Herodotus wrote:

On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:04:01 +0700, wrote:



However, as a good Moslem you are allowed four wives. Of course, If I
remember correctly, you must treat each wife equally so if you built
another boat......


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)


Bruce, Bruce, don't even suggest it. Another Englishman, Oscar Wilde
said that "The definition of bigamy is one wife too many; monogamy is
the same thing."

Sorry that you have missed out on reading any D H Lawrence. Surely you
must have heard of "Lady Chatterly's Lover', "Sons and Lovers" and
"Women in Love"? I know that I meet few Americans who have read any of
Hemmingway or Mark Twain apart from "Tom Sawyer", but I imagined that
you were of an earlier generation. A great American, Carnegie, gave a
lot of money to build libraries in places such as little N.Z. I used
to believe as a kid that therefore (kid logic) Americans were a very
well read people. This was reinforced when I was about 10 and somebody
bought me the 52 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica - 'Great Books
of the Western World" - produced, not in the UK, but by the University
of Chicago. everything from Homer to Freud including Plato, Euripides,
Descartes, Shakespeare, Euclid and so on including my own Uncle
Herodotus after whom I named my boat. At 10 I believed that Americans
must be reading these. Pretty dumb huh!

cheers
Peter

Well, maybe the great unwashed masses?
But I personally tend to read libraries by the stack.
And use the interlibrary loan system constantly!

You can find a good book on Amazon for 85 cents.
But it costs $4 for shipping.

Mr., Carnegie's legacy is still free - except for late fees.

On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:04:24 -0500, cavelamb himself
wrote:



Well, maybe the great unwashed masses?
But I personally tend to read libraries by the stack.
And use the interlibrary loan system constantly!

You can find a good book on Amazon for 85 cents.
But it costs $4 for shipping.

Mr., Carnegie's legacy is still free - except for late fees.

Thanks for this. I didn't mean to imply that Americans were illiterate
or unread. Someone must be buying books from Amazon.

Do you know the background to the Carnegie libraries?
Do they still exist in the US? In New Zealand, unless I am mistaken,
they have all been taken over by the local councils (county and town
local government as opposed to central government).

The building are still there and are almost all identical in
construction - red brick with concrete or plastered lintels and
pediments.

Peter

Herodotus wrote:

o you know the background to the Carnegie libraries?
o they still exist in the US? In New Zealand, unless I am mistaken,
:they have all been taken over by the local councils (county and town
:local government as opposed to central government).

:The building are still there and are almost all identical in
:construction - red brick with concrete or plastered lintels and
ediments.


The buildings are still around, though lots of them are no longer
libraries. They're pretty small buildings, and aren't well suited for
modern library use, which has more than books. (Some people might say
less than books.) The grants that were intended to fund them have
mostly been used up as operating money. The libraries are run by
local library authorities, usually town or county sized.