SUPERBOWL!!!!

Woot! Woot! Woot!

Superbowl Bound, 2011!!

Go, Pack, Go!

Snack Attack!

One of my favorite treats as a kid was Ritz crackers. So, when I saw a write-up on a snack website that said that the Late July brand’s organic “Classic Rich Crackers” were as yummy as Ritz crackers, I shrugged and said, “Nah.”

Last week we discovered that our local organic grocery store had started carrying them. So, I had Michael buy a box for me, so I could check them out.

That was a mistake. A big mistake.

We shouldn’t have bought a box. No, indeed. Instead, we should have bought, oh, say, a case.

They aren’t good. They are incredible.

I hereby award them the first official BSD Yummy Award of 2011, because, man, they are yummy!

Here’s a photo I took of the front of the (sadly empty) box, in case you want to look for them to try them out.

Golly, I wonder what they’d taste like dipped in melted dark organic chocolate…?

*drool*

Wahoo!!

Was Saturday’s game unbelievable, or what? The Green Bay Packers are smokin’!

Go, Pack, Go!

The BSD Book Bunny Recommends: For Freedom

Ya know what? I read a lot, and always have. I was a voracious reader as a child. Those stories about the kid who read under the covers using a flashlight? Yup. Me. My days of heavy reading screeched to a halt when I became disabled. Prior to 2002, the only game in town where I could get books that were accessible (and then only as cassette tapes) was the National Library for the Blind and Physically Disabled (NLS). The NLS is a great service, but it’s never been a good fit for me in terms of what’s available in terms of my personal tastes and isn’t particularly strong in the genres I enjoy, or in access to technical materials that go into any depth.

Now I’m making up for lost time. As of December, 2010, the volunteer-driven Bookshare has over 80,000 accessible books in a variety of digital forms for blind and disabled readers. Woot! Woot! NLS has made changes of its own, too, in its case moving to digital audio books, which are much easier for me to use than their former service, which was mostly on audio cassettes. They have around 26,000 titles available, and aim to have tens of thousands more titles available to qualified disabled patrons. Go, NLS, GO!

As an experiment, I’m going to post on BSD about books I’ve read that I really like. Every one of these books is even recommended by Butter Side Down’s own Book Bunny as being a good read.

What’s that you say? Bunnies can’t read?

Humpfh. Don’t tell them that…

Anyways, part of the fun of reading is swapping recommendations for good reads with friends, right?

Be forewarned: my tastes rarely match those of the NY Times reviewers, their best-seller lists, or the like. I also rarely read romance novels, especially not the soft porn ones that have destroyed the genre–yuck! Vampire novels and horror novels don’t interest me either, although if you haven’t ever read the original Dracula by Bram Stoker I recommend it. Just make sure you don’t read it in a dark, lonely house all by yourself, ‘k?

I do read across a variety of genres, though, and enjoy a good children’s book as much as a C.J. Box novel or one of Rutherfurd’s 800-page tomes.

Ready? Here goes…

I just finished a short, excellent, young adult novel about a WWII spy titled For Freedom, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. It’s definitely recommended, and an easy fast read for us adults. The story is written as fiction, but it’s based on the true story of Suzanne David Hall.

Wow. It’s not that the book is the very best book you’ll ever read (although it definitely is a well-written book and a recommended read, no mistake about that). It’s the story itself that leaves me absolutely humbled. The courage, patriotism and sheer guts Suzanne David Hall displayed are truly heroic.

Suzanne, who was a French teen-aged opera singer, secretly couriered messages for three years between the Allies and the French Resistance, all while living in the midst of heavy Nazi activity in the city of Cherbourg, France. When she started, she was barely sixteen years old! The story is simply told in the first-person, by Suzanne, with many details of what her life was like under the occupation woven seamlessly into the tale.

The book isn’t maudlin, and it doesn’t present Suzanne as a super-human hero who breezed through a spot of trouble here and there. Instead, it deftly shows just how ordinary people rise to extraordinary circumstances–and how enormous the toll is even when you succeed.

I do want to note one caveat about the book’s contents. If you’re a parent, please read the opening chapter first before giving this book to your teen. That way you can decide for yourself if the graphic description of how one of Suzanne’s young neighbors dies in a bombing attack is too intense for your child. My own take: while brief, the description is definitely gruesome. I suspect that it may be too graphic for some children. It is not gratuitous violence, but the scene is realistic, and presents a vivid portrayal of the violent death of a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

For more about the author, check out her website. Ms. Bradley has written several other young adult books that I’m going to read soon, given how interesting this book was. If you’re a member of Bookshare, you can get an accessible copy of the book here.

For everyone else, here’s the book information. For Freedom, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Published by Delacorte Press, copyright 2003. It’s a little under 200 pages in length, and available in everything from hardback and paperback to Kindle and audible book editions. One scene of graphic violence, but no strong language or sex.

Happy reading!

SQUEEEE! Red Pandas!

Some of the cutest, most most appealing critters on earth are the red pandas. Look at this guy–does it get any cuter than that? Can’t you just hear the conversation that was going on as this photo was taken? “Oh, look, you have visitors! Wave your paw at the crowd!”

Also known as firefox (yup, that’s the same critter that’s behind the name of Mozilla’s web browser), red pandas are seriously endangered. Fewer than 2,500 wild red pandas are left in the world. An additional 900 or so live in zoos. They aren’t related to giant pandas at all, btw, even though they do munch on bamboo, amongst other things, for their standard diet. They really like yummy fruit treats, too, including grapes and watermelon slices.

They sure seem to know how to kick back and enjoy themselves, like this firefox that’s happily lying under a cool mister at the Akron Zoo.

Genetic studies show that red pandas are in their own family of mammals, part of the broader superfamily that includes raccoons, skunks and weasels.

Want to actually see some of these fuzz balls live and in action? Mozilla (the non-profit Foundation) decided to “stream cuteness” and in partnership with the Knoxville Zoo put up a live webcam of the Zoo’s baby red pandas. Go to Firefox Live and enjoy!

Photo of red panda waving copyright © Ariel Ophelia, and photo of red panda soaking in the cool mist copyright © by Meredith Houser. Both are used with permission granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Panda_Face.jpg and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flat_panda.jpg for full information and copyright restrictions.