An Odd Glitch with Silas Marner

In my previous post, I mentioned that I was currently reading Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot and upon finishing that novel, I would go on to Eliot's Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. I had already downloaded Silas Marner from Project Gutenberg and thought I'd go ahead and send it to my Kindle.

Because of an earlier glitch with a USB cord, I now email mobi files to my Kindle via my Gmail account. For reasons I can't explain, the size of the Silas Marner mobi file was given as 0 bytes and consequently, Gmail would not attach the file. I've a new USB cord, so I attempted to transfer the file directly to my Kindle. Again, for some unknown reason, the file would not transfer.

I went back to Project Gutenberg to download another copy of the ebook. The website lists the file size for Silas Marner as 689 kB. I have no idea why my earlier copy was giving the size as 0 bytes.

This file was downloaded to my PC and subsequently emailed to my Kindle.

Oh well, All's well that ends well.

Middlemarch

After an extraordinarily long and difficult struggle, I was finally able to finish reading H.G. Wells' extraordinarily horrible novel, The Shape of Things to Come. I began reading the novel following the recommendation of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, and I soon began to regret having followed the Archbishop's suggestion.

As is often the case with particularly bad novels, I was only able to get through this one by beginning another novel and going back to the boring one by bits. The novel that allowed me to finish reading Wells' piece of drivel was George Eliot's  Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life. I still have quite a lot left to read in this novel. I've already downloaded several books to read this year - Eliot's Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe being one of them. I will probably go onto it upon finishing Middlemarch.

My Return to the Blogosphere.

It's hard to believe that it's only been a month since I mentioned the destruction of the my camera's memory card and the difficulty I was having getting it replaced. A few days ago, a friend gave a 8GB SDHC memory card to me.

I thought my problems were solved. I was wrong. I had failed to look into the reason why my original memory card became damaged to start with. As it turned out, it was my defective memory card reader that was causing the problems. I had to replace, not only the 2nd damaged memory card, but the card reader as well.

Fortunately, I was able to find replacements for both in two different shops on Perdices Ave.

After taking my son to school this morning, I drove down to the boulevard to purchase sliced ham from the JLH Butcher-shop. This seemed like a good opportunity to take a few more photos to upload to Google Maps.

The Bricks Hotel and TOM N TOMS COFFEE.
 

Mark Shea is Such a F***ing Liar

So-called "Catholic writer" Mark Shea hates Donald Trump with a fiery passion. This isn't just a mild dislike, but a blinding hatred which seems to force Mr.Shea into posting lies about the President.

Look, I can understand not wanting Trump to be POTUS. He's hardly my first choice. During the 2016 Presidential race, I frequently compared having to choose between Trump or Clinton to being the equivalent of deciding if you want mustard or mayo on your shit sandwich.

That being said, Shea's hatred of Trump has pushed Shea over the edge. In a recent post, Shea posted the above photo while stating "This is a bus for babies snatched away from their parents at the border by our sadistic border policies." The statement provides a link to Shea's "proof". Clicking on his link takes one to Snopes.com for a fact check, and he uses the link and photo to provide evidence that Trump is a Fascist and a racist.

First of all, the bus is not the product of Donald Trump. According to the Snopes fact check, the photograph "was featured in a 29 April 2016 Geo Group press release describing the purchase of two 'New Specialized Transport Buses' outfitted with convertible child safety seats, intended to be used to carry children ranging from ages 4 to 17 for medical treatment, to court appointments, and on monthly offsite field trips". In other words, the bus is a creation of the Obama administration.

Secondly, according to the link, the babies carried on this particular bus are not "snatched away from their parents at the border". U.S. Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) maintains a family detention facility for undocumented immigrants called the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas. The Karnes facility houses women with children, and it provides educational services (as well monthly field trips) to the school age children held there.

"Residents are provided education programming, medical care, recreation, visitation facilities, recreation, life skills/chores, study time, group interaction, free time, and access to religious and legal services. All residents of school age are offered educational services through a certified charter school. Each classroom is equipped with state-of-the-art smart-boards which allow children to interactively participate in classroom instruction. Field trips are provided monthly for all children to local parks, libraries, and other community events."

Either Shea did not read the entire article he linked to, or he has poor reading comprehension.

I wanted to leave a comment on Shea's blog to call him out on his lie and his calumny toward the President, but I'm banned from leaving comments on his blog.

The Shape of Things to Come

Some years ago, I made a pledge to myself that I would finish reading any book I began, regardless of how I may dislike the book as I went along.

For the last few years, that pledge has been easy to keep - I did, after all, read 45 books in 2017.

The total will not be nearly as high this year. Two of the books I've read this year -Alexandre Dumas' Celebrated Crimes and Marcel Proust's Swann's Way were not page turners.

Now, after reading an article written by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, I've begun reading H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come. I absolutely regret having begun this piece of drivel. I read four of Wells' novels last year and had high hopes for this one, but it has turned into a tortuous read. I can barely bring myself to finish what I've started. This particular novel dwells on Wells' socialist agenda, and none of his predictions for the future have come to pass.

Sadly, I'll continue to plow through, hopefully finishing this load of crap before much longer.