Rick McBee's Writings
Explore the magic of new ideas and books to read as well as see what books I have written, my favorite photos, my opinions on may subjects, including Science, Africa, the Caribbean, the Civil War, my Book Reviews, and Much More!
What do the Simple Folks Do? #5 They play with the dog!
When you wake up in the morning feeling blue staying home,
Remember your Rex your dog is also longing for a roam, So to liven your day, You can get the dog to play,
and have your wife snap a picture on her phone!
The dog won when my wife reminded me that this is not the time to see a dentist to replace front tooth caps.
If I wake up tomorrow with a crick in my neck, Oh! what the heck! It was fun!
Enjoy your day – someway!>)) and don’t forget to check out my free African adventure novel – “The Ghosts of Ukuthula” available this week on Kindle.
No Fooling! Stay at home and stay safe! GRRRR!
What do The Simple folk Do? They work puzzles! #4
One of the best things to take your mind off the rest of the world is to work a beautiful Puzzle. The concentration prevents you from caring about all those things the internet would like you to focus on like inane Tweets and crude comments and you can make something of beauty!
What do the Simple Folk Do? To help them escape when they’re Blue? Essay #3 – Keeping Positive! Flowers!
So What to Do ——– if I’m Blue ———- to Bring me back to the positive side of Life?
- Go outside in my yard, find a flower and take a selfie with it! Here’s my great flowering Japanese Magnolia in full bloom right outside the kitchen door! These have no odor, but this is one of the first trees to come out every spring. What a joy!
2. Walk on the hillside across the river from our place staying a long – long way from anyone else and shoot a wonderful Shooting-star flower (also called a Bird’s Bill by some people)
That’s what this guy does to cheer himself up. It’s amazing how the outdoors even a few feet from the house, absence from our electronic massage machines – phone–internet – TV – Radio ….. can change our mood! A touch of sunshine this time of the year after a long day cooped up in the house brings on an instant feeling of – Ah! How Great to Be a Part of this World!
Enjoy!
What do the Simple Folks Do? Essay #2: Make Pancakes!
Need something to make your day perk up a bit? Start off with Pancakes!
I always make my pancakes with either Blueberries, Huckleberries, or Black Currants to get all that Good Blue out of the berries and counteract the Bad Blue of a slow wake-up in the morning before the first hot cup of Coffee or Tea.
Easy to do steps to make enough pancakes for 2-3 people depending on your size and gluttony quotient: 1 Cup of Four ( I use the generic Gluten Free Flour because regular stuff makes me itch, reg. works fine. 2. Then to this I add: 1/2 tsp soda, 1tsp baking powder, 1/4tsp salt, 1Tbs of sugar and set aside in a bowl. 3. In another bowl I break three eggs (you can get by with 1) and beat them really well, almost frothy. To this I add 1 and 1/3 cups of buttermilk (you can use milk but then you have to add 1Tbs of lemon juice to make the soda bubble when you mix things together. buttermilk is so much easier and you can get low fat type if you prefer. I mix the eggs and buttermilk together and then add 2Tbs of olive oil (other types of cooking oil work just as well). Whip everything well. Now pour your liquid from #2 above into your #3 mixture and beat just enough to mix everything but not to whip out the bubbles that are beginning to form.
4. Now fold in with a spatula 1 – 2 cups of berries. If they have been frozen, then make sure you warm them in a strainer in a bowl of warm water for a minute and drain well before adding to your batter or the batter will actually freeze to the berries in clumps.
5. Heat your pan or griddle to mark 5 of a 10 scale gauge and add just a small bit of oil to the pan to get it ready for cooking. Put three to four dollops of batter (about 1/4 cup each) into the heated pan.
Now cook the pancakes on that side until you begin to see little air-hole bubbles coming to the surface and when they break, they leave a hole. (You can see a few holes beginning to to show on my pancakes (the little black dots). Use your spatula to check that it is turning a deep brown, but not burning and then flip the pancakes once.
RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO PAT THE PANCAKE WITH YOUR SPATULA – NEVER PAT A PANCAKE!
While the cakes are on this side, warm you r syrup, get out the butter, put the plates nearby and get your family (including the dog) ready to eat! Note I have a bunch showing at the top of the picture. Those are the pancakes that after cooling go in the freezer in a plastic bag so we can eat them for several days just by warming in the microwave.
Take out those yummy pancakes straight out of the pan and Chow Down! YUMMY!
Enjoy! All the best for another day, Rick McBee
What do the Simple Folks Do? Essay #1
Reminiscent of one of my favorite songs in the 1960 Broardway Musical, Camelot: This article and the next few will focus be on things that we, the simple folk of America can and still do in order to keep our sanity and drive fear away from the door as we pass the time while Nero and the Senate go on Fiddling and deal with long stretches of semi-solitude during our home stays being mandated by the competent State Governments who hope to keep us from spreading or acquiring the COVID -19 virus.
So what can we, the simple folk do?
1. .Start off by reading a bit about the Musical at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/camelot-the-musical-synopsis-characters-songs.htm On Wiipedia you will find a number of related searches.
Camelot (musical) Camelot is a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe (music). It is based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T. H. White novel The Once and Future King. Wikipedia Related searches include the legend of Camelot and King Arthur, the Musical Overture and much much more.
| 2. If you want to watch the later movie of Camelot from 1967 with Richard Harris and Vanessa redgrave, check this out https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061439/ then you can rent the movie on netflix see: https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Camelot/345890 |
3. Now you’re ready to start making your own list of things that we simple folk can do to help us from becoming so blue.
See my Next Blog Post #2
Enjoy! Rick McBee
The Fox, by Frederick Forsyth a Book Review
The Fox by Frederick Forsyth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Writing master, Frederick Forsyth, is back at it again with a great book linking IT to current and past events in the world of international intrigue and power games. The occurrences that happen worldwide are real. The methodology by which Britain’s IT genius, Luke Jennings, pull off the intrusions are fictional, but not that far-reaching in a world where the race to build the ultimate quantum computer to spy on others is going full blast. Adrian Weston, the resuscitated former MI-6 chief, running Jennings and the global intrusions is also a picture of a truism that the old ways of running spies and deceiving the enemy may still be needed in a world where every movement can be traced using our cell phones, our credit cards, camera facial recognition, etc. Kudos for this work to a writer who understands that the spy world is not an adrenaline rush of dodging bullets but rather a cat and mouse game of piecing together seemingly unrelated bits of information and making the chessboard moves with the knights and pawns before the opponent recognizes the deception and the true plot. Woe unto the Russians, the Iranians and the North Koreans. Loved it!
View all my reviews
The Silence of the North by O.A. Fredrickson and B. East: A book review
The Silence of the North: The Incredible Story of a Woman’s Fight For Survival in the Wilderness by Olive A. Fredrickson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Olive Fredrickson’s story of her early life growing up in the Canadian wilderness is an exciting adventure suitable for both young and old, male and female as she deals with the death of her mother at an early age, grows up knowledgeable of the world of trapping and hunting in a part of the world almost completely unknown to the majority of North Americans. The knowledge she gained from her hardscrabble family upbringing in the wilderness carries her through to adulthood and marriage to her first husband, a trapper named Walter Reamer. Olive and Walter follow the trails of the Canadian North on trapping expeditions that place them and their young child in danger of drowning in the icy waters of Lake Athabasca and the Slave River as they treck into the wilderness for a winter’s trapping and hunting. Fate steps in during the winter as the young couple makes one slight mistake after another in their choice of cabins, food supply, and preparation for living off the wilderness. On the doorstep of starvation and death by exposure to the elements, the couple set off in a desperate attempt in the subzero weather to reach another trapper’s cabin. Lady luck peeps out for a moment as they stumble through a twenty mile ordeal. Returning to civilization, Olive remains in the safety of town with her children as her husband continues to trap each winter. When she is widowed, Olive moves briefly to the States and then returns to Canada, working hand to mouth for a number of years until she meets her second husband and they are able to make a living in a less hostile section of the wilderness up the Stuart river where they pan for gold, encounter grizzlies, and fabulous fishing. It’s a memorable story with lessons for all of us about the realities of making choices in life and the consequences of making the wrong choice in the unforgiving climate and environment of the Canadian wilderness. An excellent read-aloud book!
View all my reviews
THE TIME FOR ACTION! Political Robocalls
Trust Me! You will NOT get my vote with a Robocall, 
Three times per day. That shouts in my ear
“THIS is —— —–, IT’S TIME FOR ACTION!”…….etc…….
Who gave you my phone number anyway? Is a record being kept of home many times you call me? Are you paying the phone company for all these calls? Are you just another scammer? Nigerian? Russian? Ukrainian?
Robocalls can be stopped if we have the political willpower. Do your Jobs Congress and POTUS!
Trust me, You aren’t getting my vote with this Hogwash! 
Book Review: The Shell Collector, by Anthony Doerr
The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I wrote my initial notes on this book, I was only half-way through and thought that I had already read the best of the author’s short stories within the first 120 pages. Not so! In fact, the two fishing stories were yet to come and both kept my attention to the end. In particular, the story entitled “July Fourth” got my best laugh of the book upon reading the last page of that story. No skipping ahead and cheating allowed on this one! The other fishing story is a work of brilliance showing how we all eventually reap the rewards of continual lies that build and build as we cheat on others. Excellent bedtime reading one story per night.
View all my reviews
Personal (Jack Reacher #19) by Lee Child. A book Review
Curacao is always a great place for me to catch up on my reading between dives. (More on that when I get back and have time to edit my videos and pictures. I’m also getting a lot of writing done on the next book(s).(:>)
Personal by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The sniper has always been one of my favorite themes to read about whether that person is a villain or a hero. Author Lee Child has found his firm niche for the second time with a book that gives insight into the psyche of the sniper/killer and all of the factors that go into tracking down a single human being who has decided to do someone in, long-range style. Because of the international setting and the weeding out of possible sniper candidates from Israel, the U.S., Britain, and Russia, our hero, Jack Reacher spins his wheels for a while stateside before venturing to the European theatre where the killer is due to strike next at an international trade convention. Who is the killer really after? One of the big-wigs of the conference? One of the numerous members of the international team of GRU, CIA, MI6, etc. investigators who have gathered to share intelligence and hunt down the murderer? It’s a cat and mouse game, and as the author says, “It’s not the same with a sniper out there.” When the Russian GRU man gets taken out the hunt turns toward the Russian rogue sniper. Reacher isn’t sure and ends up in London with his sidekick Casey Nice hunting for at least two snipers being hidden by the ‘Romford Boys’ under the leadership of a giant of a man whose presence intimidates even the husky physique of Reacher. It’s a hunt through good old London and enough twists and turns are there to keep you and Reacher thinking about the outcome. Lovely Casey is pretty good with holding up her own end of the deal, saving Reacher’s neck by improvising with a shard (no pun intended) of London glass to off a dude. I enjoyed the fast pace, the changes of venue and the ability of the author to get all those characters amply described and fitted for their various nefarious and savior roles. Enjoy the voyage and enjoy that final take-down of the bad guy at the end. A non-stop page turner for rain or the plane!
View all my reviews
South Africa Book Group on Goodreads
.gr_grid_container { /* customize grid container div here. eg: width: 500px; */ } .gr_grid_book_container { /* customize book cover container div here */ float: left; width: 39px; height: 60px; padding: 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; }
1557 membersThis is a book club for all South Africans who love reading! We also have members from other coun...
Books we've read
View this group on Goodreads »
Share book reviews and ratings with South African Book Lovers, and even join a book club on Goodreads.
Rick McBee's Writings 