Alone

I’m reflecting on Richard Beck’s series, Alone, Suburban and Sorted, which began here.
In part 1, he talks about the decline in card-playing since the 1970s — when 40% of Americans played cards with friends at least once a month — as an indicator of increased societal isolation. But, as Beck notes, “it’s not really about [...]

Isolation and Communion

I recently read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers, which seems to turn partly on the dual theme of isolation and communion. The main characters feel isolated from others, and the one person they all seek communion with is a deaf-mute (who in turn seeks communion, and believes he finds it, [...]

What We Might Find

Madame X at My Open Wallet writes, in Weird Stuff from Dad’s Files, about the recorded data her father has kept through the years:
“I discovered that he was way more of a pack rat than I’d realized, and incredibly obsessive about recording certain kinds of data. I’ll spare you the results of his research into [...]

Dog Eats Blood Orange

As my dog was eating some sections of a blood orange today, I got to wondering: how many dogs around the world will eat a blood orange today? I bet not many.

Crime Novel Excerpts: Henning Mankell

Favourite bits from Henning Mankell’s The Man Who Smiled (1994) and The Fifth Woman (1996):
Wallander “remembered something Rydberg had said during the last year of his life:  ‘A police station is essentially a prison. Police officers and criminals live their lives as mirror images of each other.  It’s not really possible to decide who’s incarcerated [...]

Favourite Line of the Day

“He combined Old World mysticism and New World craziness”
said by Janine Vega about Lionel Ziprin, an East End Jewish mystic, bohemian and poet who died  last weekend at the age of 84.
From the same obituary:
“Mr. Ziprin, a self-created planet, exerted a powerful gravitational attraction for poets, artists, experimental filmmakers, would-be philosophers and spiritual seekers.”
“A self-created [...]

I would not give you false hope

I love this:
House MD to Wilson: Why didn’t you tell me this?
Wilson: House, you and I, we don’t have the normal social contract. I don’t expect you to tell me the lies that …
House: I am fully capable of lying to you.  I’ve lied plenty of times.
Wilson: I mean collaborative lies. Giving someone a hand [...]

We’re Not the Only Ones!

Our dog was skunked last summer, as I wrote about in some detail. We’re not the only ones! Martha Stewart’s adorable French bulldogs Francesca and Sharkey ran into the same varmits recently; Sharkey writes all about it, with some photos depicting the cleaning process. Sharkey thinks she’s learned her lesson but if she’s like most [...]

Alienation

Came upon a post at Dave Pollard’s site that led me to this reflection about a conference called Northern Voice, a ‘personal blogging and social media conference’ in Canada, held a couple of weeks ago, which led me to this reflection at Jim Groom’s blog, bavatuesdays, about
‘intimate alienation,’ defined as
“when you are doing something [...]

Recent Reading: 14 March: Crime Fiction, Money Tips, Profound Amnesia and Identity Loss

This is a busy time for me, as my spouse has recently accepted a new job in another state and we will therefore be moving (relatively) soon. So we’re working to get the house ready to show and sell, by repairing, replacing, painting, cleaning, and de-cluttering — this last activity both so that the house [...]