Category Archives: reading

books, miscellaneous, reading, research

Library Memories – Part 2: The Company

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These massive structures took computer programs to design optimally. A library helped me do it well.

The first company I worked for had several libraries, one for each of the major divisions. But the main library was in the main building, Building A, on Meadowlake Parkway in Kansas City. I discovered this when I was working in Building N (or was it Q?) in Roeland Park, Kansas.

I had to go the 10 miles to Building A a couple of times a week to deliver a deck of punch cards to the main computer room, where they fed it into a modem to have the program run at McDonald Douglas in St. Louis. Don’t laugh, folks. This was 1975-76. Sometimes I would go, drop the cards off, and get the results the next day in the interoffice mail. Sometimes I was supposed to wait for the results. On those times, with nothing to do, I found the library and browsed in it.

This led to what I call two of my “career moments”, those times when you do something so spectacular that you remember it for the rest of your career and even after. At the time, I was with a group that was doing the structural design of 230 kV lattice steel transmission towers for the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. A few years later, I would be in Saudi and get to see those towers on the ground.

We were designing the towners using what we thought was a very good computer program, and none of us knew a whole lot about it. In the library, I found shelves full of journals of the American Society of Civil Engineers. One of those was the Power journal—many years of it—dealing with all things a civil engineer does for the electrical system. I found several articles about transmission towers. Needless to say, this was interesting reading.

In one issue, I found an article comparing the six or eight major transmission tower design computer programs (the analysis done by an unbiased party). The one we were using, the BPA program, was ranked second. The one that was first was proprietary, available only to the company that created it. My boss was about ready to head to Japan to a meeting about the Eastern Province project. I showed him the issue and article, and he took it with him and read it on the plane. In his meetings, someone criticized our program, saying it was not the best. My boss, fortified by the article and with the issue in hand, said, “Well, the ASCE Journal of Power Engineering says it’s the best program available. Look at this.” He won the argument and I was a hero. Career moment #1.

In another of those issues was an article on the general methodology of structural design of those towers. That led me to check out the manual on the BPA program and I learned it was a whole suite of programs. We were using the Design program, but after that we were supposed to go another step and do a more detailed analysis with the Analysis program. Based on what I learned, we started using it.

I learned this while a full-scale model of one of our towers was being tested in Japan, and we had a man there watching it. We worked late into the night and discovered that tower was 3% overstressed in one structural member. We quickly made a change, reran the analysis program, and had our fix, and waited for our man to make a pre-arranged call (no cell phones back then).

That morning, our man in Japan called and said that the tower being tested had failed at 97% of full load. We gave him the fix and were able waive the re-test, saving thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Career moment #2 was in the books.

My next corporate library experience: While in Saudi Arabia, I discovered an Aramco library in Dhahran, where I frequently had to go for meetings. Perhaps it was more of a privately run public-type of library, but I’m calling it a corporate library. Whenever I had a half hour to kill between meetings, I would go there and browse. My main find was an atlas of the universe. I don’ remember the exact name. This had more than star charts. It talked about all things stellar and galactic. I learned about stars and galaxies near and far, and clusters of galaxies. I learned what a parsec was and how it was used to measure distances in the galaxies.

This gave me a fascination with space travel. I have several books queued up about that. Not sure when, if ever, I’ll get to write them.

Alas, my last couple of memories about corporate libraries aren’t good. When CEI moved into our new building in 2000, we had a great library. The then-director of training and his assistant did a wonderful job of organizing and labeling everything. And we even had a digital card catalog. This worked great from move-in day to around early 2005. A re-organization caused the library to move to less prominent quarters in our building. Things didn’t get put on the shelf the digital card catalog said they were on. This was not a downsizing but rather a reduction in usefulness at the start of the search engine era.

The downsizing came in 2009. After three or four layoffs, we were giving up our beautiful building and moving into rented offices. The library would move, but would be reduced in size. I was assigned the task of deciding what to keep, what to throw away. First, I had to organize it, which resulted in finding many duplicates of manufacturer’s catalogs and many we didn’t need. Things such as old phone books, old municipal standards, etc. all had to go. It was hard, but I made the cuts, and the truncated library barely fit in its new shelves.

That wasn’t the worst. As the Information Era came on full blast, and as we had a little growth, around 2012 the library lost much of its usefulness. It had to be shrunk even more, to maybe 125 linear feet of shelf space in a conference room. Again I had to make those hard decisions. Then, around 2016 the company decided to get rid of it all together. I took some of it into my office, got other people to take things, and got rid of everything else. Those were hard decisions to make, and hard to see valuable books and references overflowing in our dumpster.

I’ve wondered what my first company did with that library in Building A. The thought of all those journals being discarded isn’t a pleasant one. Maybe they found a way to keep it. I hope so.

miscellaneous, reading, Writing

Three White Ribbons

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It’s hard to see, but in this photo are three white ribbons (paths) and two houses, mostly unseen most of the year.

Monday morning, we woke up to a layer of frozen stuff that fell in the night. It was thin, almost more condensation than falling precipitation. This was forecast; no surprise. For the rest of Monday, the frozen precipitation did come. Sleet. Freezing rain. Ice. Maybe even some snow. By the end of Monday daylight, it had accumulated to perhaps an inch, maybe less.

Tuesday dawned cold, around 18° F and cloudy. Mid-morning brought some more frozen precip—again as predicted—though not as long as expected. Maybe a little more accumulation.

I didn’t leave the house for these two days, not even to check the mail. The farthest I went was one step onto the deck to strew birdseed. We stayed inside, did inside tasks, and, to some extent took it easy. Put away a few Christmas decorations. I was glad that I got some yardwork done on Saturday.

I spent my usual time in the chilly sunroom, including some looking out the window time. Behind our house is a valley, known in these parts as a hollow, or “holler”. The photo above is from the sunroom. If you click on the photo to get it full screen, then enlarge it as much as possible and pan around, a few features come out, features that are totally obscured by forest vegetation seven or eight months a year, and features that can’t be seen except when show highlights them.

One of the features is three white “ribbons”—strips of land that are significantly lighter than adjacent areas. At the bottom of the valley is the channel bottom, covered with light-colored gravel. Up just a little higher is part of the Tunnel Vision Trail. Built in 2019 to early 2020, this trail forms a 20 mile loop in western Bella Vista, popular with mountain bikers. That is also light-colored and visible in winter months even when there is no snow.

Then, up at the top of the photo, hard to see, is a strip that is a road going up the hill on the opposite side of the valley. I saw those clearly Monday night and Tuesday morning. Alas, by the time I snapped this photo, the City had run the plow up the road. If you look closely, you can see a black ribbon. That’s the road. It is totally not visible except when snow highlights it, in this case the absence of snow shows where it is.

Our house on the left; the 700 ft house at the line on the right; the other house above that. Note the density of the forest canopy in the valley.

Other features that can be seen near the top of the photo are two houses. You can see the white roof of one. It’s on the far side of the black ribbon road, just right of the vertical projection of the evergreen tree near the bottom. The other is harder to see. It appears as a dark rectangle, partly obscured by tree trunks. This is the house that is closest to us across the holler, on this side of the black ribbon road, 700 feet as the crow flies. These two houses are barely discernable during normal winter conditions. The tree trunks reduce visibility that much.

There’s a metaphor somewhere in all of this, but I can’t tell what it is. Remove the foliage of life to see more of the background. Add a little adversity to see things even more clearly. Enlarge the vignette to see more details. I suppose I ought to explore that some.

All of which is so many words that doesn’t get me anywhere down roads I want to travel. Oh, I suppose better usage and description of metaphors would help me. My main concern Tuesday evening, when I began writing this post, was would I be able to get out of my driveway on Thursday to be able to attend the afternoon meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes critique group? That’s the road I need to travel next. By then the roads should be good enough to drive, but will I be able to get up the 50 feet of driveway to the street?

All of this is hurting my head. Too much thinking for a Tuesday night after a full day of editing, reading, and disaccumulating. I’ll add an update just before posting this on Friday.

family, reading, The Forest Throne, travel

A Pleasant Weekend Behind, Crunch Time Ahead

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On Wednesday, we drove to Meade, Kansas, my wife’s home town, to spend a long Thanksgiving weekend with my wife’s cousin and her husband. We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, to accommodate the schedule of another cousin.

Thursday we went through a box of old family photos that we brought from Bella Vista to Meade. How we came to possess this box is a complicated story, not to be recounted here. We sorted the photos by family group and era, and were able to identify almost everyone in them. A few were mysteries, but after the sorting we figured them out. One was a puzzle, a photo of Lynda’s grandmother as a young girl, sitting on a man’s lap. The man’s name was written on the mounting cardboard, but no one in the family knew who he was. I did some quick internet research and discovered he was a neighbor at the old homestead in Finney County. A mystery solved.

I got in a fair amount of walking around town. Most of the streets are wide, there’s not much traffic, and, since the sidewalks are mostly in rough shape or non-existent, it was quite safe to walk on the streets. Still, even with the exercise, I came back almost two pounds heavier than I was when I left. So the crunch time for weight loss begins today. Despite that, my blood sugar readings were mostly good.

We had lots of good conversations, watched some good music performances on TV, though a little too bluegrass for my tastes, ate good food, had a good Sunday school class and church service yesterday. Our son called us from his vacation in Spain a couple of times. I wrote two letters, one to a pen pal by e-mail, and one to a grandson on paper.

I got done a lot of reading, mostly in the biography of David Livingtone. I’m still less than halfway through this 633 page tome. I started on another book, Great Voices of the Reformation, which is close to 600 pages. Trish and Dave gave me two C.S. Lewis books I didn’t have—compilations of essays and stories, though I did have some or the individual items compiled. So I may have come back more encumbered than I went.

Thus, we come to the crunch time, mainly writing. I’m going to try to finish The Key To Time Travel before the grandkids arrive after Christmas. 1000 words a day and I’ll accomplish that, with time to go through it once editing.

The crunch time is here for clean-up. The special projects I’ve talked about in a couple of blog posts now need to be wrapped up and the “residue” put back on shelves. Piles of books need to be returned to shelves. A few Christmas decorations need to replace the few fall decorations. And then we’ll be ready for the family celebration between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Now, I must leave you and see what trouble I got Eddie Wagner into in the future, and how I’m going to get him out. Oops, guess I just gave away some of the plot.

 

C.S. Lewis, critique group, family, Health, letters, miscellaneous, reading, research, Stars and Stripes, The Forest Throne, Writing

A Busy Week Ahead

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I hope to do some writing on the sequel to this this week.

It’s Sunday evening as I write this, multi-tasking as we watch the specials about 9/11. I’m looking ahead to tomorrow, and realize I don’t have time to write the type of post I’d hoped to have for Monday. Even Friday is a little iffy for a post that takes a lot of time.

This is a killer week. Not so Monday and Friday, but the other days have a lot of activities and appointments.

First, I have two “gigs” this week. On Tuesday, I will repeat my presentation on the Universal Postal Union to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society. I made this presentation in May, but almost everyone who normally attends was gone that day. So I’ll do it again. Fortunately, all I have to do is dust off my PowerPoint and run through it once or twice.

Then, Wednesday morning, I am to be at John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale (40 mile drive), where I will make a presentation of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel to Henry and Izzy, the two students I had Zoom meetings with about a writing project they were doing, then had them be beta readers for my book. They don’t know I’ll be there and giving them the finished book. This will be at 9:00 a.m.

I have several hundred more of these WW2 newspapers to inventory.

Then, at 12:00 noon, I have an appointment with my cardiologist’s P.A. Hopefully I’ll learn how well the cardio rehab program went. Between those two appointments, I’m hoping to meet someone for coffee. We’ll see if that happens.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, Lynda and I have dental appointments. I’ll barely have time to get home after seeing the cardiologist to leave for the dentist. But, unless we head to church that night, that will end appointments on Wednesday.

At noon on Thursday, Lynda will have her MRI to find out what, exactly, caused her sciatica attach in July. That has been twice delayed, not because of us, but because of insurance and provider problems. Then, that evening, is a semi-monthly meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. I’ll have some preparation time required for that.

In addition to this, I have my normal activities, which at the moment include:

  • morning 2-mile walks
  • digitizing a minimum of 10 printed letters a day
  • inventorying a minimum of 30 issues of the Stars and Stripes
  • whatever writing I can squeeze in, most likely on The Key To Time Travel, though I have other projects to work on as well, if I want to do so.
  • A little bit of yard work, although the work I got done on Saturday puts me a little ahead of where I normally am.
  • reading for research as well as for pleasure, including a couple of C.S. Lewis writings.

At some point, I need to begin the strength exercise program recommended in the cardio rehab program. I hope to begin that on Monday.

So yes, it will be a busy week. Hopefully I’ll be able to see progress on all my tasks.

Health, reading, Writing

Dog Watching, Heart Rehab, & Other Things

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It’s now 7:13 a.m. on Monday, my posting day, and I’m just getting to this post. I had intended on doing a book review, but the time has gotten away from me. So, instead, you’ll have to settle for a mish-mash, oh I’m-so-busy post.

Since last Monday, we have been watching a friend’s dog, Rocky. He’s a good dog. Small, white, curly fur. Not terribly demanding. But oh how he interrupts life’s normal rhythms. When I get up in the morning, after weighing, checking my blood sugar, dressing, and taking my pills, instead of going to The Dungeon and having devotions and begin my work day, I walk Rocky. Just up to the stop sign and back, about .34 miles. Then there’s a walk at 9-ish, then noon, then 5, then 7, then 10 at night just before bed. Some of those walks are shorter. One, at 7 or 8 p.m., is about a mile or a little longer. I’m getting my steps in and losing a little weight.

Rocky goes home tomorrow. We will miss him, but it will be good to resume normal daily rhythms.

Which, unfortunately, are being interrupted by my heart rehab program. Based on the heart cath in April, which showed one artery 50% blocked and a tear in one artery, my cardiologist wants me to undergo heart rehab. I did the work-up last Tuesday, and I start today. One hour, three times a week, 20 miles away. Exercise and education to start, and I take it just exercise by the end. 36 sessions, though they say some people “graduate” out after about 12.

I won’t lie: I’m already resenting the time and gas money I’m going to have to spend on this. I know it’s for my good. But the angina has essentially gone away. All these walks with the dog and I don’t think I’ve experienced any angina. I’m wondering if that tear in my artery has already healed itself (as they say it does in 75 to 95% of the cases). I doubt that artery has opened up in such a short time, but who knows?

As to the other things, I have writing, stock trading (looks like a bad day today), household chores, outside work, and trying to keep up a good reading schedule. All in a day of retirement.

 

C.S. Lewis, miscellaneous, reading, Writing

Another Blustery, Rainy, Busy Day

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Rain came in Wednesday late. At least I think it did. I was asleep and didn’t hear it. When I woke up Thursday morning, I heard the plink-plink on the skylights. While waiting for the coffee to brew, I went into the darkness of the sunroom and listened. The wind was easy, the rain light, and the sounds wonderful.

As for my “work” day, after the coffee was done, I went to The Dungeon. Light was just barely visible between the blinds slats, darker than normal due to the rain. I had my devotions and read morning newsletters, then planned my trading day. Thursday is a busy day for my trading system. I did some analysis and laid out some trades. I then made them slowly as the day unfolded.

For writing, I pulled off The Forest Throne to get back on the church Centennial book. As I’ve said before, the writing work is done. I had also begun formatting it for print a week ago. My main task was to add photos. Some of those were on a shared Google drive. Some were in church archives I had at the house, and some were loose or in envelopes. I worked with them all morning. By the time lunch came around I had approximately ten pages of photos added. It’s not done, but it’s now close. Another morning of work and I’ll have added all that are available to me. Today I plan on doing that work.

After lunch, I fell asleep reading C.S. Lewis’s essay “De Futilitate”. So I got up and went out to the sunroom and went back to reading it. I was able to finish the essay, but didn’t really understand it. I think it’s a three or four reading just to get a basic understanding but that wouldn’t be enough to be able to discuss it intelligently.

Pizza and salad for supper, then an evening of…what? I could write, edit, read, chill out watching TV, wash the dishes, declutter. Hmmm. I’m actually writing this Thursday evening, around 7 p.m. Well, I worked on decluttering and disaccumulation last night; I’m not sure I’m up for it tonight. The dishes really need washing, so I’m sure I’ll do that. I may then mess around with e-mail archiving. That’s easy to do in distracted conditions.

The rain is about over, but the winds have risen. I hear the roaring through the closed window. This is blowing-down-trees strength wind. I enjoy listening to it, but won’t appreciate the clean-up afterwards.

This is the last post for October. I’ll be back on Monday with a writing progress report.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Health, History, home improvements, reading, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Post Not Ready

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Six ads running for this, getting impressions, clicks, and a few sales. Other promotion is bearing fruit.

This morning I went outside to work shortly after I got up at 6:45 a.m. The temperature was 60°, and it felt good. I planned to work a half hour, mainly cleaning up a few things and pulling a few weeds from the backyard. When I did what I wanted and went inside, I was surprised to find I’d worked more than 45 minutes. I was way past scheduled time for my blog post, but I wasn’t worried about it since I had a post partially started—two posts actually—and thus could post it quickly once I got to it.

Alas, I finally came to my dashboard here, found there was only one post, and realized it is no where ready to be posted. Bad memory I have.

So here I am with nothing prepared to say. I could talk about any number of things off the cuff: what I’m writing, what I’m reading, how book sales are, what I’m doing for book sales promotion, life in general. I guess I could tackle all of those.

I’m still working on little changes to the church centennial book. I got some new information yesterday that will require a minor change. I also have decided to double-check a couple of places in the book. One I’m fairly sure will require a change, the other one maybe or maybe not. Still, I come closer to done on this every day.  Also, my short story inches along. Every couple of days I open the file, re-read it to remember where I was, and add a few hundred words. I need an uninterrupted , undistracted couple of hours to finish it.

For reading, my time is taken up with Way Truth Life, the book for our Life Group lessons. I’m also reading a book on the Genesis flood. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact title, except that it might be The Genesis Flood. It is a scholarly work from the late 50s-early 60s. I’m not enjoying it a whole lot, but will stay with it a while longer. As to recently finished books, I have four sitting here on my work table waiting for me to write my book reviews.

Book sales are good in September. So far I have 14 sales outright, and I think two accesses from Kindle Unlimited with both people finishing the book. This is my first time to have KU reads (not many of my books are in KU), and I need to figure how to account for them in my stats. I suppose as 2 sales, bringing the total to 16. That’s a good start to the month.

Sometime soon I’ll make a presentation to the local Civil War Roundtable. That will be my first author event since June 2019.

I have been a little more active in book promotion the last week. I still have my Amazon ads running for three books, and they seem to be generating sales. I contacted two influencers in our denomination, both men I’ve interacted with in the past, about giving a shout out to Acts Of Faith. I heard back from one on Friday and he is going to put a promo in his next newsletter.  Another promotional item concerns my Civil War book, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Back in July I gave a copy of it to the president of the local Civil War Roundtable. I heard back from him yesterday. He liked the book and wants me to make a presentation to the Roundtable. I don’t yet know when that will be, but should know today or tomorrow. So book promotion is in progress and, at least a little, seems to be working.

Life in general is good. I’m still having trouble losing weight, but in general my weight is dropping very slowly. My blood sugars have been under control, though just a little higher than I’d like. This morning’s was good. My right knee has been hurting more of late. Perhaps replacement surgery will have to be moved up. Although, the last three or four days I’ve done a few different things to try and ease the pain and it seems to be working. Four nights of good sleep in a row. Yardwork is in much better shape than in past years. Household projects are slowly being done. My devotional life remains consistent, with room for improvement.

Life goes on. I’ll have a better post on Friday, and will start getting some of these book reviews done.

Health, miscellaneous, reading, Writing

A Mixture of Things

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I’m now down to about 125 of Mom’s old books left, from around the 800 I started with. That doesn’t include the 100 or so that I’m keeping and are on display in the house.

This week has been just that: a mixture of things, getting done, adding to the to do list, and either worrying over or brushing aside.

First and foremost was completing our income taxes for 2020. The deadline was changed this year from April 15 to May 17, and since I knew I was going to have to pay (based on my early estimates) I embraced the new deadline and delayed my personal tax work. I did our trading partnership taxes and got them in by March 15, the deadline for partnership filing. I completed them Tuesday, let them sit overnight, found an error Wednesday, re-printed them, let them sit overnight, proofed them Thursday morning and declared them good, signed them, wrote a check, got them in an envelope, and walked them to the P.O. Done for another year.

No, not quite done. Every year, when I finish the taxes, I say I’m going to prepare my spreadsheets for the following tax season. Obviously, the Federal and State forms might change next year, which would necessitate a change in my spreadsheets, but I can’t anticipate those changes. I can at least create the 2021 Taxes folder and save this year’s spreadsheets into it, change all the date, zero-out the manual entries,  and have them ready. Also, I have my “Estimated taxes” tab to help me know if I have to send in any payments during the year. I got that prepared and entries made through yesterday. Also, I created my 2021 writing business spreadsheet, overhauled it somewhat to remove some clunkiness, and made all entries year to date. So, I feel pretty good about this.

This photo didn’t come out as well as I hoped. The left side of the street is lined with blackberry bushes awash with while blooms. I’ll be doing a lot of picking in late June and July.

Speaking of writing business issues, I sold four books yesterday. I buyer was coming to get some of my older books that I have listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace—23 of them to be precise. I took the occasion to message her that I was an author, gave her the link to my author page at Amazon, and she said she would get some. Some turned out to be four. That gives me eight sales for the month. And, yes, these are some of the things I entered in my 2021 writing business spreadsheet.

A local writing group I’m a member of, Bella Vista Village Lake Writers and Poets, met in person Wednesday for the first time since February 2020. It was a planning meeting, outdoors at a Starbucks. Only five of us met, but it was good to do so.

Work continues on my writing projects. I get a little done on the church anniversary book almost every day. Same thing with the Bible study I’m working on. This week I’ve had a break-through, of sorts, on how to do one difficult section. The Bible isn’t particularly difficult to understand at this point, but how to present the material a interesting and informative way was a question for me. I figured it out, I think, and will soon move forward with it. Also, my next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series is starting to roll around inside my head. I think, when I get done with the projects I’m currently working on, I’ll be ready to write that.

Other than selling those books, our decluttering/disaccumulation efforts have slowed. Over the last month we’ve finished four small books that are not keepers. Once I get the book reviews done for this blog, off to the sale/giveaway shelves they will go.

After a two week hiatus from walking, I’m back at it. It started with short walks in the evenings with Lynda, just as much as she has strength to do. Tuesday I think we did just under half a mile, Wednesday two-thirds, and yesterday nine-tenths. Also yesterday I did my afternoon walk to the P.O. and, along with some extra trips down side streets, I did a little over two miles on that walk. How great that was. My walking shoes are almost worn out and I’ll soon need to get another pair, but the ones I have are doing alright for now.

My main observation during my walks was the blackberry blooms. The bushes are covered with them, and the number of bushes with blooms is more than ever. On our street, I tend these bushes. It’s not much work. I cut away various woody plants that compete with them for sunshine; I cut vines that grow up and choke the blackberries, and I cut away dead branches from prior years, giving the new branches a chance to grow. It seems to be working, because our street is loaded with bushes. I’ll be making cobblers and muffins and who-knows-what all July and into August, with some to freeze.

Local lore says that you need some cooler temperatures to cause the blackberries to “set” properly. Most Mays we get those cooler temperatures, and the time is called “Blackberry Winter”. Well, last week and this week we had that. We are past the frost-free date, but temperatures dropped into the 40s for the about six of the last ten nights, with the highs getting above 70 only once or twice. This morning it was 46 when I got up. We had this both before the blackberry bushes bloomed and after. This, I hope, will result in a good crop.

And, last among my miscellaneous activities, is reading. I mentioned the small books above that we’ve already read. We started on another one a couple of days ago, a non-scholarly commentary on the book of Daniel. It’s going well so far. I’m also reading in the Annals of America as research for my next Documenting America volume. Also in a very thick book on the history of the Jewish people. I don’t get a lot of pages done each day, but I’m making a little progress. I may pull off this and read the last 50 pages of a book I can get rid in less time. Also, I have volume 3 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis for Kindle, and have been reading that on my phone whenever I have a spare ten minutes with nothing to do. So far I’m a 135 pages in on this 1600 page book. It’s probably the most enjoyable of all that I’m reading.

This post is longer than I expected, but I haven’t time to make it shorter. See you all on Monday.

C.S. Lewis, Church History Novels, home improvements, miscellaneous, Politics, reading, The Teachings, Writing

A Whacky Week to Start 2021

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That sounds too flippant, to call last week a “whacky” week. It was an awful week as far as our nation goes. For me in my personal life, “whacky” is an apt description.

Not that anything went wrong, at least not terribly wrong. The worst that happened to me was a dead battery. I drove to a haircut appointment on Friday, the first haircut I had since May. I took the Green Monster, our old minivan. It’s been a little hard to start and I thought it might be that the battery was old. But it started and I drove it the 3/4 miles to the beauty shop. Got my haircut, came out, and it wouldn’t start. So I walked home and let it sit overnight.

I considered having my neighbor drive me up there and jump start me then drive it to the Dodge dealership 4 miles north, but on Saturday? I decided instead to call AAA. They now have a battery service. I requested that, and they came so fast I barely had time to walk up there to meet them. Fifteen minutes and some money later and I was up and running. That battery was six or seven years old, so I was on borrowed time with it. And, that service didn’t cost a whole lot more than going to Wal-Mart, buying a battery, and putting it in myself.

During the week I actually got back to significant work on my novel, The Teachings. Over Tuesday through Friday I added over 5,000 words to it. I haven’t had that kind of writing production in a long time. I left it on Friday with the next scene clearly in my mind, hoping to add another two to three thousand words over the weekend. But instead I added…nothing. Other tasks consumed my time.

On Saturday, in addition to taking care of the van, I did maintenance around the house. The shower door handle needed attention, and was easily fixed. I tried to glue down some old wallpaper that is coming loose but it wouldn’t stick, even with gorilla glue. A window handle needed put back in place, and I was able to find screws that reasonably matched and got that done. While at it I went around the house and checked the other window handles, tightening a few. I also did some more straightening/arranging of my miscellaneous hardware, and identified some more I can sell.

We continue with decluttering, going through old Christmas cards and letters received over a 28 year period. Few are worth saving. Why we saved them I don’t know. But that is slowly being cleared out. I keep getting some inquiries about items I have listed for sale on FB Marketplace. Sold some books on Thursday, but a freak snowstorm that day kept two other scheduled buyers away or I might have sold more.

My reading was progressing well early in the week. I read ten or more pages a day in C.S. Lewis’s letters, with great enjoyment. But I read less over the weekend, my concentration waning. Our evening reading is in a Philip Yancey book, and we make good progress in that. We lost reading time two days as I had evening Zoom meetings on church-related tasks.

One of those tasks is our church’s 100th anniversary committee. I was asked if I would write a book to be distributed as part of the celebration, which is in October. That may seem like a lot of time, but it’s not. Thursday evening I went up to the church to retrieve the archives. Saturday I went through about 5 to 10% of them. It’s going to be a huge task. I have a timeline already started, though with much more needed. I probably need to spend some time every day on this, and will do some today.

My weight and blood sugars were a little whacky last week. My eating was fairly good and I lost some weight and had good blood sugars, but the blood sugars didn’t track as well to my eating and exercise as I thought they would; not sure why.

I could go on. Prepared on Saturday for and taught adult Life Group yesterday. Did a little genealogy research. And, as you would expect, made a few Facebook posts or comments on Wednesday, now estranged from a family member over it. This too shall pass. I will post about that, maybe in my next post of possibly not until next week. While I’m hoping the madness (yes, I consider it madness) has stopped, I’m hearing things that concern me that it hasn’t. More on that later.

So, here it is another week, the 2nd of 2021. Normal tasks are before me. God is on the throne. I will continue to serve Him, regardless of what of what swirls around me.

Health, reading

Clarity of Mind

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How to re-engage the brain, short of taking questionable supplements?

I’m running late today with this post. I had time to do it early this morning (thought in fact I slept in a bit, not getting up till 6:45 a.m.), but let other things fill up the time—good things, but they caused the delay. I normally try to have my blog post up by 7:30 a.m.

I think just about everyone who does intellectual or creative activities finds themselves in times when their mind just won’t engage sufficiently to produce anything. I know that true for me. One activity that’s true for is when I read aloud to my wife in the evenings. For about three or four months we’ve read a mix of Agatha Christie novels, Bible studies, devotional books, just about anything. I do most of the reading but Lynda does some. When I read, I can tell right away if my mind is not engaged. I’ll read the words out loud but won’t comprehend what I’m reading. At some point I’ll come to a name or situation that stands out and wonder where it came from, only to go back a few paragraphs and realize I read right through it without comprehending.

Other times, my mind is so clear and so well engaged that reading is easy, comprehension is good, and the only need to go back is if I think the author has made a mistake (the curse of being a writer who reads). Right now, for instance, my mind is quite well engaged. I’ve been looking at another author’s websites and books for sale in preparation of interviewing her for a post here.

It’s not just with reading that I’ve noted the engaged or disengaged mind phenomenon. It happens with writing. Sometimes I pull up my work in progress on the computer and can’t see my way clear to write a word; other times the words just flow out. It’s not writer’s block. It’s not that I can’t think of something to write, it’s that my mind just won’t work. Sometimes it’s tiredness. Sometimes it’s clutter. Sometimes it’s overload resulting in the wheels of thought not being able to turn.

Written during the 2012 election, this book had relevance in 2020. I will soon being reviewing it on this blog, probably in two posts.

Of late I’ve had trouble engaging my mind in two particular books. One is Miracles by C.S. Lewis. The other is Kings and Presidents by Tim and Shawna Gaines [my review now posted]. I’m reading Lewis for pleasure and elucidation. I’ve been reading the Gaines for teaching the book in adult Life Group. I could easily set Lewis aside until my mind felt more lucid, but I had to read K&P because of the teaching schedule. But I struggled with it, mightily struggled. How much of that was the subject matter, how much was mind disengagement I have no idea. I suppose it also could have been the writing style. But for whatever reason, my ability to apply my mind and grasp what the authors were trying to tell me was lacking, even when I read the chapters three times.

Go back now to last Tuesday. We watched television rather than read aloud. We went to bed at the normal time (11 p.m. or a little later). Normally I fall asleep quickly, but not that night. I tossed and turned, not in pain, but in some kind of agitation. And perhaps a brain that wouldn’t stop churning. I got up around 12:45 a.m. My wife was in the same category. She got up and together we went to our reading chairs. I said, “I think I’ll read in the book for Life Group lessons; that will put me to sleep right away.”

Except it didn’t. I opened to the chapter I was to teach five days later and found I was comprehending it! The author’s words popped out at me. The concepts they stated, the solutions they proposes, the problems they solved, all of these stood out. An hour and a half later I had a good comprehension and knew how I would teach the class.

What caused this? Was it something I ate that gave me an engaged mind and excellent comprehension in the middle of the night after having days of a disengaged mind? Was it simply that the impact of getting many tasks done had built up to some milestone in my busyness in life in general that my mind was free to concentrate? I wish I knew.

In the days between Tuesday and Sunday I was able to reread other portions of the book with great comprehension. I was able to read in the evenings without excessive tiredness and lack of engagement. This status lasted for six days in a row. It remains still, now for a seventh day.

As I said before, I wish I knew what the change was. For sure I like myself better this way.