"Saints at the River" by Ron Rash

     So far i have really enjoyed reading this book. I guess the fact that it takes place in South Carolina and and i have been in or heard of just about every place it talks about.
     The story starts out with a young girl and her family having a pick nick on the bank of the Tamassee River. Since the river is on the the Georgia, South Carolina line the girl wants to wade out to the middle so that she can tell her friends back home that she has been in two states at one time. The girl, who i think they say was around 9 years old or so, wades out to the middle of the river and ends up getting swept downstream. The Tamassee River is very powerful especially during this time of year they say. The young girl ends up getting caught in a hydraulic and under a rock. The girls family tries to do all they can to save her, the mother dives in a few time but can't get her out and the father, who can't swim, just watches helplessly from the shore. But, the river is to powerful and they can't get the girl out.
     After about 3 or 4 weeks the girls body has still not been recovered from the river. The girls father begins to raise hell about the situation, which i think is very understandable. The story eventually begins to attract the attention of some big time news media and that's when our main character Maggie Glenn comes into play. Maggie works for a newspaper company down in Columbia, but she is a native of the Tamassee River area and actually attended Clemson University. Maggie gets sent to cover the story, since she is a native of the area, with a rather famous writer Allen Hemphill.   It turns out Maggie secretly like Allen but notices that he wears a wedding band on his finger even though everyone knows that he is single.
     Maggie and Allen head out the next morning to cover the story. The car ride there seemed like Maggie was pretty nervous riding with Allen. She kept wanting to know more about Allen and why he wore a wedding ring. Once they got there Maggie seemed to know everyone and they all seemed very happy to see her. This is the exact same thing that happens when i go back home from school, everybody makes it seem like you've been gone forever, but i guess that's just the way things are in small town, I really wouldn't have it any other way. Anyways Maggie meets up with a few old friends and introduces Allen around to everyone. Allen ends up staying at a hotel the first night while Maggie goes to her house to stay with her father. Maggie's mother died when she was a junior in college and now her father lives at home alone but is dieing of cancer. Maggie and her father never really had a good relationship with each other so she is rather nervous about going back home to spend the night.
     There is a meeting the next day about getting the young girl out of the river. The girls father has hired a portable dam company to build a temporary dam in the river to divert the water enough that they might be able to pull the girls body out of the river. But many of the locals especially Luke says that this is against the law because it would cause harm to the river. At the meeting many different people argue back and forth about what should be done. Personally i think that the portable dam would be a great idea as long as it could handle the power of the river. they say that the dam could be built, used, and taken out all in the same day without causing any harm at all to the river. I have to agree with the father i would be trying to do any and everything to get my daughter out. But the river rats don't agree with this. They say that this will cause harm to the river and led to other things such as roads being built and development taking place close to the river.
     While at the meeting Allen records the whole things for his story. They next day down at the river they try to measure different depths and things in order to get some information to build the dam. Maggie and Allen get some good information from some of the major players involved and later on that night they meet up with Luke for supper at Moma Tilsons. Here Luke shows them all the paper work and some pictures of the laws protecting the river and says that if it were his daughter trapped in the river that he could image no better place for her to be. From this quote i can see where Luke is coming from but i still just doesn't seem right to let her stay in the river. Maggie also does some research on Allen and finds out that his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash and wonders how it feels to be covering a story like this. That night or either the next night Maggie and Allen head down to Billy's store for some guitar pickin and the two seem to hit it of pretty good. On the way home Allen skips past the hotel and drives down to the bridge. The two talk for a while and then end up kissing. The next morning they pack up and head back home.
     Once back at the office Maggie gets praised for the picture she has taken. Allen is pretty close but has not yet finished his writting on the story. The two end up eating supper at Maggie's house that night for their "first date". Here Allen kind of opens up to Maggie about his feelings for his wife and daughter. He seems to really miss his daughter the most and feels like helping to get this little girl out of the river would make him feel like a better parent than he was to his daughter. When the night is over the two kiss goodnight and he heads back home. And thats as far along in the story as i have gotten.
     Overall i like this story a lot. So far it is a pretty easy read and sort of hard to put down once i get going good. I strongly lean toward the side of doing everything i can to get the little girl out of the river. It can be done without the destroying the river like Luke and many of the other think it would.

bustling- a crowded space full of people walking around talking, lots of noise everyone very busy
rheumy- mucus disgarded from the eyes, nose, or mouth
juxtaposed- to place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast

"Glengarry Glen Ross" by David Mamet

     I'm starting out at scene three here. Its seems like from here on out it's pretty much just everyone arguing with everyone else. In the beginning scenes we found out that Levene and Moss were planning on robbing the office to steal some of the better leads and sell them off to another guy for profit. Scene three starts  out with Roma meeting a guy named Lingk at a restaurant and Roma pretty much runs his mouth the whole time. I may have missed something here but i really don't see where this scene fits into the whole play at all. But anyway act two starts out with the rest of the guys finding out that the office had been robbed and the leads had be stolen. This is where a lot of the arguing starts to begin everyone wants to blame everyone else for the robbery.
     As usual Levene continues to act like a bad ass just because he closed an eighty two thousand dollar deal, which i have to admit i would be pretty proud of myself. But one of the things that i just don't like about him is that he just thinks he's better than everybody else, and that just drives me crazy. For example of page 76 when he is talking to Williamson he says, " Would you?  Would you...? Or you're gonna what, fire me?" (page 76).  And over on the next page he's talking trash to Roma he says, " What are you, you're a secretaty, John. FUck you. That's my mesage to you. Fuck you and kiss my ass. You don't like it, I'll go talk to Jerry Graff. Period. Fuck you." (page 77)  I just don't see how Levene hasn't had his ass kicked yet, i just really don't like that guy. But anyways a little later on Williamson kind of puts two and two together and figures out that it was Levene that actually robbed the office. This is what Williamson tells Leven, " Well, I'm saying this, Shel; usually i take the contracts to the bank. Last night i didn't. How did you know that? One night in a year i left a contract on my desk. Nobody knew that buy you. Now hoe id you know that? You want to talk to me, you want to talk to someone else...because this is my job. This is my job on the line, an you are going to talk to me. now how did you know that contract was on my desk?" (page 99). After Williamson finally gets Levene to admit to it he also gets him to rat out Moss. The play ends with more arguing amongst everyone and with Levene trying to pay people off to keep him out of trouble but it's just not working. 
     To me my enjoyment of the play picked up a little more than it was in the beginning. It was a pretty quick read and once i got  used to reading the "play" style format i was able to read it pretty quick. Overall i think it was a pretty decent play, kinda wish i could find out whats gonna happen to Levene though. Maybe he gets taken out by some mafia members or some hired guns by some of the other guys at the office haha.

schmuck- a surname of German orgin

prudence- is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason.

"Glengarry Glen Ross" By David Mamet

     To start with I really do  not like reading plays. With the names up the characters constantly being on the side of the page  i find it very distracting to read. Also to me i just do not feel like the story flows as well when its written this way.
     Act one scene one takes place at a  Chinese restaurant with John Williamson and Shelly Levene. The two seem to be arguing over some business. Although Levene is older it seems like Williamson has more power and control with the business. It seems that Levene has had a run of bad luck lately and is having trouble closing deals. I'm not sure what kind of work these guys do but it seems to me like they are in the  reality business or something of that nature. From reading just the first act i can already tell i won't like Levene very much. He seems like a cry baby and somebody who is all talk. Also he seems to repeat words a lot even withing the same sentence for some reason this really just aggravates me and adds to my dislike of Levene. For example the very first words he says in scene one, "John...John...John. Okay. John. John" (pg150). After he finally finishes saying John for the twenty time he goes on to say something else. Throughout the first scene the two seem to argue back and forth with Levene mostly complaining and trying to push the blame onto other people. Levene just really gets under my skin. On page 24 he tells Williamson, who i think is his superior, "Fuck that. That's defeatist. Fuck that. Fuck it...Get on my side. Go with me. Let's do something. You want to run this office, run it (pg 24)". I would never talk to my superior that way unless i pretty much knew i wasn't going to have a job there the next day. The scene ends with Williamson getting tired of Levene's crap and leaving the restaurant.
     Scene two starts out with Aaronow and Moss sitting in a restaurant as well. They also seem to be talking about business and they both seem as though they are being screwed. They both seem to want to be more like Jerry Graff who found a list of like a thousand nurses. They say that Jerry clears anywhere from ten the fifteen thousand dollars a week. Aaronow and Moss both seem to think that they are being screwed out of good leads just as Levene believes that he is as well. For example Moss says, "That's what I'm saying. Why? The leads. He's got the good leads...what are we, we're sitting in the shit here. Why? We have to go to them to get them."(page 34). Later on in the scene is seems as though Aaronow wants Moss to break into the office building and steal all the leads making it look like a robbery. After they steal the  leads he want to sell them all to Jerry Graff and go into business with him. This is pretty much how  scene two ends with both me arguing back and forth about robbing the office of the leads and whats going to happen to each of them if they get caught.

Seville- is the capitol of the autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville, Spain

Antagonize-  a person or group of people who oppose some one else or another group

Polacks- a derogetory reference to a person of Polish decent.

The Same River Twice

     This section of the book follows the same pattern as the beginning. One chapter on him as an adult about to have a baby and the next chapter on him as a young boy exploring the world. The author spends most of his time continuously worrying about the baby's health, and if he will be the cause of it if something is wrong. For example at one point in the story he says, "I was against the test, afraid that if oour child turned out damaged, it would mean that i was too" (page55). I think his wife is starting to worry about the health of the baby as well simply because her husband is so concerned with it. On page 55 it shows an example of this by saying, "She wanted amnioscentesis to eliminate the worry of producing a baby less than perfect".
     The author still seems to wander through the woods seemingly doing nothing while his wife goes to work everyday. He did however recieve some payment for a short story that he wrote. He feels that the payment makes his wife feel comfortable with her decision to have a baby with him. The payment he recieved was only 54 dollars and i think thats the only money he has brought in for a while now. It seems to me that he is pretty much lazy and just doesn't want to do anything at all. This is pretty evident in some of the chapter in which he is a young kid roaming around the world alone.
     At one point he considers himself a drifter and doesn't know if he is running from something or running to something. Most of the time while he is our drifting from state to state as a young kid he finds work but hardly every stays at one occupation for a decent amount of time. At one point in the story he says, " Montana was a beautiful state but lacked employment" (page 67). At this point in time he seems to be wandering around looking for the perfect job moving from state to state. He did find one job that he like as a dishwasher. But the only reason he liked it was because he didn't have to do hardly anything including think. He even turned down a job with higher pay as a short order breakfast cook because he said he like the freedom of washing dishes.
     To me so far the story seems to have a pretty continous patter of worried father to be and lonesome wandering kid. To me the worried father to be chapters are pretty boring but i do enjoy reading about his adventures as a young kid.


amnioscentesis- is a medical procedure used in prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal abnornormalities and fetal infections, in which a small amount of amniotic fluid, which contains fetal tissues, is sampled from the amnion or amniotic sac surrounding a developing fetus, and the fetal DNA is examined for genetic abnormalities.

dyslexia- a learning dissability that impairs a persons fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read.

trepidation- ossilation in the precission of equinoxs

corpuscles- a small free floationg biological cell, exspecially a blood cell.