Daily Kos

My Mother, Summer Travels, Book List Request

Fri Jun 22, 2007 at 02:27:06 PM PDT

I have been in Nashville, off and on, for the past eight months working with my mother on a historical project.  My mother is a history professor at the university from which I graduated. This summer, instead of teaching, she has been working on a couple of projects and doing a bit of traveling with my father.

While driving to various places, she often finds local bookstores and looks for books on the Civil Rights Era; she especially enjoys audio books so that she and my father can just listen to books as they travel.

My mother is working her way toward being comfortable with computers and the Internet.  She told her department head that if he wants her to know anything that is e-mail only, he had better knock on her door and tell her in person or send the secretary with a message or else she will not know what the occasion is or when to arrive.  In that she has been at the university thirty years longer than he has, unfortunately he acquiesces.

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Our daily ritual is that she comes down here ( I am in my mother's basement but I am not in pajamas eating pop tarts and drinking Yoohoo) and asks what I have read today.  I show her video, read a couple of articles, usually go down the front page and anything that I have hotlisted. If she doesn't come and ask or if I am busy and still need her to see something, I (gasp) print it out and leave it for her.

This week, for instance, I printed the BobOak diary How To Not Hire An American - MUST SEE VIDEO for her and she came down and watched the video.  Interestingly, we had just been discussing the issue but she left before I had seen the diary.  I then ripped the video from YouTube, converted it to a quicktime file and burned it and the diary as a text file to a cd and gave it to her to make one of her students show the class on his/her laptop. Needless to say, I plug this site and community religiously, including the web address on everything I give her.

My folks are about to take off again, from Nashville to Chattanooga, probably Atlanta and then who knows which direction they'll take.  They only call me to tell me where they are and ask if I can book the hotel room for them, even though they are always right around the corner from the place.  Well I know she already has a couple of regular bookstores she will visit and she asked me about some books she could be looking for, especially as we gear up for '08.

So, I am requesting a list of progressive titles for which she can be looking while she does her regular canvas. I was thinking about making a list, by category, and laminating it so that she can put it in her bag and it get tossed around without being torn up. She is already primed; she bought me an audio copy of Bob Woodward, 'Plan of Attack' and left it down here without my knowledge so I just need to get her a great list of books. I would especially like to put the individuals from here as well as the progressive sites we read regularly so that she can see just how informed, passionate and 'champing at the bit' that we are as a progressive community.

Make no assumptions. Other than 'The Assault on Reason', any book on the list that she or I already have, she can look for audio and if she purchases any duplicates, they can always be given away. All suggestions are appreciated.

Tags: progressives, personal, family, teaching, books (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

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