Another great book of mysteries he wrote is "A Memory of Murder," some of his older mysteries and a great read.

Biplane, just a public service to you. I think your message to Alexandra got buried so much that it got lost in the shuffle. If you don't already know, she has answered ya.

Yes, Robot Lincoln, I saw that and thanks for the heads up. It was very nice for her to reply.

well i'm almost done with the paper now. (this is the final paper for my english class so it counts for so many points and all...)

i'm so tired! i've been reading and reading and reading.

i've been breathing bradbury. after being bored to tears by critiques of his novels and analysists of the themes therein, i've been relaxing with his short stories.

thanks so much to all of you who have been so patient and open with me. i've had computer problems.... highly amusing.

my computer went into xenophobia zone- denied that i had a cd drive, a flash drive, a floppy drive, and of course it wouldn't let me send files. i erased it. two times, it died.

i'm back now though. i'm so busy with this pape rand the spanish travel brochure...not to mention the chemistry video i'm writing the script to.

so please forgive my pidgeon english, f or the nights have been long. i've missed this site and you all much.

i hope no one forgot me.

Dear Depth Perception, your hard work and diligence will pay off in an awesome grade. You will have to let us all know how you did on your paper.

As for as computer problems--yeach! Everyone's nightmare. I had reordered two years of Norton anti-virus and it appears that by ordering it, the computer became infected somehow. It had to be cleaned out and everything re-loaded thanks to a co-worker of my wife who helped with this.

Best to you and your accomplishment.

your great faith in me may be rather displaced, dear biplane. one a side note, i got a library card this last weekend. i was wont to haunt the library for long hours, not trusting myself to study at home. i suppose i am now forced to be diligent. what was i thinking?

Depth Perception--please forgive me as I do not recall if you are a high school or college student preparing a paper, but I envy anyone today who is attending any kind of school. I admire your getting a library card,but back in the olden days when I haunted a library you had to know the Dewey Decimal System and the large wooden boxes with their little pull drawers filled with cards listing all of the pertinent information to a topic, author, dates, etc., etc.

Oh, if only I had a computer back then with Google and web sites and Word with Spell Check, who knows that I could have breezed right through my B.S.E. and gone straight through onto my M.A.

Who of you young punks know of pounds of encyclopedias, stacks of other reference works, manual typewriters, carbon paper, erasers that gummed up the typewriter keys? I could go on and on, but I won't!

My daughter, although not feeling well and I felt bad for her, was starting her tenth college course (History) and because of her illness did not feel like completing her initial assignments. So her first compulsion was to drop out. Drop out! Why? she has all of the tools to help her. She has her own computer in our Guest Bedroom (still displaced due to Hurricane Wilma)and at her finger tips all of the information she needs to understand many aspects of history, no matter what the period.

Oh, if I only had a computer and the Internet way back then...

Vivid memories rushed back to me while reading the above exchanges between Biplane and DP. The scenarios involved finishing my last graduate course on the study of Bloom's Taxonomies.
RE: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html I shutter at the thought even now as the rain falls outside my window, and the keys click away at my desk top, how many years later?!

(Biplane, this is of which you speak - yes!!)

I had rented a really inexpensive motel room (a dive) for a three week period while the daily, three hour course was being completed in the midst of late July heat. The professor of the course had also been my undergraduate advisor, a stickler for details to the extreme. (ie, the exact placement of the page number on the bottom of the paper, everything concisely to his guidelines, etc. If not, "Do again. Resubmit.")

So, I was typing out the very last of several papers assigned during the intensive revelations of this highly stimulating field of study (yeah, right!?). I had entered that haunting time of 3-4 am of early morning, cramming and tapping.

It was raining. The roof leaked in the muggy, flea-bag room. A wastebasket, already half filled with "re-do's," was fast filling with the drip, drip, drips from the ceiling. Coffee was no longer the solution. Adrenaline, fatigue, frustration, and the sweep of the minute and hour hands on a clock radio urged me on. Late 1970's rock music added to the din and general mayhem. A portable Olympia manual typewriter would carry me to glory or oblivion.

"Just-get-it-done. Just-get-it-done." The rain seemed to sputter on the roof and into the metal basket, with many failed, discarded attempts getting ever soggier.

[Remember, there were no computer "edits, cuts, pastes, select all, spell checks, or moves" available then. Plus, we all had to walk to campus, uphill - both ways. And it was always raining.]

Birds began to arrive just before the light of day. The pressure built. The paper was to be approximately 8-10 pages long, double spaced, with references, and proper use of "et al." As I was proof-reading into the next to last page or so, I realized, to my chagrin, a whole section had been left out. The missing 3-4 paragraph segment was vital to my argument and the layout of the paper. White-out would have made things look as if an errant painter had placed his bucket on the pages. Though erasable paper was the way of the day, this too seemed foolhardy, not an option.

The only logical action to take, and one I initiated without a second thought, was to smash the small typewriter against the the flea-bag wall. I stood, blurry-eyed and grumbling epithets not worthy of repetition in the presence of children or the meek of manner, poised with Olympia raised overhead.

Suddenly, it was all clear. Smash and crash and free myself of the demons. Yes, that was the answer. Why had I not seen things so clearly before? It just ain't worth it...

Then, divine intervention? A soft voice comforted from my right shoulder, "Now, now! Take a breath. Lower your upraised arms. Plod on, McDuff."

Then again from the left, "That's not the answer. Just do it. Let 'er fly. Go ahead. It's right. You'll see. What's it going to be? Huh, huh?"

The room closed in, the rain spat into the bucket, the light of approaching morn increased ever so slightly. If I didn't get the paper in, the past three weeks would have been for naught...and, yet, I could not face another piece of correction paper place "just so" beneath the simple typing ribbon so as to change my compositional faux pas.

I paused. I lowered my arms, still wanting dearly to make a whole in the worthless wall. I did not.

Well, I had a few good hours before class was to meet later in morning. Also, in an hour the coffee shop (Mr. Donut) down the road would be opening to help rev-up the first of the truck drivers getting on their way.

I stepped outside to find the rain had ceased. Actually, a fresh, clear day was in the making.

When I returned to the room and that small Olympia typewriter, I found a way to patch things up in a manner that somehow avoided the much feared "Resubmit" edict.

Only now, as I type and the rain falls outside my window, I wonder if I was really a successful hoodwinker, after all! Or had Ol' Dr. B. ever read that darned Taxonomy paper in the first place. I never did get the work back but did receive an "A" in the course. Hmm?! As everyone in this NE region knows, summers and vacation time in far Northern NY are too short to be checking up on paginations and "et als." Not to mention repeating a class because you didn't get a final paper typed and turned in on time.

Moral of the story? Download all assigned papers from some link on line! (And stay out of flea bag motels.) Good luck, DP!

Frank,thanks so much for the link which explains everything. For a moment I thought that you were into stuffing road kill or some such animal, but then I realized that is Taxidermy, NOT Toxonomy.