books et al

It isn't that I've lived too long, that, hopefully - - language is never static, there was a Time when "hopefully" meant what it was meant to mean instead of how people began to misuse it; but, as language does, over Time, and not very much Time as evolution goes, people's misusing it made its misused meaning its new meaning, all made official in some recent recognition, to the disgust of some, the relief of some like me, and right over the heads of the ignorant who had no idea what all the fuss was about - - will not happen. For one thing, living in a place that has mornings like we do here at 7H, it seems impossible to live too long. And to my recollection, of people close to me, only my mother lived too long - - after about age 95 into years of increasing physical disabilities too many to get into here, and her own deepening depression into despair about how she was, her sight gone, her hearing gone, her balance gone, her mind okay and her heart at age 99 better than my heart was at 75, as I was when she died. She had her mother's longevity genes, I have my father's longevity genes, which helps assure me that I'm unlikely to live into where mama did.

Why was I saying that, why was I going there? I forget. I went outside to snap a picture of our sunrising here the day after Armistice Day. Coming back inside, I stubbed the big toe on my left foot but pleased myself by not even thinking, much less saying, bad words. So, back to life as it is.

Reading: on a browse of my computer "desktop" earlier this morning I came across a book I'd downloaded, I guess some years ago, and completely forgot to read. It must have been when I read "The Sun Also Rises" and thought to go ahead and read more Ernest Hemingway, so "In Our Time", about eighteen chapters, most of them one page or half a page, a few, maybe three or four, running over to the next page. Time, timely because he's in Europe, and experiences some fighting and the Armistice, and apparently also in Spain, and several of the little chapter essays are focused on bullfighting, for which he is known. In each of the essays he's the narrator. Took half an hour to read the whole book, in case you've not read it and would like to. For me, chronologically it fit right in with the World War One books I'm reading at the moment. I think Hemingway even mentions trench coats in what I read this morning.

Now and next, added to finding, downloading, and reading free online, last evening I started "The Wars" by Timothy Findley, more and again timely, it's 1915 in Canada, Robert has just enlisted in the army and is in training there on the prairie. This is my first Findley book: he has a basic, almost innocent style of writing that makes it easy to keep up, very much unlike Mark Helprin's detail ("Soldier ...") so far. Or Rushdie's almost excruciatingly fine detail in "Midnight's Children".

Which brings to mind, and it's my wandering blogpost, I can amble off path into the brambles if it pleases me, one of my life's delights was seeing and hearing Salman Rushdie give the commencement address when Kristen graduated from Emory. From how it was in the 1950s when I was at Florida, with a Methodist theological seminary and at least some sort of residual Methodist sense to it, Emory seems to have become primarily a "Brown" school, but there was obviously still enough Christian sense among those present at the graduation ceremony that day, that Rushdie's address that so delighted me caused numerous gasps of horror, outrage, offense in the audience. Which, I suppose, his style and presence may be the reason for the Iranian authority's fatwa against his life. I have so little respect for fundamentalist religion that everything about Rushdie was/is a refreshment.

Jiminy, how did I get here? I'll just wrap it up saying that John Irving's "Until I Find You" is a bit much, alongside "Hotel New Hampshire" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany", cannot compete. It's still on my desktop, but I may not come back to it.

No literary critic, I'm just finding reading anew after all the years of Dr Doolittle, and Cheaper by the Dozen, and The Yearling, and Lassie, Come Home, and Little Men, and Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys as I made my way through childhood, then our monthly Book Club our years in Apalachicola. Long years of too serious stuff, finding fiction again during despair after elections and during pandemic.

See, remembering Apalachicola and books reminds me that I was on the city library board of directors my years there. The librarian, a Puritan, fundamentalist Christian but nevertheless parishioner of mine (she eventually made her way back out of the Episcopal Church into the true religion from which she came), used to telephone Linda to report with horror the books that Tass checked out. There's a lot more to our experience and story with Imelda (disguised name) and her family than I'm willing to disclose here, even though she's long dead.

All of which goes to show what can happen when one starts a blog about a book or two.

Tomorrow, something about our Sunday School lesson this weekend.

And a visit with my brother: Walt & Judy may be coming over from Pensacola for lunch at Hunt's.

RSF&PTL