Library Notes
February 27, 2004
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
On Valentine’s Day, when we had the biggest snow we’ve seen in years, I wondered there for a while if my much-lamented Rocky Mountains had finally decided to come to Texas. I keep wanting them to let me have just one mountain to look at. There are so many there, they would never miss it. It could just slide on down here and become a Texas Mountain. With the snow falling like it was, that mountain could have slid in here and just been there when the snow finally stopped. But I looked and looked and never did see one.
On Saturday morning, I took my yard stick out in the front yard and stood it up in a nice level place. It measured five and a half inches and then it snowed all day long, so add that amount that fell and we should have come up with six inches or better.
Suzie came down to attend the Gaither Homecoming show at the American Airlines Center in Downtown Dallas that week-end. Most of you will probably know who they are, different groups of singers and quartets that sing southern gospel.
We’ve attended one of their Homecoming Shows in Oklahoma City two years ago, Reunion Center last year and had been planning to attend this show for a few months.
Well, with all the snow falling and the temperature hovering in the 30’s all day, we were afraid we would not get there.
All day, Cheyenne kept saying "I want to see the Gaithers." And we’d explain that we might not be able to go, if the roads got ice on them. But, I assured him that we’d see them on my TV, because I have some videos I’ve taped off TV. His favorite singer and mine is a black man named Jesse Dixon, who sings so well and, of course, has a lot of soul. Well, Chey wanted to see Jesse. He has a little video called "The Fish Pond" that the Gaithers made and several of them are the voices for the animated sea fellers. Jesse is the big green frog that hops around and sings. And I have a cassette of Jesse singing that I play for him sometimes too.
Finally, at 4:30, with the snow slackening, the sky brightening and the weatherman telling us it was 38 degrees and the snow would stop, we decided to try it. We said to ourselves that if the roads were bad, we would turn around and come home.
We got there with absolutely no problem, thirty minutes late, but we were there. With no extra parking around anywhere, with that cold north wind blowing and snow everywhere, we gritted our teeth and paid $15.00 to park at the Center. That was almost as much as the admission price. You might say they had us over a barrel.
We got to hear those Gaithers and all their friends. We got to se Jesse and hear him sing. However, not nearly enough. Cheyenne even got to shake his hand out in the lobby where Jesse had a booth set up to sell his music. And, he got to tell him that he watches "The Fish Pond" and knew that he was the big green frog.
They sang for four hours. We ate our gigantic box of popcorn, drank our Dr. Peppers, patted our feet and clapped our hands. Suzie whistled, as Suzie can, and after four hours, hating for it to end, we gathered our coats and headed out into the cold and our $15.00 parking lot. For that price, a valet should have brought our car to us. But we had to hike a long-g-g-g way to find our car and then find the road home.
Cheyenne likes to sit in his car seat anytime and sing, and he was wound up after hearing Jesse and everyone for four hours. He likes "Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing", but doesn’t know all the words to it yet. He wanted Mama and Monee’ to sing it. Well, Mama and Monee’ don’t know all the words either. We started singing, with the words we knew, we hummed some, we sang some more, and finally stumbled our way through it. Cheyenne sat there a minute after we finished our singing and he said "I’m disappointed". Well! I guess we did not sound exactly like Jesse! We are just going to have to learn the rest of those words, so that we can sing on command or invitation and do a better job of it. But, how in the world can we dare to try and sing anyway, following four hours of the Gaithers and friends?
We got back home, still with no ice on the roads, and got to bed about 1:00 AM. The Gaithers will be back in the Dallas area next year about this same time. Maybe we won’t have a blizzard next year, though.
Ya’ll do remember "The Thorn Birds", don’t you, written by Colleen McCullough? I’m sure that you do. Well, she has a brand spanking new one out, entitled "The Touch". You’ll have to read it, and see if it comes anywhere near "The Thorn Birds". Let us delve into it and see what it’s all about.
"At the center is Alexander Kinross, remembered as a young man in his native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker’s apprentice and a godless rebel. But when, years later, he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his Scottish relatives quickly realize that he has made a fortune in the gold fields and is now a man to be reckoned with.
Arriving in Sydney after a difficult voyage, the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers to her dismay that he frightens and repels her. Offered no choice, she marries him and is whisked at once across a wild, uninhabited countryside to Alexander’s own town, named Kinross after himself. In the crags above it lies the world’s richest gold mine.
Isolated in Alexander’s great house, with no company save Chinese servants, Elizabeth finds that the intimacies of marriage do not prompt her husband to enlighten her about his past life – or even his present one. She has no idea that he still has a mistress, the sensual, tough, outspoken Ruby Costevan, whom Alexander has established in his town, nor that he has also made Ruby a partner in his company, rapidly expanding its interests far beyond gold. Ruby has a son, Lee, whose father is the head of the beleaguered Chinese community; the boy becomes dear to Alexander, who fosters his education as a gentleman.
Captured by the very different natures of Elizabeth and Ruby, Alexander resolves to have both of them. Why should he not? He has the fabled "Midas Touch" – a combination of curiosity, boldness and intelligence that he applies to every situation, and which fails him only when it comes to these two women."