attended a graduation

this afternoon, i went to a high school graduation. my student from the mentoring program was graduating. it was held indoors, good thing-since there was rain. i was moved by one of the songs the choir performed in the ceremony, it was 'stand by me'. i was singing along with them. the oddest thing to me was how the graduates weren't crossing the stage in alpha order. i saw my student after the ceremony, who said it was due to not everyone getting their diplomas. there was a recent news story about some students not meeting math standards, but i thought none of it at the time. i liked being able to find my student, as it meant i could give him the picture from last week's event. it also meant getting better pictures, since we were outdoors and my camera- albeit digital- doesn't always take goos pictures indoors, especially when dark. so i have one of the graduates spraying silly string all around. after the ceremony, i didn't go back to my car right away. i wanted to find a candy bar, since i like having one after lunch. i had enough time for lunch, but wanted to get to the venue on time- the auditorium on the university campus. found a candy bar at a gift shop inside a hotel, along with some nice postcards. and i noticed a nearby movie theater had been closed about two weeks ago, unsafe to occupy. i had seen one movie there, a documentary filmed in my native iowa called 'king corn'. it was a good story about 2 college grads from boston that move to iowa to farm one acre of corn- and all of the things they found out about the industry of farming.
but that is not the reason why i said the movie plans were a no-go. i fell asleep for a while after getting home, then decided to see a movie in a nearby town, 'robin hood' with russell crowe. but the showing was sold out, and i didn't want to wait until late in the evening for the next showing. so i finished my drink and breadsticks outside the theater before leaving. i had eaten at a target snack bar nearby, there was a personal pan pizza special. hard to say when i will see it now. i know this had happened before, over a year ago. i wanted to see the jim carrey movie 'yes man' with my then-lady friend but it was sold out. so we went to her place and saw a video there, 'the great debaters'. i eventually saw the movie at a discount theater by myself about a month later, she had broken up with me by then. i do like russell crowe movies, as he did 'american gangster', 'cinderella man', and 'beautiful mind'.
i didn't go home right away. i noticed there was a borders bookstore nearby, saw it while on my way back. so i decided to do more emerson hough research, what else? i'm wondering if anyone else is blogging about him, if there is there's not too many i would expect. i wanted to see how many listings there were of his books in their database, there were 280. but i recognized many as just different printings of the same novel. i knew he didn't write THAT many novels, the bio by delbert wylder only said he wrote 37. that makes it comparable to the number of plays by shakespeare. hough did do some plays, though apparently they are long forgotten, along with many of his novels. thanks to this, i found more things to look up online. i decided to order a piece of carrot cake and some juice from the cafe, since i had been there a while. even looked up the world war I books that reference hough, but like hough's novels they were listed as 'see associate to order'. so they were not in the store, but i know borders doesn't keep all books in their store. many can still be ordered through their database, new or used, as they do have an extensive network of stores, especially for rare or out of print and used books. i did go over to the history book section to see what was there, and one book caught my eye. it wasn't a lincoln book, i have a decent number of those already. i was interested in how much, and what they say about ann rutledge. historians debate what ann was to abe, if they were engaged to be married. we only know for sure that she died of typhoid, eventually he met mary todd.
the book i found was one about pat garrett and billy the kid. i knew hough had written about them in 'story of outlaw'. he gets a few pages in the index, and i looked at those pages. there was mention of hough being approached for money to investigate the murder death of his friend, pat garrett, but hough apparently said 'leave it alone'. there was mention of theodore roosevelt as well, since 'teddy' was president at the time, in 1908. on another page it spoke of replacing garrett in one of his federal lawman positions, and his financial problems. hough had wrote to roosevelt on garrett's behalf, as all three were friends.
after getting back home tonight i did read through the hough bio i have, giving me even more things to research. before, i had only looked at select pages due to checking for certain names in the index. since i like history books, i like reference books and being able to flip right to what i want to see. the index allows me to do this. he sure seemed to be a mover and shaker, knowing many of the prominent people of his time based on all of the names in the bio, various people he was in contact with over his literary career. there was mention of joining the same organization as jack london did. the more i read, the more i like as i can relate to some of his struggles. but as lincoln said about himself, 'paint me, warts and all'. hough has some warts in his bio, at least by today's standards. but who doesn't have any warts? who isn't above reproach?