A MIXED BAG

Topics:



 Blogging,  Reading, Music, Miscellaneous, Poetry

 

 BLOGGING plans this year are to blog more regularly but still within my time constraints (I know:  boo-hoo retired people with time constraints!).  My modest goal is to consistently post a blog twice a month.  So far it looks like this:  1) continue end-of-month blogs.  2) continue any Special Events blogs (e.g. travel) and 3) sometimes post a blog with a mixed bag of current topics in my life.  Starting right now.                                                    

 

READING plans this year are driven by a reorganization of what I'll generously call my Library.  It's a large Ron-made built-in bookshelf in the bedroom.  Currently it's holding books we've read; fiction, non-fiction and reference.  I've been eyeing it for the three years I've been retired, and this is the year for change.  A clean-sweep change.  It's the rare book I read more than once, so it's time to get rid of the many books I've kept, thinking I might do so.  That will eliminate the majority of the books. I might have to twist Ron's arm a bit for him to do the same with his share of the books.  To refill the shelves, there's a category I'm calling Focus Reading.  These will be books I'll collect and read on a particular topic that catches my interest.   One example is the series of books about Mt. Everest I just finished.  Another example was mentioned here a couple of years ago, "80 Books Around The World", a list of books recommended by my e-book company.  There are about 25 of those left; I'll acquire the rest of them and give them a home in the Library.  There are several Focus Reading topics floating around, waiting for shelves to clear.  Not to mention the opportunity to acquire new books! 

I guess if Focus Reading is the name of one category, all the other reading I do must be.....Unfocused Reading?  Which is: whatever I want, whenever I want, in any quantity I want.  Those books are currently housed in a bookshelf in the loft, and vary in number from a minimum of 25 to what the shelves will hold, which would be about 75. I've never happened to fill all three shelves; I've always kept at least the top shelf full.  

Current Focus Reading (just finished):  the last Everest book:  Into The Silence:  The Great War, Mallory, and The Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis.  I thought this book would be on the dry side; it ended up being my favorite of the list of seven I read.  As indicated in the subtitle, it gave the historical context of European interest in Everest, first as part of English empire-building and later as a reaction to the damage done to England's psyche by WWI and the need to have Heros doing Heroic Deeds.  George Mallory became the figurehead of that effort.  And what an effort it was.  Even though the first three organized expeditions chronicled in this book were well-financed and had the most current knowledge and cutting edge gear, the difficulty was astonishing.  More than once I found myself agreeing with the Tibetans, for whom the concept "because it's there" couldn't contain the hardship the climbers endured. The book ends with Mallory's death during the third expedition and the shuttering effect it had on England's push to Conquer. 

  

Current Unfocused Reading:  I've long been a casual fan of Sherlock Holmes through books, movies and TV series.  I recently happened upon a book series by the author Laurie R. King in which the stories are told from the point of view of the character Mary Russell, who becomes Holmes apprentice at age 15, and whom Holmes marries at age 18.  I love these books! I'm so glad there are fourteen in the series!  They're classic Holmes in style, but Mary Russell breathes new life into this paragon of whodunnits. 

 

MUSIC focus this year is to bring piano playing back into the fold.  Each year since I retired, I've had this same intention.  Each year, it's not been met.  This is the year.  I Promise Myself.  I've played piano off and on since childhood, and it definitely feels like something I'm not done with.  However, if I don't give it a priority, I'll be done (meaning IN THE GRAVE) before I get around to it!  Hey, not being goulish, but there are only so many years left, and I'm on the short end of THAT stick!  It's early days, but so far so good.  Though I've plenty to work on without formal instruction, I may end up with the input of a good teacher to help get the results I want.  

 

MISCELLANEOUS:

TO WHOM I'M LISTENING:

 

 

 and of course

TO WHOM I'M WATCHING ON YOU-TUBE:

Jimmy Fallon!  Yeah I know, SNL for six years, two years already on The Tonight Show, etc, etc..I'm slow on the uptake!  Not only is he a comedian and impressionist, he's a musician and impressionist.  I'm utterly enraptured with the clip of his impression of Neil Young's "Old Man".

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6otmy3DAK8

 

 Another fave is one of his Classroom Instrument bits, in which he and his house band Roots play classroom instruments to accompany in this case (you guessed it!) Adele.  SUPER FUN!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yL7VP4-kP4

POETRY: 

Being literal-minded to the point of embarassment, I've always struggled with the often metaphorical nature of poetry.  However, I recently came across this poem about poetry by Marianne Moore in which I think she had me in mind. 

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all 

                  this fiddle.

        Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one

                  discovers in 

        it after all, a place for the genuine.

           Hands that can grasp, eyes

           that dilate, hair that can rise

              if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because 

                they are

        useful.  When they become so derivative as to become

                unintelligible,

        the same thing may be said for all of us, that we

           do not admire what

           we cannot understand:  the bat 

        holding on upside down or in quest of something to

 eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless

                wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin

                 like a horse that feels a flea, the base-

ball fan, the statistician--

        nor is it valid

             to discrimiate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important.  One must

                make a distinction

        however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the

                result is not poetry,

        nor till the poets among us can be

          'literalists of

            the imagination' -- above

                insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall

               we have

      it.  In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

      the raw material of poetry in

               all its rawness and

              that which is on the other hand

                  genuine, then you are interested in poetry.