A Week of Torpor

Torpor, great word that. Hot Humid and not much doing. Had to turn the air-conditioning on before the end of May. Nasty. Finished reading THE SIXTEEN PLEASURES by Robert Hellenga. That's three of his four novels in the last month. It tracks inbetween FALL OF A SPARROW and PHILOSOPHY MADE SIMPLE in both quality and interest for me. The character of Rudy in PHILOSOPHY MADE SIMPLE just seemed so real and close that there were times when I could imagine myself in his shoes. In THE SIXTEEN PLEASURES our heroine is a young book conservator having pangs of the heart and soul during the great flood of 1966 in Florence, Italy. There is not quite as much empathy for her in my bones. It's a good book; better, I believe than FALL OF A SPARROW, as it doesn't force the plot coincidences quite as much.

A nice little article on souvenir collection caught my eye. Check it out. As I read it I looked around my study. There was my Tudor London Map poster, my plastic Shakespeare doll, my Japanese mask refrigerator magnet, Guiness sign and phony Anasazi canyon wall painting. The fake Egyptian papyrus is downstairs.

Son David just celebrated the fourth year of his Minneapolis web site called How Was the Show.com Read all about it if you wish.

Thanks to every veteran on this Memorial Day. Whether one agrees with an individual war or not, the people who are being shot at deserve every ounce of our respect. A bullet has no politics.