|
Diary Index
Home 6 April 2003 My Directory of Links Goes South Earlier I was perusing the collections of photographs stored online at GlobalAirPhotos.com. I especially like the images of Downtown Vancouver, B.C. They are spectacular views of the city from maybe a thousand feet high or so and are in color. I highly recommend a visit. I've added links to my Link Directory. See the new heading, Florida. You'll find a few more under Miscellaneous. www.AnythingSouthern.com offers a lot of neat stuff about plantations and the mansions on them and such. www.FloridaMemory.com offers a lot of historical documents. I'm always on the alert for new links. It doesn't take long to install one on the page. So keep logging on and you can watch the list grow. I find it rather comprehensive, for my own projects. I've been exploring the history of the Southern sates lately. Why not? I didn't really get any history in school as a kid, and I was born and raised in South Florida. The easy access to the Internet at the local library makes it convenient. Funny thing: What got me thinking about it was a showing on television of the movie "Gone with the Wind". (You know, in the novel, Rhett Butler says, "My dear, I don't give a damn." Apparently, Clark Gable improvised or a script writer added the "frankly".) I just finished reading Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This I hear is Twain's masterpiece. The back of the book depicts a photograph of Twain. The short bio says that he lost his wife and both daughters when they died of unspecified causes and that he became a bitter old man and died as such. I think I couldn't do it. If I wrote something like Finn, knowing I had done so wouldn't leave bitterness much of a purchase to gain on me. Ernest Hemingway wrote that this novel is the work from which all American Literature comes. (Actually I think he had one of his fictional characters make this remark.) I also just finished reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. It's hard to imagine an eighteen-foot swordfish. It's also hard to imagine eating raw fish, which Santiago does, but people do it. Sushi, for instance. A few facts: Hemingway died in 1961. He once had a job driving an ambulance. I wonder what he would have thought of the Internet? Presently I'm reading Piers Anthony's Up in a Heaval. It is a typical Xanth novel, I think, the most recent, and not bad. It contains a reference to Star Wars. A character in Mundania writes a letter that speaks of a "strange personage" who translates all languages and is named C-3PO. The author of the letter mails it to someone in Xanth. Also, a day or two ago, I noticed a new novel on the library shelf. It is by Charles Sheffield and I bring it up because the title is Resurgence, which is the title of my first archived fan fiction. Neat. Speaking of Science Fiction writers, I'm eagerly awaiting an article by Spider Robinson on the war in Iraq to appear at The Globe & Mail (online). I think today is day seventeen or nineteen of the war. I hope its absence means that he's not only writing one but also really putting some thought into it. He always writes a thoughtful column, but maybe this time he is taking special care. It's a hot topic, at any rate, of course, and many interpret the promotion of peace as treasonous, for some reason, this time. You can't be too careful what you say in public. |