I just KNOW that I'm much prettier than my pictures show and, to that end, I am, hopefully within the next 2 weeks, going to have a new one taken for this column! Somewhere, deep, deep inside, there is someone who not only has Liz Taylor's birthday as a bond but also her fabulous face--well, the one she had 20 years ago. We'll see--if the next picture looks even worse, there will only be a picture of a squirrel in the corner where the picture goes. Or, perhaps, one of those moles that is slowly but surely tearing holes in my yard.

Think about going out to your local community college or health center, beginning this month, and signing up to exercise and use their machines four days a week. If you pay your money and sign up, it will be very easy to schedule and plan to BE THERE 'cause you indicated you would be. It may be tough at first and sometimes "achey" in unused muscles but as you feel better, move more easily, and look more streamlined you'll be hooked and really not want to miss a session.

One important thing--ask for directions on the machines as to seat height, arm length, and weights you will be pulling up--all for your body type, how long since you've exercised, physical capability, etc.--and the people who work there will be of help to you.

Start out walking just a few laps and work up to a mile--and do it four times a week, EVERY week--if you don't take care of yourself, nobody else will feel the responsibility! And one last thing--you'll get used to seeing some of the same people every week--and they will you. Join me!

There are some really good Non-Fiction titles and my first one is, "How Full is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life", by Tom Rath, and when I read, "The #1 reason people leave their jobs is they don't feel appreciated", I knew I'd enjoy the apparent down-to-earth humanism Rath would be talking about. It has to do with how you can "fill someone's bucket" with praise that is specific to them and how to "greatly increase the positive moments in your work and your life--while reducing the negative."

The main message of this book is to give to others messages--literally words--that will make their day and thoughts more hopeful and, in many cases, enable them to have better physical health and productivity on the job. One of the most valuable things, in this interaction, is to make sure that you have it specific to that person, not a "Good job, way to go" kind of tribute that is generic and devoid of meaning to the duck hunter/top manager you're attempting to praise. Rath would suggest a duck decoy with a ribbon around its neck!

However, we all need plans to put good ideas into action and Rath and Clifton sifted through 4,000 interview responses to reach this list of five;

• Prevent Bucket Dipping (this is done by negative comments, uttered most of the time!)

• Shine a Light on What Is Right

• Make Best Friends

• Give Unexpectedly

• Reverse the Golden Rule--Rath's slight variation is "Do unto Others as They Would You Do Unto Them"

This points out the need of individualization. Learn, by asking, how people think, what pleases them, what annoys them--and how do you learn all this, you ask? By asking the person! Wonderful, slim book that really holds your attention. Come in and check it out.

In the year 1970, in a small North Carolina town, a racially-motivated murder was committed, and Tim Tyson, a resident, revisited his hometown and writes about it in "Blood Done Sign My Name". Tyson first heard of the event when, at the age of 10, a classmate whispered in his ear, "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger" and it began a firestorm that would change, forever, the town of Oxford, North Carolina.

On May 11, of that year, a 23 year old black veteran, Henry Marrow, walked into a store owned by Teel, and abruptly came out running, chased by Teel and two of his sons. They beat him until he died, ignoring Marrow's pleas for his life. As the county prosecutor later said, "They shot him like you or I would kill a snake."

The civil rights movement had barely touched that part of the country but after the killing, a lot of African-American youths marched in the streets, led by 22-year-old Ben Chavis. Chaos reigned. A group of recently returned Vietnam vets organized a military-like operation, fires were set, the Ku Klux Klan waged war in the background, and Tim Tyson's father, the pastor of an all-white Methodist Church preached widening their vision of humanity outside of black or white and pushed the town to come to terms with their racial history--the Tyson family was forced to move away (I'll bet they were 'cause nobody wants to look in a mirror and see what THEIR faults are!)

The town burned, the black radicals told Tim, "It was like we had a cash register up there at the pool hall, just ringing up how much money we done cost these white people", and so--a defining book about the injustice of Man to Man and a classic work of conscience.

In the tradition of "To Kill a Mockingbird", this is also a picture of a town and its people that had problems it could not or, at the beginning, would not face but in the midst of it, as in "Mockingbird", there is blues singing, down-home humor and a place where faith, violence, courage, and cowardice all are "in the same pot" that makes us Americans. Well written book.

At different times, in our Republic, there have been important issues that confronted us and the personal responses of individuals have helped shape events and, certainly, ideas. "Great American Speeches; A Collection of the most important and inspiring addresses--by many extraordinary Americans", by Gregory Suriano (who collected and edited them), is really fascinating, rather than "dusty and dry"--cross my heart!

The speeches are from Adlai Stevenson, Margaret Mead, John Kennedy, George Washington, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, and many others whose words, if not echoing popular thought, certainly gave words to think on, argue about, and, ultimately, see the purpose of.

I found that Barbara Jordan's speech on the question (concerning Nixon knowing about and directing some illegal activities at Watergate), "Has the president committed offenses and planned and directed and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That is the question. We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question." We all know the answer to what they found, as measured against the standards of the Constitution--Nixon resigned, because of no base of support left in Congress.

The eloquent black lady lawyer from Texas helped sum up the transgressions and left him no choice but to resign. She also said that when she was in school, the phrase, "We, the people" had left her out by mistake, because she is black, but through amendments, interpretation, and court decisions, "I have finally been included in 'We, the People'". Really a great book!

"And if I Perish; Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II", by Evelyn Monahan, is one of the very good books chronicling that time. These are eyewitness accounts, some heroic, some run-of-the-mill, of the Army nurses who endured withering fire on the beaches and burned hospital ships, who often worked with inadequate supplies in endless mud and treacherous minefields. This is a sense of their experiences--"terrifying and triumphant, exhausting and exhilarating."

Nurses, even more than doctors, have to deal with the damage done emotionally and psychologically and my mother and aunt got a small dose of that when they played, in Florida, for the service men in the hospital around Lake Wales. One young sailor who'd been blinded, upon discovering my mother was from Chicago, asked if she knew a girl, gave her name, and turned his head towards Mother, anxious to hear the answer. Mother improvised and the young man was happier. When she went there the next week, he had died.

She and my Aunt Luise, my very own "Auntie Mame"!, asked boys who were so badly burned all you saw was their eyes and mouth, what songs they'd like to hear, listened to their MOSTLY optimistic stories of "going home", even danced around the ward with those on crutches--and cried on the way home and wondered if they'd have the courage to face it again the next week. But they did--for many "next weeks". Excuse the memory trail but this book brought those stories back again and as my husband was part of that "Greatest Generation", at its end, these nurse's stories are very real.

Theresa Archard was principal chief nurse of the 2nd unit, had been on duty continuously for 24 hours and had been asleep only an hour, when a flashlight shone in her face and a corpsman handed her an envelope with a note, which read, "Dear Miss Archard; There is a very sick patient in the operating room who need special nurses. If this upsets you too much, take the enclosed two aspirins" and was signed by the surgeon. That got her awake and to O.R.

The soldier was fine, the surgeon hadn't even checked prior to writing the note, and then "Tressie" ran into the Colonel in command and "told him who laid the rails" on lack of respect to the nurses, from the doctors, "and if the 48th Surgical Hospital doesn't want the nurses along, why don't they just say so? It isn't that we like living like cattle most of the time, washing our clothes in a helmet, and eating C rations!". Col. Mellies said he'd take care of it--and he did, to everyone's relief. Come get the book and read about brave, dedicated women who did miracles everyday--and would have laughed in your face if you said that.

Start a fire in the fireplace, pop some popcorn, let the animals in when the overnight temp is below 35 degrees, think about making me a caramel apple and I wonder if we'll know who's FINALLY going to be president by the time you read this? Heaven knows a lot of folk were voting--lining up to do it, too! Great! Time to go walk my 2 miles and lift free weights at the Community College with Himself. Bye!