Trying to Find Myself

Useless Information


Just the facts and nothing but the facts. Or are they?

After 68 years, I have decided to try and find myself.  Most people who do this go to Africa or some far flung primitive place.  But, I decided to do it through the library.
 
I never really found anything that held my interest except for the fourteen years Jan and I lived in Columbus, Indiana.  I was involved in the Civil Air Patrol cadet programs for teenage youth. March of Dimes dedicated to improving the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. Columbus East High School Business Partnership Committee; Senior Projects Judge; Career Fairs participant.  Optimist Club Oratory Judge. The Indiana Astronomical Society dedicated to the pursuit of astronomy for professionals, amateurs, students, avid sky watchers, or curious hobbyists. And probably a few other things that escape me at the moment.
 
Of course now I am retired and living in a retirement village in Farmington Hills, Michigan where our roots are. 
 
Considering I spent 21 years in the Army I have joined the American Legion  founded on four pillars: Veterans Affairs & Rehabilitation, National Security, Americanism, and Children & Youth.

Aside from that however, I have nothing.  I have gone on a quest to find something that will hold my interest without consuming all of my time. So, I started out by obtaining a library card.  That allows me to download e-books and audio books through Metro Net Online Lending Library and Farmington Community Library eContent Collection.  In addition I have accessed Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/

Next thing was to start browsing for any subject that might catch my interest.

Now with all the resources that I mentioned above (and these are just a few of the available e-book sites) we are talking in excess of 60,000 books.  After going through the first thousand or so, I hit "Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address-Four Score and More written by Barbara Silberdick Feinberg"

This was the first book since the "Harry Potter" series that held my interest until I completed reading it.

Then I started playing around with writing a book report. I enjoyed this so much that I do believe that I have found a new outlet to keep my mind occupied.

I labeled it "Useless Information" because although I am interested, it doesn't mean that all of my contacts that I send it to are interested. Of course they all have the option of opting out.

OK, now I have an outlet. So how do I speed up the process of searching 60,000 books to see what will snag me again? First I was searching alphabetically...didn't take long to see that this was going to be a herculean task. I thought and I thought, how does the library organize all of their books? DUH!!! Dewey Decimal System (DDS).


Here are the major categories of the DDS:


000 – Computer science, information & general works


100 – Philosophy and psychology


200 – Religion


300 – Social sciences


400 – Language


500 – Science (including mathematics)


600 – Technology


700 – Arts and recreation


800 – Literature


900 – History, geography, and biography


If you would like to drill deeper into the DDS, go to URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification


This will still be a herculean project but when you are retired and nothing but time on your hands, it will definitely keep me from being bored.  Especially when you add in going to Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, restaurants, walking the dog, visiting with family and on and on and on.  How can one be bored?