Twelve year old underachievers Ethan and Julius form their own club called "Losers Inc."but everything changes when beautiful student teacher Grace Gunderson arrives at their school.
Suddenly, Ethan will do anything to impress Ms. Gunderson including reading the very long "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, befriending poetry loving Lizzie Archer, and entering the school science fair. Losers inc. is a thoughtful and gentle book with plenty of positive messages for the reader.
I have always loved reading stories of strange and unusual events. "The Strangest of Strange" by Phyllis Raybin Emert is a good collection of stories about lost treasure, ESP (extra sensory perception) ghosts and other odd happenings.
For centuries, Mount Rainier stood quiet, but over the years acidic water flow within the volcano weakened the rock that supported the massive summit of the mountain.
On one ordinary Monday afternoon, a massive earthquake shook the mountain and the weakened summit collapsed. Millions of tons of mud, snow, ice, and rock poured down the slopes of Rainier.
The earthquake did considerable damage to the roads and buildings of the small town of Orting which was directly in the path of the mud flow now moving at 40 miles an hour.
Thanks to an early warning system, Orting authorities immediately began an evacuation, but it wasn't easy moving thousands of residents away from the danger on damaged and already congested roads.
A few miles to the west was the much larger city of Puyallup. Even in the best of times, Puyallup has heavy traffic, now panicked Orting residents created instant traffic jams.
Less then an hour after the earthquake, the mud flow reached Orting crushing everything in its path. The city of Puyallup was now chaos with everyone trying to flee at once. Some people simply left their cars and started running away from the mud flow.
After burying Orting, the lahar slowed somewhat, but it still had enough energy to obliterate downtown Puyallup. The mud flow continued on until it reached the Port of Tacoma and finally stopped not far from the Puget Sound.
A swath of destruction more then 50 miles long and 20 miles wide was left by the Lahar.
I watched a good movie the other day on TCM titled "Mystery Street" The story begins when a skeleton is found on a Cape Cod beach. Detective Morales (Ricardo Montalban) uses early crime forensic techniques and good detective work to identify the skeleton and the killer.
I really enjoyed Mystery Street. The Boston area is rarely presented in movies and it was nice to see Ricardo Montalban in an early performance. There are also some good character actors in the film including Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric and too greedy landlady and Betsy Blair who later appeared in "Marty" with Ernest Borgnine.
Sometime in the early 1900s, young Josh lives in a blended family consisting of his Grandfather, Uncle Charlie, Aunt "Lou", and his newly arrived Great Grandfather.
Josh loves the way things are and is upset to learn that his Grandfather and his Uncle are trying to match up his Aunt Lou with a good husband. (This custom may seem a little odd by modern standards, but it was fairly common in earlier days.)
Josh sets out to sabotage every suitor that comes to call on his Aunt Lou, but he is not entirely successful.
I have enjoyed every Janette Oke novel that I have read. Her stories remind me of good times with my own family.
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