Cooler this morning...

Hi again:

The two pictures here are from Santiam Summerfest. The top picture is an old car at the old car show.

The second picture is the Gardner House, now a bread and breakfast. It used to be a flower shop but before that it was a house owned by the Gardners. It is old house, from the early 20th century. We have five old houses in Stayton. I will take some pictures of the others to post here.

It is finally cooling down here. Only to get to 90 degrees today. It is still hot.

What are your plans for the coming weekend?

We have a series of concerts starting Tuesday August 8 and on the next 2 Tuesdays after that. I plan on going with a lawn chair and a picnic.

I am going to publish this blog on the Kindle publishing page. It is for sale to Kindle owners for 99 cents. I don't think anyone will buy it but it will be nice to have it there.

I copy a lot of essays to my Kindle by emailing to Kindle, getting back an email then transferring it to my Kindle. I get the essays and articles from The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, and The New York Review of Books. Now I must find the time to read them.

I am finishing up the umpire book I told you about yesterday.

My next book will be You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall by Colin Ellard.

My next book will be How I Became a Famous Novelist, a novel that is suppose to be so funny one should not be drinking liquids while reading it.

Later today I am making iced coffee. I love the way it tastes.

Hope your last day of the work week goes well for you.

Steven

The heat wave continues...

Hi:

First let me rant about something. I was in the midst of a long posting here and some how I hit a wrong key cancelling my post. I could not revive it even though there is a "save now" feature on this page. I absolutely hate this. I do not know what key I hit by mistake but this is not the first time I did this.

Now to recall what I wrote earlier.

I am reading As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires. The author is Bruce Weber. He attends one of the two umpire schools in Florida. It is a very interesting book. Like I said before, I do not watch NFL football; I have not watched an NFL game in more than 20 years. Same goes for NBA games. I find more interesting things to do than to watch football or basketball on TV.

I do watch, however, baseball. I do not watch every baseball game on TV. I rarely watch the Cubs as the announcers for WGN are nothing but cheerleaders.

My favorite team is the Los Angeles Dodgers. I watched an HBO Sports special on the Boys of Flatbush, sad history of the Dodgers in Brooklyn. I found out the origin of the name of Dodgers. Taken from "trolley car dodgers" the phrase given to early 20th century people in Brooklyn.

The pictures here are from Santiam Summerfest last Saturday. The top picture is an old car, from 1923, with a body made of wood. There were over 200 old cars at this year's show. Last year people told me there were only about 25 cars there.

The second picture is a booth at Summerfest. I took it to show the variety of colors available for dog collars.

My knowledge of other Kindles is about to double. Right now I know of my Kindle and my dad's Kindle. A friend in Salem recently bought a Kindle on my recommendation. He is the one that had Steven Schwindt Publishing put his book of poems on the Kindle page.

I gave a demonstration of my Kindle yesterday at the Used Book store of Stayton library. One of my close friends plans to buy her husband a Kindle for his birthday.

So this makes four Kindles I know of now.

If anyone else who reads this blog has a Kindle then please write me at schwindt68@hotmail.com

106 here yesterday. Is this another sign of global warning? We never have a heat wave this long. Usually a high pressure system breaks down after three days and we get ocean breezes to drop the temperature 30 degrees. Now we are in the fifth day of 100+ degree weather.

There are things I wrote in the earlier post that was lost in cyberspace that do not show up here. I am more careful how I type now. (The one skill I learned in high school that is still with me is fast typing. I can still probably type 60 words a minute with QWERTY typing.)

Stay cool.

Steven

hot, Hot and HOT

Hello:

The two pictures here are of the Star Theater here in Stayton. This theater has been here for as long as I can remember. Every Friday, when I was in late grade school, we went to the movie there no matter what was playing.

Right now, the latest Harry Potter movie is showing there. I may go see it tonight or tomorrow.

At 10:00 this morning I am riding my bike to the local used bookstore here to demonstrate my Kindle to some of the employees here. I have 19 pages of material on my Kindle now, consisting of mostly books, one magazine, one blog and about 15 documents I transferred over to my Kindle for reading there. I told you in an earlier post how I transfer Word and PDF documents to my Kindle. I would much rather read them on the Kindle than on the computer screen.

For my friends in Oregon, how are you staying cool during this heat wave we have now. I notice it is 72 degrees on the coast and only 104 here. It is suppose to get down to 85 by next Tuesday and Wednesday. In the past a few hot days gave way to ocean breezes, dropping the temperature 25 to 30 degrees and even lower.

But like I said earlier, we should not complain about this hot weather. Just think what it is like here September to April: showers, mist, rain...our seven months of cooler and wetter weather.

Stay cool.

Steven

Hot this Tuesday morning

Good morning:

Warm enough for you? We in Oregon should never complain about the heat. We get only a few days of really hot weather. We get months and months of rain so this is a treat for us.

The picture here is a stream that runs through downtown Stayton. Very pretty but we call it the Salem Ditch. Dug in the 1930's to serve a grain mill just east of Stayton. There is a gate on the North Santiam River that lets water flow down this stream. It joins Mill Creek just west of Stayton.

We have another stream that runs though Stayton, what we call the Power Canal. Again, dug in far past it was for the power station in downtown Stayton. We cannot fish in the Power Canal but we can fish in the Salem Ditch.

Like the Salem Ditch, the Power Canal has a gate on the North Santiam River east of Stayton to let water flow through it.

I will take some pictures of the Power Canal to show you what it looks like.

Directly to the south of Stayton, on our southern border is the North Santiam River.

This is a short history of rivers of Stayton. Let me know if you have any questions about what I write here.

Steven

Hot enough????

Hi:

The picture here is one of the vendors at Santiam Summerfest today in downtown Stayton. This is a church group that sells nuts, obviously.

It is hot today, to get to triple digits today, tomorrow and Monday and continue hot to early next week.

We went to a breakfast at Pioneer Park here in Stayton. For $5.00 to get to eat pancakes, ham and eggs---as much as you can eat.

I took some pictures of Santiam Summerfest and at the park of the old cars there. Over the next few days I will post pictures from Summerfest.

I met a friend downtown today; she is with the used book store. Next Wednesday morning I am showing her and her husband my Kindle. She wants her husband to get one, so they will see my Kindle 1.

I have 16 pages of books on my Kindle now. What we need so desperately for the Kindle are folders in which to place books. Many of us have been waiting for Amazon to come up with a software fix that lets you create folders. More than half of the books on my Kindle were free from Amazon. Amazon Kindle has over 7,000 free books; most are older books with the copyright at an end.

I ended my subscription for The New Yorker as I was behind at least 12 issues. It comes out every week so I was falling behind on my Kindle as I was falling behind when I had a paper subscription to this magazine.

Now I discovered I can go to thenewyorker.com and copy an article I want to read over to Word, save it and then send it by email to schwindt68@free.kindle.com I get an immediate email back within seconds with the article in the format my Kindle can read. I attach my Kindle to my computer and download the file to it that way. This is a free service of Amazon. If I send it to schwindt68@kindle.com it comes back to by the whispernet service and shows up on my Kindle as soon as I turn it on with the whispernet also turned on. This used to be a free service also, but recently Amazon announced that each document costs 15 cents.

I am finishing Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America. This book is by Chris Hedges. Each chapter touches one of the commandments, starting with the first in which the author tells the story of his time in the Protestant seminary when he was stationed at an intercity church. His experiences there teach him to leave the seminary and forgo becoming a priest.

The chapter on murder (Thou Shall Not Kill) is about men who went to Vietnam and the troubles they had returning to America.

My next book is Leviathan by James Bron Huggins. I started this last night; it is a fast read with action taking place in the first chapter.

Hope you can stay cool over the next few days.

Steven

The weekend arrives....

Hi:

The picture here is a person cleaning fish on the Newport dock. I am taking the picture from above as she cleans rock fish from a recently-returned charter.

Tomorrow here in Stayton is Summerfest, the successor to the Bean Festival of old. The Bean Festival celebrated the pole bean and its prominence here in the 1950's, 1960's and early 1970's. Stayton Canning Company, now NORPAC, was the world's largest processor of pole beans. I picked pole beans from about age 10 to age 15. At age 16 I could start working in the cannery.

I will take my camera with me tomorrow as I tour Summerfest here.

I have been watching Torchwood: Children of the Earth on BBC/America this week. Tonight is the last episode of the miniseries. I understand that this may be Torchwood 4 or 5, with other series preceding it. I can download Torchwood episodes on iTunes, so I may try that tomorrow to see if I can find older series of this TV show from Britain.

It is suppose to get to triple digits over the next 3 days. We shall see...

Steven

Tuesday evening

Hi again:

The picture here is what you often see at a parade: a young pretty lady on a horse.

Tonight we went to Portland to give a CD of our book (Your Home-Based Business Guide) to a person at the Mona-Vie meeting. We made a quick presentation that our book on CD should be used for new customers in their initial package of information for the poor suckers whom they get to sign up for this multi-level scheme.

I am the publisher of two books on the Kindle now, under the publishing name of Steven Schwindt Publishing. The two books on the Kindle page are Your Home-Based Business Guide and Showing Up for Life: Poems. The first book is by Nolan Geraths and the second book is by Ron Clibborn. If you have a Kindle, you can find each of them on the Kindle Amazon page.

The book of poems are very interesting. Go to this site to see the introduction I wrote for the book as its publisher:


http://www.amazon.com/Showing-Up-for-Life-Poems/dp/B002GJTBOO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1248237582&sr=1-2

Ron is getting me more customers for my publishing company to help each of them get a book on the Kindle page. The book profit on each sale is split between Amazon and the author. The ratio is 65% to Amazon and 35% to the author.

I need to find better avenues to advertise each book. The only advertising I have done for each book is on the Kindle Yahoo website, putting posting on that message board for Kindle users. It has about 4,000 members, but we have sold only 3 books of the poetry and one book of Your Home-Based Guide. (I was the one who bought the tax book to see what it looked like on the Kindle).

Hope your week is going well.

Steven

Hello again

Hi:

We went to a small Schwindt reunion yesterday. Mostly it was the family of my uncle Joe, who died a few year ago. I know only a few of his children, my first cousins, and none of the first cousins once removed and first cousins twice removed. All of my first cousins are much older than me. They are the children of one of the oldest children in my father's family. My dad is the 13th of 14 children so I am younger by many years of my first cousins.

The picture here is one of the better ones from my 4th of July series.

I am almost finished with the King of Vodka. The revolution is almost there now. I do not know what is going to happen to the Smirnov boys who are destroying their father's company. It an excellent book.

Hope you enjoy the remaining weekend.

Steven

Weekend is here...

Hi:

The picture here is what you expect to see in Newport. I did not have my camera when the tide was at -3 feet. At that point there was no water under the bridge at all. Hard to imagine that, but I walked under the bridge arch that morning while clamming there.

I am more than half way through The King of Vodka. An excellent book, with a history of life under that last 3 Tsars and the coming Russian Revolution. I am at a point where the new Tsar comes to power after the death of his father. Nicholas II is quite young when he takes power, unaware of coming troubles. I recommend this book as an excellent biography of the founder of the world's biggest selling vodka.

I have over 25 books reserved at the Stayton Library. I sure hope they all do not come in at the same time. Unfortunately there are four books there for me already. I am not going there until early next week in order for me to get through King of Vodka and So Long As Men Can Breathe.

I try to read at least 100 pages a day, meaning I don't watch much TV at night.

I have not checked BookTV schedule yet for this weekend. I usually find one or two books there and I don't want to reserve any other books until I get some off my list there.

I have another book here, The Third Reich at War. This book is over 800 pages long. I may have to wait until winter to read this book.

I told you before we are part of a regional library here, covering the area Chemeketa Community College, all of Marion and Polk counties. I have three books from the Stayton library here and one from Salem library. Unlike the Eugene library I get books much faster here than in Eugene. I did read that Eugene wants to form a regional library. Did the bond issue pass there so Eugene can form a regional library system?

We watched Quantum of Solace on DVD last night (again from the Stayton library). It sure was a confusing movie, not nearly as good as the first one.

I miss China. Now that the new Harry Potter is out in theaters here for a week I could find it on DVD in China now. Street vendor copies are not good, as they cost about 4 rmb, which is 63 cents. I get better copies in brick and mortar stores, where they cost me 9 rmb, which is $1.42.

Hope you have a good weekend.

Steven

Good morning

Hi again:

The picture here is an electric car, in a sense. The Shriners came to Stayton for the parade.

I just finished Hannibal Rising, the story of how Hannibal Lector came about. An interesting story, much better than the successor to Silence of the Lambs, his book called Hannibal.

I am now reading The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire. He mirrors the end of the empire in Russia and the start of the Russian Revolution.

The next book I want to read is So Long as Men Can Breathe: the Untold Story of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

I usually like to read novels in the summer but these two books are so interesting I want to read each of them now.

I watch some of the hearing for the new Supreme Court justice. It is too much like "inside baseball" in that it is a bunch of lawyers asking stupid questions. It is just face time for the R's on TV. It is a foregone solution that she will be confirmed.

Time for some breakfast here.


Steven

Please consider signing up here...

Hi again:

Please consider signing up here as a member to follow me on this blog. In the upper right hand corner of this blog you will see a link to follow me. If you have a Google address, a Microsoft AIM address or a Yahoo name and address you can sign up here.

I do not know how many view I get of this blog as there is no way (I can find) to do this here, so unlike the 360.yahoo site that had an automatic counter on it.

Thanks if you decide to sign up here.

Steven

So cool again today

Hi:

This is an earlier view of the evening sky on the 4th of July.

So cool again today. Hardly seems like summer. Only getting to 71 today (21.6 for those in China reading this) for our high temperature.

Did you experience the thunder storms yesterday? It boomed and rained very hard here for over a couple of hours.

We got our fax machine working here today, finally. Let me know if you ever want to fax something for me and I will give you are fax number here.

Today my blog at 360.yahoo.com ends. No more entries there at all anymore. I made my last entry there a few weeks ago so nothing more shows up there.

I like this blog site better because I can see the picture I download to every posting here. At 360.yahoo I never could see the picture I downloaded there; all I could see was the link to the picture but not the picture itself.

Today I am getting a call from a friend in Lebanon who wants to buy a Kindle 2. Over the phone I will lead him through the process. I don't even know if he is registered on Amazon yet. If not then he will have to do that before he applies for a Kindle. Because the Amazon Kindle link is so long I am instead using http://kindle.lenedgerly.net/ as the site to go there. He can link up to Amazon there to buy his Kindle there.

Hope your week goes well.

Steven

Hi again

Hello again:

The one picture here is the crowd at the parade last Saturday. This is before the parade started. It is a small town parade, with candy thrown out by the parade participants. The other picture is from the local fireworks, one of my better pictures.

I am reading Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charlie Pierce. You can often hear Charlie on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me on NPR every Saturday at 11:00 am. You can hear NPR locally here at 91.5 FM or 550 AM.

In the book he recites plenty of examples of stupid people, starting with W. The first story is about the Creation Museum where he shows the operator there that Noah had two dinosaurs on the ark. Talk about stupid, but so many believe the world is only 6,000 years old. That is the stupidest comment I have ever heard. Dinosaurs left us 75 million years ago after having lived on earth for 125 million years. We humans have only been here about 3,000,000 years.

Get this book from your local library to see all of the other examples of idiots in America.

I do hope you all have a good weekend coming up.

Steven

Only in Oregon...

Hi again:

The 4th of July in Stayton.

The picture on the left is an old growth tree on a log truck. A very big tree.

The picture on the right was my attempt to take pictures of the fireworks later that evening. I have about 20 pictures of the fireworks, most of which are much better than this one. But I like this one as the movement gave this picture special treatment.

Only in Oregon do we have three days of very hot weather followed by a day like today where it will get only to 72 degrees, (22.22 Celsius for my readers in China). The heat wave breaks down with coast winds that hit us. We do not see this in China as the winds are always off shore unless a typhoon was coming toward us there. So even though Shanghai is a coast city it never gets winds off the coast like we do here.

We are heading to Portland today for a meeting telling how to get grants from the U.S. government. I wonder how much good it will be as I know how to get grants with all of the numbers I got from government agencies to apply for grants. I will not bore you with all of the acronyms of the names where I get the numbers.

Hope you enjoyed your 4th.

Steven

The 4th of July...

Happy 4th to you:

It is early here and cooler in this house.

The picture on the left above is a drawing on the building in Newport. The picture on the right are the live crabs you can buy on the dock in Newport. We got our tuna at this same place.

I like eat crab but not breaking it up to get the meat. Too much effort for such little bites...

Stayton is having a parade this afternoon so I will take my lawn chair to 1st Street to watch it. I will take a few pictures of it to post here.

I wonder how many people read this blog. Unlike the 360.yahoo blog, there is no counter here to see how many people view this blog.

Today I plan to read some more, House of Cards about Bear Stearns failure last year. I have this book on my Kindle so it is fun reading a book on it again.

BookTV on C-Span2 is three days this weekend, but with very books I have an interest in this time.

If you go to Amazon.com today (through July 6) you can get a free download of one of the Star Spangled Banner songs they have listed there. You must get to the MP3 download site; it is on the left column. There are at least 25 different versions of the national anthem there.

You need to type in this code to get the song downloaded for free: JULY4MP3. This gives you a free gift certificate to use to buy one of the songs listed. I bought Kronos doing the Jimmy Hendrix version. It was a mistake on my part. The music is loud and not nearly as good as the Jimmy version.

On History International I watched an hour long program last night searching for the Edmund Fitzgerald. I think the Gordon Lightfoot song one year after the sinking kept interest in this ship. I have the song as the first song on my Story Songs CDs. It is on the Story Songs III. Story Songs 1 is a audio tape I made about 25 years ago.

So I started with Story Songs II when I started putting the songs on CDs. I made it all the way to Story Songs IX. I have II, III and VII here with me here in the U.S. I think the remainder are still in China.

Stay cool again today. I hope you enjoy your 4th.

Steven

Where is this???

Hi again:

The picture is where? Do you know?

I am reading The Strain by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro. A plane comes to JFK in New York. After coming there is dark. Everyone is plane is dead, or so we think. This fiction is about vampires, but not like the good vampires in Twilight. These people has a vampiric virus. I am sure there will be a movie about this and you will then know how bad these vampires are. I am about 100 pages from the end now. I do not know how it will end. Reading on the back of the book I see this is the first book of three about this vampires.

It is getting hot today and tomorrow, in the upper 90's I hear.

I have about six books that do not in this library so I am going there to ask them to get these books. A few are in the Salem library but it does not send out new books to anyone except those living in Salem. It is the only library that does this in the regional library.

I am reading about one book a week now, down somewhat. TV is not good in the summer so I read instead. I finished the American Buffalo and liked it very much. I was not going to read The Strain, but got into it right away when I started it.

Looks like we will not be going to the coast on July 4, as too many people are there already. Good day to stay home to see the parade in Stayton.

Stay cool.

Steven