 |
| HOME DONI WHO? MUSIC BOOKS PHOTOS PHILOSOPHY CONTACT WEBMAIL LOGIN | |
| 3/10/2010 1:53:40 PM EST | |
| Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before. -- Steven Wright |
Tales From 3:16 Depot Preview  Preview From "Tales From 3:16 Depot Street - A Carpenter's Best Friend"
As a child, I used to spend most of my summers with, and later we lived with Mr. John Raymond and Mrs. Ruth Erlene Shedd, lovingly known to all as Mama and Papa Shedd. Mama and Papa lived in the small, community of Abbeville, Georgia, which to this day is about as country as you can get. About the only historical claim to fame that Abbeville Georgia ever had was that the first all-female university in the state was founded there in the late 1800’s. When I, my Mother and my two brothers went to live with them in the summer of 1965, Mama, Papa, two of my aunts and one of my uncles, lived in a little house on a plot of land that belonged to Papa and three of his siblings. Although I have very fond memories of the time we spent in that little red-shingled house, it wasn’t very long before Papa realized that the house was much too small to accommodate us all. Without anyone else suspecting what he was up to, Papa went house hunting and it wasn’t very long before he made the announcement that we would be moving. The place we were moving into was a big old, two-story house at 316 Depot Street, which was about two miles closer to downtown Abbeville than where we were. The house was the old dormitory building for the women’s college, which had been located right across the street back at the turn of the century, and provided plenty of room for a typical, large Southern family. 316 Depot Street was a big southern style house, with eight bedrooms, four downstairs and four upstairs. There were long, wide hallways that ran the length of the house and all of the rooms were large, with great, high ceilings, and a stone fireplace in every one. There was a porch on the ground level, as well as a big balcony porch on the second floor. Both of the porches ran the full width of the front of the house. My bedroom window opened out onto the upper porch and along with a large pecan tree growing strategically at the corner of the house, served as an entry and exit escape route for my friends and me during our late night forays through the streets of Abbeville. Although the college had burned to the ground decades before, the metal room numbers were still on the doors of all of the bedrooms when we moved in, so we just left them there. To this day, Abbeville is the county seat of Wilcox county Georgia, but is still not much more than a hole in the road when traveling south on US route 129. Some of my fondest memories are the times that I spent getting up early in the morning, “before the chickens is woked up”, as Mama Shedd would say, to go and ‘help’ Papa at whatever carpentry job he was doing at the time. Papa was an extremely handy man around town, and at some time or other had done all kinds of work for just about everyone in Wilcox county. Everybody knew that if you had any type of carpentry job that you wanted done the right way, and for a fair price, my Papa was the man to call. One thing I remember Papa saying to me, time and time again when we were on the job was; “A crowbar is a carpenters best friend”. It wasn’t very long before I realized exactly what he was talking about. Papa showed me how to use a crowbar for just about every task imaginable on a carpentry job. I’ve used it for demolition work, lifting, hammering, pulling nails, notching out dove-tail fittings, helping me on and off of roofs, and for killing snakes, rats, and various other undesirable critters, underneath and around the places we were working. I also came to realize that a crowbar was a pretty good equalizer when it came to business dealings. Now as far as I know, in all the time that Papa Shedd made a living as a carpenter, he never signed any type of contract with anyone. Papa always told us that if you couldn’t trust a man’s word, and a handshake in a business deal, then the deal probably wasn’t worth doing. Papa didn’t talk a lot about the money he earned, and he told me that only on a few occasions did he ever have any problems in collecting his due. One of those times I was witness to. It was the time that Papa Shedd had made a deal, and shook hands, and he and I had done some work for old Mr. Woolfe. After the work was finished, Mr. Woolfe tried to pull a deal change on Papa. That, as it turned out, was not a good idea at all. Click here to order your copy of Tales From 3:16 Depot Street. |
|
Here is information about some of my favorite books. Check them out for yourselves and enjoy. Oh yeah, and buy my book...
|
|
Michael Crichton - State of Fear  Michael Crichton has always used the latent but, in his view, underappreciated dangers associated with scientific advancement as a theme in his books (microbiology in The Andromeda Strain, genetic engineering in Jurassic park, and so on).
In State of Fear he reverses field and uses the incorrectly perceived threats of environmental disaster as the underlying impetus for a novel. In Crichton's view, the whole global warming argument is false. His view is that environmentalism has degenerated into a quasi religious system devoid of scientific veracity. Thus, the proponents of the global warming hysteria are pushing faith over fact, many of them have lost their moorings and the inevitable result is a grand conspiracy. At the heart of this conspiracy is Nick Drake, head of a radical environmentalist group. Outraged that a significant source of funding has been closed by the donors getting Drakes science debunked by a MIT professor, drakes sets out on a murderous course that is designed to both do away with his detractors and enemies while concomitantly creating a profound state of fear about global warming among the public. As is generally the case with Crichton, an avalanche of scientific data is imparted in Crichton's usual informative yet entertaining manner. Many will debate the validity of Crichton's "science" as regards the issue of global warming. As Crichton so deftly displays in this novel, this issue has become more political than scientific in many ways and there's no reason this novel won't be analyzed in that light. The story has all the traditional strengths and weaknesses of a Crichton novel. Crichton is an accomplished technician and that comes through in this novel. It can justifiably be called a page turner. However, the methodology of using characters to do the education creates a scenario wherein the characters become somewhat robotic and predictable, not truly fully fleshed out human beings. However, that's quibbling. This is a very fine novel. I suspect one's enjoyment will be colored to a great degree with how strongly one leans to or away from Crichton's premise. That aside, this ranks as one of his better works. As some of may know, Michael Crichton recently died, after a long and very private battle with cancer. We will miss him, his intelligence, and his many talents greatly. May he rest in peace. |
Ann Rice - The Vampire Chronicles  This is a box set of the first four books of Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles series. Her works are immensely popular and have spawned 1 1/2 movies (calling Queen Of The Damned even half a movie is being extremely generous!) and many many sequels. The vampires in this universe are elegant beings of the night who are very articulate and this translates into very interesting and inspiring story telling, typically in the first or second person. This may bother some but once you get used to Rice's style, it could best be described as a dreamy flow of the subconscious and it works well for the series. The books take you all over the USA and much of Europe as well and Rice does a great job of creating these vampires that have very human qualities.
The series mainly centers around the title character Lestat. Lestat is a fascianting study of the flawed uber-vampire who does what he wants and refuses to conform to the vampire "rules". He knows he is not perfect but realizes the only way to live through immortality is to enjoy oneself whenever one can. The supporting cast has their fair share of interesting characters and the personalities of the vampires are really the heart of the series. A couple of things Rice does makes her vampire world so fascinating. The vampires act as their own little microsociety with rules and taboos that are well thought out and extremely interesting. For example the longer a vampire exists (I guess "lives" isn't really correct when speaking of the un-dead) before creating another vampire determines how powerfull that new vampire will be. There are many issues concerning imortality which Rice explores through nearly all of the main characters of the series. Vampires have extremely strong emotional bonds with their own fledglings (when you create another vampire they become your fledgling), and are aware of them for indefinite periods of time and over great distances. The irony of Rice's Vampire Chronicles is that they are indeed based around love stories, horrible, beautiful love stories that tell of the torture and pain of those who are destined to and cursed by imortality. This collection is only the first four books, however, all of the Rice collections are awesome. She is one of my favorite authors. |
The Fair Tax Book - Neal Boortz, Congressman John Linder  Wouldn't you love to abolish the IRS ... Keep all the money in your paycheck ... Pay taxes on what you spend, not what you earn ... And eliminate all the fraud, hassle, and waste of our current system?
Then the FairTax is for you. In the face of the outlandish American tax burden, talk-radio firebrand Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder are leading the charge to phase out our current, unfair system and enact the FairTax Plan, replacing the federal income tax and withholding system with a simple 23 percent retail sales tax on new goods and services. This dramatic revision of the current system, which would eliminate the reviled IRS, has already caught fire in the American heartland, with more than six hundred thousand taxpayers signing on in support of the plan. As Boortz and Linder reveal in this first book on the FairTax, this radical but eminently sensible plan would end the annual national nightmare of filing income tax returns, while at the same time enlarging the federal tax base by collecting sales tax from every retail consumer in the country. The FairTax, they argue, would transform the fearsome bureaucracy of the IRS into a more transparent, accountable, and equitable tax collection system. Among other benefits, it will: Endorsed byscores of leading economists and supported by a huge and growing grassroots movement, the FairTax Plan could revolutionize the way America pays for itself. In this straight-talking book, Neal Boortz and John Linder show you how it would work—and how you can help make it happen. |
J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter Collection  The Harry Potter series is one of my favorite all-time book sets. J. K. Rowling develops the characters extremely well, and you feel as if you know each one, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the questionable.This collectors box set contains all seven of the books in the series and will be a great gift for anyone. I enjoyed each installment of the series and could hardly wait for the next one to hit the shelves. Although the books are each very long, they are such a good read, that you absolutely don't get bogged down in aimless story lines, and you're done with the books before you know it. I, along with most of the Harry Potter fan base, were very sorry to finish the last book and would love to see more out of Ms. Rowling concerning Potter and friends. We're all looking forward to the coming installments of the Harry Potter movies to be made. All of the movies have been satisfying, however, for us avid readers, the books are the only way to feel, hear, see, smell, and experience the true world of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and all the others at Hogwarts. |
The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien  Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
'The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them.' Sunday Times 'A story magnificently told, with every kind of colour and movement and greatness.' New Statesman 'Masterpiece? Oh yes, I've no doubt about that.' Evening Standard 'Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the 20th century.' Sunday Telegraph 'A story magnificently told.' New Statesman 'An extraordinarily imaginative work, part saga, part allegory, and wholly exciting.' The Times 'A grand piece of work in both conception and execution.' Daily Telegraph |
Tales From 3:16 Depot Street - Doni Helms  Tales From 3:16 Depot Street is a collection of short stories, based upon the author's childhood memories of growing up in the Deep South. Although the 60's and 70's were tumultuous times, with racism still prevalent, the Vietnam War touching many of our lives, and the country torn between generational differences, it was a wonderful, memorable period, and in retrospect, a much simpler era.The characters, places, and situations that are depicted in these stories could very well be extracted from the memories of all who might have lived back then, and in some cases they are timeless. Many of the character's names in these tales are fictitious, in order to protect the innocent, but the stories are all based upon real people, real places, and real situations. People from the area will undoubtedly know exactly who some of these people are and will remember them, as well as some of the things that these stories depict. Some may remember the facts differently, but that's always the way memories are. These stories tell of life, love, laughter and pain, friendships, and the coming of age for a group of family and friends. They tell of situations that could have been disastrous, and the life-lessons that were learned, and taught, by those of us who survived them. Some of the people in these stories have already left this earthly existence, and we miss them. From "A Carpenter's Best Friend" to "The Rumor Mill" these tales will make you laugh and perhaps cry, reflect and perhaps muse, reminisce and perhaps recall your very own memories from another childhood in another place and time. |
|
Famous Quotes And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. -- Abraham Lincoln |
|
HOME DONI WHO? MUSIC BOOKS PHOTOS PHILOSOPHY CONTACT WEBMAIL LOGIN |
|
| ©Copyright DoniHelms.com 2006, 2009 - All Rights Reserved | |