utenzi

Sometimes when you read a book description you wonder just what demographic the book is aimed at. That's what happened when I saw the blurb about a book by Linda Laird titled The American Grain Elevator: Function and Form . Here's the blurb: NEW BOOK! Explains the who, what, where and why of these sometimes massive structures that puzzle the traveler and are mostly taken for granted by the locals. The 111 pp. paperback, with over 150 regional illustrations, tells the story of how grain storage began, elevators were invented, who owns them and how they work. Includes sections on a variety materials used in the Midwest from the 1800s to today; with many historic photos and 86 full color examples of an important building form that is integral to our American heritage and agricultural economy. I just have to wonder how large an audience there is for this book. For all I know, it could be huge and untapped---I've not seen many grain elevator books around---but it's not...

Every once in a while when I read the description of a book the idea pops into my head that the writer was following a definite strategy for marketing the book. Case in point, today I read the description of a recent release, Joshua's Revenge, by Richard Wren. The blurb goes: Yosemite Park bears are being killed and eviscerated for their body parts to be used in Chinese medicines. Joshua, a Yosemite Ranger, is assigned the task of finding the gangs behind the killings after his best friend, another Ranger, is murdered by one of the bear killing gangs. The trail leads from the backwoods of Yosemite to the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he’s faced with beatings, murders, kidnappings, and gang warfare. Fortunately, Joshua was born with superior athletic attributes and his well kept secret of being a world champion Oriental Martial Arts expert is put to the test. When his wife is captured and tortured, he must use trickery, misdirection and imagination, as...

 This is what happens when a guy tries to repair some pants with a sewing machine. Havoc! In my defense I wasn't trying to be neat, nor tidy, not even pretty. I just wanted to keep my bits from dropping through the bottom of my pants. You see, the entire crotch was torn out of these poor cargo pants. It started off with one small tear, as these things usually do. But then it got bigger.  And then a tear started on the other side of the seam and that tear kept getting bigger. Soon they started looking like chaps---they covered my legs but little else. So this was my solution. I cut some cloth out of an old t-shirt and sewed it over the torn material of the pants. The pants' material was so thin it couldn't handle the repair on its own. Admittedly it'd have been a lot better had I used brown thread for the repair but I don't use my sewing machine very often and it's a miracle I did this without sewing my fingers to the pants.  Here's a smal...