​Screenshot #1 - ​ Do you want to read about Veterans for Veterans Day? I have two posts, but how can you find them? Go to my Pinterest boards at https://www.pinterest.com/rindabeach/  This is what you’ll see , two boards with soldiers. Bingo! You could check the Economics board, but the Government one is better. I peeked!

​
Screenshot #2 - If you clicked on Government, then you’d come to this page. You’re still looking for veterans so I’d go straight to the pins for Serving your country.

If you need Citizenship, International rules, or state government, you can look them up later. If you’re interested in the DACA kids who are in the news, I have a post about them too.

                                   Screenshot #3 –  Here’s the screen you’ll see for Serving your country.

​The first post is titled Stories Matter, and they’re all about the life of President George H. W. Bush. I was inspired by all the stories I heard during the week leading up to his funeral.
​
The first one tells how George joined the Navy the day after he turned 18. A year later he was the youngest Navy fighter pilot, and he almost didn’t live to tell. You’ll have to read to discover the details.
​

Screenshot #4 - The middle post is titled There’s More to Soldier, More to a Veteran.​

I interviewed a Facebook friend who has since become my son-in-law. He went to West Point, became a Captain in the Army. I wanted to know what inspired him to join, and why he’s still inspired with his mission.
​
Today and every day I thank Jesse and his fellow soldiers for their service, for giving their time and talents to serve our country. They could have taken an easier route, but they didn’t. They’re out there every day making a difference for us. Thank you!
​

​Screenshot #5 – The Final Post is Semper Fi! The 14 Marine Corp Leadership Traits. They’re the same traits I taught my second graders back in the day.

​I found this story because my friend Mark emailed me about Jesse and his service. Mark wanted me to know that our servicemen don’t do their jobs for appreciation. They do them for love of country, because they want to serve.
​
Then he told me about the character traits that changed his life. I was so impressed that I saved his email so I could write this post.

I want these posts to live, to be rediscovered and reread. That’s why I decided to use screenshots for my illustrations. I want you to be able to find them and use them again and again.
​
Tomorrow – two books I’ve reviewed that honor our military.

​

​​The Gates of Hell, Part 5
No bodies here! They would have been incinerated already. This fiery furnace has 2 other names - the Door to Hell, and the Darvaza Gas Crater, but I think it looks like the center of the earth.

​Remember the good old Soviet Union? They were involved in this disaster too. Back in 1971 they found a natural gas field, and a camp of engineers started drilling. They didn’t know there was a pocket of gas. The field collapsed, the crater opened, but no one died.

​The engineers were worried that poisonous gases like methane would be released. They decided to burn them off, thinking it would only take a couple of weeks. It didn’t. They’ve been burning now for 43 years.

If you decide to visit, try camping out in the Karakum Desert that’s pictured above. You won’t need to bring your night light.
​
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
https://factslegend.org/18-interesting-door-to-hell-facts/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Turkmenistan

On April 27th the Soviets started evacuating the town next door, Pripyat. By May 14th they’d gotten everyone out of  the 18 mile area around the plant. The pictures above could have been taken in 1986 or in 2019. No one has lived there since.
​
By April 28th the world discovered the spread of radiation. Workers at a nuclear plant 680 miles to the northwest in Sweden found radioactive particles on their clothes. 

The map below shows the levels of radiation. The Confiscated/Closed Zone is probably part of that original 18 mile evacuation, but the radiation spread into Belarus and Russia itself. 

                                              Here are 5 creepy facts from my research: 
1. The radiation in Chernobyl was the same as in Hiroshima, Japan after the atomic bomb.
2. The greatest danger was in the first few weeks, just like Hiroshima. 
3. The firefighters suffered the most. They went in to stop the fires, but dozens of them died from radiation sickness.
4. Chernobyl didn’t have a containment building to protect it like a cocoon. If it had, very few people would have died. The environment would have been preserved.
5. Today animals like deer, moose, and boars are back, and so are the plants. Radiation is still there and will be for decades.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster 
https://www.livescience.com/39961-chernobyl.html 
https://www.livescience.com/65450-weird-chernobyl-facts.html

​                                                                       The Hanging Coffins of Sagada

Feel like hanging around for eternity? Go to the town of Sagada in the Mountain Province of the Philippines. These coffins are an old Igorot tradition. Not everyone is allowed to have one. One source said you had to have grandchildren. Another said you had to die from natural causes. Being old just might help you hang high in the sky.

​Today things have changed. The coffins are now 2 meters long so no more broken bones, but the burials only happen every couple of years. Younger people prefer level ground.

This is a map of the Philippines. Find the province on the northwest coast, then go south 2 more provinces. I think that’s where Sagada is, but click the link below to see for yourself.
​
Travel north to the Chinese mainland or south to the island of Indonesia, and you’ll find hanging coffins there too.

​Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_coffins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagada
https://filipiknow.net/sagada-hanging-coffins/
https://www.roughguides.com/article/hanging-coffins/
 

This is Annette Schottenfeld, and this is the dummy cover for her debut book. It was supposed to come out in 2019, but its book birthday has been moved back to 2020.
​
The book business, especially children’s books, is so hard to break into. I was lucky – I self-published so I had control over my book, but I was still delayed. It was only 17 days, but it seemed like forever.

What do you do when your book is delayed? You work on book business like this, or you work on the next one.

Annette wrote a blog post for OBI’S MUD BATH . . .  with 5 reasons why you’ll love it. I hope you check out her link below, and keep an eye out for Obi’s book birthday. I read her 5 reasons, and I can’t wait to read the real book. https://onthescenein19.weebly.com/blog/five-reasons-why-youll-love-the-picture-book-obis-mud-bath

Meet author/illustrator Laurie Smollett Kutscera. This week she interviewed herself. What else could she do? She wrote her debut middle grade novel and illustrated it too. It sounds funny, like hitting a tennis ball across the net, then running over to return it. It worked for Laurie! She did a great job with both her questions and answers. Click on the link below to see for yourself.

Meet author Tina Shepherson. This week she interviewed her main character, Maddie, about a walkout at school. Read Tina’s interview to discover why Maddie and her friends decided to walk.
 
https://onthescenein19.weebly.com/blog/character-interview-author-tina-shepardsons-interview-with-main-character-maddie-from-walkout

​This interview is a two-fer with Andy from Bear with Us Productions, and Eduardo Paj, illustrator of LLAMA DRAMA.  Andy runs the production company, a one stop shop for anyone who wants to self publish a book. He’ll help you  with the ins and outs of the business. Continue reading, and you’ll learn how Eduardo Paj made the words come to life on the pages of MY LLAMA DRAMA..
 
https://onthescenein19.weebly.com/blog/an-interview-with-bear-with-us-productions-and-illustrator-eduardo-paj

​We have something new for you this week from author June Jacobs McCrary. She interviewed Weston Gregg about his role as main character in her book Res-Q Tyler Stop, What a great idea!

https://onthescenein19.weebly.com/blog/character-interview-author-june-mccrary-jacobss-interview-with-main-character-weston-gregg-from-res-q-tyler-stop-a-middle-grade-historical-adventure-set-in-northern-california-in-1968    

I think I should try this on my latest Work In Progress (WIP). My critique partners think I need to push deeper into the plot. Maybe if I interview the characters, they’ll help me figure out how.
​

​Here’s my acrostic ode to Neil Armstrong – thanks to Vanessa’s inspiration!
 
     Neil loved airplanes.
     Every day he worked to build better ones.
    If he failed, he didn’t quit. He
    Looked and looked till he built a better plane.
​

This post just kept growing and grow so long I decided to go into parts. 

Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, Italy
I see dead bodies – really – in Palermo Italy. This was once the cemetery for the Capuchin Monastery, but in the 1500’s they ran out of space in the graveyard so the monks excavated the crypts below it. Once they pulled out all the coffins, they mummified the bodies.YUCK!

To mummify something you dehydrate it. That means you pull the water out of the dead body. The monks did it by putting the body on the ceramic pipes of the catacomb. After the water was gone, sometimes they washed the bodies in vinegar. P-U!

Sometimes they embalmed them, which usually involved 4 steps. Other bodies were sealed in a glass cabinet, but everyone wore their everyday or favorite clothes.

At first the catacombs were only for  monks, but in time getting entombed there became a status symbol. It was the ultimate form of burial. Relatives donated towards the upkeep, but if they stopped payment, the body was put on a side shelf until the money streamed in again.

This is Rosalia Lombardo. She was one of the last people to get a spot in the catacombs in 1871. She looks like a ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ which is the pose she was placed in. 

Make time if you want to visit everyone – there are about 8000 corpses and 1252 mummies, but please, no photos or touching bodies. Iron grills stop the touching, and I bet a big fine stops those photo ops.

The big map is the island of Sicily. The tiny one shows it beside the rest of Italy.

If you want to find Palermo, go to the northwestern corner of Sicily. Travel east to the next province. It looks like Palermo is the third bump along the coast line, and it’s Sicily’s hottest tourist spot.

​Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombe_dei_Cappuccini

This post started with 4 eerie pictures I found last year on Triptrivia.com. I saved them, and now I have time to share them. Unfortunately my link doesn’t work anymore, but I copied the words and pictures  so I could research them.  
Original link: https://www.triptrivia.com/answer/5c61be31cca5d000045ca39d

​                                                                                  Island of the Dolls, Part 1
I don’t think  dolls are creepy, but this picture sure is. It’s from the Island of the Dolls. I’d never heard of it until Trip Trivia’s post. The island is in the channels of Xochimilco. That’s south of Mexico City, close to the Estadio Azteca football stadium. Would you believe it’s one of the channel’s main  attractions?

​The story: a girl drowned near this spot. Don Julian Santana owned the island. After the drowning he got one too many scares he couldn’t explain. Then he spotted a doll floating along the shore. He had heard the dead girl still cried out for her missing doll. He decided evil spirits were behind it.

​Don Julian started searching the canals and garbage for unwanted dolls. He hung them on trees to scare off those evil spirits. That was the 1950’s. Don Julian lived till 2001. The creepy part – he died of a heart attack, close to where he found that first doll.
​
This is the oldest one found on the island, but there are literally hundreds. They’re covered in cobwebs and bugs. YUCK! You can visit if you’d like, but I prefer the toy store ones that are bug and web-free.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Dolls

Here’s a tourist map of Xochimilco, just in case you ever find yourself in Mexico City.
Map source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xochimilco

                                                                      Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, Italy, Part 2
I see dead bodies – really – in Palermo Italy. This was once the cemetery for the Capuchin Monastery, but in the 1500’s they ran out of space in the graveyard so the monks excavated the crypts below it. Once they pulled out all the coffins, they mummified the bodies.YUCK!

To mummify something you dehydrate it. That means you pull the water out of the dead body. The monks did it by putting the body on the ceramic pipes of the catacomb. After the water was gone, sometimes they washed the bodies in vinegar. P-U!

Sometimes they embalmed them, which usually involved 4 steps. Other bodies were sealed in a glass cabinet, but everyone wore their everyday or favorite clothes.

At first the catacombs were only for  monks, but in time getting entombed there became a status symbol. It was the ultimate form of burial. Relatives donated towards the upkeep, but if they stopped payment, the body was put on a side shelf until the money streamed in again.
​
This is Rosalia Lombardo. She was one of the last people to get a spot in the catacombs in 1871. She looks like a ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ which is the pose she was placed in. 

Make time if you want to visit everyone – there are about 8000 corpses and 1252 mummies, but please, no photos or touching bodies. Iron grills stop the touching, and I bet a big fine stops those photo ops.

The big map is the island of Sicily. The tiny one shows it beside the rest of Italy.
​
If you want to find Palermo, go to the northwestern corner of Sicily. Travel east to the next province. It looks like Palermo is the third bump along the coast line, and it’s Sicily’s hottest tourist spot.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombe_dei_Cappuccini

                                                                                 The Hanging Coffins of Sagada, Part 3
Feel like hanging around for eternity? Go to the town of Sagada in the Mountain Province of the Philippines. These coffins are an old Igorot tradition. Not everyone is allowed to have one. One source said you had to have grandchildren. Another said you had to die from natural causes. Being old just might help you hang high in the sky

Today things have changed. The coffins are now 2 meters long so no more broken bones, but the burials only happen every couple of years. Younger people prefer level ground.
​
This is a map of the Philippines. Find the province on the northwest coast, then go south 2 more provinces. I think that’s where Sagada is, but click the link below to see for yourself.
Travel north to the Chinese mainland or south to the island of Indonesia, and you’ll find hanging coffins there too.
 

​Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_coffins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagada
https://filipiknow.net/sagada-hanging-coffins/
https://www.roughguides.com/article/hanging-coffins/

​                                                                        Chernobyl, Ukraine, Part 4
I don’t see dead bodies – I see a region that’s dead, that’s frozen in time. It looks like it did 33 years ago when it was abandoned because of what happened at 1:23 AM on April 26, 1986. That’s when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. 

On April 27th the Soviets started evacuating the town next door, Pripyat. By May 14th they’d gotten everyone out of  the 18 mile area around the plant. The pictures above could have been taken in 1986 or in 2019. No one has lived there since.
​
By April 28th the world discovered the spread of radiation. Workers at a nuclear plant 680 miles to the northwest in Sweden found radioactive particles on their clothes. 

​The map below shows the levels of radiation. The Confiscated/Closed Zone is probably part of that original 18 mile evacuation, but the radiation spread into Belarus and Russia itself. 

Here are 5 creepy facts from my research:
​1. The radiation in Chernobyl was the same as in Hiroshima, Japan after the atomic bomb.
2.  The greatest danger was in the first few weeks, just like Hiroshima.
3.  The firefighters suffered the most. They went in to stop the fires, but dozens of them died from radiation sickness.
4.  Chernobyl didn’t have a containment building to protect it like a cocoon. If it had, very few people would have died. The environment would have been preserved.
​5. Today animals like deer, moose, and boars are back, and so are the plants. Radiation is still there and will be for decades.  
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
https://www.livescience.com/39961-chernobyl.html
https://www.livescience.com/65450-weird-chernobyl-facts.html
​

 ​The Gates of Hell, Part 5
No bodies here! They would have been incinerated already. This fiery furnace has 2 other names - the Door to Hell, and the Darvaza Gas Crater, but I think it looks like the center of the earth.

​Remember the good old Soviet Union? They were involved in this disaster too. Back in 1971 they found a natural gas field, and a camp of engineers started drilling. They didn’t know there was a pocket of gas. The field collapsed, the crater opened, but no one died.

​The engineers were worried that poisonous gases like methane would be released. They decided to burn them off, thinking it would only take a couple of weeks. It didn’t. They’ve been burning now for 43 years.

​                                                                                                     Stage 3
I’ve been on this voyage now for a month, since September 26th. I’m in a much better place than I was. I no longer sleep 10 hours a night or need hour-long naps every day. The last post I wrote was October 5th. Here are my results since then.

I didn’t track numbers this time, but over the last 22 nights I’ve been able to get 9 hours of sleep. I probably had 1-2 early mornings each week. I got up, and I didn’t take naps longer than 20 minutes on those days. I followed my rules.
​
I managed to power down somewhere between 11 and 11: 15. I wanted to push it back to 10:30, but I decided not to. I’m a late night person, and an 11:00 powerdown time works for me. Sometimes close enough, like 11:15, is good enough.

​ The next problem I took on was waking up. I can hit the snooze button for an hour. That’s a really bad habit! I decided to try something new. I let myself snooze for 15 minutes. Then I wanted to try something positive, something that would make me want to wake up.

​I’m a reader so I thought I’d reward myself with kindle time in the morning. I tried a couple different ways, and I got closer, but I still want sleep more than my kindle. Time to revise the plan, again.

​My New Game Plan
This is exactly  how I feel at this stage of the game. I have basic rules that help me go to bed and wake up, but it’s not perfect. I’m still tired, especially after a day spent subbing.  I need to do some tweaking, maybe even break a rule or two when necessary.
​

Most nights 9 hours of sleep works, but it doesn’t on subbing mornings. Then I feel tired into the next day. I discovered, when I really can’t get up that next morning, I gift myself with an extra hour of sleep. It breaks the rules, but  I feel so much better. It’s my plan for tomorrow and for Thursday, my recovery day after subbing.
​
This week I discovered turning  on the light, sitting up in bed, and checking my phone – it  works! I can wake up in 15 – 30 minutes, and that’s a new record for me! It changes the rules, but who cares! I don’t, especially if they work better. My goal is to make waking up something I enjoy, not the chore it’s always been.

Lisa, my Noom coach, suggested meditation as a way to help me fall asleep. There are some nights when I’m so excited/upset that my head spins with ideas. I can power down my body, but it’s a lot harder for my head.

I reached out to my Noom social group. I asked for ideas, and I got 3. Someone suggested using a musical playlist of 3 - 4 songs. Another suggested two different kinds of breathing exercises, and the last one had a You Tube video.
​
I think I’ll start with the breathing. I use a BIPAP sleep machine. It’s for sleep apnea, but it also stops my snoring. I used to be Snoring Thunder. Now I’m Snoring Whisper. The BIPAP machine makes it easy to focus on breathing because it pushes air in and out of my nose every minute of every night. I’ll let you know in a week or two how it worked! I hope the force is with me!

​I found Readers’ Favorite in August. Someone on my 12 x 12 writing forum had earned their star, and they were sharing their good news.  I decided to check out Readers’ Favorite. You can pay for an express review. That means you get the review within 2-3 weeks, but it doesn’t affect the quality or rating of your review. 
​

​Readers’ Favorite also has free reviews, but you are not guaranteed one. Reviewers choose the books they want to do. They look over a list in their favorite genres. They look at the cover, read the description, sometimes a little of the book. Then they make a choice. Half of the submissions are reviewed within 3 months. Some are never reviewed. 

​I decided to opt for a free review. I sent my submission out August 30th. September came and went. I was busy working on other manuscripts, and I forgot about the review.  Then October 14th I received an email from Readers’ Favorite. I was afraid to open it, afraid of what was inside. I knew it would be an honest review. I hoped for a 5, but I’ve been hopeful before and been disappointed. I prepared myself for a 3. Then I opened the email, and this is what I found: 

Reviewed By: Emily-Jane Hills Orford
Review Rating: 5 Stars - Congratulations on your 5-star review!
​

​Reviewed By Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers’ Favorite
​
Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon in 1969, had a passion for flying and aeronautical engineering from a very young age. An outing with his father to watch an airplane race in 1932 launched his passion. In 1935 he had his first airplane ride. As a boy, he built one model airplane after another (and a few paper airplanes in between), always looking forward to sending the finished craft zooming across the yard outside his bedroom window, just to see how far it would fly. He worked odd jobs, earning the money to finance his ever-growing fleet of homemade airplanes and to pay for his much-desired flying lessons at the nearby airfield. As a teenager, he researched and designed a wind tunnel, a project that earned him recognition. He graduated from high school in 1947 at sixteen, the youngest graduate at his school. He earned a Holloway scholarship to study aeronautical engineering at Purdue University. Little did anyone know then that this passionately brilliant young man would someday walk on the moon.

I remember that day in 1969. I was twelve. Not usually allowed to watch television during the day, I sat down with my grandmother to watch the historic event on a small ten-inch black and white television. My memories of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon parallels that of author Rinda Beach. A lot has been written about this astronaut’s accomplishments, but what’s interesting is the story Rinda weaves in her book, Neil Armstrong’s Wind Tunnel Dream. Written with young readers in mind, the story tells of a young Neil Armstrong and his growing passion for airplanes, flying, and the world beyond the skies. With occasional black and white sketches to parallel the story, the author develops a plot that will appeal to young readers and encourage them to dream big, to never lose sight of one's dreams and to work hard to achieve them. Every famous adult was once a child with a dream. Having fond memories of this historic event fifty years ago, it was a pleasure to read this story and learn more about the man whose passion encouraged all of us to dream big. A wonderful addition to the library of young people’s stories about flying and space travel.

​If you’d like to see the review online at Readers’ Favorite, click on this link:
https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/neil-armstrongs-wind-tunnel-dream

I’m a winner, but I had to buy my own chicken dinner!   LOL!

​I won 4 books this summer, and this was my 1st win. If you want free books, follow an author’s newsletter, especially the ones that feature brand-new books and contests. Authors want to get publicity. They want you to know their books are out there. They want you to look at them and either buy them or  check them out from your local library. Book contests give you attention, but they may/may not bring in sales. 

When I won this book, I looked at it, read a page or two, then put it away for later. It never called me back. Then I read an email from the 4th book I won. The author asked me to take pictures of the book, write a review, post it on Amazon and other sites, and finally share it on social media.
​
I don’t post reviews unless I can give them 4 or 5 stars. All of these books are worthy of those scores. I’ll post their reviews here, and on Amazon too. So, here goes!
​

​Untitled
Written and Illustrated by Timothy Young
Age Level: 5 – 6
Grade Level: K – 3
 
UNTITLED is an unusual book because it breaks the 4th wall. If you’re wondering what that is, it means the characters are talking directly to you, the reader. In this story the 2 main characters are trying to work out the title and plot for this book. One’s a coatimundi, and the other’s a capybara. I’m not sure which is which, but one is the largest rodent, and the other is a social raccoon. I  didn’t enjoy the book till the middle. That’s when something dangerous and unexpected happened. I love when an author can twist the ending. Without giving it away, I hope the coatimundi and capybara live to tell another tale.

​A Wonderful Day!
Written by Michael Samulak
Illustrated by Louise charm Pulvera
Reading Level: Early Reader
 
This is a simple, easy to read story about a day at the zoo. It’s designed so that you and your child feel like you’re there in the story, meeting each animal at the zoo.
 

​You Can Call Me Katelyn
Written by Keri T. Collins
Illustrated by Marcia Adams Ho
Age Level: 1 - 12
Grade Level: P – 4
 
Poor Carlee Ashley Myers! She’s hated her first name since the day she was born. Carlee decides she has to change it. She picks a new name and comes up with ways to persuade her family and friends to use it. Katelynn/Carlee is so very clever. She’s actually training the grown-ups to adopt her new name.
 
I  discovered by writing a review, that this book is a great tool. Katelynn can encourage your kids to learn to solve their own problems. She can also model for parents and teachers how you can allow your children to become problem solvers. A kid who can solve problems can go anywhere, do anything! The world is their oyster!

​Rosie the Dragon and Charlie Make Waves
Written by Lauren H Kerstein
Illustrated by Nate Wragg
Age Level: 4 - 8
Grade Level: K – 2

This is a great summer read, but it’s also perfect for indoor pools. Charlie loves his pet dragon, but Rosie has a horrible time with rules. Follow Charlie as he tries to teach Rosie proper pool behavior. Then enjoy kid/dragon fun on every page. Surf’s up for Rosie, Charlie, and You too!

​It’s fall now, and time to enter a few more book contests.
Win or lose, it’s fun to try!
Here’s to winners and chicken dinners!