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.

book reviews, Writing

Book Review: Eats, Shoots and Leaves

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A cute title for a book on punctuation. Of interest to writers, but probably not many others.

I’m not sure where I picked up this little volume, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss. I think I won it at a writers conference. It’s a small hardback, 209 pages. What’s it about?

Punctuation.

The title comes from a punctuation error, though the author didn’t tell exactly where it happened. The writer, writing about panda bears, meant to write, “The panda eats shoots and leaves.” Alas, a pesky comma crept in, and it was printed “Eats, shoots and leaves.” The difference in meaning is startling, all from a misplaced comma.

Truss tells of several books on punctuation, going back to the 1700s.  She shows how acceptable punctuation came into use through what worked and what didn’t. Punctuation was for the purpose of giving readers clues as to when to take a breath, when to fully stop. It’s a British book, so deals mostly with the British way of punctuating. Truss does talk about the differences on the two side of the pond.

It’s a good book. Truss manages to make a boring subject quite entertaining. If you are a writer and need to get a better handle on punctuation, this should be helpful. It wasn’t so much for me. I can’t say that I learned much in it, other than something about how punctuation has changed through the years.

I give this 4-stars. It’s not a keeper, however. I’m either going to give it to someone at one of my writers groups, or put it in the donation pile.

books, family, home improvements

One More Big Hole

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Here’s where they sat for over 20 years.

As I’ve posted before, my wife and I are slowly in the process of shedding possessions accumulated over the first 44 years of marriage. You would think that with the moves we made we would be lean in terms of stuff, but, alas, not so. When we went overseas our company paid to store our stuff so we didn’t have to get rid of anything. Now, being septuagenarians and knowing we will someday have to downsize, each possession is getting scrutiny. Does it bring us joy? Will we ever use it? Will we want to move it to whatever our next place is?

And here is the hole.

I’ve written before about some dis-accumulation we’ve done. Here’s a summary.

  • Dad’s tools. When Dad died in 1997, my brother and I split his tools between us, while my brother took all the hardware. My share, except for a very few I found uses for, sat in garages, unused, catching dust. It was in 2020 that I realized, “Do I really need six saws and eight planes?” Facebook Marketplace was my friend then, and I sold everything I didn’t see myself ever using.
  • They aren’t elegant to look at, but are obviously old. People like that.

    Mom’s books. In the 1930s and 40s, Mom accumulated books, some of them through book-of-the-month clubs, some through one-off purchases. Most of them were commonplace books with no sentimental value. Except they were Mom’s. I came to realize I never would read them, couldn’t keep them forever, and sold off about 800 of them. The last 120 or so went to thrift stores, with a couple figuratively stained by my tears.

  • And the “innards” aren’t splashy the way encyclopedias became—before they migrated to the internet.

    Dad’s Stars and Stripes. I’ve written about them before here and here, so I won’t go into it much. They are now in residence at the University of Rhode Island Library’s special collections, most likely in the inventory/curation process, waiting for scholars to pour over them.

  • Grandpa’s trunk. I also wrote about that not so long ago. The trunk Grandpa Oscar Todd brought with him when he emigrated from England to the USA is now at the home of a cousin, and much appreciated there.

So, what’s the new “hole” in our house, left from dis-accumulation?

  • Uncle Dave’s encyclopedias. These are a very nice, gently worn, 1900 set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. As our son urged us to do even more in anticipation of future downsizing, I listed them on Facebook Marketplace for a pretty good price. I had no action on them for a few weeks, then someone made an offer while we were out of town; I countered; a bargain was struck; and the transfer of money and books and bookcase happened on Saturday. The hole is in our entryway, which serves as an antique room.
A close-up of the covers. How they did encyclopedias in 1900.

The encyclopedias sat for many years (1950 to 1997) in the basement of the house I grew up in in Cranston, Rhode Island. Covered by a bedsheet, I found them one time in my teenage years, and had occasion to use them only once, in 1990 while visiting Dad. He said they were mine when he “croaked”.

I’m pretty sure they belonged to David Sexton, my grandmother’s uncle and the man I’m named after. He took my grandmother in when she was a single mother in a strange country and became a surrogate dad to my mom—or maybe a surrogate grandfather. He emigrated to the USA in 1887 and made his way to Providence in 1903. I suspect he bought the encyclopedias around the time of his arrival in Rhode Island.

A typical title page. Again, not splashy. Only a hole now because they belonged to Uncle Dave.

Our house here had the perfect place to display them. They took up little space and made a nice decoration for anyone entering the house. But are they something I would keep forever? I wish I could. When our son was here in January, he encouraged more dis-accumulation. My wife and I were at an impasse as to what to get rid of next, and as a result I decided these antique books would be next.

So they are gone. Even the bookcase, which was an antique of the same era, is gone. After confirming the sale, I wound up getting a full-price offer from another buyer. But, having made the bargain with the first buyer, I felt it had to go to them.

What more can I say? There is a hole in the entryway where they stood, and a little bit of a hole in my heart. But I have many other legacy books that belonged to Uncle Dave. Someday they will go the way of all earthly possessions, but not just yet.

family, Health, travel

Oh the Pain of It

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Dateline: 14 June 2023, Lake Jackson, Texas

Nuisance turned away just as I snapped the picture. This was taken 6/13, when I had healed enough to try walking her again.

We have been in Lake Jackson, Texas, since June 2, a combination of seeing our son-in-law installed as pastor of his new church, followed by grandparent duty for the oldest grandchild and five pets while the rest of the family went to our denomination’s General Assembly in Indianapolis.

You really can’t say you’re babysitting a 15-year-old. You’re just providing adult supervision and authority, and perhaps not much of either. For five days, we cared for the pets, and occasionally pried the teenager out of his room for some food or a game of Rummycube.

But, while the rest of the family was still there, maybe on our third day in town, I decided to go for a morning walk. I thought, why not take the dog with me, and give her some extra exercise.  Her name is Cherry, but my name for her is Nuisance. Unfortunately, the dog and a snake saw each other before I saw the snake. They lunged at each other, stopping two feet from each other, Nuisance almost pulling my left arm off—or so it felt.

It was a beautiful area. Just watch out for alligators and snakes.

Back to the house, I self-assessed the damage and decided to go to urgent care. They determined nothing was broken, and the arm was still in its socket. It was just a bad sprain of a couple of muscles that come together at the shoulder, where the deltoid and the pecs come together. I was fitted with a sling and told to take lots of over-the-counter pain meds, and come back in a few days if it wasn’t better. Sleeping has been a little tough, but has gotten better every night.

It’s now nine days since the accident. Healing isn’t complete. but it’s come a long way. At first, I couldn’t raise my arm. I had to pull my left arm up with my right. Once I got it up there was no pain. Now I can raise it with just a little pain.

The first couple of days I couldn’t get my arm up to the computer keyboard. So it was a good thing I planned on taking the month of June off from writing. After a week of recovery, I was able to use a keyboard enough to do source gathering for my next Documenting America book. I didn’t finish, but I made a lot of progress for a man with a gimp arm.

Tomorrow we head home. It’s a 10-hour drive if we take only minimal stops. We’ll be on a road we’ve never taken before, at least for a good part of it.

I missed three writer group meetings this week, but that’s okay. I’ll catch them in July. Meanwhile, I’ll have half a month at home to read, clean up my writing area, or perhaps do a little editing of a Bible study, or plan out a new one. I have some books that were ordered that I need to mail out.

So, that’s my adventure to report, experienced and planned. Let the vacation commence.

book reviews, letters

Book Review: The Hogarth Letters

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Not a keeper; only 2-stars; not recommended.

It’s difficult to remember where I picked up different books. Before embarking on this road trip, I searched my bookshelves for a book to take to read, something that looked interesting but was probably not a keeper. In the basement, in the area where we set up a bed for when needed when we have lots of company, I found a book titled The Hogarth Letters. I had no idea what it was about, when I got it, how new or old it was, but it sounded perfect. Upstairs and into my book bag it went.

It turned out to be something much different than I expected. I love reading letters (as regular readers of this blog will know), but it turned out this book wasn’t really letters. This was a publisher’s (Hogarth Publishing) stunt from the early 1930s. Twelve different people—writers, politicians, etc.—wrote fictitious letters to people. Not necessarily real people. What the “letters” were were essays disguised as letters. The subjects were of the authors’ own choosing, and the person behind the stunt—er, project, Hermione Lee, did an introduction.

Essays from Great Britain from the early 1930s. The Great Depression was on world-wide, or coming on. It was the time between the two world wars. Communism was on the rise. Some of the essays, such as the one by Viscount Cecil, dealt with disarmament. I read that one through and learned from it, though many of the references and circumstances were obscure in 2023. Still, it wasn’t bad. A couple of other letters/essays were to real people, such as Madan Blanchard, Virginia Wolfe, and W.B. Yeats, the poet. Others were to a fictitious person representing a class, such as an archbishop, a modern novelist, a young poet, a grandfather.

I began this book at the beginning, even though a book such as this could be read at any of the essays that seemed, from the title, most interesting. I read the first couple all the way through, but then I found them increasingly uninteresting. I started reading them, found myself skipping or just reading the first sentence in each paragraph. The last three or four essays I quit after getting halfway into them and finding myself not benefitting from the reading.

I plan on abandoning this book, but not quite yet. As I write this, I’m halfway into the letter to W.B. Yeats. I may finish it. I have six more essays to go, and I will at least start each of them and perhaps finish a couple.

Originally published in 1931 (my copy re-published in 1986), I can’t recommend this book. Perhaps I’ll feel differently if the last six letters/essays are better than the ones I’ve read. If I leave a rating somewhere, it will be 2-stars. Maybe they seemed interesting at that time, but almost 90 years later, not so much.

Nor is it a keeper. When we get home, it will go straight to the donation pile. And it goes into the category of, “Where did I get this book (for $3.00, apparently), and why did I think I needed it?”

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.

 

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: David Livingstone – His Life and Letters

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I learned much from reading this bio or Livingstone. Quite a man.

Another book that I recently read, just like the last one I reviewed, was one I have wanted to read and not keep. Like the last one, it’s a biography and I don’t remember where I got this. Unlike the last one, I knew a little about the subject: David Livingstone.

I knew something about him from various sources over the years, as well as from a short biography I’d read about him and reviewed on this blog.

This book is titled David Livingstone: His Life and Letters. Written by George Seaver and published in 1957, at 633 pages, it is much different than the last one I read on him. That one was popular; this one scholarly. That one did little more than give the basics; this one get deeper into Livingstone’s life.

Yes, David Livingstone was a headstrong, complex person, and the life he lived has much controversy in it. He found Christ as his savior in England while a young man, and felt a call to preach, but as a missionary. He went to South Africa under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. Livingstone married Mary Moffet, the daughter of the head of that mission, Rev. Robert Moffet.

Immediately on Livingstone’s arrival in South America, the problems began. He wanted to push farther into the interior of Africa than the mission was prepared for or had the money to do. He tended to fight for what he wanted, writing letters to people back in England, going above Moffat’s head to enlist help. Eventually, they moved his family further inland. Only a year or two passed when Livingstone wanted to push even further. He had determined that the best way to promote missions in Africa was to promote trade that would bring more Europeans there.

He fought for this, eventually won, and made a transit of south-central Africa, first to the west, then back to his starting point, then to the east. This trip, immortalized in his journal and other writings, brought him instant fame in Great Britain, and he was mobbed when he returned to England on furlough.

I could go on and on about how Livingstone became so fixated on the commerce thing that he eventually became an explorer, not a missionary. But this is a book review, not a mini-biography. One thing this book did that the other didn’t was point out Livingstone’s faults and controversial traits. Here are a few of them.

  • The already mentioned headstrongness and tendency to think his way was the only way.
  • The dragging his wife along on some of his explorations, to the detriment of her fragile health.
  • His neglect of his children, who eventually were shipped back to England or Scotland and raised by others.
  • The fact that his opening the continent to more trade also opened it to more slave trading. Livingstone was strongly against the slave trade, already outlawed by England but not by Portugal and several Moslem nations. Unwittingly, Livingstone helped facilitate the vile practice he wanted to eradicate.
  • His essentially abandoning missions in favor of exploration.

As for the book, while being scholarly, it was actually easy reading.  A handful of maps included were copies of maps Livingstone drew while on his journeys. While the authenticity was nice, I would have preferred having modern maps that showed the places better.

The text was a mixture of narrative and Livingstone’s letters and other writings. But the letters weren’t quoted in their entirety, but rather in limited extracts. As one who likes to read letters, this was a negative. Because of the length and limited daily reading time, it took me about two months to read it.

I give the book 4-stars, one star lost for how the letters were handled, the lack of readable maps, and…I don’t know, a sense that despite its comprehensive nature, at the end of the reading I felt like something was missing, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It’s well worth reading, however, if you can find it. I suspect other semi-scholarly biographies or David Livingstone are out there and would be better worth your time and money.

This is not a keeper. I wouldn’t mind reading more about the famous explorer one of these days, and even some of his own writings. But I won’t ever re-read this one. Into the donate/sale pile it goes.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, The Forest Throne

April-May Progress, June Goals

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When I last posted about progress and goals, at the end of March, I said I wasn’t going to post goals for April due to uncertainty of my schedule and ability to work on writing. Slowly, my schedule clarified itself. I found more time to work in the midst of grandparent duties than I expected.

So here it is June. I didn’t have goals for April or May, but I need to give you some idea of the progress I made in those months. I can’t compare it to goals I didn’t make, so I’ll just give it, in the format I usually do, as if I had goals.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I managed to do this. A couple of times I had almost dummy posts, but I got it done.
  • Attend writers groups as I can. I was traveling a lot, and missed a number of meetings. But I attended whenever I was in town.
  • Work on and finish Parts 4, 5, and 7 of A Walk Through Holy Week. I’m pleased to say that the time I spent on this was quite effective and efficient. I finished Part 7 a little ahead of the teaching schedule. I finished Part 4 just after that, and Part 5 on May 19. I’ll soon write a blog post about that progress.
  • On The Key To Time Travel, finish a final edit to make sure all editor’s marks are addressed, and all dates and ages are consistent. Then format and publish it by the end of May. Yes, I got this done! I learned yesterday I need to make a minor edit to the acknowledgements, which I hope to do today. The print cover has been delayed, as the cover designer has had a health issue. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can get the print book published.
  • Update this website as needed. I did most of that. Possibly I’ll get it all done before this posts.

So, what about June? I’m not real sure. After five months of intensive work this year, I feel like I need to take some time off. Yet, time off doesn’t result in the writing that leads to publication. Therefore, I’m going to make a few goals.

  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, as always.
  • Attend writer groups meetings as I can based on travel schedule. I was supposed to present at one of these in June, but have had to delay that based on my schedule.
  • Proofread as much as I can of the four completed volumes of A Walk Through Holy Week. I actually started that in May, doing a complete read-through of Part 4 and some of Part 5. We’ll see how far I can get.
  • Work on the cover for the AWTHW series. I don’t sell enough books to pay for cover creation, so I just have to do it myself. I have a concept I want to use, if I can do the graphics. Which leads to my last goal…
  • Work with G.I.M.P. on how to do more artistry in covers. I’ll have to find some tutorials.

Enough goals. Although, I’m writing this post on May 23 for publishing on June 2. I can always edit the goals before it goes live.

book reviews, History

Book Review: Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man

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Once again, in the spirit of dis-accumulation, I picked a book to read that I wanted to read, but didn’t think I would keep. So I picked “Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man”, by Katherine Drinker Bowen. Published in 1963, the

The book is 50 years old and in good condition. It’s also a good, informative read. Alas, it’s not a keeper.

book I have may be a first edition. I’m not sure where I got this book. It may be one my dad picked up at a flea market, though there’s no sales sticker on it.

I must first say that, before reading this book, I knew almost nothing about Francis Bacon. I would have called him Sir Francis Bacon, noting either knighthood or respect, for that’s how I’ve heard him described over the years. But why was he famous? What did he do in England to acquire such fame?

I remember he was discussed in a book I read, a book about escape from POW camps during WW2. The POWs argued about something Bacon allegedly said or wrote. From this, I got the impression that Bacon was a writer and philosopher of sorts. But I knew nothing that he wrote, nothing that he said, nothing about his life and work.

This book, described by the author as an introduction to the man, was an easy, relatively short read at 236 pages. It showed Bacon as a loyal monarchist during the days of Queen Elizabeth 1st and King James 1st. He slowly rose in government service, through the law and fawning over the monarchs, but not as quickly as he wanted. He was constantly thwarted by one particular rival, Sir Edward Coke. The two vied for the same positions, the favor of the same monarchs and nobles, and Coke almost always won the day. Bacon, in consequence, would retreat to his abodes and write: sometimes on the law, sometimes on science, sometimes on politics or national policy.

His family was well placed, his father having been Lord Chancellor for Queen Elizabeth. I don’t really understand what that position is, but it was pretty high up in the government. Bacon got the short end of his father’s bequests upon the elder’s death, as most of the estate went to children by the elder Bacon’s first wife, Sir Francis having been born to the second wife. As a result, and due to his inability to adjust his lifestyle to his financial circumstances, was constantly in debt.

Due to losing so often to Coke, Bacon had lots of time to write. I won’t list his publications here. They include essays and legal treatises. None of them have I read, but after reading this book want to.

And that’s the measure of a biography, isn’t it? Does it spur you on to want to know more about the subject, to read his works? This biography has done that. I don’t think I have any of Bacon’s works in the house, but given that they are all out of copyright, I should be able to find them available on the internet. I bet I can also find a more complete biography from before 1925.

Now, the question is, how do I rate this book, and do I keep it? I rate it 5-stars, which is a rarity for me. I base that ranking on its brevity and ease to read, along with how it has caused me to want to know more. But it is not a keeper. I simply have too many books, and need to reduce my possessions. So onto the donate/sales shelf it goes. But I am very glad that I had it and

read it.

Racism

An Old Article on Racism

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The prosecutor took a simple crime by three bad men perpetrated on a peaceful, innocent man, rather than on the race of those involved. It worked, and the murderers were convicted. [NY Times photo]
At some point, I don’t remember when or how, I got on the subscription list for the NY Times Morning newsletter. Based on several problems the NYT has had with inaccurate reporting, biased reporting, and their general acceptance by the media as the nation’s “newspaper of record” (I generally distrust almost all media), I’m not very favorable to the Times.

It comes daily by e-mail, and I generally read the main stories every weekday. I find them to be mostly biased, but not as badly as I expected. In several, I found fodder for blog posts. These emails I saved, while all other of these newsletters I discard. Recently, I was trying to reduce the number of emails in my inbox. I started with the oldest, one of which was Morning for Nov 30, 2021.

The lead story was the trial, just concluded, of the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery. Remember that? He’s a black man who was jogging in a mostly white neighborhood, stopped to look in a house under construction, and was murdered by three white men. They were convicted in the trial.

Here’s how the Times began the story.

The most effective way to achieve racial justice can sometimes be to downplay race.

That may seem like a counterintuitive idea. And it can certainly feel unsatisfying to people who are committed to reducing the toll of racism in the United States. But it is one of the lessons of the murder convictions last week of three white men in Georgia, in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man.

In previous posts about racism and how to end it, I brought up the idea that it takes many approaches to end racism. I differentiated between racism, the ending of which requires changes in the hearts of people, and racist acts, against which legislation, policies, and an honest justice system can make a big dent in.

The Times story indicated that the prosecutor’s strategy was considered controversial because she mostly ignored race and made it a simple murder trial. Three men killed an innocent man, thinking they would take the law in their own hands. Critics thought she should make the trial about the racism of the three killers, their racism spilling over into a horrible racist act. Had she lost the case, she would have been soundly excoriated.

This prosecutor decided, rightly so, that a non-racism approach was the right approach. Sometimes it’s right to be color blind. That’s how I want to live my life. That’s how Mom and Dad taught us kids. Of course, they never told us we were mixed race, but that’s a story for another post.

Later in the newsletter article, the NYT further endorsed this multiple strategies needed approach.

The Arbery trial offers a reminder that calling out racism is not the only way to battle it. Sometimes, a more effective approach involves appealing to universal notions of fairness and justice. [Emphasis added]

If different approaches are what’s needed, then I suppose I should not criticize those who make race a defining characteristic in almost every human interaction. To me that seems wrong, but I won’t say those that take a different approach than me are wrong. May both approaches work together toward the goal of ending racist acts and eradicating racism from the hearts of men.

Author | Engineer