Category Archives: miscellaneous

home improvements, miscellaneous, reading

The Tree Came Down

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Here’s the view of the newly fallen tree, as it looks from my reading chair in the woods, off in the distance.

Summer is upon us in northwest Arkansas, both by the calendar and the weather. But our temperatures are hovering just below 90°F, or even in the upper 80s, for the daytime highs. Nightly lows are still in the 60s. That won’t last long. A forecast for next week shows us hitting 100 towards the end of the week.

But, I find it is cool enough to go to the sunroom and read around noon. That won’t last long either. My alternative place to read is a spot on our wood lot just south of the house. The lot is sloping, and finding a level spot to set a chair is a challenge. Last year I tried it but had a bad spot. Sitting wasn’t comfortable.

A little bit of enlargement. You can see how it’s at about a 45% angle. I haven’t walked down there yet to see what’s holding it up.

This year I chose another spot, just off the path to my compost pile. It’s not deep in the woods. In fact, when the sun comes around to due south and then a little to the west of south, the canopy of leaves becomes imperfect and it gets kind of hot. But, before 12:30 PM, when the sun is in the right spot and the shade is full, it’s quite pleasant there, even with the ambient temperature above 90.

The problem is, I find sitting in the woods distracting. I come out through the garage, walk the 40 or 50 feet down the path, put my coffee and book on the log I’m using as a table, set out my chair, and have a seat. I open whatever book I’m reading (currently C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms), and read.

Except, I find it impossible to concentrate for long. I’m constantly looking up to see what is in the woods. Or to listen to whatever sound is about. Our street is little traveled and so doesn’t give off much noise. If a strong enough breeze is going, I can hear the trees swaying and rustling through the leaves. I don’t hear many critter sounds. Sometimes a squirrel will be dashing here or there perhaps a hundred feet from me. I will watch it for a while. A bird or two may fly through the woods, but birds I hear more than see.

I will take that walk down the hill soon. But I don’t think I’ll do much about it.

Anyhow, one day last week, I interrupted my reading to look into the woods. Off to the right and quite a way down the hill, but still on our lot (or just a few feet south of it), was a tree that was newly leaning, closer to horizontal than vertical. I knew this tree. It was one of three trees in the area where I had established a brush pile and a log pile. The trees were dead, but standing. One of these trees, about 6-inch diameter, had come down over the winter. I’ve slowly been cutting it to movable lengths and taking them down to the log pile.

This new one is at least 12-inches diameter. It sits, as I said, a few feet south of our lot line, but is falling in the direction of our lot. I can’t leave it how it is. In North Carolina they called this type of tree a “widow-maker”. So this will be another one I’ll have to clean up.

A 12-inch tree is too big to try to cut without a chainsaw, so maybe I can get a friend to come with his chainsaw and help me out. I want to keep the lot clean for when the grandkids come, so they can play on it without a lot of stuff to trip over. But that will have to wait until after blackberry season, which is now in full swing.

What’s the point of all this? The difficulty of concentrating, which might be a sign of aging? Enjoyable things seen in the woods? The extra work that an extra lot puts on you? I suppose any of those could be a subject to expand.

I was thinking, though, of how using our senses results in expanded observations. When did that tree come down? We had a windstorm, with a little rain, over Saturday-Sunday night. That might have been it. But, it could have come down sometime before that. I’ve been sitting in the woods off and on for about a month, and I don’t remember seeing it before. Had I not seen it, or was it a new casualty of the forces of nature?

I’m not sure how much we use all our senses. Sight. Hearting. Touch. Taste. Smell. Rarely, I think, do I take a moment to observe around us and evaluate the area with all five senses.

I’m trying to do a better job with this. Right now, Friday evening, I’m sitting in the living room. The TV is on in the background, providing sound. It has to compete with ringing in my ears, however. The sight factor is easy, and I won’t describe to you the combination of furniture, clutter, carpet, etc. that I see. No particular smell stands out from whatever the background smell is. I’m sipping cold water, which has a neutral but somewhat enjoyable taste.

As to touch, I’m in the recliner, laptop on my lap. The chair presses in on me, causing some pain in my slowly-recuperating left shoulder. It reminds me that I don’t much like this chair; something about the height of the arms and the way they press in. The “pillow” behind my head also is a bit too big.

Ah, using the senses. Time to get up and find something to exercise more fully my sense of taste. Peanut butter and jelly, perhaps? Or maybe half a grapefruit.

miscellaneous, stock market, Writing

A View Looking South

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[Dateline 31 May 2023, for posting 9June 2023]

From my reading chair in the sunroom, looking south. It’s hard to tell, but I recently spent a couple of hours cleaning the window fan from years of dirt. Gotta be healthier.

Summer is here—maybe not by definition, but by the reality of temperatures. When I finish my morning work in The Dungeon (writing, stock trading), I go to the sunroom with either coffee or water, and read for an hour.

The sunroom is not air conditioned, and it gets hot in the summer. A time will come, in July and August, that it will be over 90 degrees by noon and more or less unusable. Right now, however, it’s around 80 degrees at that time. Each year I make an adjustment at this time. I swivel my reading chair around to face south, put a fan in the window just a few feet away, and make do with the air flow making the room fairly comfortable.

I made that change yesterday. I would have done it a little earlier, but the fan desperately needed cleaning. That took a long time, as I had to removed the grill (which turned out to be a pain) but couldn’t fully remove it due to some clips on one end. Thus, I had to reach my hand in between the spread grills and clean it as best I could. I finished that on Monday, and used the fan for the first time this season on Tuesday.

Now, when I sit there, I’m looking out the south windows a couple of feet away, rather than the north windows on the other side of the room. What do I see? Well, the chair is low enough, and the window ledge high enough, that for most of the view, all I can see is trees. Oak trees. Most of them with 12-inch or larger diameter trunks. They are dense. The canopy is fairly solid and very little sunlight penetrates it—that’s even after thinning the trees to make our woodlot somewhat park-like. If I raise up a little, I see more of the trees and trunks. The ground is lower, and falling away.

Except for off to the right. There the ground slopes up steeply. I can see the tree line at the edge of the woods, the grassy area between the trees and the street, and the asphalt strip of the street. The grassy area isn’t solid. It is punctuated by blackberry bushes that I’ve allowed to spring up. I can even see a small pile of cuttings from this morning’s yardwork, which I plan to move to a compost pile tomorrow.

Further away, across the street, I can see the woods across the street. A hundred and fifty feet into that lot is the fort I build with my grandsons, but it’s too far back in the dense foliage and I can’t see it from the sunroom. I know it’s there, but I can’t see it.

This new view means that I can no longer see the birdfeeder on the deck; it’s now behind me. However, today I noticed that I can see the birdfeeders reflected in the south windows. It takes concentration to look at the glass and see the small reflection instead of looking straight at the south woods. I was able to see birds come and go, but the reflection wasn’t clear enough to know what type of birds they were.

I have about a month more to enjoy the south view if temperatures are normal. It might even be a little longer than that, if I change my schedule and read in the sunroom before the heat of the day warms it beyond the edges of enjoyment level. Or there will be the occasional rain day, when I can use the room all day.

So what point am I trying to make? To change your schedule according to the needs of the moment? To enjoy whichever view life gives you? To observe the panorama of views that life gives you? I suppose all of the above.

Now in my fifth year of retirement, I’ve come to enjoy my noon reading time. I’m usually up at around 6:30 a.m. and in The Dungeon working by 7:00. With only a short break for breakfast, that’s close to five hours of writing or whatever work I have to do. Reading makes a nice break. The sunroom is nice venue. I have enough books in this house to find interesting reading material for the next 50 years—no exaggeration.

So I keep busy in the sunroom. At times I even look out at the windows and simply enjoy the view.

 

Bible study, miscellaneous, Writing

A Small View Between Obstacles

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Hard to see in this photo, but the gaps in the forest are there. I took this photo this morning, and the cloud cover is about the same as Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I came to The Dungeon as per my routine, mug of coffee in hand. I opened my current Bible reading book, which is the harmony of the gospels that I wrote, did my reading, had my prayer time, and got to my work—or maybe my busywork, can’t quite remember exactly two days ago. At some point I went upstairs for breakfast, then returned to The Dungeon and got to my real working time.

The day had dawned cloudy and remained so. At some point I looked up and out the window. Now, the window is covered with vertical slat blinds from the top to the floor. And my computer desk with the upper shelf unit is between me and the window. So two items are blocking my view of the outer world.

But I did have some view, enough to know the clouds were still thick. All I could see was tree leaves and branches. Once the oaks leaf out, which happens in the latter part of April, the holler behind our house is fully obscured. I see leaves close, a little light behind them, and then a mass of leaves that covers all else.

I took note that the leaves were perfectly still—not a bit of movement. But then I focused on the small amount of leaves deeper in the woods that I could see through the small gaps between the near leaves and branches. There, behind the front foliage, were places where gaps in the forest canopy allowed more light to penetrate. And in those gaps, I could see leaves and branches stirring. Eventually, that stirring worked its way toward the nearer leaves and branches, and they began to stir as well.

That got me to thinking of the limited view we have of the world. Our view is obscured by the things around us: the work at home, the work at a job, the need to keep in contact with people. So many things crowd our lives that, to use the old and trite adage, we can’t see the forest because of the trees.

It’s good to be looking for those gaps in what crowds us in to see beyond, to see what the rest of the world is up to. That’s what makes our little piece of the world a better place to live in.

When I took note of that movement in the forest, working from deeper in it to the edge of it made up of our back yard, I knew I had to blog about it, but how do I find meaning in it? Meaning, that is, beyond the gaps that allows us to see a little more of the world? And I thought of what I wrote not so long ago about friendship.

Friendships are the little gaps in the forest, with light penetrating the canopy and shining deep within. Friendships are elusive in this busy world, but well worth cultivating.

I’ve been working hard on my current work-in-progress, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5. I’m down to less than 1,500 words to go on the main text, plus some kind of introduction. My hope is to finish it today, though a doctor appointment may be too much interruption for that to happen. No matter if it does; I’ll finish it tomorrow. Then, I’m going to take time to cultivate some friendships I’ve kind of dropped while working so hard between writing and parent/grandparent duties.

Here’s to friendships, and to little gaps in the desk top-unit, the blinds, and the forest, that occasionally align and allow a view of the woder world.

family, holidays, memories, miscellaneous

An Odd Delivery

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Grandfather Todd’s trunk. Came from Yorkshire to NYC in 1910, to Providence in 1912, to East Providence around 1914, back to Providence around 1945, to Cranston in 1950, to NW Arkansas in 1997, and to Myrtle Beach in 2023.

One of the consequences of being in West Texas on a long-ish (more than two weeks) grandparent duty is that I wasn’t home to handle one very important item, scheduled since January. This relates to decluttering and dis-accumulation in advance of a downsizing some day, specifically to the Stars and Stripes that I’ve written about before.

For decades it held wartime copies of the “Stars and Stripes”, but they are now gone.

Not really about the newspapers, but the trunk they were stored in. This is an old steamer trunk that was one of three trunks that sat in the basement of my parents’ house for decades. As a kid growing up, I never knew the origin of those trunks nor what they were storing.

Someone who knows trunks could probably figure out more about it, such as year of manufacture and value.

On one trip back to Rhode Island, in 1990, Dad and I talked about his war service setting type for the S&S. We went to the basement and Dad showed me all those newspapers he’d sent home from Europe, which his parents kept and put in the trunk.

When Dad died in 1997, I took the trunk back to Arkansas and there it sat, either in my garage or basement, until a few days ago. Last year I removed the contents and shipped them to the University of Rhode Island Library as a donation, keeping a handful of copies as keepsakes.

That left the empty trunk. It was a steamer trunk, nothing fancy. On one end “OT” was painted. I assume, therefore, that this belonged to my grandfather, my dad’s dad, Oscar Todd. He emigrated from Yorkshire, England, to the USA in 1910 at the age of 20. He was in New York City for a couple of years, then made his way to Rhode Island. There he worked, married, and raised a family.

The “OT” painted on the outside is the only real clue I have about the origin, and the reason I believe it belonged to my grandfather, Oscar Todd, and was probably the trunk he brought with him from England to the USA.

I assume that this trunk was the one he brought from England in 1910. I’m sure there’s a way to research it and determine its age and origin. But I’m convinced that’s what it is: my grandfather’s trunk. He kept it, and when those newspapers came in wartime mail, it became a good place to store them.

From 1910 to around 1950, the trunk was wherever Oscar was, in NYC, the Riverside district of East Providence, and Providence. From 1950 to 1997, it was in the basement of Dad’s house in Cranston. From 1997 to 2023, it was with me in two different houses. While not overly large, it just doesn’t fit in with the concept of dis-accumulation. So when I decided to donate the S&S, I decided to get rid of the trunk.

Neither of my children wanted it. I don’t fault them for that. The trunk would take a fair amount of restoration to be a display item. The heirloom value would only be to someone who knew Oscar, and he died before they were born. I thought of others in the family who might want it, and decided on a cousin’s son, Frank Reed. He and his wife have six children, Frank knew Oscar, his great-grandfather, briefly and remembers him, so that seemed the next logical place for it to go.

The problem is, Frank recently removed from New Jersey to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. How to get the trunk to him? Shipping was a possibility, though expensive. So in January I put out a call on Facebook for anyone making a road trip there who would be willing to take the trunk. Amazingly, a woman responded saying she would be going to the North Carolina Outer Banks and could drive the trunk as far as Raliegh-Durham Airport. Could my cousin meet her there? He said yes, and arrangements were made for the trunk transfer at a certain time on May 9.

But then, grandparent duties took me away from home at the time we would have to get the trunk to the woman who was driving it east. She contacted me; I was in Texas, not planning to be home before May 7, when the trunk needed to go to her.

Our neighbors had a key to our house to water the plants. I contacted them and they were happy to help out. The first transfer, from our house to our neighbors, happened on the 6th. The second transfer, from our neighbor’s to Kimberly’s van, happened on the 7th. The third transfer, from Kimberly to Frank’s son’s car (he went to pick it up), happened in the cell phone lot at Raleigh-Durham Airport on the 9th, and the drive to Myrtle Beach the day.

So much work to get a simple trunk halfway across country. But it happened. Now Frank and his family can decide how best to display and enjoy this family heirloom, either as-is or with restoration.

Dis-accumulation continues. Next, Uncle Dave’s 1900 Encyclopedia Brittanica.

 

family, miscellaneous

Too Busy To Write

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Not going to review this one. I read it, a thin volume, over five or six busy days.

That’s the problem right now, I have too much to do to do any writing. I think it was Tuesday that I put the finishing touches on the first draft of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 7. Since then, I’ve done no writing. Well, I spent a little time in The Key To Time Travel, taking care of a few loose ends, especially in the dates that Eddie travels to. But I did nothing to get ready for this blog, wrote no letters, nothing.

I did finish a writing book, titled The Writer’s Notebook. I won’t review it here. It was marginally beneficial. I gave it to my granddaughter Elise, who has also read it and said she got a lot out of it. Maybe she’ll be a writer someday.

The busyness comes from our daughter’s family’s upcoming move, currently scheduled for late this month. I’ve been pushing everyone to sort and pack the small stuff. Sort into keep, donate, discard. And the keeping stuff has to be marked for storage or temporary house.

They had done a lot before we got here twelve days ago, but there is much to do. Everyone has pitched in. Saturday was a major effort. Lots of books gone through, Legos boxed, messy piles gone through in bedrooms. Even yesterday saw some work done. Saturday #2 grandson, Ezra, and I took a modest load of stuff to a thrift store. Hopefully today I’ll be able to take a load of books to a Christian school.

Of course, everything is a mess at the moment. Boxes everywhere, some sealed, some not; some assembled, some waiting for assembly. Many more in the garage, though not even close to what will be needed.

Many Wal-Mart runs later, with many meals cooked and eaten, rides to and from school, and errands run, and we are down to the last few days of this trip. We’ll head home for some appointments, then be back here to help with the final move. That will be about a ten-day trip, shorter than this 16-day one. That will include helping them into the new place.

Writing tasks will begin again later this week, probably on Friday. I’ll report in then.

miscellaneous

Thinking About Friendship

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The concept of friendship has been on my mind recently. One of the books I brought with me to read on our current trip is a C.S. Lewis book titled The Four Loves. One of the loves Lewis talks about is friendship. So far I’ve only skimmed this book.

Another reason I’m thinking about that is because of my currently reading the letters of Thomas and Jane Carlyle, along with an older bio of him. My current reading is in the time less than three years after he moved from Scotland to London and was still forming friendships. Reading about how that was going is an interesting read.

Friendship has been on my mind because I wonder if people really experience it these days. We are more connected than ever thanks to the internet, yet we are, perhaps, more isolated. Posts and reactions take the place of real interactions.

Building friendships takes time. Both parties to a friendship must want the friendship and show the want by investing the time needed to, first, get to know the other person, and second, to know them well, well enough to say, “We are friends,” and to consider it a loss if you didn’t hear from or engage with the other for some time. Of course, to get to know someone well probably means you share interests.

We don’t have much friendship today. I’m convinced of that. I’m thinking at the adult level. Children at all ages, linked by school classes, do a better job of making friends.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this topic and whether I’ll have more posts on it as I get into the Lewis book. If I do have more, they won’t be consecutive.

letters, miscellaneous

Learning a Word: Ontological

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Unlike the last word I took note of on this blog, today’s word is not archaic. I came across it in a magazine article I’m reading on-line. Here’s the quote.

Annabel Patterson, [her section], in her [article], explores the “peculiar ontological status of letters as texts, as generic modifiers, or as members of a distinct and in some ways unique genre,” arguing that the correspondences of [three old Englishmen] a natural Ciceronianism.”

The article I’m reading has to do with collections of letters. Having just done my talk on collections of letters to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society, my urge to read more about the topic has not yet run its course. Hence, I did a search for “letter collections” on JStor, and this is one that popped up.

The definition I find for ontological is:

  1. relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being: “ontological arguments”
  2. showing the relations between the concepts and categories in a subject area or domain:
    “an ontological database” · “an ontological framework for integrating and conceptualizing diverse forms of information”

I gotta tell you, that doesn’t help a lot. The study of “being”? I don’t really know what that is. I looked up ontology and got this for a definition:

In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.

Which wasn’t any help.

All of which suggests to me that I’m reading the wrong things.

Bible study, Christianity, Health, miscellaneous, Writing

I Guess I Was Tired

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Here it is, Monday morning, 7:42 a.m. at the new Central Daylight Time, and I’m just getting around to writing my blog post. I didn’t get up until 7:02 a.m. today. I guess I was tired.

I taught adult Sunday school yesterday. That usually takes a lot out of me, both the preparation work and the teaching. I was exhausted as I made my way from the classroom to the sanctuary, and then as I sat through the church service.

When we got home, I ate our Subway lunch then put a roast on for supper. And off to the sunroom I went for my normal reading and nap time. I don’t always nap during these sessions, but I did yesterday. I like to take a walk then, but I was much too tired to do so. I went to my reading chair in the living room, where Lynda had a UFO program on. Just the thing to have in the background when you’re too tired to do much. I decided to forego my afternoon walk.

The next couple of hours are a blur. I caught up on e-mails. At 3:45 p.m. I added the veggies to the roast. I sent an e-mail to our Life Group with the prayer requests from the morning and the scripture we studied. I really can’t remember what else took up those couple of hours. But I did learn that I had left the charging cord to my computer in the Sunday school classroom. Alas, I won’t be going anywhere near the church this week. Well, I have a second cord I keep in The Dungeon, and fetched it. I can carry it up and down the stairs this week.

When the roast was done a little after 6:00 p.m., we ate, putting on a Miss Marple TV show, one of the ones from the 1980s in which Joan Hickson plays Miss Marple. When that was over, I pulled up on my computer the Bible study I’m writing, the one that my co-teacher and I are also teaching. I started writing on that around 8:30 p.m. or so, and when I stopped at 9:50 p.m., I discovered I had added 1,800 words, and was a little ahead of schedule on where I hope to be at that point in the week.

After that writing session was reading, putting pills together for this week, cleaning a bit in the kitchen, and to bed around 11:00 p.m., my usual time. I slept okay. Up several times in the night, but was able to get back to sleep each time. I woke this morning around 6:10 a.m., and rather than get up I decided to stay in bed until my normal 6:30 a.m. rising time. The next thing I knew it was 7:02 a.m. I never sleep that late.

But, of course, we changed this weekend to Daylight Saving Time. I lost an hour of sleep. It’s no wonder I was tired. It’s going to take a couple of days to fully adjust. And Saturday, I spent a fair amount of time pulling together our partnership income tax form. We trade stocks as a partnership, and that tax return is due March 15. That actually came together pretty well. I was able to complete and print the forms on Saturday. Today I will proof them and, assuming they are correct, make my copy and take them to mail today, two days early.

I also did some writing on Saturday, in the evening, on the Bible study as I prepared the lesson for yesterday. In that session I produced around 1,200 words. I think they were good words, but I’ll know more when I re-read them today at the beginning of my writing session.

So maybe I earned that tiredness. My blood sugar readings were good, as were my blood pressure. My weight is up a little as I’ve lost motivation to eat properly. I hope to get that motivation back today.

I think also the weight of everything I have to do this week was pressing on me. Tomorrow I make a presentation to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society (one of my clubs) on Historical Letter Collections, and I’m not ready yet. With banks failing this weekend, I know stock trading today will be intense. Wednesday are our annual eye exams. Thursday is Scribblers & Scribes writing critique group, and I have to decide what to prepare.

Oh, and this morning, I discovered that I also forgot my wireless mouse at church. It’s very hard to do my stock trading without that, and of course it’s important to overall computer use, so I guess I’ll make the 13 mile drive to church this afternoon and retrieve the forgotten items.

Obviously, I was tired.

miscellaneous

Learning a Word: Animadvert

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My current main read is Great Voices Of The Reformation, Edited by Harry Emerson Fosdick and published in 1952, I think my copy, bought used some time ago for a long-forgotten price, was from 1954, I think. I bought it as a reference book. However, last November, I pulled it off my research shelf and decided to read it. I’ve been going at it slowly, normally 5 to 10 pages a day, but skipping days where I felt like it and reading fewer pages on days when I didn’t think I was reading for comprehension.

The last couple of days I had progressed to the included writings of Cotton Mather. This 17th Century New England Puritan is a man whose name I have often heard but really knew little about. I’ve learned something of him from the brief bio provided by Fosdick and from the excerpt from Mather’s magnum opus, Magnalia Christi Americana. This was Mather’s defense of the Puritan method of colonization, intending to make Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill” into the reality it never was.

In Tuesday’s reading I came across the word “animadvert”. This is a word I’ve seen somewhat regularly in the old writings and have looked up to know what it was I was reading. Then, in Thursday’s reading it came up again, but in a different form. Here’s the quote:

…diverse persons professing themselves Quakers…arrived at Boston, whose persons were only secured to be sent aaway by the first opportunity, without censure or punishment, although their professed tenets, turbulent and contemptuous behavior to authority, would have justified a severer animadversion—A law was made and published, prohibiting all masters of ships to bring any Quakers into this jurisdiction….

This form of the word, as a noun rather than a verb, if what I see most of the time. Here’s what I learn from the dictionary about them.

Animadvert: verb; 1) to pay attention to; 2) pass criticism or censure on; speak out against.

Animadversion: noun: criticism or censure

This is an old work originally from Latin, adopted into English more or less directly from the Latin. Dictionaries give the etymology. They also show a severe decline in usage from the early 1800s unto our time. Here’s a graph that shows that for animadversion.

Animadversion has obviously fallen out of style.

 

I’m not surprised that the word has fallen out of use. Animadversion is so much more complicated than criticism or censure. It sounds so strange. I never see myself using it in a sentence, either in speech or in a book, whether or not it’s considered archaic.

What are the nuances of its usage, I wonder? When would it be more correct—if ever—to use than criticize or censure? Would I say, “Trump I criticize, but Biden I animadvert”? That would take a lot of study, consuming time I really don’t have.

This got me to thinking about words and what they mean. I have a tendency, which I think many people have, to use words without really thinking about what they mean. I’m trying to change that. We’ll see how it goes in the future.

Meanwhile, if you don’t like this post, keep your animadversions to yourself!

books, memories, miscellaneous

Library Memories – Part 5: Later Adult Years

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This post continues in the series of my memories of times in libraries Earlier posts are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

After moving to northwest Arkansas, with our children a little older, with a house that had space to accumulate books, with the school libraries apparently adequate, we spent less family time at the Bentonville library. However, from 1991 to 2000, my office in downtown Bentonville was across the street from the Bentonville Public Library. I went there frequently during lunch hours, even sometimes on breaks. Once in a great while, I would go there with some of my company work and find peace and quiet, away from the telephone and people, and get some real work done.

I don’t have memories of particular books or discoveries from this library. One thing I did was look at investment publications, particularly Value Line. You couldn’t check that out, so I would sit and read it over several days. Was it time well spent? I’d like to think so. The things I learned about stocks, for investment and trading, provided a foundation for how I use the stock market now for supplemental income.

The Bentonville Library built a new building at the edges of downtown, and our company moved way away from downtown. I used the Bentonville library less. In the last ten years, it has been more of a meeting place. I used to meet with our pastor there for coffee and conversation. I donated a number of my books to this library for their local authors section.

Nowadays, my library forays are to the Bella Vista Public Library. While I sometimes browse and find a book to check out, it’s more a place for organizations I belong to to hold meetings. My critique group, Scribblers & Scribes, meets there one afternoon a month. Another group, Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society, meets there one afternoon a month. And another writers group, Village Lakes Writers and Poets, does the same. So I’m in this library typically three or four times a month. A recent expansion makes it much more functional.

If it weren’t for the 2000 or so books in our house, which I’m trying to sort through and read those I don’t think I will ever read, or read again, I would get more books from the library. I actually checked one out last week. But that was at the Big Spring, Texas, Public Library. It was a biography of C.S Lewis. I had only a few days to read it, and couldn’t get through all the 300 pages in that time, not with the babysitting and pet sitting duties to read a whole lot. I read a number of sections, determined it’s a book I’d like to read in full, and returned it to the library on the way out of town. I’ll see if they have it in Bella Vista, or if I can get it on interlibrary loan.

This will be the end of this series. I conclude by saying: Long live the public library!