If you haven’t read this in awhile, I encourage you to do so. If I had read it in the past, it was so long ago as to be new to me.

I just finished listening to it, and will say that it made me both gasp and cry at the end.

I couldn’t help but notice what very plain language the writing was and how direct the story-telling. I hope I will remember this for my own use.

PS – if you ever have to embark on a fearsome adventure yourself, I urge you and your companions to keep journals to tell your own story, since this was probably the best thing of all, to hear a tale spun out from several different aspects.

I have several other books at the ready for my coming online class but I’m going to let this one digest for awhile.

There is about a half hour of Dracula left and I suddenly wondered why the sound seemed so low…

Goof – the bunched up quilt was blocking both speakers!

Well, it did make me listen with much attentiveness.

Long ago, when I’d be machine quilting, I would be going along and BLAM! I would break a needle. Not from hitting a pin but at the moment of running out of bobbin thread. I always guessed this was from a change of movement and from pulling or pushing too much on the needle and hitting the edge of the throat plate.

These days I rarely break a needle while machine quilting unless it’s from accidentally backing up to a safety pin. Oops.

Most of this change is the sewing machine teaching me what it sounds like to have little thread left in the bobbin. This has the extra benefit of stopping sooner, but mostly it prevents broken pieces of needle from flying around.

In the last 60 days Mr. Holmes had purchased four guns at local gun shops, Chief Oates said. And through the Internet, he bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition: more than 3,000 rounds for the assault rifle, 3,000 rounds of .40 caliber ammunition for the two Glocks, and 300 rounds for the 12-gauge shotgun. The guns were all bought legally, a federal law enforcement official said.

Mr. Holmes also purchased online multiple magazines for the assault rifle, including one 100-round drum magazine. “With that drum magazine, he could have gotten off 50, 60 rounds, even if it was semiautomatic, within one minute,” Chief Oates said.

Dan Frosch and Kirk Johnson for the NYTimes

However you may stand re gun control, it should not be that easy to purchase that many guns and that much ammunition. How can you make an argument that it is necessary for anyone to own those weapons and that much ammunition?

I’d like to think that the government would act on behalf of its citizenry rather than the interests of the NRA etc but they certainly don’t seem able to do that on other topics so my hope of this is very small.

sure hope not…