TIRED OF HOLDING THE PHONE?

Perhaps many of you have already learned this little trick, but if not, hear this: 

When you are asked to hold the line, don't fret; just punch the speaker button for the music on your phone, and take the phone with you as you move about doing other duties. The time you wait for a human voice to speak to you again will fly by, and perhaps you have loaded the dishwasher in the meantime or have cleaned your garden boots. This system worked for me this morning and I got a few more papers pushed around on my desk, didn't even have time to clean off the mud on my garden boots. Try this. You may be glad you did.

TIME OF BEAUTY, TIME OF SADNESS

My town is currently blessed with numerous trees wearing their springtime white blossoms, whose identifying names no one I've asked seems to know. Everyone says the trees are fruit trees but non-fruit-bearing. Just a thing of beauty, not for food. But oh, what beauty! I've seen two types of these trees, one of shorter height with limbs spreading outward, making a design of delicate lace, perhaps a bridal veil. The other type is taller in height and shoots straight up, showing more bark. This taller one is what reigns outside my windows. Probably a no-show appearance (at the windows only) today, for it is cloudy, I read a few hours ago, when I got up at 3:00, after only three hours of sleep. It's almost 7:00 now and I hope to get back in bed for a short while. 

Most people probably enjoy such picturesque scenery as these trees, but it takes a higher acumen to appreciate beauty presented in words. I will illustrate with one example and hope you will enjoy it. In the book I'm now reading (because it has only 151 pages) the first paragraph--nay, the very first sentence--is gorgeous metaphor. The author describes people leaving a theater in "three separate streams, each flow checked by unexpected eddies." If you don't know what an eddy is, then you will miss the thing of beauty here. But follow through the sequence: streams, flow, eddy. See how they complement each other. I've barely started reading this book but can predict more beautiful language like this first sentence.

Yesterday I took this small volume with me to my appointment at my doctor's office. I was so excited about this sentence that I read it aloud to her. She loved it. She told me about her book club, in which all members read the same book during the month and then discuss it at the next meeting. I suggested Unbroken for them to read, an idea I think she will act upon. 

There is much more beauty in the world, both in nature and in the printed word, but such magnificent highs are tempered by the events in the news, such as Hillary's debacle and accidents in the air. The latter makes one wonder: why would someone so unhappy living in this world today opt for hell instead, which would be worse yet, taking the lives of 150 people with him? The Christian religion, both Protestant and Catholic, teach such punishment for such crimes. If you are inclined to think "Perhaps that killer didn't believe in whatever the Bible says," you must realize God does not allow anyone to make up his own theology. God's laws stand forever and don't change. So much sadness in the world. But this is not a sermon. 

SOMEONE COULD GET RICH WITH THIS

Over the United States each year more retirement centers and homes appear on the scene, some with such luxuries as golf courses and swimming pools, and some with no more extra amenities than a hair and nail salon. The salon is a necessary adjunct to any place for people over the age of 80 or so most of whom can seldom give the proper care to their feet and their hair. 

But there is a problem that needs to be remedied. The chair on which one must sit to have one's hair done needs to be redesigned to suit the client's ability to get into it. Stuck out in the middle of the very area for the client's maneuverability is the footrest for use after one gets situated in the chair. This footrest needs to retract and get out of the way till the client is seated. It is too easy to fall anywhere. We don't need the unnecessary possibility for falling when someone out there can get this design done and patented. And I'll be happy with just 1/2 of 1% of sales for originating the idea. Now, who among you can run fastest to win this patent? 

THE RIGHT OR THE FORCE

This morning I read on my computer that death and taxes are not the only things we are all sure to face, but the president has a third one for us. Tonight I found out what that third thing is: he wants everyone to be required to vote! This is probably the dumbest remark any of our presidents ever uttered. If you think it is a good idea, just take a little time to study the proposition. 

First, you must realize that the majority of Americans are not politically savvy. They don't read. And many of them can be bought. Those of us who do read are aware that for some, only a pack of cigarettes will buy a vote and without any reading done to understand what an election is all about.

These same people who don't read probably do not realize a requirement to vote is un-American. That's taking away a basic freedom we have been blessed with for a few hundred years. Remember that Einstein became a naturalized citizen of America for it was a place where one would be free to think.   

Even though there are further reasons for not establishing such a foolish law, these two given here are critical for further discussion among your friends and acquaintances. We don't need any more  chicanery and subterfuge in our government. 

A SHORTER BOOK NOW

After reading four books of more than 500 pages each in recent weeks, I longed for a shorter volume to give my hands a good rest. There was no real search for such a book; I just walked over to the most accessible of my walls of books and picked up the most accessible volume, The Coffee Trader by David Liss, copyrighted in 2003. I had started reading the book way back then, but it dragged a bit and I shelved it. Now I wanted to get it read and placed in the library here where I live. I am almost half way through it, and I must say . . .

It is extremely well written and doesn't drag at all. As my favorite author is Shakespeare, it took no time to settle into the year 1659 to see what was going on in Amsterdam. Plenty! As that city was quite an important  shipping center, the popular place to be was at the world's first commodities Exchange, where fortunes were won and lost in minutes. But since this is a historical mystery, I won't give away the plot, which gets more exciting as the pages turn. 

This highly educated author presents his characters as if they are actors on a stage. That is a plus, not a negative. They act with their eyes and sometimes get caught at it, while dickering about a move on the Exchange. There seem to be spies everywhere and several languages and nationalities abound. But this writer is so clever, he keeps me reading to learn what the big mystery is.

David Liss's Conspiracy of Paper won the Edgar Award in 2000 for Best First Novel. What an intriguing title. Perhaps I should read it. In the meantime, I must find out what the mystery is in the coffee trading business. 
  

BRIEF REPORT ON LATEST BOOK READ

Days ago I finished reading Einstein by Walter Isaacson and have loaned it to the husband of our Executive Director. He has the time to indulge in this heavy tome, she says. Many readers would get bogged down with it with its page after page after page of discussion about quanta and the quantum theory, and related terms. Although I didn't understand much of what I read about physics, I plowed all the way through the 551 pages. But the other parts of the book are  easy to read and are most enjoyable. Einstein was a scientific genius who also had a sense of humor and who also played the violin. Sometimes when people thought they were going to hear him lecture, he surprised them by playing the violin instead. That seemed to be quite all right with the audience. Perhaps his most famous quote is that imagination is more important than knowledge. There is more to it than that, but you can check it out easily. Just type in "Einstein on imagination."

It seems to me that if someone reads and has read only books that tell a true story, he probably lacks imagination. Enough said here on that subject.

Einstein was a man who could and did change his mind even about scientific matters but also about politics. At times he spoke for World Government and belonged to pacifist organizations. But when he realized what Hitler was doing in his native Germany, he changed his mind about pacifism, and never went home again. He became an American citizen for it was a place where one could maintain a free mind. Because of his associations with pacifists and a few communists, the FBI kept a thick dossier on Einstein, but he always panned out not to be any more than a good American citizen. 

Einstein was brought up to study both the Jewish and the Christian religions. While he did not accept the Christian religion, he said that Man who spoke from the pages of the New Testament, that Nazarene, was really someone special, or words to that affect. Many people probably think all scientists are atheists. Einstein was not one of them. Perhaps they are the best example of "A little learning is a dangerous thing," while a scientist with much learning like Einstein (in his solitude and with imagination), learns the earth and the heavens didn't just happen with a big bang, but show the handiwork of a master planner, rather a Master Planner. Isaacson did not write enough about this. Einstein died in his sleep at age 76 from an aneurysm that burst. 

This work is a definitive biography of one who is recognized as our greatest scientist. And he had imagination.

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES

He wasn't exactly a babe when I asked a young boy if he would like to read a short story of mine. (I forget which story for it was several years ago.) He asked, "Is it a true story?" I answered, "No, I made it up." He said, "I don't read stories that are not true." 

This was such a surprise that I was left speechless. Once I got home, of course I could think of fitting replies to the boy's comment. Had he never heard the children's classics such as The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, or Cinderella? 

I felt this was a misguided Christian concept and I now had the answer to that. But the boy didn't live near me, and I saw him seldom. What I would have told him was that even Jesus told made-up stories. That is what a parable is, a made-up story told to teach a lesson. I certainly do not mean to disparage anything our Lord said, but the serious novelist is also trying to teach a lesson: He presents a conflict or several conflicts, and the characters work out the solution by the end of the novel. Generally, good is rewarded and evil is destroyed. 

I see this as a deprived childhood. 

 THE PURPOSE OF A BOOK

Among my acquaintances is a lovely lady who will not read a book unless it is a true story. What a shock and what a miss! There was a time in America when the "dime novel" was something to avoid. But even before that time, great works of fiction were already on the scene, such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In England the Bronte sisters had turned out two enduring novels Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. And Jane Austen tops the list for English fiction, both then and now, with her Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, to name only two of them. These literary masterpieces are enough proof that great value abounds in the well written make-belief worlds of those with the gift for writing. 

I have omitted above the great novels of the pre-revolutionary writers of Russian literature, which can claim the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I'll not indulge your time with a longer list but it certainly does exist for those writers of that time in Russia. 

I bring these titles to mind as examples of great literature that is needed even if one goes into a different field from reading and writing. The architect, as an example, can learn much about his chosen field in only a few minutes with fiction, whereas in a class of architecture instruction it might take a whole hour to get it. With fiction, you can learn such a multiplicity of ideas that you might otherwise never know. So what? you might ask. Everything that enriches your mental life should make your life more enjoyable and profitable but also hurt a little for the less fortunate. So? You owe it to those in your orbit to help enrich their lives. I do not mean you should go around telling others what to think, but to set the example for the contagion of idea gathering.   

Several years ago, as a teacher of accelerated seniors who had big ideas about what to study in college, I assigned each one of them to write to the college of their choice and ask for a catalog of courses of study. They wrote to such schools as Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, etc., and got the surprise of their young lives. The recommendation for undergraduate study in medicine, law, and even physical education was the same: MAJOR IN ENGLISH! (An undergraduate major in English covers in depth study of literature but also written composition. It requires two years of one foreign language and a course in history of England.) Of course, my students asked why. It took about one minute to tell them you learn all about human nature in literature much faster than from individuals that may become your clients or patients or quarterbacks. I've often wondered how many of them followed those recommendations. 

I once read a book by a professional man whose field was science. So long as he wrote about science, he did all right. But outside his field, his lack of a literary education was most evident. And that is what sells a book, not the story alone and often not the story at all. A meticulous vocabulary is what makes it or breaks it. Perhaps everyone who goes to college should major in English.