Appalachian Mountain Dreams

First Friday Musing

Have you ever had the experience of someone else’s words bringing forth a mind picture so vivid you could not disregard it? Even when the image the writer was invoking had nothing to do with your mind picture? Well it just happened to me reading Colleen’s opening quote over at Loose Leaf Notes . She had this passage quoted: Two

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UnSATisfactory

UnSATisfactory: “THE DRAMATIC decline in SAT scores announced yesterday raises the issue of whether there is something wrong with the new test or, even more worrisome, with the lessons being taught in high schools.” Could it be that the test has run up against “the Test”. Wouldn’t it be right about now that the teaching to the test in “no

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Friday Musing

This caught my eye this morning for no particular reason… The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media: “On this day in 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel. In twenty-one hours and forty-five minutes, he swam from Dover, England, to Calais, France. Nine years later, he drowned in Niagara Falls, trying to swim

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Heat, Heat and More Heat

I was out last night with hopes of seeing some meteors. About the only thing I saw in the night sky other than the dim stars was a few airplanes. Living in the Houston Galveston metropolitan area the nights never get that clear. The thing over-riding every other sense though was the heat…you could literally smell the heat in the

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The Blog of Henry David Thoreau: Thoreau’s Journal: 12-Aug-1854

The Blog of Henry David Thoreau: Thoreau’s Journal: 12-Aug-1854: “Thoreau’s Journal: 12-Aug-1854On Conantum saw a cow looking steadily up into the sky for a minute. It gave to her face an unusual almost human or wood-god, faun-like expression, and reminded me os some frontispiece to Virgil’s Bucolics. She was gazing upwards about 45°. There were only some downy clouds in

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