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I heard somebody say
The ’70s had some great music … and this is another fine example from The Trammps.
Plus it’s a two-for, because “Disco Inferno” was a minor hit in 1977 and a huge hit the next year with “Saturday Night Fever.” Hard to overstate how big that movie and that soundtrack was, for John Travolta and the Bee-Gees and disco in general. I was too young to see “Saturday Night Fever” but my mom did and played the soundtrack so much that year.
Even if I can’t believe that a popular song had the lyrics, “burn this mother down.”
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Smoke and feeling ill
Been sick the past four days, and I haven’t been feeling too productive nor too interested in doing much of anything.
The illness is either a summer cold, which happens, or it’s a reaction to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that has descended upon the city where I live. (I live in one of the smokiest cities over the past few days, even though we’re far away from the fires.)
Don’t know which it is, although I was feeling pretty healthy until the smoke led to Code Red readings on Wednesday. I woke up the next day with a sore throat and I ended up having to spend more time outside, which didn’t help. Nor did it help that I wore a mask outside the whole time. I am one of those people who could care less what anyone thinks about wearing a mask.
I’m prone to upper respiratory challenges, which was made worse by a near-fatal bout of pneumonia nearly 25 years ago. My lungs haven’t been the same since, which made it imperative that I stay as far away from Covid as I could. (And in that, at least, I have been successful so far.)
Yet I can take a lot of precautions and still, apparently, get tripped up. I don’t know whether it was a cold virus or the smoke from the fires. I would just as easily attribute it to a cold except for the timing, which is just right for it being smoke.
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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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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
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