Following your thoughts
A dash of arctic air this week before a rapid rise into the 30’s and 40’s. I hate the swings; they cause such a mess with snow melting and frost coming out of the ground causing havoc all around, especially driveways and private roads - mud galore. Get cold in November and stay there till March is best for homebuilding - the cold causes its own issues but I’d rather have the consistent issue than navigating the roller coaster of frigid and luke-cold.
34” of snow in Vermont over the last week. We head there for our 10+/- annual Vermont ski trip over President’s Day. With my son now skiing pretty well, makes it a lot of fun. Actually thats not true - he’s actually a pain, never knowing which personality he will bring out that day.
I’m reading The Rings of Saturn, which is a combination ‘serious piece of good writing, with original structuring (think oddly placed paragraphs or lack of and few chapter breaks), a travelogue of sorts, book-ended with writing that follows the writer’s thoughts wherever they may lead” - luckily for me they lead onto random English history based on the coastline he is on, and where is mind goes.
Currently, the coast of England led to quite a few pages about Joseph Conrad (formerly Joseph Koreniowski of Ukraine) and his seafairing experience that led him to the Congo, and a meandering about the Belgium presence there under King Leopold. That intersects interestingly the Kingsolver book I read recently, The Poisonwood Bible, all about the Congo. Let’s just say it’s hard to square any of our western self-impressions of the ‘good guys’ when you read much into the history of colonialization in Africa, South America, or heck North America. All western societies have been more or less white supremist in their actions over their non-white neighbor throughout history. We may now be supportive of individual non-white rights within the individual context, on a broader level among societies, it still is solidly white supremist. We believe ourselves to be better by a long shot over these societies.
The New Yorker had one of their long reads that I turned page after page - some of these can be 15 pages long. This one, “The Long Way” was about a kid traveling solo in the 70’s and his crazy tale of adventure and survival.
My college friends - Leo and Justen - and I zoom on occasion and we were talking about when we traveled after college in the mid-90’s, long before cell phones and daily email. How we would call home on occasion, with our parents having no real idea where we were. How once Justen got disconnected after a short static-y late night call to his mom (the time change never fully considered when deciding to call home), where his mom was left in complete uncertainty as to the point of the call, why it was placed, what was said, and if it was an emergency, - and just sat on that information until Justen called back a few weeks later. That would and could never happen today.
