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The reading challenge, halfway mark
Photo by Gu00fcl Iu015fu0131k on Pexels.com How are you doing with your summer reading list?
For the first year since the ill-fated 2020, I began the year with a plan to read no less than 52 books the entire year. I only read a handful in 2020, 2021 and 2022, due to the pandemic and then my own Welsh-language studies, which included reading books in Welsh over most English books.
But now I’m back to English mostly, although I do try to keep my hand in Welsh. I figured one a week wouldn’t be bad, given my schedule. I have been tracking on GoodReads.
The first book for the year is a tip of the hat to the kind of 2023 I envisioned: Anna Quindlen’s “Write for Your Life.” I didn’t know that Quindlen had written a book about writing, although it turned out she had, published in 2022. I felt called to make it the first book I read in the year, given that Quindlen was a favorite author and columnist of my muse, who died in 2022. She would have loved the book.
I’ve been able to keep up, mostly, with 2023’s book-a-week pace, between reading paper books, Kindle books and also audiobooks. It also helps that I have begun to commute four times a week, since since 2020 I wasn’t doing that. (Gotta think of the positives!)
I say mostly, because at the end of the first half of 2022, I’m one book short of my goal.
The good thing is that I’m going to be on vacation most of the first two weeks of July, so I should be able to catch up. I’m planning on doing a lot of reading and writing. -
An understatement
“The finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
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A baseball first for me: Smoke delay
I have been going to Major a league Baseball games since 1974. And I have never been in a smog or smoke delay.
Till now.
The smoke from the Canadian wildfires caused a nearly 45-minute delay on the afternoon getaway game between the San Diego Padres and the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
It wasn’t great conditions. I wondered for a time whether it would go on.
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How they’re growing
Nature really is a wonder.
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Breathing easier, and what a wonder that is
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I spent about an hour working out on a marvelous early summer night — the first night of summer it was — and the latest of a half-dozen outdoor activities of an hour or so the past week.
Between strides, I noticed something was different. I wasn’t wheezing. There was no coughing. My nose wasn’t running. Allergies, which have debilitated me most of my life every spring, had disappeared.
It had been a tough couple of weeks, between the height of pollen season and the Canadian wildfires that drifted smoke in the skies above my head. Add to the fact the fact that I had run out of the allergy medication I use daily in the spring and fall and I had never gotten a refill. For the first week or two after stopping the medication, I wondered about how stupid I was.
And then, the symptoms eased.
I’m not sure why. The pollen count, while not as high as it was, remains moderate. The wildlife smoke has abated but it’s possible that it could come back. And without my allergy medication, instead of being at the mercy of the elements, I seem to have passed the pain point.
I’m breathing easier, at least until hayfever season begins. Then I will likely have to get back on the Zyrtec.
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What you find
You never know what you’ll find in library books. I’ve found any number of pressed flowers and leaves, an old love letter, a dollar bill, and index cards and the occasional honest-to-gosh bookmark. I’ve never kept any of that stuff, because it wasn’t mine to keep and also because maybe the person who left them will come back.
Or maybe they should stay where they are, frozen in time.
Today I was at my local library, looking for my next few reads. I picked up John O’Hara’s “Collected Stories,” a book that I have been meaning to read for a long time. You don’t hear much about O’Hara these days, but he was one of the best-ever American short story writers last century. He was also someone who long lived in New York City (as I did) and was from northeastern Pennsylvania (where my family is from). Plus his “Appointment in Samarra” is also on my reading list.
Flipping through the pages, I came upon this slip, from Friday, Sept. 19, 2014, almost a decade ago. It was slipped into the pages, about halfway through the book, where the reader apparently stopped.
There were two books taken out that day almost nine years ago: “The Collected Stories of John O’Hara” and “Harlot’s Ghost,” one of the last novels written by Norman Mailer.
I don’t know what to make of that. There isn’t any other details about the person who took this book out before me, or whether this was the last time it had been out. I wonder whether I’ve ever done that, leave a due-date slip in a returned library book. And what would it say about me?
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Perspective
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
Cormac McCarthy, who died June 13, 2023, in No Country For Old MenI think on these words a lot.
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Juneteenth
I have Juneteenth off for the first time.
The holiday has been around for a long time, ever since 1865 in Texas when United States Major Gen. Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom in the formerly Confederate state. It has been a state holiday in Texas since 1980. But it wasn’t until 2021 when it became a federal holiday.
My company made it official last year, with 2023 being the first time it was officially a day off.
But truth be told. I’ve got to do more.
And this is one thing to do, but not the only thing. From Juneteenth.com:One of the most important and immediately impactful actions anyone can take is to support black-owned businesses and organizations. These grassroots, ground-level contrbutions make a daily impact on work, quality of life, and growth in the community. Make a daily, weekly, and yearly conscious effort to plant your economic seeds and watch them grow.
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Show, don’t tell
Word of advice that I put on my new Chromebook, which has been serving as my main writing device the past several weeks:
Show, don’t tell.
I found this sticker online and I wanted to find a spot on the Chromebook so that I see those three words every time I sit down to write.
Powerful words, they are.
Sometimes, all you can do is tell. But if you want to really impact readers, have them really see it, you have to show.
I need to do more showing, less telling.
And, related: Less talking, more writing.
Those are two goals through the rest of ’23.
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Pushing a noun against a verb
One of the great scenes in “Inherit the Wind.” “You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow up something.”
“Inherit the Wind” is one of the great plays of the ’50s and one of the great movies of 1960. It’s kind of stunning that it didn’t win anything at the Academy Awards. Putatively about the 1920s Scopes Monkey Trial, it’s also about McCarthyism and the 1950s, and 63 years after its release, it has a lot to say about the world we live in today.
The script and the play not only are first rate-dramas, but they offer so much in the writing. And the movie has first-rate acting: Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, Gene Kelly (yes, that Gene Kelly), Dick York, Harry Morgan. Tracy and March are at the top of their game, in roles of a lifetime of it wasn’t for the fact that they always brought the heat. Tracey plays the character named after Clarence Darrow, who has always been a personal hero of mine. (Here’s why.) York, who became well known on “Bewitched,” is outstanding as the teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of state law.
I am blown away, though, by Kelly’a performance. He was already in some of the great movies of the late ’40s and ’50s including the groundbreaking “Singin’ in the Rain.” Kelly was what they call in Hollywood a multihyphenate – dancer, singer, choreographer, director and musical actor – but not known for drama.
Until this movie.
He was fabulous as E.K. Hornbeck, modeled after journalist H.L. Mencken. It’s this scene, sparring at the very end with Tracy, that Kelly shows he can go toe-to-toe with the best.
So good.
As a journalist, it’s also an object lesson, a reminder that your humanity is important in your search for truth. There’s such thing as being too cynical, to in Tracy’s words needlessly push a noun against a verb.
I don’t like to watch courtroom dramas as a rule, maybe because I have spent a fair amount of time covering the justice system. But “Inherit the Wind,” as well as “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” are exceptions to the rule. So is another classic, “Twelve Angry Men.”
All three from the ’50s, which if you look back is a lot less rosy and idyllic than collective memory suggests. And if you haven’t seen either “Inherit the Wind” and “Twelve Angry Men,” you should. They are the kind of movies not made anymore but should.
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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
Nows and Forevers 
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