CatchingUp

I've been meaning to post for about a week now, but my reading has gotten in the way. By the end of July - tomorrow - I will have read six nonfiction and two fiction for the month. Pretty impressive considering most were NF and they usually take longer.

What did I read?

It was a good month for interesting books. One of the fiction books, The Doomsday Book, was about the Black Death in 1348 England while time travelers back in 21st Century Britain dealt with a flu epidemic. Timely.

The other, Flight of the Sparrow, is a historical novel about 17th-century settlers in New England and the Indians located there. This was a true story. It is our upcoming book discussion in August.

Two nonfiction books were noteworthy. Killers of the Summer Moon was about the 1920 era murders of members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma and the founding of the FBI that solved the cases.

The second, Exterminate All the Brutes, was about the colonization and subsequent subjugation of the Africans living there. A horrifying, but very appropriate reading for these times.

Two other books:

David Sedaris's book of essays is typical of him and is entertaining for the most part. The Forster book on reading nonfiction was quite enjoyable. His poetry book, which I have, is next. 

The Education of T.C.Mits was a book about mathematics and thinking, written in the early 1940s, during the war. It was a very popular book and was included in the books that were sent to the men and women fighting overseas. Incidentally, the full title is The Education of The Celebrated Man in the Street.

The Trump book just came out and is self-explanatory. I believe the photo on the cover is from his days at the New York Military Academy (A JROTC high school).

All in all, a good reading month.

Movie Nights

Since COVID has taken over the world of TV watching along with everything else, we have taken to spending evenings either reading or watching movies. Most of the movies are from our collection -over 500 - but some are from TV and we tape them for watching later.

Last evening was movie-watching time. My wife gave me five to chose from - a common way of deciding what to watch except sometimes I select the candidates and she chooses. Anyhow, I chose a James Garner and Doris Day film, The Thrill of It All,  made in 1963.

It was a light-hearted movie. Just the thing for these times. About a baby doctor (Garner) whose wife (Day) becomes a spokesperson for a soap she uses. It is about how the family life is disrupted and changed when she goes to work and the husband has trouble adjusting. 

I had never seen it before. I should add that their two small children steal the film every time they are on - especially the boy. One of the best parts is in the beginning when Dad calls home and Mom, who washing the girl's hair, tells the boy to answer the phone.

A feel-good movie for sure. (It made up for watching the 4th Bourne movie I chose and we watched it earlier in the week. If you haven't seen it, take a pass on it.)

I want to watch a western next.

Ala Heart of Darkness

 I just completed reading a small book (172 pages) written about 1992 by a Swede who was traveling in Niger, Africa, at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. He intersperses his diary-like inserts with a historical discussion of Europe's exploration, occupation, and destruction of the natives who resided there. He compares this to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness novel written about the same time.

I have had it on the shelf for a few years, but only now decided to read it considering today's environment. It was a very disturbing book. But I am glad I read it. I think I will read Conrad again. And maybe watch the film, Apocolypse Now.

I will have more to say about this book, but not now. A little too raw in my mind.

The next book I should read? The Mind of South by W. J. Cash, written in 1941.

Another Pandemic-Like Episode?: TB to 2008

Going through this current crisis with COVID-19, I was reminded the other day of a slightly similar, though definitely not as deadly nor critical, that happened my last year at SSVC when I was superintendent.

It happened just after Christmas, 2008. We had restarted school after the Christmas break, the students were back, and we were preparing for semester exams. We had had some flu cases earlier in the year, but nothing our nurses and houseparents couldn't handle. This time it was different.

I don't know how or why it happened - maybe it came back with the students when they returned from their homes scattered across the state - but it hit the school hard. Normally, a sick child would be kept in the cottage during the day away from the school and other students. If there was a risk of spreading it to others, the child would be kept in the campus hospital.

The hospital was more of a clinic, with a nurse on duty 24 hours a day. It had a few beds, but its main function was to distribute medications to the 300 students who had prescriptions or needed something for whatever cold or pain they had. It definitely was not equipped for treating a flu epidemic. But that's what it did in January 2009.

We had to put beds in rooms that were originally meeting rooms or equipment storage rooms. Then we began to move beds into the hallways, just like I saw on TV recently. Many of our administrative personnel who were co-located in the clinic were enlisted to assist the nurses in many of the housekeeping chores. Some children were taken home by their parents, but that was the exception since almost all of them lived in either the Philadelphia, Harrisburg, or Pittsburgh areas, and those areas were dealing with similar illnesses.

We survived. After about three weeks, we returned to a situation where the nurses could handle things on their own with help from the houseparents. But it was close for a while. We had some great staff and kids. 

I think about it oftern these days. 

The Twilight Zone

I've been videotaping episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. I remember watching the show back in the early 60's on TV. Most of the episodes I watched were in black and white which matched the aura of strangeness the show displayed in its episodes. Many well-known or soon-to-be well-known actors played the main characters.

Two of my favorites involved my love of reading and my fear of flying. In "Time Enough at Last", Burgess Meredith played a man who worked in a bank, and during every lunch hour, he would seal himself inside the bank's vault to read instead of relaxing with his co-workers, which he really didn't like to do. 

One day as he came out of the bank vault, he saw that a nuclear bomb had hit the town and he was the only survivor. He was so happy that now he didn't have to spend his time talking to others. He could spend all of his time reading. And read outside at that. It ends as he is walking down large courthouse-like steps, his glasses fall off and he steps on them, breaking them. He can't read now.

The other episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", William Shatner played a man just released from a sanitarium and is on his way home flying with his wife. Shortly after they are in the air, he looks out his window and sees a gremlin outside. 

He tries to convince everyone, without success, of what he saw. Since I haven't seen this episode again, I don't remember how it ends. I just know I have a fear of flying.

Leave it modern-day memes to come up with takeoffs.

From Malcolm to Ian

This week I decided to get back to my writing; my novel that is. So I dug out my notebook I used in July 1993. 27 years ago. So sue me. I had writer's block.

I had actually begun making notes about a WW2 mystery involving Rudolf Hess, Nazis, and conspiracy. Why did he make his flight to England in 1941? They say, "write about what you know". Well, at that time I was heavily into researching everything about Hess. And archaeology. Why not add some Indiana Jones?

Who was going to be my main character? Since Hess crashed in Scotland (near Glasgow actually) I decided that the hero of the book would be Malcolm Kincaid.

And why "From Malcolm to Ian? 

Simple. When I began writing again this year, I started over. Completely over. About a man who owned a store consisting of old books, globes, and maps in the New York Catskills. He was an Army veteran, widowed, and had a grown daughter, and a border collie. 

And he liked single malt scotch whiskies. You see his ancestry on his father's side was Scottish, whose family owned a distillery. Hence, I named him Ian Kincaid, completely forgetting about Malcolm until I pulled the notebook out this week!

Long story short, I am staying with Ian and the Catskills. I've moved on - at least for now - from Hess and WW2. But who knows, maybe someone will show up at his store with a flight map of Hess's route to England on that fateful night in May 1941.

Stay tuned.

As the Week Ends

It was an up and down week.

• Completed the project for the SJH. It was just proofreading the exhibit labels for the gift shop museum orientation room. It wasn't difficult and I enjoyed doing something different.

• We held our monthly book club meeting virtually. While only 6 of 14 people made it, it worked well. We don't know what we're doing next month yet.

• My current reading hasn't changed much this week. I did finish "The Darwin Myth" by Benjamin Wilker. It was a good book to read and complemented our club book, "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" by David Quammen.

My hair cutters came from Amazon yesterday. The box went to our last address. A friend picked it up from that address - meeting some nice people he said - and is mailing it back to Amazon today. I will be re-ordering new cutters today.

• I had a low BSR yesterday of 144. That's the best it's been in years! Today was 160. Still not too bad, but I'd like to see more in the 130s and 140s for now. Still at 24 units once a day in the morning.

•  This week I learned that the word "jerry-rigged" means putting something together in a slapdash, shoddy manner. To improvise is to "jury-rig". I've been using it wrong all this time.

• Started a new nonfiction book this week; the title says it wall -well almost. I'll probably mention more about it later.

• Watched live golf this weekend - the Charles Schwab Tournament in Dallas, Texas- with no fans and social distancing among the players. While it is somewhat quieter and different, it is still good to see a live sport.