Almanac for February 13th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for February 13th: https://ko-fi.com/post/February-13-To-morrow-is-Saint-Valentines-day-S6S01AOJBZ

Friday the 13th at Aurora's Gin Joint blog: https://aurorasginjoint.com/2017/01/13/friday-foto-follies-superstitions/

Bummer February 13th

February 13, 1925: On or around this date, cave explorer Floyd Collins dies of exposure after becoming trapped in a narrow cave passage with a 26-pound rock crushing one of his legs. He has entered the cave system in Kentucky, now part of Mammoth Cave National Park, on January 30th. Collins’ brother discovers him trapped in the narrow passage on January 31st. Despite rescue attempts, when rescuers reach Collins on February 16th, he appears to have been dead for one or more days. Collins is 37 years old.

San Antonio (Texas) Light, November 13, 1925
Vernon Dalhart

February 13, 1931: German-American circus acrobat Lillian Leitzel falls to the ground while performing at Valencia Music Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. The metal brace holding the rigging attached to her harness has snapped and broken away. Leitzel will die of her injuries two days later. 

February 13, 1945: U.S. and U.K. forces drop incendiary bombs on Dresden, Germany, causing fires with the intention of destroying munitions factories in that city. A second round of bombs is dropped in the early hours of February 14th, calculated to hamper the efforts of rescuers on the scene of the first round of bombings and fires. It’s estimated that between 22,000 and 25,000 Germans are killed, almost all of them civilians.

February 13, 1964: 22-year-old Ken Hubbs, who plays second base for the Chicago Cubs in the ‘63 season, is afraid of flying. To help himself get over his fear, he takes flying lessons and earns his pilot’s license in January 1964. The following month, the private plane he’s piloting near Provo, Utah, crashes, killing Hubbs.

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Mockingjay? Read It. Adored It. Declared It the Best of the Trilogy.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If I ever hear someone say that a female novelist can't write a war story, I am going to chuck this book at his or her head. So much pain and passion generated by the folly of war and nation-building is contained in its too-brief 390 pages, Mockingjay is as good an introduction to the grim paradox of war as Slaughterhouse-Five was a generation ago. Yes, it's even darker than the first two books (already quite dark), and yes, young people should read it anyway. Parts of it make the reader yell out, "What?!" but that's precisely the point. Katniss learns to question everything, and so must we. Brava to you, Ms. Collins, for even though a piece of my psyche has been vicariously wounded, I see the reason and the hope behind it. 

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Mockingjay is the best book in the Hunger Games trilogy. It's the best-written, the darkest, the scariest and the most true. Now excuse me while I grieve over the death of two particularly beloved fictional characters. 

Last night, I watched the Person of Interest rerun. It was the episode that introduced the hacker known as Root (dis bitch!!), and it involved a stakeout. I read Mockingjay for a while afterward. Then I went to bed and dreamed about a stakeout conducted by members of PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. You know, the ones who got Taraji P. Henson to pose naked to protest fur fashions - although, in all honesty, Ms. Henson seems to rather enjoy posing naked.

It took me a while to figure out that I dreamed about PETA because I was reading about Peeta Mellark. 

The blog Books and Movies discussed who should play Finnick Odair in Catching Fire recently. I don't have much of an opinion about that - I haven't even seen the Hunger Games movie yet. At this point I care much more about the books than the movies. (P.S. I'm utterly terrified at the idea of a Fifty Shades of Grey movie - I lean toward rooting for Michael Fassbender to get the role, but I also know no actor will ever measure up to my image of Christian Grey.) I don't really like any of the author's, Carrie K.'s, choices. 

I do, however, completely agree with the YouTube commenter who gave me the idea that Michael Emerson could play Beetee. That needs to happen.

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