David McCullough | dual personalities

June 20, 2019

“I will not afflict you with complaining.”*

by chuckofish

Greetings from the land of the living. I am checking in while daughter #2 is busy in NYC. For several weeks after my surgery I was not reading much; it was difficult to focus.

I started slowly with poetry…

and moved on to old, familiar Kierkegaard and a wonderful new history by David McCullough…

Finally I made my way back to Moby-Dick and a recent biography of Melville. (Don’t you just love his face?)

I am not a STEMM person by any means, but genetics has always fascinated me, and this book is quite engaging and easy to read.

This is not to say that I spend all my time reading. Hardly. I wiled away many an hour in the first weeks of my recovery watching two seasons of sleep-inducing episodes of Murder She Wrote (better than any sleeping pill). When feeling more engaged, I have chuckled my way through several seasons of Corner Gas (2004-2009), a Canadian show about a small town in Saskatchewan where nothing much ever happens, which in my weakened state, I have found to be hilarious.

Screen Shot 2019-06-18 at 2.51.12 PM Sometimes, when I am feeling really productive, I work on a new needlepoint project while I watch the telly.

This old Victorian chair is remarkably well suited for sitting in and sewing by a sunny window. And how about that decoupaged side table I picked up at an antique mall a few months ago? How could I resist those tassels?

Chemotherapy commences tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

“An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.” (M-D)

Meanwhile, what are you reading?

P.S. Here are a couple of pictures of the wee babes, because I know you have missed them, right?

*Lucy Backus Woodbridge, pioneer, quoted in The Pioneers by David McCullough

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June 28, 2016

“Chair’d in the adamant of Time”*

by chuckofish

I feel so sorry for anyone who misses the experience of history, the horizons of history. We think little of those who, given the chance to travel, go nowhere. We deprecate provincialism. But it is possible to be as provincial in time as it is in space. Because you were born into this particular era doesn’t mean it has to be the limit of your experience. Move about in time, go places. Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present?”

–David McCullough, “Recommended Itinerary” in Brave Companions

I concur.

As we approach Independence Day on July 4, why not read some history?

*Walt Whitman, “America”; the painting is by Childe Hassam.

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April 30, 2013

No time to read?

by chuckofish

“Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt’s eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven’t time to read.”

― David McCullough