5 Days a Stranger

A Student project from SCCC.

Death and Rebirth of Muscle Cars

This video by Jason Tamarro takes a look at the muscle cars of then and now. Jason just completed a communications degree at Ramapo College.

A Video Collection

This Video Collection
is hosted at LIVE DIGITAL.com and has a number of LOCAL features in it that are also posted in THIS blog. ME3Tv uses a number of video streaming services such as YOUTUBE and BLIP.TV and this one.

A Paintball Weekend

About an hour away in Pennsylvania, is Skirmish.com where large scenario paintball events take place. We were at this one in mid July. Worked out well. Our group was made up of people who do a lot of business with PREDATOR's DEN in Newton, NJ. It's a good place to get paintball supplies and to learn more about the game and the equipment. Our own photos and video clips from the event are in THIS WEB PHOTO ALBUM.

Guns of August

FROM JM: A superb writeup on the Pulitzer Prize Winner book:
I finally finished Guns of August and wanted to let you know how much Ienjoyed it. Since I read it immediately after The Proud Tower, I read over a thousand pages of straight Barbara Tuchman. Although her writing is over all excellent, I was still annoyed at a couple of aspects of it -- as I said before, her presumption that the reader is familiar with every important event and battle since the Greeks, her plus tendency to use obscure words when there are perfectly good words that would apply, her sometimes jumbled sentences where one has to figure out what pronoun refers to what, and most of all, her tendency to use foreign phrases assuming her readers to be multilingual. (I have familiarity with German and and was once fluent in French, and still many of the phrases were meaningless to me.) All this being said I found her writing generally delightful and much prefer it to straightforward declarative sentences -- in fact, after the first Barbara Tuchman, I tried to read a book I had on my list, Summer of 1914, and found
it totally unreadable because the language was overly simplistic and the writer seemed to have some kind of point he wanted to hit the reader over the head with. I try to read books were the author doesn't have an agenda..

Please don't take anything I said above as a serious criticism -- I loved the book and really want to thank you again for giving it to me. It took me a long time to read, because I kept having to consult maps and charts including but not limited to the ones that Tuchman supplied.. Also, I was constantly looking at the index to remind myself of who people were -- I really appreciated her inclusion of people's titles in the index without forcing the reader to go back to the page and search for it. I realize this is sounding like a book report, but when I'm on my voice program it's hard for me to keep it simple.

I must admit I was frustrated at the ending, as I was looking forward to reading the details of the Battle of the Marne, and considered reading next a book that would continue from where hers left off, but I am really eager to get back to Robert Massie, whose style I consider to be absolutely perfect and delightful. I'm going to start it tomorrow -- today I'm finishing a mystery that I started in the last chapters of Guns of August but I'm Impatient to finish it, as I can't wait to get to Castles of Steel.

You're so right about how fascinating reading about strategy and battles is and my fear of "gory details" being unfounded. In fact I've ordered a couple of books that show in detail the battles of World War I. My World War I library is approaching the size of those high formerly acquired about Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and the progressive movement in the first 20
years of the twentieth century. I've been reading history for just about a year and a half now and am still surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. I have a tendency to read several books about a period or person from different perspectives as opposed to reading a book or two and covering a lot more territory. Please forgive my verbosity -- I've just been so excited about these books that I can't contain myself, and I'm really dangerous when I have my voice recognition program running. Bottom line: thanks -- I really enjoyed Guns. Let me know if you've found your copy of Gary's book yet -- if not, Gary will gladly arrange to give you another copy. Hope you're enjoying the summer -- JM

Benedict Arnold

Just read Benedict Arnold's Navy by James l. Nelson. Interesting. A fairly easy read, as history tomes go. I never really understood that this action even took place, nor how critical to the ultimate success of the revolution it truly was.

Next I am off to Cradle of America-Four Centuries of Virginia History by Peter Wallenstein. We lived in Virginia (Charlottesville/Richmond/Newport News) from 1970 through 1983 and lived just up the road from Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg and traveled the state in various jobs.
Virginians on the whole tend to be an arrogant lot ("if my grandfather did not know your grandfather, my dear, you are NOT from around here!") but then 4 centuries of history will do that to you. (fom Tom R).

Local Kid Debuts Comic Act

Anger Management ... Moses flunked the PC approach. Here, a 10 year old comic does his first show at a local establishment. Add comments below this post.