Category Archives: reading

reading

A Lot To Chew

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I’m currently reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I picked this up in hardback very cheap from somewhere. It is a loooooonnnngggg book, over 900 pages. Last August I put this at this point in my reading pile, after Burnt Sienna by David Morrell, wanting to alternate between non-fiction and fiction. As I built my pile from books purchased in the first half of 2008, I didn’t worry about every other book being fiction, non-fiction, fiction, etc., just so long as I was getting a mixture between them. I also wanted to spread out books on history, or biography, by Christian writers and secular writers, on writing helps and other things.

So Team of Rivals came up next. I love history. I love Lincoln. I love things that appear as if they will be scholarly. This is a perfect book for me, and following the easy read I just finished, and the easy one before that, it is time to read something a little harder. But over 900 pages? Of fairly small text, with few illustrations and not a whole lot of white space?

I flipped through the book on Saturday and Sunday, and read the Introduction. It turns out much of the end of the book is index and notes. In fact, the epilogue of the book ends at page 754. So I figured twelve pages a day average will make this a two-month read. And, if I can find a bit more time on the weekends, perhaps a mere seven weeks.

This is complicated by my coming up on a busy time at work, some additional travel to see the kids or for them to come and see us, and the need to spend some more time on things around the house. So I may be optimistic on averaging twelve pages a day.

In fact, after three days of reading I know I’m optimistic. I’m at page 34, but the actual text started on page 5. The subject matter is such that I’ll have to have complete quiet; I won’t be able to read it while Lynda has the television on, at least not read it for true comprehension. And I don’t see any point in reading for half comprehension.

So I eat this elephant one bite at a time. I may find I have to put it aside for a while, read something simpler, then come back to it. Next in the pile is a harmony of the gospels, which might aid in my current writing. After that is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Both of those promise to be easier reading, so I may read them in parallel with Team of Rivals and see how that goes. Perhaps all three by the end of the summer.

Engineering, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, flood studies, Genealogy, Harmony of the gospels, Life Group lessons, reading

4:20 PM, Friday Afternoon

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This has been a full and busy day.

Work wise, I completed the base work on the Little Osage Creek Flood Study. That is, I:

– entered new rainfall data into the hydrology model for the 10-, 50-, 100-, and 500-year rainfall events, and re-ran the run-off calculations. Since I hadn’t run the 500-year before, I had to make adjustments in the overflow structures of eleven detention ponds. By noon, I had a successful run-off model.
– entered the new run-off values into the hydraulics model and re-ran the flood calculations. This was successful at about 3:50 PM. That doesn’t mean I’m quite done with this. I still need to run two phases of ditch improvements and one major future condition, but the hard work is done. Oh, and I still need to write the report, fill out the FEMA forms, and submit it. But with the work today, I consider the hard part done.

I also helped a man in the office with construction site problems.

Personal work wise, I:

– Proofread my article for Internet Genealogy; found a few changes to make; typed the changes; printed the article; proof-read it (in one uninterrupted sitting); found a few more changes to make; typed them; proof-read it and saw it was where I wanted it to be; and e-mailed it to the editor. The article still is not quite finished, because…
– I once again called the professor I wanted to interview for the article, and once again had to leave a message. I’ve found a work-around in case I can’t get a hold of him.
– Mailed my mother-in-law’s income taxes. “So late?” you ask. Yes. She doesn’t owe anything, they don’t owe her anything, she probably doesn’t even need to file at her income level, so yes, quite late, but it’s done for this year.
– Walked a mile on the noon hour.

I approach the end of a day of great accomplishment that made the whole week worthwhile, and somewhat made up for my inefficiencies of the last two weeks, and the two weeks before vacation. I have only 22 pages to go on my reading book, which I will finish tonight and write my review over the weekend. Next in the reading pile is Team Of Rivals, which I am looking forward to. I’m fairly close to finishing the edits on the John Cheney file that I’ve been plodding through a little each night for the last week and a half. I’ll surely have them done by Sunday afternoon, after which I’ll print and file it, file accumulated genealogy papers and clean up my mess in the Dungeon. Hopefully I’ll put genealogy behind me for a while and figure out what to write next. Probably it will be one or two appendixes on the Harmony of the Gospels. Possibly it will be a chapter or two of In Front of 50000 Screaming People. I’ll also consider working on queries for other articles, or fleshing out proposals for the Bible studies I’ve been working on recently.

Too many choices; too little time.

Genealogy, reading, research, Wesley

The Joys of the Day

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This morning, before work, after reading for a few enjoyable minutes in John Wesley’s letters, I had some additional time to do some genealogy work. So I went to the digital library of Brigham Young University (which I discovered only yesterday) and did some more experimentation on how to use the site. I searched for John Cheney, Lynda’s immigrant ancestor on her paternal line, going back to Newbury Massachusetts in 1636 and in Lawford and Mistley, Essexshire, England before that. The search in the “family history collection” returned 33 hits, which I began going through. Some I recognized. Oh, and I admit to taking some work time on this, not starting my business day right at straight up 8 AM. I shall have to make up some time.

One of the hits was a 100 page (approx.) typed manuscript dealing with Cheney families in England. It turned out it was mainly concerned with John Cheney’s English origins. While it did not have the full source citations it needs to have to be fully credible, it’s about the best document on the subject I’ve seen, and worthy of further study. So genealogy was a joy today.

Work was pretty good too. I spent two hours (in two different sessions) with a department head in our office who has a very difficult construction project. I’ve spent much time with him already on this project, but he had two new issues come up that he wanted to get my input on. Such a discussion is good, and enjoyable. I think we worked out the best possible response for him to make. Then it was off to Centerton to deal with the flood study that has plagued me for so long, and resolving one nagging question on the site topography. I’ve dreaded getting back on it, but cannot wait any longer. I finished writing a difficult specification today (another joy), and so I have non-distracted time I can put into this project and get it done. That would be a joy. Oh, wait, I have another one for the City I’ll have to do when I finish this one. At least it is a much simpler flood study. I did the complicated one first.

I left work more or less on time (I’ll make up my time another day) and went to the Bentonville library. Time in a library is always a joy. To be around thousands of books and a hundred different magazines, people studying, librarians working–that’s where I love to be. The hour passed all too quickly, but I found a magazine I might be able to pitch an article to.

Church was enjoyable, a Bible study in Daniel chapter 8.

Now here at home, I read twenty pages in the book I’m working on. Less than 60 pages to go, and it has been an enjoyable read. Now I’m in the Dungeon, on the computer. I worked 30 minutes on the current genealogy project, then this.

How much much joy can a day contain? If it weren’t for having robbed my employer of some time. That was the only blot on the day. Well, buying some chips too. But all in all, I wish all my days were like this.

Genealogy, reading, Writing

Trying to Re-focus

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The problem with a vacation is it throws you off your rhythm. When you get back, you have to re-establish your habits, patterns, and practices in all areas of life. At work this week, I’ve been so un-focused on what I need to get done that, instead of CEI paying me, they should charge me for taking up space. Before vacation, I was having a difficult time concentrating at work. I think my desire to complete my work is higher, so from the aspect of rest and relaxation the vacation was a success. Now I just need to work on focusing on what I need to do.

As far as writing and things I need to do around the house, same thing. I have worked very little on my article, very little on such mundane things as paying the bills, working on my budget planning and recording, or household chores. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal on those soon.

The last two nights I managed to get my reading re-focused. The next book in my reading pile was Burnt Sienna, a novel by David Morrell. I had trouble starting it, however, allowing myself to be distracted by the two books of letters I recently purchased (Tolkien and C.S. Lewis). But Tuesday and Wednesday evenings I spend time in Burnt Sienna. I’m not 52 pages into this 379 page book. It’s an easy read, and is holding my interest well.

However, I have found it easy to focus on genealogy–sort of. I’m working on my Events in the Life of John Cheney, who is my wife’s immigrant ancestor to Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s. I have that document quite well along, up to nine pages. My library research in Milford and Fort Wayne turned up some new information about him, however, so I’m adding those events. At the same time, I’m gong through each of over 100 citations and footnotes to correct errors in the way I first entered them. It is quite tedious, with much re-typing needed. My focus hasn’t been perfect, however, and I still get much distracted from the task at hand.

All of which leads me to question the effectiveness of vacations for all people. For me, while the rest and relaxation are good, the loss of routine is bad. All in all, I’d rather be in my routines than off resting.

Christianity, Dune, History, reading

Current Reading

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Having finished The Powers That Be by David Halberstam, I moved down to the next book in my reading pile–actually to the next two books:

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Letters From Hawaii by Mark Twain

When I put my reading pile together last August, making sense of books I had recently acquired, I tried to get a good alternation of fiction and non-fiction. Not that the alternation had to be every-other book, but that I wasn’t reading a whole bunch of one and not the other. Since I just finished a long non-fiction book, a novel popped up next. Good planning on my part last August. I’d show you a picture of that pile (now divided into two to prevent toppling), but my digital camera drove to Oklahoma City on Sunday, and hopefully is taking many pictures of my grandson as he passed his 10 month birthday. Perhaps I’ll edit a picture in next week.

Actually, I began reading Twain’s book first. On the trip to Phoenix last week I took both books with me. Fighting a growing cold from the night before the trip, I was pretty sure my mind would not be able to concentrate on Dune Messiah, not if it was anything like Dune, the first of the trilogy. So on the plane from DFW to Phoenix, having messed with the crossword puzzle in the airplane magazine on the previous flight, I pulled out the Hawaii letters and began reading them. Even though they are 140 years old, I found them light and easy to read. On the trip I read about forty pages of them.

Once home, and somewhat recovered from my cold (though it lingers still), I moved back to the first on the pile and began Dune Messiah. As I expected, it is a tougher read than the letters. Still, I know I will enjoy it.

For other reading, I keep A Treasury of Early Christianity beside the bed and read a few pages of it some evenings. These are the non-canonical writings from the first few centuries of Christianity. Well, not all the writings, nor even complete of the ones included. Ann Fremantle has edited those, and we get only part of them in the book. I finished “The Shepherd of Hermes” recently, and am currently working on “Epistle to the Corinthians” by Clement. This book is almost a reference type book, and not to be taken in large doses.

Other than these, I have a stack of newsletters to work my way through, and a few printed articles, such as one from a Jewish literature magazine about Daniel’s seventy weeks of years.

So much to read, much to write, much to do at work, and much to do around the house while batching it. What a life.

Harmony of the gospels, Health, reading

Inch by Inch

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That’s advice you always here:
“Mile by mile it’s a trial.
Yard by yard it’s hard.
Inch by inch it’s a cinch.”

I’ve often felt that the person giving such advice was running a two-mile race, not a marathon. Yet, I can see some truth in this in terms of my own life and the improvements I’d like to make in character and conduct, as well as the goals I have set for myself.

Take my weight, for example. Slowly over the course of about three years, I have lost 50 pounds. That was as of my scales moment Friday. Of course, that does no more than put me back to where I was on a day in June 2003. I’ve still got 54 pounds to lose to make it to the top end of my ideal weight range. So I have many more inches to go in this.

Take the Harmony of the Gospels I’ve been working on since, when was it, 2004? This is a project that for a long time I worked at between other projects. It started as a Bible study for myself, to use in teaching an adult Sunday School class and to satisfy my own curiosity about something. Yet, since then it has grown into a Bible study I am working on to be of publishable quality. Friday night I finished the second round of proof-reading. I have only one more step to go before I begin typing these edits and putting it in a format to share with my pastor. Only a couple of yards to go, inch by inch.

Take the book I’m reading, The Powers That Be by David Halberstam. I began this sometime before Christmas. A 736 page tome, I’m down to twenty-five pages to go, and likely will finish it tonight. Perhaps I was stupid for persevering through the whole thing rather than setting it aside after a hundred pages, when I realized that, while it was good, the reading was going to be tedious and I would be a couple of months getting through it. Oh well, persevere I did, and have only a few inches to go.

Take trying to be published. This is certainly an inch by inch proposition, as at this time I’m not prepared to self-publish. The problem is I don’t know how long the journey still is, or even if there is a final destination. Possibly the inches are taking me along a race track with no finish line, and I will never be published. Or perhaps it is only an inch or two ahead. Either way, in the last couple of weeks I managed to move a couple of inches forward, mainly in my realization of where my writing is relative to publishing standards, and in seeing the next two or three inches along the way.

Other things in my life have also shown inched progress. And I’m thankful for that.

Headshots, miscellaneous, reading

Tatamagovich Trail

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This has been a busy weekend. Yesterday, Saturday, we spent a good chunk of time at my mother-in-law’s house in Bentonville. We cut limbs that had fallen in the recent ice storm, dragged them to the street, and cut them into 6-foot lengths. The City is supposed to pick them up this week. Then we raked the leaves in the back yard. Well, not all the leaves, but probably 70 percent of them. I took four pickup loads to the compost facility. I would have taken the limbs there too, but the City says they will pick them up.

My pick-up bed holds a lot of leaves in bulk. Raking them on to a tarp, dragging the tarp to the truck, hoisting it up to dump in the bed, then get ’em all out at the other end is work. Years ago, when we lived on NE “J” Street, I would take eight loads of leaves to the compost facility in that pick-up. Now, three loads wear me out.

We rested yesterday evening, and slept in a little this morning since we were having only one church service, at 10:30 AM, and no life groups. This was our annual Upwards Basketball service, held in the gym, and we had a good group of visitors. This is a good outreach program for the church.

After church, we again went by my mother-in-law’s house, to meet the man who bought the organ for him to load it and take it away. We loaded a few things in the van to take to our house (which I guess I need to go unload), and headed home.

Except, we decided to stop by the walking trail at the north end of Bentonville, close to Bella Vista. We had done that once before, and I was intending on doing about the same walk. However, Lynda wanted to do one of the forested trails. So we took off down the Tatamagovich Trail. Although listed as difficult, we did not find it so. It is narrow, normally only wide enough for one person, and it does go up hill, but the grade is easy. The entire trail is about 2 miles long. We did a mile of it, found an old farm or logging road, and cut back to near the beginning. During all this time we encountered only one person, a mountain biker, who passed us.

It’s hard to believe that this trail exists in built-up Bentonville. Kudos to the city planners and officials who put this all together. Kudos to the person who arranged for the city to get this land (purchased or donated, I’m not sure). We enjoyed it, and it’s a nice feature for the city and area.

Now, an afternoon nap finished, I’m ready to go tackle The Powers That Be, and see if I can get 40 pages closer to finishing it.

Bible study, critique group, goals, Harmony of the gospels, reading

The January Report

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As always, I begin the new month with a report of how I did last month relative to the goals I set. Here ‘t’is.

1. Blog 10 to 12 times. I far exceeded this, coming in at 16. Of course, having not met some other goals, maybe I spent too much time here.

2. Complete my review essay of T.B. Macaulay’s essay on the History of the Popes. For whatever reason, I did nothing on this at all. I’m not sure why, but after working on this diligently in December, and having only a few paragraphs remaining to finish it, I forgot about it completely.

3. Return to typing the Harmony of the Gospels I wrote in manuscript over a several year period. If I finish the typing this month–and that is easily possible, I can start the editing process next month, including adding a bunch of notes. This I did in a big way. I did indeed finish typing it this month, and proof-read it once and made those corrections. I also began laying out the introductory remarks and the passage notes and appendixes, writing some of them. I also began going through and making sure I had all the NIV footnotes typed and properly referenced. I estimate I’m 60 to 70 percent done with this.

4. Come close to finishing my current reading project, The Powers That Be, by David Halberstam. Only 453 pages to go as of last night. I worked on this, but only on the weekends and not as much as I should have. As of last night I am at page 549, leaving about 180 pages to go.

5. Work on Life On A Yo Yo, which I begin teaching this coming Sunday, as a publishable Bible study. I did a little bit of this. I’m in the midst of teaching it to our adult Life Group, so obviously I’m working on it. I haven’t done a whole lot to turn it into a publishable idea, but did some.

6. Monitor five websites regularly…. I did this, even posting a couple of comments and receiving some feedback. I think having narrowed my reading down to these few sites regularly, and a couple of others occasionally, I have reached a doable reading list.

7. Critique 5-10 poems at various places, both public and private. I met this goal, critiquing seven poems publicly and one privately. This feels good, and at a rate sustainable from month to month.

In addition to these, and maybe in place of some, I actually completed some other things related to writing that were not on my to-do list.

8. Attend one critique group meeting, presenting “Mom’s Letter” (a short story) and receiving good feedback.

9. Captured some new ideas for Bible studies/small group studies I think I could write.

10. Began research and writing on an essay on the resurrection. This was sparked by a discussion thread at the Absolute Write Christian writing forum, and became a real activity after a little research. I’m not sure where I will go with this, but I like the start. This is engaging my mind right now more than anything.

career, Harmony of the gospels, miscellaneous, reading

Iced In

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Since 5:00 PM Monday, I have barely left the house. As I returned home from work early, the ice storm had already started; driving was already a little slick in Bentonville, but okay in Bella Vista. I parked the truck up the hill, not quite to the brow, thinking maybe I would go to work on Tuesday. All Monday evening and night we heard the roof being lightly pelted, either freezing rain or sleet or ice.

Tuesday I slept in, finally reached the office by phone about 9:00 AM and learned only 5 or 10 people (out of a hundred) had come in. The frozen stuff was still coming down. I walked a couple of tenths of a mile, up to the stop sign to see how the somewhat-major road was. It was sanded and had many tracks, but it was a mess. I didn’t bother to clean off the truck. I spent the whole day being tired doing nothing. Well, not really nothing, as I’ll explain in a minute.

This morning, Wednesday, I was up at 5:45 AM and out the door by 6:00 AM. I walked to the truck, started it, and began clearing windows. Forty-five minutes later I walked a ways further up the road where my near neighbor I work with had parked his pick-up. I put a note on it saying I would like to ride in with him, worked on clearing his windows, then went back to the house about 7:00 AM. I read for an hour, contacted the office and got my near neighbor’s number, and called and left a voice message. I then slept a while.

About 10:00 AM I decided to try to get to work on my own, but couldn’t get the pick-up even up the slight hill remaining (should have parked it OVER the brow, I guess), so came inside. Later, about 3:00 this afternoon, they had sanded our road, so I drove the truck down the hill and around the corner and up the next hill with no problem. I then drove a mile or so, out to the highway to judge its condition. Which was not good, but probably passable in my truck in the morning. On return to my neighborhood, I was not able to back the truck into the place I wanted to, so parked it up at the house closest to the main road, the home of a widow. I asked for permission to park in her circle drive overnight, and she said fine. So, in the morning I will have to drive it 30 feet on our side road, then I should be alright for the 15 miles to work.

These two days, which I will charge against accumulated vacation, seemed lazy, but they weren’t. I worked on my Harmony of the Gospels. I entered a bunch of footnotes, worked on the chapter notes and appendixes, finished typing the edits for typos, misspellings, etc., and worked on getting the proper white space. I did all that in the Dungeon. Upstairs, I did a few more edits, read in The Powers That Be, which is going incredibly slowly, worked on reading for my next Bible study, and had what seemed a leisurely time. But it was productive.

I’m wondering, could this be a dry run for a time in the future when I might actually be a published author, working on deadlines and galleys and multiple projects? Could be.

poetry, reading

Mainly Reading

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This past weekend I went to Oklahoma City to visit with daughter, son-in-law, and grandbaby Ephraim. I went with my mother-in-law, my wife being already there. We had a good time, a combination of baby-sitting and visiting. An excellent church service on Sunday, where son-in-law Richard preached on Philippians 4:4-9. First he read a story for the children before they were dismissed for children’s church, about a boy named Alexander (I think) who was having a no good, horrible, terrible bad day–with a couple of other adjectives thrown in. His adult sermon was on the same theme. Since I have had a lot of them lately (bad days, not sermons), his sermon spoke to me.

I need to get out of the doldrums; and I shall. It will just take time. I’ve mainly been reading as a means of pulling myself up. I finished a small book (not on the official reading list) for Life Group, Moses: A Model of Pioneer Vision by Chuck Swindoll, which I shall soon review in a post to this blog. I’m also working through The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry. This is a book on how to write formal poetry, which I won in a sonnet writing contest. I’m about three or four days from finishing it, and will review it on this blog when finished.

As I read this last night, in the chapters dealing with various forms of poetry, I found myself suddenly beset with a mild case of Sidelines Syndrome. This hasn’t hit me for a while, so maybe this is a good sign of coming out of my funk. I put the book aside–since I could no more concentrate on it–and began writing two poems. I know, poetry would be the worst possible thing to turn to if I have any hopes of being published, but at least it was something for my writing.

We’ll see what happens tonight. We are supposed to have rain, so I’ll be stuck in the house, nothing important will be on television, I don’t really have to play mindless computer games, and maybe, just maybe, my brain muscles are starting to strengthen. Can a new chapter be far away?