Author

Publisher: Avery, January 5, 2012

Genre: Memoir

My Rating: B

Summary (from the publisher):

The captivating story of an ordinary bartender who’s changing the world through clean water.

Doc Hendley never set out to be a hero. In 2004, Hendley-a small- town bartender- launched a series of wine-tasting events to raise funds for clean-water projects and to bring awareness to the world’s freshwater crisis. He planned to donate the proceeds through traditional channels, but instead found himself traveling to one of the world’s most dangerous hot spots: Darfur, Sudan.

There, Doc witnessed a government-sponsored genocide where the number-one weapon wasn’t bullets-it was water. With limited funds, Doc realized that he couldn’t build new wells costing $10,000 a pop, but he could hire local workers to restore a damaged well for a mere $50 each.

He’d found his mission.Today, Doc and Wine to Water continue to help stricken peoples repair and maintain water-containment systems in places like Darfur, Cambodia, Uganda, and Haiti.

Doc is a regular, rough-and-tumble guy who loves booze, music, and his Harley- but he also wanted to help. Wine to Water is a gripping story about braving tribal warfare and natural disasters and encountering fascinating characters in far-flung regions of the world.

My Thoughts:

I have a thing about making sure my first book of the year is special. (Last year’s was The Help.) I picked this one because I wanted something inspirational. This story of a young man who took his skills to propel change in the world definitely inspired me.

Doc (a nickname, not a profession) Hendley may be called an “ordinary bartender” but what he is accomplishing is anything but. On top of that, he’s young – early 30s.

I liked reading about his childhood and how he took stock of his life. It was amazing how he came up with his idea and then, with no big fanfare, made it all happen. And that was just the beginning. How he took his idea and turned it into action is like reading a super adventure novel.

I also enjoyed learning about the clean water issues around the world. I take clean water for granted, and I’m embarrassed that I complain occasionally about it’s taste. All that is nothing compared to what is happening to the people Doc Hendley is helping. It’s a serious, wide-spread problem and Doc Hendley is making a difference. I recommend reading Wine to Water.

____________________________________________________

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of the book and to TLC Book Tours for allowing me to be a part of it all. To see other stops on the book tour, visit the schedule here: TLC Book Tours

But now that I’m retired this day is a bit different. Many fellow retirees like celebrating all year long. They love sending jokes via email with a variety level of humor.

I received some computer tech jokes that I thought you might appreciate. In celebration of National Fools Day, let me show you some incredible fools.

Tech Support: What kind of computer do you have?

Customer: A white one.

……………………………………….

Tech Support: Hello. How may I help you?

Customer:  Hi .. . . I can’t print.

Tech Support: Would you click on ‘START’ for me and . ..

Customer: Listen pal; don’t start getting technical on me. I’m not Bill Gates!!!

……………………………………….

Customer: Good afternoon, this is Martha. I can’t print. Every time I try, it says . . . ‘CAN’T FIND PRINTER’. I even lifted the printer and placed it in front of the monitor, but the computer still says it can’t find it!!!

……………………………………….

Customer: My keyboard is not working anymore.

Tech Support: Are you sure your keyboard is plugged into the computer?

Customer: No. I can’t get behind the computer.

Tech Support: Pick up your keyboard and take ten steps backwards.

Customer: Okay..

Tech Support: Did the keyboard come with you?

Customer: Yes.

Tech Support: That means the keyboard is not plugged in. Is there another keyboard?

Customer:  Yes, there’s another one here. Wait a moment please. .. …. . . . . Ah, that one does work. Thanks.

……………………………………….

Tech Support: What anti-virus program do you use?

Customer:  Netscape

Tech Support:  That’s not an anti-virus program.

Customer: Oh, sorry . . . Internet Explorer.

……………………………………….

Customer:  I have a huge problem! My friend has placed a screen saver on my computer . . . But, everytime I move my mouse, it disappears.

……………………………………….

Tech Support: How may I help you?

Customer:  I’m writing my first email.

Tech Support: OK, and what seems to be the problem?

Customer:  Well, I have the letter ‘a’ in the address, but how do I get the little circle around it.

……………………………………….

A woman customer called the Canon help desk because she had a problem with her printer.

Tech Support: Are you running it under windows?

Customer: No, my desk is next to the door, but that is a good point. The man sitting next to me is by a window, and his printer is working fine!

Anybody recognize themselves? The jokes are funny because we all at some point have done something similar. However, there is no way in the world I’d want a Tech Support Job. The Lord bless them all.

HAPPY FOOL’S DAY

This year, while we are here, my goal is to see how these vines go

from bare vine to leaves and grapes and then turn into wine.

I’ve actually been following this one particular plant. Here’s what it looked like a month ago.

As we were driving along the road two days ago we could immediately see the changes. What a difference a month makes. All along the lower edges of the leaves we could see a section of dark colored grapes.

The grapes are still very small but they have changed into a very dark blue – almost black hue.

Aren’t they beautiful?

It hardly ever rains during the summer months. To keep the vines moist, the vineyard keepers install “drip lines” along the bottom of the vines. Set to timers, the water flows through these pipes and slowly drips a drop of water ever few seconds. It’s just enough to keep the vines looking lush and the grapes filling with juice.

I don’t know what we’ll find next month when we look again at “my” vine. But it must surely be getting closer to harvest time. I hope you’ll join me  next month as we take a look.

Kay of My Random Acts Of Reading

Esme of Chocolate and Croissants

Barbara of Views From The Countryside

They have all been notified. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Star Gazing. I’m sure they will too.

If the Church Were Christian by Phillip Gulley

Best Food Writing 2009 edited by Holly Hughes

What made March so great was some very impressive writing.

I started off with Nora Roberts (Vision In White). She has given so many hours of pleasure over the years and it was enjoyable to spend time with her new characters.

And then I met Joseph Monniger with Eternal on the Water. If you haven’t read any of his work, I’d recommend starting with this one. His writing touched all of my senses.

Phillip Gulley (If the Church Were Christian) was a new writer to me as well. This man touched both my brain and my spirit. I have more of his books on order. He made me think and then think some more. I like that. I’m still talking about what he said.

I know I read that really great spiritual book – but – I have to confess my favorite writer this month was Michael Connelly. I loved the character of Mickey Haller, the defense attorney who seems like a shyster but deep down he has an ethical heart. I’m looking forward to spending more time with him. (Lincoln Lawyer)

What’s up for April? Oh, there are so many books I’m looking forward to. Here’s three:

First is a TLC book tour for The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees. It’s a fictional account of a time in Alcott’s life as imagined by McNees. I’ve only treated myself to a few pages but I’m raring to get going.

My book group is reading City of Thieves by David Benioff. It’s a story set in Leningrad during World War II. Looks very good.

I’m also going to join an online book club, the Classic Reads Book Club, and read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith. The club members will be reading and discussing it over the next three months. I read this book over fifty years ago but I still remember Francie and those Brooklyn streets. Visit the website if you feel like joining in on this read-a-long. I think it’s going to be great fun chatting about this one.

The big event in April is the Read-A-Thon. It’s next weekend. I’m working on my strategy for that day. I hope you’re planning to join in.

I trust you’ve also had a good reading month and that you have a nice big stack for next month.

Fiction: 3

Non-Fiction: 6

This is an exact duplicate of January. I just seem to love those non-fiction books.

Challenges completed: 0

Challenges started: 0

Favorite character I met during the month:

It’s a tie!!

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the private investigator (researcher) Britten in the graphic novel Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry. I’m sure the author meant this as a serious noir crime novel but I found Britten to be funny and a very likable character.

My heart went out to the young Ethel Waters who was never loved or cared for as a child. Then my admiration grew for her as she developed into a magnificent woman who shared her amazing voice with the world. [From His Eye Is On the Sparrow.]

What’s ahead for March?

I’m very happy to be hosting two book-tours this month. One is for Pump Up Your Book Tour with the new mystery, Devil’s Food Cake by Josi Kilpack.

The other tour is with TLC Book Tours with a non-fiction title, If The Church Were Christian by Phillip Gulley. I can’t wait to tell you about them as well as a few others I’m anxious to read.

I hope you have also had a good month with your reading.

by Alice Adams

This short story was told in the first person and the reader never knows her name. I call her Alice after the author’s name. It felt as if this really was Alice’s story.

When Alice was ten-years-old her mother, Margot, moved them both to North Carolina because the ouija board said to do it. Margot opened an antiques business on the side porch. and set about creating a new life for herself. Alice was sent off to take walks around their new little town and then given a new bicycle to explore even further. Occasionally, Alice went along with Margot to buy new antiques. She fell in love with the area.

“I was excited by the novelty of the landscape. The red clay banks that led up to the thick pine groves, the swollen brown creeks half hidden by flowering tangled vines. Bare, shaded yards from which rose gaunt, narrow houses. Chickens that scattered, barefoot children who stared at our approach.”

As Alice explored the area on her bike she next fell in love with a beautiful house on a hill. The occupants, a mother and daughter her age, were the opposite of her own mother. So was the house.

“Inside, the house was cluttered with odd mixtures of furniture. I glimpsed a living room, where there was a shabby sofa next to a pretty, “antique” table. We walked through a dining room that contained a decrepit mahogany table surrounded with delicate fruitwood chairs. . . Books overflowed from rows of shelves along the walls. I would have moved in at once.”

During that summer in the early nineteen-forties Alice was at that house so often she began to feel like a member of the family. And, as a member of the family, she began to see why the mother was always so sad and vulnerable. She saw a side of the often-absent father not normally seen by outsiders.

The story felt like a long letter from a friend who was explaining to me the circumstances and outcome of childhood friends. If it was a letter from a friend, my friend is a beautiful, descriptive writer as I’m sure you’ve seen in these quotes. A short story but powerfully beautiful writing.

About the author: Alice Adams (1926-1999) has written over a hundred short stories and ten novels, and has received numerous awards.

This story first appeared in The New Yorker in 1975. I read it in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison.

For more Short Story Monday, visit John at Book Mind Set.

In this case – yes. Although we are each alone at our computers, it was great knowing that I was not the only one devoting this much time to improving my blog. Having people stop by and tell me they noticed my improvements was definitely the fiesta part of the weekend.

A few unexpected things happened this weekend too – a couple of things that weren’t on the list. One was to learn some new skills. Thanks to Jackie at Farm Lane Books I learned to back up my blog. She also tipped me off to an alphabetizing plug-in. While in the plug-in world I discovered a plug-in for Top Commenter (see left sidebar) and a couple others I didn’t know I needed.

It took longer than I thought to accomplish my tasks. Why does that always happen to me? That meant I didn’t get to participate in many of the mini challenges or visit as many as I wanted.

But the bottom line is still the bottom line, i.e., did I accomplish what I wanted to this weekend? The answer is almost everything. Below is my original list plus a couple of things added in. I still have a few things to finish up but I’m going to schedule those for the week ahead. For the rest of the weekend it’s time to relax, read and have a different kind of fun.

1. Fix my header picture
2. Clean out and organize my sidebars
3. Fix my ‘About Me’ page
4. Add Review Policy/Disclosure Statement
5. Find and install a plug-in for alphabetizing my booklist – still need to use it
6. Add ‘Book List’ (alphabetical by genre)
7. Move 2009 & 2010 Reading List to a subdivisions of Book List
8. Fix My Challenges w/subdivisions for Agatha
9. Create a Favorite Places page – still need to do the  links
10. Create a Food/Recipe page –  still need to complete the page
11. Make sidebar buttons for books, challenges, food
12. Check my stats on Google Analytics
13. Check my blog rating
14. Update book reviews on LibraryThing and Goodreads
15. Catch up writing book reviews
16. Clean up my categories on book review posts
17. Brainstorm post ideas for the next month
18. Install plug-in for Top Commenter
19. Back up the blog

Now I need to work on the behind-the-scenes tasks. I’m going to keep going strong on Saturday to make that happen. I haven’t had a chance to visit other blogs so, hopefully, I’ll have a chance to go blog-hopping Saturday afternoon. I’d like to enter some of the mini-challenges as well.

But first I have to work on my list. Here’s a copy of my updated list:

1. Fix my header picture
2. Clean out and organize my sidebars
3. Fix my ‘About Me’ page
4. Add Review Policy/Disclosure Statement
5. Find and install a plug-in for alphabetizing my booklist
6. Add ‘Book List’ (alphabetical by genre)
7. Move 2009 & 2010 Reading List to a subdivisions of Book List
8. Fix My Challenges w/subdivisions for Agatha
9. Create a Favorite Places page
10. Create a Food/Recipe page
11. Make sidebar buttons for books, food
12. Check my stats on Google Analytics
13. Check my blog rating
14. Update book reviews on LibraryThing and Goodreads
15. Catch up writing book reviews
16. Clean up my categories on book review posts
17. Brainstorm post ideas for the next month

Thanks to everyone who has been cheering me on.

I’m taking a few days off from blog posting so I can work on my blog. I have a whopper of a list, probably more than I can get done in the time period. That’s how most of my Things To Do lists go. But I’ve found that if I don’t write it down, it probably won’t even be thought about, much less get done. So, here I go with my giant list.

• Fix my header picture
• Clean out and organize my sidebars
• Fix my ‘About Me’ page
• Add Review Policy/Disclosure Statement
• Find and install a plug-in for alphabetizing my booklist
• Add ‘Book List’ (alphabetical by genre)
• Move 2009 & 2010 Reading List to a subdivisions of Book List
• Fix My Challenges w/subdivisions for Agatha
• Create a Favorite Places page
• Create a Food/Recipe page
• Make sidebar buttons for books, food
• Check my stats on Google Analytics
• Check my blog rating
• Update book reviews on LibraryThing and Goodreads
• Catch up writing book reviews
• Clean up my categories on book review posts
• Brainstorm post ideas for the next month

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