Wolfgang Hampel - and Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Greta and her Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on their project
Betty MacDonald on Vashon Island
The first Betty MacDonald fan club fan who can answer our question below is going to win a Betty MacDonald fan club DVD collection.
Greta is going to share another Betty MacDonald fan club surprise very soon.
Did you ever see the bike in the tree on Vashon Island?
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel will have two fascinating guest readers at Vita Magica May and June 2016.
A wonderful Betty MacDonald fan club ESC surprise for Betty MacDonald fan club ESC fans from all over the world is waiting for you.
12 points for 1st place and until 1 point for your 10th place.
You were not allowed to vote for your own country.
Yours,
Mats
Don't miss this very special book, please.
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Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
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Vashon Island Bike Tree: The True Story
I've posted previously about the bicycle embedded in a tree on Vashon Island. Yes, it exists. No, it's not photoshopped. Recently I've been getting a zillion hits on the old posts on the blog because people keep posting the picture on Facebook with some bogus story about a boy leaving his bike in the woods and going off to fight and die in World War One, never to return. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see all the holes in that story.
The true story is revealed in this article from the December 30th, 2009 Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomer. The bike dates back to the 1950s and the kid who left the bike went on to be a King County Sheriff's deputy.
The bike is still there in the tree and Vashon is still a lovely place to ride. It's worth the stopping by to check it out.
If you want to read a great fictitious story about the bicycle in the tree, check out Berkeley Breathed's classic tale Red Ranger Came Calling
.
If you want to read a great fictitious story about the bicycle in the tree, check out Berkeley Breathed's classic tale Red Ranger Came Calling
.
Keep 'em rolling,
Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA
Linde Lund shared Rita Knobel-Ulrich's photo.
Opinion: The new Donald Trump can beat Hillary Clinton
Trump’s makeover into a serious statesman will make him electable against unlikable Clinton
REUTERS/Jim Bourg
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The making of a president 2016 has already begun.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump gave a major foreign policy address this week with all the trappings of a commander in chief — American flags in the background, dark suit with the stars-and-stripes lapel pin, white shirt, red tie, and, wonder of wonders, a teleprompter to stay on script.
Trump, who is nothing if not a good performer, mostly pulled it off, prompting MarketWatch Washington bureau chief Steve Goldstein to comment, “Squint and you can almost see Trump speaking from the Oval Office.”
Renowned Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight threw his support behind Donald Trump's presidential campaign, less than a week before Indiana voters go to the polls in the state's primary. Photo: AP
The makeover that began with
Trump’s uncharacteristically short and concise victory speech after the
New York primary is in full swing, with the aim of transforming the
rowdy, rambling brawler of the primaries into a distinguished statesman
capable of taking on the most powerful political office in the world.
It could work.
After all, Theodore White’s best-selling “Making of the President” series, which began with his chronicle of John Kennedy’s successful 1960 run, soon became Joe McGinnis’s “The Selling of the President” about the equally successful packaging and marketing of candidate Richard Nixon in 1968.
And who is better at marketing and branding than Donald Trump?
The Democrats are in more trouble than they realize proceeding with their rigged effort to crown Hillary Clinton as their nominee.
Who really thinks it’s a good idea to field a candidate with that much baggage and with a 56% unfavorable rating?
The Democratic Party bosses take comfort that Trump’s negatives are even higher, thus logically pointing to a Clinton victory in this war of attrition.
But, as Clinton herself constantly proclaims, she is the battle-scarred veteran of the trenches, and her favorability ratings are likely to move much more sluggishly.
Trump is new to this game and his ratings are more fluid. There is every reason to expect that as he pivots to a new look and demeanor, his favorability rating will improve.
As for the content of that foreign-policy speech, the mainstream media predictably found it “incoherent” and full of “paradoxes.” As if the foreign policy followed by President Barack Obama and his erstwhile secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was a resounding example of coherence.
There is actually a good deal of internal coherence in Trump’s analysis of America’s place in the world and his policies, and it fits in well with the general themes of his campaign. Read the speech and judge for yourself.
“America First,” like “Make America Great Again,” has considerable resonance with a wide swath of voters through any number of swing states that Trump could well move into his column in a general election. (Sorry, pundits, no one really cares if the expression was first used by Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s.)
And let’s look at the widely touted impact on the down ticket — that aversion to Trump will swing a number of contested Senate seats to the Democrats and enable them to regain control of the Senate while making considerable gains in the House.
That may be too optimistic, especially considering that the trend under Obama has been for the party to lose ground.
Data from University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato published this week in the Washington Post showed that Obama set new standards in this regard.
Democrats have lost a net 11 governorships during his tenure, as well as 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, and control of 32 (!) state legislative chambers — far more in every case than Republicans under that party’s presidents and mostly more than other Democrats have lost.
Why should Democrats gain under Clinton’s standard after she has wrapped herself in the “success” of the Obama administration?
The Democratic Party leadership is for the most part geriatric and sclerotic, and even the feisty independent trying to win a new generation to progressive policies is 74.
Conceivably, Hillary Clinton could do a pivot of her own and wholeheartedly embrace the policies championed by Bernie Sanders, which have generated so much of the energy and enthusiasm in the Democratic primaries.
No matter how convincingly Sanders endorses Clinton once she has actually won the nomination, it is not his responsibility to keep that enthusiasm alive.
Carly Fiorina brings to the Ted Cruz campaign a proven ability to go toe-to-toe with arch rival Donald Trump. Here are some of the sharpest exchanges between Fiorina and the GOP frontrunner. Photo: AP
The ability to generate
enthusiasm is nontransferable and if Clinton wants to keep those voters,
especially young people who would be voting for the first time, it is
up to her to motivate them to go to the polls.
She has shown little inclination so far to do that, apparently confident that she has the “Obama coalition” well enough in hand to win the election and that organization will do the rest.
But it won’t be fear and loathing of Trump that gets these young people to the polls. It is Trump who is making the more successful opening to the center, with his support for Medicare and Social Security and his opposition to trade pacts.
He, too, could promise some relief for student debt along with his raising hopes of more and better jobs.
These young voters aren’t bogged down in the past. They don’t care if someone calls himself a socialist, and they certainly won’t care that Charles Lindbergh was the first to use the expression “America First.”
Hillary Clinton, as Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger noted this week, is much likelier to pivot now to the halcyon days of President Bill Clinton, perhaps throwing Obama under the bus now that he has served his purpose of winning her the nomination.
But for many of these young voters, the first Clinton administration is something they read about in history books, and it would be hard to overestimate the degree of Clinton fatigue among older voters.
We’ll see who does a better job of packaging and selling, but it would be premature to count on seeing a second President Clinton
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump gave a major foreign policy address this week with all the trappings of a commander in chief — American flags in the background, dark suit with the stars-and-stripes lapel pin, white shirt, red tie, and, wonder of wonders, a teleprompter to stay on script.
Trump, who is nothing if not a good performer, mostly pulled it off, prompting MarketWatch Washington bureau chief Steve Goldstein to comment, “Squint and you can almost see Trump speaking from the Oval Office.”
Renowned Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight threw his support behind Donald Trump's presidential campaign, less than a week before Indiana voters go to the polls in the state's primary. Photo: AP
It could work.
After all, Theodore White’s best-selling “Making of the President” series, which began with his chronicle of John Kennedy’s successful 1960 run, soon became Joe McGinnis’s “The Selling of the President” about the equally successful packaging and marketing of candidate Richard Nixon in 1968.
And who is better at marketing and branding than Donald Trump?
The Democrats are in more trouble than they realize proceeding with their rigged effort to crown Hillary Clinton as their nominee.
Who really thinks it’s a good idea to field a candidate with that much baggage and with a 56% unfavorable rating?
The Democratic Party bosses take comfort that Trump’s negatives are even higher, thus logically pointing to a Clinton victory in this war of attrition.
But, as Clinton herself constantly proclaims, she is the battle-scarred veteran of the trenches, and her favorability ratings are likely to move much more sluggishly.
Trump is new to this game and his ratings are more fluid. There is every reason to expect that as he pivots to a new look and demeanor, his favorability rating will improve.
As for the content of that foreign-policy speech, the mainstream media predictably found it “incoherent” and full of “paradoxes.” As if the foreign policy followed by President Barack Obama and his erstwhile secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was a resounding example of coherence.
There is actually a good deal of internal coherence in Trump’s analysis of America’s place in the world and his policies, and it fits in well with the general themes of his campaign. Read the speech and judge for yourself.
“America First,” like “Make America Great Again,” has considerable resonance with a wide swath of voters through any number of swing states that Trump could well move into his column in a general election. (Sorry, pundits, no one really cares if the expression was first used by Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s.)
And let’s look at the widely touted impact on the down ticket — that aversion to Trump will swing a number of contested Senate seats to the Democrats and enable them to regain control of the Senate while making considerable gains in the House.
That may be too optimistic, especially considering that the trend under Obama has been for the party to lose ground.
Data from University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato published this week in the Washington Post showed that Obama set new standards in this regard.
Democrats have lost a net 11 governorships during his tenure, as well as 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, and control of 32 (!) state legislative chambers — far more in every case than Republicans under that party’s presidents and mostly more than other Democrats have lost.
Why should Democrats gain under Clinton’s standard after she has wrapped herself in the “success” of the Obama administration?
The Democratic Party leadership is for the most part geriatric and sclerotic, and even the feisty independent trying to win a new generation to progressive policies is 74.
Conceivably, Hillary Clinton could do a pivot of her own and wholeheartedly embrace the policies championed by Bernie Sanders, which have generated so much of the energy and enthusiasm in the Democratic primaries.
No matter how convincingly Sanders endorses Clinton once she has actually won the nomination, it is not his responsibility to keep that enthusiasm alive.
Carly Fiorina brings to the Ted Cruz campaign a proven ability to go toe-to-toe with arch rival Donald Trump. Here are some of the sharpest exchanges between Fiorina and the GOP frontrunner. Photo: AP
She has shown little inclination so far to do that, apparently confident that she has the “Obama coalition” well enough in hand to win the election and that organization will do the rest.
But it won’t be fear and loathing of Trump that gets these young people to the polls. It is Trump who is making the more successful opening to the center, with his support for Medicare and Social Security and his opposition to trade pacts.
He, too, could promise some relief for student debt along with his raising hopes of more and better jobs.
These young voters aren’t bogged down in the past. They don’t care if someone calls himself a socialist, and they certainly won’t care that Charles Lindbergh was the first to use the expression “America First.”
Hillary Clinton, as Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger noted this week, is much likelier to pivot now to the halcyon days of President Bill Clinton, perhaps throwing Obama under the bus now that he has served his purpose of winning her the nomination.
But for many of these young voters, the first Clinton administration is something they read about in history books, and it would be hard to overestimate the degree of Clinton fatigue among older voters.
We’ll see who does a better job of packaging and selling, but it would be premature to count on seeing a second President Clinton
Betty MacDonald Fan Club proudly presents:
The amazing, very witty, charming, intelligent story written by our brilliant Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honor Member - artist and writer Letizia Mancino.
WHEN YOU DREAM, DREAM BIG
Copyright 2011/2016 by Letizia Mancino
All rights reserved
Translated by D. Tsiaprakas
Betty, I love you! Your books „Anybody can do anything“ and „Onions in the Stew“ are really outstanding! I take them into my hand, and at a stone's throw I am right away in America ! Columbus and the egg: The great discovery!
Your bestseller „The Egg and I“ the greatest discovery. And you and I! I know America: It's true what you are writing: That's America: Absolutely right! No, even to the least detail! The landscape and the passion: Do you know the country where pistols blossom? Brava, Betty, you are describing the Americans vividly, genuinely, insufferably, brushed upon paper. If I like to read your works? To read doesn't even express it! I can even hear and see everything: Nature, culture, subculture.
America has almost remained unchanged! O those cool Americans! Calculating, stockmarket, Wall Street, the financial crisis (even back in 1930), the gamblers, the bankruptcy of companies! The swarming of dodgers and cheaters. People left without money. Dispair und hunger! A terrible „Worst Case“ (when I knew but little English I thought it is sausage with cheese).
Still how impressive is the ability to adaptone self of the Americans: They know how to enjoy life, acrobats of survival! In the twinkle of an eye they achieved to adapt themselves and effect the work of pioneers: In the morning you are a cleaningwoman, in the evening a brothel woman! No problem!
„The insufficient, here it's becoming an event; The indescribable, here it's done;“ Mary Bard Jensen, your sister, was the treasure trove of procuring work: My word, what a power woman with unlimited imagination! She has recommended you everywhere: Betty can do everything, also write novels! Go ahead, sister, hurry up! The editor wants to see your manuscripts! Up to that point you had not written a single line! Wow! And if still everything goes wrong? No problem: When you dream, dream big!
Just look, you have become famous.The Egg and I You know that, Betty? I'll slip into „The Egg and I“ and come and be your guest! I want to get to know your chickens. I hate chickens! I'm a chickens slave from North America! O Betty, without these damned animals, no chance of you becoming famous! „The Egg and I“ you would never have written! How many readers you have made happy!
Your book is so amusing! Your witty fine (almost nasty) remarks about your family members and roundabout neighbours made me laugh so much! You have been born into a special family: Comfort was not desired: I can't but be amazed: What did your father say to your mother? After tomorrow I am going to work elsewhere: Thousands of miles away...He sent her a telegram: LEAVING FOR TWO YEARS ON THURSDAY FOR MEXICO CITY STOP GET READY IF YOU WANT TO COME ALONG – That was on Monday. Mother wired back: SHALL BE READY, and so she was.That's America! Improvisation, change, adventure. You show no weakness: Let's go! Your descriptions, Betty, about the tremendous happenings in nature have deeply frightened me.
Continent America, I'm terrified by you! I feel so small and threatened like a tiny fly before an enormous flyswatter! Your novel is very many-sided! The reader may use it even as a cook book! „The Egg and I“ starts straight away with a recipe: „Next to the wisdom that lamb meat doesn't taste good unless it has been roasted with garlic“. Do you enjoy the American food?
O Betty, it's too fatty for me and I hate garlic! (Betty is presently cooking lunch for Bob. She's continually talking to „STOVE“: STOVE is Bob's rival; in the beginning I thought it was being himself). She turns round and says: Well, so no garlic for you. No lamb either, Betty. I don't eat any meat! I'd actually prefer only fried eggs. Betty, let me make them myself. Then you try it!
Blow! „STOVE“ out of order! I don't succeed in turning it on! Damned! It's got more of a mind of its own than „STOVE“ of my friend, Hilde Domin! Bob's coming! He must eat directly! „Men eat anything, the swines! Says your grandmother Gammy“. Is it true? Do you like my chickens? Bob asked me without introducing himself. Yes, Bob (rude) I love them! I'm vegetarian. Do you want to clean the henhouse with me tomorrow? A, you're always getting up so early at four o'clock! Bob, that's not a job for me! He looked at me disdainfully! A Roman cissy! You need a reeducation at once! Help, Bob's attacking me! I rather change the novel immediately and move to the „Island“!
