Katherine Kellgren

In the past several months (it has probably been years now!), I have become rather addicted to audio books. I have had a library subscription with the Yuma County Library (they allowed me to use it for free as long as we spent part of the winter there - this year I paid to be a remote user). They have a large collection of audio books, and I have been checking them out, downloading them to my phone, and listening whenever I want. In many cases, the reader makes the book almost more like a radio drama than just reading the book.

I cannot remember how I got started on a series that I listened to in the past couple of months - the first book in the series is "Bloody Jack: Being An Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship's Boy" -- the title doesn't even sound like something that I would look at twice, but something got me interested, and I downloaded the first book from the library. The reader of the book was Katherine Kellgren. Oh my, I was hooked! The books are probably more targeted toward teens or young readers (though they are pretty long, so I don't know). Katherine not only does all sorts of accents as she reads the books, with different voices for the main character (a teenage girl) versus the boys that she is on the ship with, and men and women with whom she interacts... but the books also frequently use song - sea shanties, or folk tunes (Mary "Jacky" Faber is from London, and the songs are sometimes Scottish or Irish) - and she sings them - not only does she sing them, but she sings them in the different voices - Mary's voice, or an older guy that she is performing with at one point when they are working to make money in a pub in Boston. Katherine is so creative!

At the end of one of the books, Katherine interviewed the author, L.A. Meyer. I was surprised to find out that the author was male - I don't know why, but because of his writing about a teenage girl, I figured a female author. He mentioned in the interview that her audiobook versions had produced an additional audience, and one of the reviews I read on Amazon essentially said, "the books are okay, but the audiobooks are outstanding!"

In the interview, the author mentioned that he had already written the last book in the series, though he didn't know how many books there would be... the "last" book was written. I'm thinking that he wrote the last book because he knew that he was ill and, sure enough, the last book was published after his death.

I found an interview of Katherine at an audio books event talking about one of the Bloody Jack books and how she kept the voices of the characters straight from book-to-book recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_M0W1ySvt4
I was looking for the interview between L.A. Meyer and Katherine, but haven't found a free version of that...

I enjoyed her performance in these books so much that I went to the Yuma Library looking for other books that she read. I have listened to some by other authors - they are good, but not as good as the Bloody Jack series. One of the series had 6 books, and when I got to the 6th book, it was a different reader... I thought, "Why would they have changed the reader?" Well, at the end of that book, there was again an interview between the reader and the author, and it came out that Katherine had died before book 6 was published. The author said that she called Katherine when the 6th book was done, and Katherine asked her to read the beginning of the book to her, which the author did. When she got to a place in book 6 where the "school song" was sung (something also done in the earlier books), the author said that Katherine joined her in singing the school song as they were on the phone together - the characters in the books being "friends" as Katherine viewed it.

If any of my blog readers have audiobooks that they would recommend, I would be interested to know it. I don't buy audio books (I'm too cheap), but, as I said, Yuma library has a lot, and I've recommended some additional ones to them which they have acquired, so if I know of a good one, I'll try to find it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Kellgren

Differences in rules...

I was thinking about the challenges of differing rules between campgrounds and how hard it is to work within the rules. The only place that I really notice this is in the DFW area, because this is the only place that we really stay for a length of time, and move between campgrounds that are near each other. There are 3-4 campgrounds that we have used here:

• Lake Park, in Lewisville
• Willow Grove, in Lake Dallas
• Hickory Creek, in Hickory Creek
• Pilot Knoll, in Highland Village / Argyle

They aren't far apart, they are all on Lake Lewisville, I think they all were originally built by Corps of Engineers (COE). Only Hickory Creek is still a COE park, the other three are now owned/operated by the cities in which they are located.
Google map showing locations of the 4 parks
All of them have electric/water sites with a dump station. 

Varying rules:

• Lake Park allows you to make reservations 3 months in advance. You can reserve and stay up to 28 days. Once you have checked in, when you leave, whether you have stayed 1 night or 28 nights, you have to stay out of the park 14 nights. When you check in, you can pay for up to 7 nights; even if you have a reservation for 28 nights, you pay for 1 week at a time. You don't have to pay when you make the reservation, so you can make a reservation and then cancel with no penalty. You can leave at any point with no penalty (other than if you have paid for a week and you haven't stayed the full week, you don't get a refund) - but if you have a reservation for 28 days, you can stay for just a week and then leave with no penalty. You can hold only one reservation, so if you want to stay for multiple 28-day stays, you can't reserve the second one until your first stay starts... so when I checked in to Lake Park on 2/24, I had a reservation for 26 days (they didn't have availability for me to stay 28 days at that point); I asked, and made a reservation for checking back in 14 days after my checkout date (I subsequently changed that to check back in on 4/12). Senior discount is 50% off the nightly rate and is available for 60 years or older. 50A sites are $22, I think 30A sites are $20.
• Willow Grove - only allows online reservations. You can reserve and stay for up to 14 days out of any 30 days. The senior discount is for people 65 or older, and I think it is just 10%. I don't know how far in advance sites can be booked, but I just tried booking over a year in the future and it appeared to allow me to go through the booking process. If you cancel your reservation, there is a penalty - the site says 50% of your reservation fee - I don't know whether it means 50% of the first night's fee or 50% of the whole reservation. You can hold multiple reservations at one time, as long as you comply with the 14 nights in 30 rule. This park is heavily used by tent campers and day-use on nice weekends - to the point that it is a bit uncomfortable for RV staying due to lack of respect for privacy (people walking through sites, using picnic tables, not aware of site courtesy, etc.).
• Hickory Creek - reservations through the federal government site, recreation.gov. You can reserve and stay for up to 14 days out of any 30 days. Senior rate is available to holders of the Golden Age (federal park) pass, and I think also the America the Beautiful pass will get you 1/2 price rates (since the rates for 50A sites are $30/night, and the America the Beautiful pass costs $80 for a year, it would be worthwhile for me to get the pass if I'm going to stay there more than 5 nights as it would save me 6*$15=$90). I am not certain how far in advance sites can be booked - I just tried to book for a year in advance, and it didn't let me choose any dates beyond December, 2019. Cancellation fee is 50% of the first night's fee. You can hold multiple reservations at one time, as long as you comply with the 14 nights in 30 rule.
• Pilot Knoll - I don't know as much about this campground; we only have stayed in it a couple of times.

Trying to figure out where to go when is challenging!

It turns out, it can travel on the road

When my brother and sister-in-law were visiting for Dwayne's memorial service, they visited at the campground (Lake Park) where I was parked. We noticed a trailer that looked to be highly customized... and Jimmy remarked that he wondered if it was even able to be moved on the highway because it didn't seem to have appropriate reflectors or other markers on it...

It must be able to move because now it is at the new park where I am parked, Willow Grove.

It definitely looks like it is not road-worthy for any long trips - there are something like bungee-cords holding parts of it together/down...

I guess if it just travels the few miles between the parks in this area, they are able to make it. I know that Lake Park Campground requires me to show current registration when I check in, which, in Texas, requires that the vehicle has been inspected. I'm guessing that they require that of all vehicles that stay there, so it must have passed inspection. Oh well, it is an interesting rig!

Volunteering

I have volunteered a couple of days with Crisis Ministries in Irving while I've been in Dallas this time.
https://crisis-ministries.org/

Their slogan is "Help Today, Hope for Tomorrow".

One of the very gifted members of our church painted the mural on the outside of the building.

I have the gifts of being tall and able to lift! On Tuesday, I helped with packaging sugar into 1 pound bags, creating the daily bags of food to give to the "road warriors", re-positioning some of the frozen meats so we would have ham and beef roasts in a handy location to start providing to families for Easter dinners coming up in a few weeks, and just helping out wherever I could. I enjoy being able to help others!

A restaurant with a history in Lewisville

Last week, one of our former Coppell neighbors, Susan, and I met for dinner at a local restaurant in Lewisville, Tierney's Cafe and Tavern. The information on the menu told us that the building had been built as the home of a local medical doctor in 1885 (that's pretty old for Texas!), and that legend says that Dr. Kennedy would sometimes provide medical care for Bonnie and Clyde (after being blindfolded and kidnapped to be taken to the hideout). It was a neat local restaurant - always fun to find this kind of place!

When is the "h" pronounced?

I have recently become better acquainted with a lady at church for whom English is not her first language. She mentioned the difficulty in knowing whether to pronounce the "h" in English words - sometimes it is silent. I had not even thought about this before (I would have thought it may have come up in ESL, but I don't remember it).

Read through these, is the "h" sounded or is it not?

• honor
• humility
• have
• hope
• hover
• hand
• hour
• how
• hospital

There are other examples when the "h" is not the first letter: ghost, rhythm, exhausted.
And one of the websites mentioned that there are words where the "h" is pronounced when the word is emphasized, but not when it is unemphasized, like "his" - "It isn't mine, it is *his* book." versus "We are going to read from his book." (saying it casually rather than emphasizing)

As a native English speaker, we just "know" how a word is pronounced, and we know how to spell it even if the "h" is not sounded... it does not appear that there is a good rule to follow with regard to this!

Some websites for further study:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/words-with-silent-h/
https://theaccentsway.com/the-h/
https://jakubmarian.com/list-of-words-with-a-silent-h-in-english/

I think I'm glad I learned English as my first language, though I really wish I was fluent in some other languages as well!

Christian Women's Job Corps

Peggy, Dwayne's step-mom, invited me to join with her Sunday School class today to hear from the director of the Dallas Christian Women's Job Corps about what they do and how they do it. I had never heard of this ministry, so I found it to be very interesting.
https://dallascwjc.org/

Christian Women's Job Corps has locations across the US (and Mexico and South Africa). There is also a Christian Men's Job Corps. The parent organization is Women's Missionary Union. From their website (http://www.wmu.com/?q=simple-page/christian-job-corps): "Christian Women’s Job Corps and Christian Men’s Job Corps equip women and men, in a Christian context, for life and employment." The Dallas group offers 3 8-week training sessions per year, helping with job readiness and life skills. Their students may come out of addiction, probation, or even loss of a spouse forcing them into the work force for the first time or for the first time in a long time. The classes are also approved by CPS for mothers who are attempting to regain parental rights for their children.

I enjoyed hearing from Vanessa about their ministry - and thought that some of my readers might be interested too. You can contribute via their website, and they also make and sell candles that provide funds for their programs too (http://www.prospercandles.com/).