Senior Adventure

Still reading and liking "The Storm of Steel", Ernst Jünger's intense autobiographical diary of his years early as an ordinary soldier, then quickly to junior officer during the Great War. This is the original 1929 English translation that smooths over nothing, and I might correct that a better word than liking would be appreciating. Intense is right though, so much so that I read a chapter then lay it down for some hours or days.

A fast reader, for some weeks evening hours autumn 1968 while a student at the Naval War College in Newport, RI, I took the Evelyn Wood fast reading course that was strongly recommended for officers because of the overwhelming reading workload required of us. So, I can read a very fast skimming or scanning, buzzing down page after page that is still well comprehended, and I generally do that with books and magazine articles; but Jünger is so dense and so very descriptive that he draws me into every scene with him and I find myself involved, participating in what he's experiencing, even being shot in both legs this morning and going off to hospital then back to the front line with him, instead of just reading his war stories.

So, reading and finishing the chapter "At St. Pierre Vaast" this morning, I notice that I'm still only forty percent or so through his book. Maybe forty-five, but not fifty percent. This is said to be his best, so I'll not be reading another.

"Goodbye To All That" by Robert Graves is still waiting for next or whenever, I set it aside in favor of "Storm" and cannot imagine it will measure up after Ernst, Graves' autobiographical experience of the same war but from English trenches.

So far, Jünger's time is all in France, he speaks fluent French, though I do not and do wish his translator had translated the French conversation snippets that Jünger gives us. While off the front line he's sometimes billeted in a village in one house or other with a French family, often an amicable time believe it or not. And without making it seem unusual, he describes an era, had to have been the final one, of rules and honor and mutual respect in both directions, between the Germans and the English. These are admirable soldiers and human beings: notwithstanding the horrors and outrageous purposelessness of that trench warfare. So far in Jünger's narrative, there is none of the atrocity, cruelty, unspeakable evil and arrogance that the entire German folk and military force devolved into during their Third Reich era and WW2, that I did see in Nietzel & Welzer's books "Soldaten" and "Tapping Hitler's Generals". There is no innocence.

Still on reading, my covid-19 pandemic shelter in place has included subscriptions to a few lifelong favorite magazines, "The New Yorker" and "The Atlantic" and "Smithsonian", and I'm finding that they arrive so fast and furious that I can't keep them read. Sometimes share without finishing by peeling away the address label and Linda leaves them in the mailroom in the lobby area of the HV garage below, where they instantly disappear. Among other features, weekly in TNY, an essay "Tables for Two" helps me understand people's love of New York City. If born and bred a native there, I'd surely have loved it as much as I love living out my life looking one direction over downtown StAndrews and the other direction across StAndrewsBay.

The television images of the tornado damage are incredible, those from above, helicopter or drone camera showing miles and miles of piles of matchsticks that once were towns. Death, and dazed, grief-stricken survivors, Holiday Season for so many. LHM CHM LHM.

What? Local schools weapons arrests? Don't even young boys have enough sense to see what happens to shooters? The rest of your life in prison is a long time to contemplate that It wasn't worth it. People of all ages can be so alphabet stupid.

Senior Adventure today: Sam's for batteries and something. Publix for something else, IDK what, it's on Linda's list. Cahall's to inquire about a turkey? and in the deli showcase at Cahalls is a tray of the richest, creamiest, most exquisitely delicious chicken enchilada that's ever melted in my mouth. All it needs is another layer of chicken breast at the bottom, which we've added here at home in 7H.

If we have a Senior Adventure tomorrow, it'll probably be out to Fresh Market and The Carousel. Fresh Market has a decent selection of European cheeses: have bought German Limburger cheese there, and having last night read a Smithsonian article about Roquefort cheese, and not having had that genuine French product in maybe forty years, I'll see what they have in the chilled case. Sampling cheeses is another favorite.

Senior Adventures are exciting, and once you get to what the actuaries call extreme old age (at its high range, the life expectancy calculator I used this morning didn't go above 85, which I'll take as a caution), a Senior Adventure is doing one thing, and one only, in any given day, and nothing after dark. And the best thing that can happen any day is when you can work in a second nap.

Still trying to psych myself out about liking these war diary documentaries, autobiographies and fiction.