts On Travel, Books, And Life
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew there was a good chance that there wouldn’t be much left of the Weedpatch Camp aka the Arvin Federal Government Camp. But Tom and I decided to locate it last week on our return home from a funeral near Bakersfield.
For anyone familiar with the town of Quartzsite, Arizona, people living a carefree, itinerant lifestyle might come to mind. This little desert town of less than four thousand residents is 125 miles west of Phoenix, but boasts over two million visitors a year. Most of those visitors live in vans or RVs.
Quartzsite, in fact, plays a substantial role in the Academy Award-winning film Nomadland (Best Picture, 2021) based on the book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder. (The book is well worth reading.) Continue reading “Hi Jolly and the Town of Quartzsite, AZ”
When Tom and I first married, we thought we should invest in something that would appreciate in value. I’m not sure how we decided on antique maps, but our first real purchase during the first month or two of marriage was Continue reading “Maps of All Kinds”
When I think of how much I love to read, I think of Mom. In a family of nine children, there wasn’t much money to go around for books during the Depression. Mom, as the eldest daughter in her family, was called upon to watch her younger siblings while her parents milked the cows and worked their Wisconsin farm. But what would Mom have much preferred doing instead of babysitting? Reading! Continue reading “Seckatary Hawkins in Cuba”
I never realized how much I would love looking through baby board books, but when I went to Barnes and Noble this week, I was mesmerized. So far I have purchased only the three shown above. But by the time our grandbaby arrives Continue reading “Bookworm Time”
Driving along Highway 111 through the Palm Springs area, Tom and I would always look forward to stopping in at St. Margaret’s Cellar Door Thrift Shop to see if we could snag any deals. It was always my favorite thrift shop when we were on vacation in the area until just a few years ago when Continue reading “St. Margaret’s Cellar Door Thrift Shop”
One of my favorite books of all time has been Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I was introduced to it in my high school French class and I’ve read it many times since. Tom bought me a Continue reading “Taming Remi”
In my very first post back in early November, you might recall my mention of a lawyer/writer named Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason crime series. Besides writing, Gardner also spent a number of years, Continue reading “The Case of the Autographed Corpse”
Back in October, I was excited to learn that the Fox Cities Book Festival in northeast Wisconsin would be virtual. For an avid reader like I am, a virtual book festival in my hometown area seemed almost too good to be true. Over the course of a week, I watched a variety of interesting author/book presentations, many of them regional about the Midwest.
The one that caught my eye Continue reading “Dairylandia”