Dear everyone,
Jasper and Cindy are watching the Dr. Who from two weeks
ago. I am sulking over the latest Bears
loss. Make Jay Cutler throw the ball,
and you have a good chance of losing - - although, of course, the Bears’
defensive secondary is not up to much either.
The Steelers also improbably lost to Tampa bay. It’s a sad day.
We have had some excellent early fall weather, which looks
like it will continue. As I have gotten
older; however, I think I have developed allergies, and as I drive around my
blurry eyes see lots of ragweed and goldenrod ready to pump the atmosphere with
pollen. The stores already have pumpkins
and other October items out for sale. I
am not sure if I will carve any pumpkins this year; it depends on Jasper’s
interest - - also, I will be in New York at the end of October. I did see an interesting YouTube video of
someone using an electric drill to ‘carve’ out a fairly intricate pattern of
holes in a pumpkin. Since I have
suffered some repetitive injury in the last couple of years, this method may
have something to recommend itself.
I just read an interesting novel out of my last batch of
books, “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers” by Tom Rachman. This is his second novel; I have not read his
first, “The Imperfectionists”, although I have now ordered it from the
library. In any case, if you liked “The
Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, you will probably like Rachman’s book also. Among the load I just got is the book I have
heard so much about lately, “My Struggle” by Karl Knausgaard. It’s supposed to be very Proustian (by the
way, I just read the biography of Proust written by his last housekeeper
(Celeste Albaret) that rekindled my simmering desire to reread the
masterwork. Maybe in a few more years.
I also read an interesting biography, “Straight Life”, about
Art Pepper, a junkie Jazz saxophonist, written by his last wife (of four),
Laurie Pepper. Apparently she just wrote
another, more autobiographical, book about how she came to write “Straight Life”. Art Pepper was an interesting musician who
clearly couldn’t handle success. He
spent years in San Quentin because he was a heroin (ab)user, at the peak of his
career. It’s hard to understand the
rationale of throwing junkies in prison without remediation. Other than getting them off the street (and I
imagine, keeping them from theft and burglary to support their illegal habits)
it’s hard to understand what benefit this had to society in either the short or
long term. The results of interdiction
are even worse today. I hope people in the
future look at the methods we use to curb drug use in the same way we look at
debtor’s prison of Dickens’ time. Pepper finally got out by becoming a member of Synanon, which started out as an all encompassing drug rehab program, and then turned into a cult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon.
We just installed a new modem on our home computer system,
based on Comcast’s recommendation. I can’t
say that we have noticed any increase in speed.
We are ready for IPv6 now, though.
Links to books:
Love, H.
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