the

'Kinda mad that I don't look like you': Suhana Khan's sweet Mother's Day wish for Gauri Khan

Gauri too had shared a collage of pictures on her Instagram in the morning featuring Aryan, Suhana, and AbRam and a picture with her mother.




the

This Mother's Day, reminisce good old days & take a look at TV moms from our childhood days

With Mother's Day today, why not take a look at the TV moms from the older and simpler times.









the

How five Canberrans are marking Mother's Day in the time of COVID-19 - The Canberra Times

  1. How five Canberrans are marking Mother's Day in the time of COVID-19  The Canberra Times
  2. Eight Australian mothers share the greatest thing their kids have taught them  ABC News
  3. Mother's Day: Our special mums - your stories  New Zealand Herald
  4. Mother's Day: Jacinda Ardern shares heartwarming message in celebration of her mum  Newshub
  5. Mum, in memory: A Mother's Day Tribute  New Straits Times
  6. View Full coverage on Google News




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The COVIDSafe app – What we know and questions that remain unanswered - Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Australia - Mondaq News Alerts

  1. The COVIDSafe app – What we know and questions that remain unanswered - Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Australia  Mondaq News Alerts
  2. Readers respond to the COVIDSafe app's launch  Sydney Morning Herald
  3. COVIDSafe app downloads shoot past five million  Sky News Australia
  4. UK contact tracing app source code shared as researchers seek to solve mystery  9to5Mac
  5. Lack of honesty on virus app is a problem  9News
  6. View Full coverage on Google News







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South Korea takes first cautious steps into a post-Covid world - The Guardian

  1. South Korea takes first cautious steps into a post-Covid world  The Guardian
  2. S. Korea warned of COVID-10 second wave  NEWS.com.au
  3. South Korea reverses on reopenings amid nightclub outbreak  The Age
  4. S.Korea leader says no panic as cases rise  SBS News
  5. Coronavirus: How South Korea 'crushed' the curve  BBC News
  6. View Full coverage on Google News











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The Annual Book Fair for Ballou Sr High School Is On!

It's Time to Send More Books to Washington D.C.

Welcome to the annual Book Fair for Ballou Sr High School!

For the 8th year, Guys Lit Wire is delighted to invite readers to help this school fill its library shelves by shopping their Amazon wish list. There are hundreds of books to choose from covering every topic you can think of and we hope you will buy a book or two for this worthy school and help its students and wonderful librarian, Melissa Jackson, gain greater access to more titles. The school depends on this annual book fair and we are happy to host it. This is our chance to help the students obtain books they want to read and we can't do it without your help!

Ballou Sr High School's students face many obstacles; all of the students qualify for free or reduced price lunch and last year its graduation rate was 57%. But in 2017 every member of the senior class applied to college — a first for the school — and we certainly believe that the library was a huge support to them in their efforts.


Our Goal

We hope to send at least 150 books to Ballou this year and there are plenty of titles at a wide variety of prices to choose from. It's important to stress that this is a list that is reviewed and approved by Ballou students and includes many many books that they have requested. There are poetry and novels, biographies and cookbooks, graphic novels, science, travel and more. There is literally something for everyone on this list and we are sure that you will find a book (or more!) that you want to gift to these worthy students. 

We know 2017 has given us all so many things to worry about and, sadly, so many people who are in need of assistance. With Ballou the need is ever present however and, we believe, critically important. Libraries are the heart of every school and every community; they are part of the long game that can positively transform a community and are especially critical to the hearts of young people. Books can be game changers in the life of a teenager — heck, books ARE game changers and we want to get as many as we can into the hands of Ballou's students. 


The Details

The Amazon wish list can be found here. It is also easily searchable at Amazon under "Ballou High School". If you would like to embed a link in a post or tweet (and PLEASE DO!!), use this one: http://tinyurl.com/BookFairBallouHS

And here is the url in case the links are not working for you:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/2CU17Q38C3P68/ref=cm_wl_sortbar_o_page_1?ie=UTF8&sort=universal-title 

The mailing address is already set-up for checkout and there are nearly 500 books to choose from with a wide price range. We do hope you will find a book that you want to send to Ballou and help us make life a little better for a great bunch of a kids.

The Book Fair for Ballou High School Library will stay open for 2 weeks and we will keep you posted here on how things go. Be sure to follow @chasingray (GLW moderator Colleen Mondor's twitter feed) and watch the Ballou Library feed for shoutouts from Melissa (@BallouLibrary) as books show up.


Just one book will make a huge difference.



  • Book Fair for Boys

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The first books have arrived at Ballou High School in DC!


The first books from the wish list have arrived at Ballou High School in Washington DC and are front and center for students to check out! 

We are very excited by how the Annual Book Fair for Ballou Library is going — over 80 books have already been purchased. Our hope is to send 150 books to Ballou from their amazon list this month and we would be delighted to surpass that goal. There are still over 200 books on the list, covering many topics and genres. (Especially 2 MCAT study guides for one student who hopes to be a neurosurgeon & wants to get a head start on what she will need to know for medical school.) 

We hope you will take a look at the list (http://tinyurl.com/BookFairBallouHS) and help spread the word. Be sure to follow @BallouLibrary & my twitter feed, @chasingray, for updates as the books arrive and, if you have any questions, check out the original post on book fair or email me at colleenATchasingrayDOTcom.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE ANNUAL BOOK FAIR FOR BALLOU!!!!!



  • Book Fair for Boys

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Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

This book. This book is grounded inside its main character's mind and body in an almost visceral way, and if you've ever had a "crazy" friend--and who hasn't, but I mean one who is actually diagnosed with anxiety disorder and/or OCD--even though this book is entertaining and wonderful and all the things good fiction should be, it will help you to "get" them in a way they might not have been able to articulate to you.

Aza is the star of the show. Or maybe she's not. She's so stuck inside her head, where twisty thoughts and logic have her spinning about the bacteria in her body and how it might just take over and kill her, that maybe she's the victim. Worse, maybe she is the bad guy. And the victim. And the star.

Life is complicated.

Aza is lucky in that she has a best friend, Daisy. Daisy, who talks all. the. time. but who sticks by Aza even though Aza isn't easy to stick by. So when Daisy suggests that she and Aza make like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden to solve the mystery of the missing billionaire, Aza goes along with it.

Things happen. So many things. And I don't want to talk about any of them, really, because it would spoil this book, which unspools almost magically. It starts from a very clenched place and almost literally unwinds to a a better stasis.

Read it. Read it to find out what role Aza plays in her own life. To see if she can find her way out of her own head, at least a little. And to find out what the title means: "turtles all the way down."

So yeah - consider this review the equivalent of me standing next to you, shoving this book into your hands, making almost uncomfortable levels of eye contact while imploring you to read it.

But really. Read it.




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The Extinction Trials by S.M. Wilson


Stormchaser is a teen who lives in a world ravaged by hunger and disease. Food is scarce, and an illness that starts with the blistering and peeling of one's skin soon leads to death.

In her world, a few dinosaurs still exist. Stormchaser has befriended a plesiosaur she's named Milo. This is a secret she must guard closely because dinosaurs are universally hated.

When the Trials are announced, Stormchaser enters on a whim; she doesn't have a family, doesn't have anyone dying from the plague like the others.

The contest is a deadly one: enter the area of the world known as Piloria, where the dinosaurs are abundant, and retrieve as many dinosaur eggs as possible. The winner will receive health care and food, two things essential in order to survive their daily nightmare.

She's joined on the Trials by Lincoln and Leif, two boys with a lot on the line. As the competition heats up, they must learn to trust each other if they're going to avoid being eaten alive. But as Stormchaser soon learns, you can't really trust anyone in the Extinction Trials and what she finds hiding under the surface of Piloria will change her life forever.

The Extinction Trials is a super fast action adventure that anyone looking for a strong female hero will love. It's got elements of The Hunger Games without a doubt, and that's a good thing because it means it will make my job as a School Librarian all the easier when I promote this book in the coming weeks. And promote it I shall, because it's got some great scenes, fully realised characters and a ton of action. Highly recommended, can't wait for the sequel!




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Cyber Monday means Round #2 for the Ballou Book Fair!

We are getting ready to send more books to the library at Ballou Sr High School in Washington DC!

In two weeks last month you purchased over 135 books off the wish list for Ballou as part of our annual book fair. They included everything from novels to biographies to history to a couple of MCAT study guides that were particularly appreciated by this student:

With millions of people getting ready to shop this weekend, we are hoping to take advantage of your generosity one last time in 2017 and send even more books to Ballou. As you may know, students at the school suffer far too much from poverty and all its accompanying factors. They struggle to stay in school, to stay engaged in their studies and to persevere in the face of the area's violence.  They deserve every chance that we can give them and their librarian, Melissa Jackson, is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to going the extra mile for her students. We want to make it easier for her to do her job and the best way we can do that is to buy the books that those students want and need, (and in some cases positively pine for), to fill her library's shelves.

We buy books for Ballou!

There are several hundred books on the list at Amazon and for those folks who shopped last month, you will see that several titles have been added in the past few days. They are courtesy the most recent email from Ballou — books the students are excited about and asked if we would add. (And of course we did!) We also moved several books that are on sale to the top of the list as they are excellent bargains right now. We hope that you will take advantage of the low prices and buy one or more of these titles.

If you can't shop off the list, please help spread the word on social media. Here is the direct link: http://tinyurl.com/BookFairBallouHSAlso follow me (@chasingray) and Melissa Jackson (@Balloulibrary) on twitter for updates.

Have a great Thanksgiving and we look forward to an amazing next week of book buying for Ballou!





  • Book Fair for Boys

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The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz




Lyrical, visceral, and wise, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz haunts the melancholy middle between heartbreak and hope.

Salvador confronts his senior year and the anxiety that accompanies this countdown to supposed independence—questions of college and new beginnings and one’s true place in this world. Add to these the accumulating stressors particular to Sal’s life: homophobic slurs against his openly gay adopted father, feeling Mexican-American but looking white, the deteriorating health of his beloved grandmother Mimi, the deteriorating home life of his friend Fito, the devastating loss experienced by his best friend Samantha.

Not surprisingly, Sal finds himself greeting more days with fists and tears. Sal desperately wants to find himself in the larger sense, but as Sáenz deftly demonstrates in this young adult novel, all growth is loss—a truth that can make growth a daunting task.

With one of many eloquent words of wisdom, Sal’s father tells him early on we must “find a way to discipline our hearts so that their cruelty doesn’t turn us into hurt animals” (13). But how do we discipline our hearts without hardening them? How do we fight the darkness without devolving into darkness ourselves?

In Sal’s case, he scrapes together every illuminating spark: the tenacity of Fito, the loyalty of Sam, the grace of his father, the serenity of his grandmother. And through the spark of The Inexplicable Logic of My Life and Sáenz’s luminous prose, we learn anew how family is forged by more than blood—and though who we are is our life’s work, identity is never a solitary act.



  • Everyone's Got Issues
  • The Way We Live

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My Side of the Mountain

This has never happened to me before: I enjoyed the sequel more than the original! Be assured, though, My Side of the Mountain

is very good. Young Sam Gribley goes off to live in the wilderness quite comfortably in a huge hollow tree. He trains a young falcon he named Frightful:

"Every day I worked to train Frightful. It was a long process, I would put her on her stump with a long leash and step back a few feet with some meat in my hand. Then I would whistle. The whistle was supposed eventually to mean food to her. So I would whistle, show her the meat, and after many false flaps she would finally fly to my hand. I would pet her and feed her. She could fly fairly well, so now I made sure that she never ate unless he flew to my fist.

"One day at breakfast I whistled for Frightful. I had no food, she wasn't even hungry, but she came to me anyway. I was thrilled. She had learned a whistle meant 'come.'

"I looked into her steely eyes that morning and thought I saw a gentle recognition. She puffed up her feathers as she sat on my hand. I call this a 'feather word.' It means she is content."

I also enjoyed this, from near the end of the book: "I returned to my patch on the mountain, talking to myself all the way. I talk to myself a lot, but everyone does. The human being, even in the midst of people, spends nine-tenths of his time alone with the private voices of his own head. Living alone on a mountain is not much different, except that your speaking voice gets rusty, I talked inside my head all the way home, thinking up schemes, holding conversations with Bando and Dad and Matt Spell...
"I cooked supper, and then sat down by my little fire and called a forum. It is very sociable inside my head, and I have perfected the art of getting a lot of people arguing together in silence or in a forum, as I prefer to call it. I can get four people all talking at once, and a fifth can be present, but generally I can't get him to talk. Usually these forums discuss such things as a storm and whether or not it is coming, how to make a spring suit, and how to enlarge my house without destroying the life in the tree. Tonight, however, they discussed what to do about Matt Spell. Dad kept telling me to go right down to the city and make sure he published nothing, not even a made-up story. Bando said, no, it's all right, he still doesn't know where you live, and then Matt walked into the conversation and said that he wanted to spend his spring vacation with me, and that he promised not to do anything untoward. Matt kept using 'untoward' - I don't know where he got that expression, but he liked it and kept using it - that's how I knew Matt was speaking; everything was 'untoward.'"

What I liked there was that it seemed that author Jean Craighead George described how her stories got generated. Characters in her head interacted, and she transcribed what took place onto paper. I could be wrong, but maybe.

The sequel that I liked even more is called On the Far Side of the Mountain. There's a third book, Frightful's Mountain, but I have not read it yet. It's here at my desk, so it won't be long.




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The Barefoot Sisters Southbound

I have enjoyed several books by people who have through-hiked the Appalachian Trail (A.T.). But Isis and jackrabbit (their trail names) set off barefoot from Mount Katahdin in Maine on their way to Springer Mountain in Georgia (They used boots after the snow started falling on them in Virginia.).


They take turns telling the story, and that sets this book apart from others I have read. I got to see things through both their eyes. So they reignited my hope to hike the A.T. Okay, not barefoot. And I'd probably start in Georgia and hike north, but still. There's a community of through hikers there every year. To be part of that community! A lot are unable to finish for one reason or another. But still...

A beat-up green Dodge ground to a halt on the gravel beside us, and the driver rolled down the window and shouted over to us, "thru-hikers?" We smiled and nodded. "Hop in!"

We loaded two packs into the trunk. Isis and Blade clambered into the backseat with the third. The powerful reek of week-old sweat filled up the hot interior of the car, but the driver seemed not to mind.

"I hiked northbound in '88," he said. As we sped down the two-lane road to Gorham, New Hampshire, we exchanged names and hiking stories. He stopped in the driveway of a large B&B at the edge of town. The gray building just ahead of us, an old hay barn, had an A.T. sign by the door, and a crowd of familiar people longed on the strip of lawn beside the driveway.

"Welcome to The Barn," the driver said. A look of nostalgia stole over his face, a bemused mixture of joy and regret that we would see on the faces of many ex-hikers when they talked about the Trail. "Make the most of your hike. It doesn't last forever."

We thanked him and the battered station wagon pulled out of the drive and was lost in the stream of traffic.

Inside the Barn, the accommodations were fairly basic: a common room downstairs with a TV and VCR, board games, magazines, and fuzzy plaid-upholstered armchairs that had seen better days...

At a bookstore just down the street from the hostel, we shelled out the money for a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Hardcover. We had debated endlessly with ourselves and each other: is it worth the weight? In the end, the prospect of truly entertaining trail reading had won out...

Matt, Blue Skies, and Tenbrooks caught a shuttle out of town in the early afternoon. The rest of us, a motley crew of southbounders and a few northbounders, convened at Mr. Pizza at 6:30...


They proceeded to pig out - a frequent occurrence for thru-hikers when they hit town. Two of them each ate "The Stomper," a pizza that measured one hundred and ninety-two square inches! Long-distance hiking burns a lot of calories.

If you enjoy The Barefoot Sisters Southbound, you're in luck. Because Isis and jackrabbit (Lucy and Susan Letcher) "yoyoed," turning around and hiking back to Maine. And they wrote a book about that, too: The Barefoot Sisters Walking Home. I enjoyed that one too.





  • See the World
  • Survival
  • The Great Outdoors

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The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy


From my recent Locus review of The Disappearances, a WW2 era fantasy that includes a curse, a literary mystery, some grave robbing, and the disappearance of the stars:

Initially, Emily Bain Murphy’sThe Disappearances reads as straightforward historical fiction. It’s 1942 and teenage Aila is facing the stark reality of life in the wake of her mother’s recent death. To make matters worse, her father is off to the war in the Pacific and she and her younger brother Miles must go live with their mother’s oldest friend in Sterling, Connecticut, where she grew up. Aila knows very little about her mother’s childhood but is resigned to doing her best to fit in. Readers will feel immediate empathy for these children and their predicament but likely expect little in the way of fantasy from reading the first few pages. Then Aila and Miles arrive in their new home with the Clifton family and, in spite of the pouring rain that greets them, Aila is stunned to notice that Matilda Clifton remains completely dry. Clearly, everything in the seemingly dull town of Sterling is not as it appears. 

Highly recommended for those who like to see how things used to be done (before cell phones which would have made a lot of the clue-following in this book a lot easier!) and as a reminder that sometimes nothing beats hitting the library. (Cue relevant Doctor Who quote here!)





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WATCH: Stars Take Game 3 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Final | Stars CLASSICS

WATCH: Stars Take Game 3 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Final | Stars CLASSICS




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Mother's Day Special by Gryffinclaw_31 [G]

"Shhh, You'll wake Ginny up, James," Teddy Lupin whispered to the three-year-old James, who was looking at Teddy with a sheepish look... R&R!








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Preserving the history of social work: Golden Bridge




the

The View from Here



  • Reports
  • Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS)


the

Youth and Criminal Justice in Scotland: the young person’s journey



  • Webwatch
  • Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS)

the

The impact of welfare reform on the social services workforce




the

The Ultimate Mail Box Fix

What do you do when you put your mail box too close to the road?




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If you can't beat them, join them!



  • Hall of Fame


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The Urge For Coffee

Necessity in the mother of invention. So I guess Near-necessity is the weird uncle of invention.




the

The Classic Fart Exhaust Mod

Listen to this glorious innertube attached to the exhaust mod. Honestly, this is so much more entertaining than the whistle tips.







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It's Now Safe to Use the Toilet

Submitter TurboJens explains this fix: The fill valve split in half and the floater does not cut off the water supply. The towel keeps the water inside and the wrench keeps it from overflowing.