How was I so gullible...

 

Moby Dick

 I finished reading this book yesterday. My version has 377 pages. The White Whale does not show up until page 357. Most of the book is spent on excruciating details of the types of whales, ships and whalers. Everything from which whale is best for what type of oil to which artist of whaling scenes best captures the moment. Everything you wanted to know and many things you did not. I wondered, "Why is this book considered a classic?". 

I see the value as a historical piece, detailing everything one would want to know about how to catch, skin, clean, make oil, and the like. You are schooled on the many professions that depended on the whaling business, how to outfit a ship, hire a crew, finance the voyage, etc. It increased my understanding of what that life was like at that time and at that place. 

Interesting, yes. Readable for those of an era gone by, absolutely. A great piece of literature, no. The folks at Penguin books place it #1 on their list of ten greatest American novels. Eggheads.  Stereotypically, they call it "a metaphor for America's post 9/11 foreign policy" Nope, not the version I read, not the country I live in.    

I would recommend it to anyone who 1) lives in Nantucket and wants to learn about the history of the area 2) aspires to go into the whaling business 3) is interviewing for a job at Penguin books.  

2020 Not much traveling going on

 There were plenty of day trips around the state, but for real travel I was limited to Missouri and Tennessee. The former to see my son and his family, the latter for a family reunion. 

Places where I spent the night: Victoria and Minneapolis, MN, Webster Groves, Kirkwood, and Brentwood, MO, Knoxville and Roan Mountain, TN.

Thoughts on 2020

The overwhelming majority of people will not write one word about this year. The memories will fade and we will all fall into a collective shared fable of what this life was like. Of the writings of my grandparents and great-grandparents, not one reference to the Spanish flu of 1918 has survived. I have no idea what that time was like for them. So this is for posterity, my thoughts on life during the China flu of 2020. 

As I write this it is about one year since the flu virus first arrived in the US. It is about one month since the vaccine was approved by the FDA. It is about ten months since the government started imposing restrictions on public gatherings, masks, etc. 

For the most part, things were not that bad for me. Actually they were quite good. I welcomed two new grandchildren into the world, saw the Cardinals and Twins in Spring training, boated a lot, read many good books, learned a lot about the geography of Africa, prayed much more than in the prior year, saved some money, drove from Victoria Minnesota to Roan Mountain Tennessee, and welcomed a future son-in-law into the family circle, witnessed the entry of my son into the Catholic Church. I went to the dentist twice, the dermatologist once, my eye doctor once and my family doctor once. I got good reports from all of them. For those of us who are retired, and who planned well for retirement, things were pretty darn good.  We finished an addition on to our house. I got all of our old VHS tapes digitized. My children did not lose their jobs and my youngest successfully got a better job and launched her career in physical therapy. I wrapped up most of my responsibilities as trustee and executor of my brother Kevin's estate and trust. 

I think that day to day our lives were not as bad as we pretend them to be. Apart from those who actually got the virus and suffered through all of that, all of my friends had a pretty good year. We had some inconveniences, but in the span of human history they were very very very minor. We did not get to see relatives and friends as often as we would like, but go back in time 150 years and you will find that your great-great grandparents spent much of their lives in relative isolation, working 12-14 hour days. I did not get to be at the hospital when my grandsons were born, which I would have so loved, but turn the clock back a few dozen decades and there would have been no hospital and men would have taken no break from work while the women anguished in childbirth. I had visits from friends cancelled but I had the ability in my home to see them live on a screen like a television. 

There will be lots of whining and second guessing about what the government did or did not do. A few thoughts on that. It is surprising that we have a vaccine as quick as we do. Some credit should go to the current president for clearing the path for companies and scientists to make this happen. He threw a lot of money at the problem. In time we will see that much of it was wasted, but a lot of it was not and that helped get the vaccine out quicker. 

It appears that the president, who is a very combative person, did not do enough to clear a path to distributing the vaccine once it arrived. He was not nice to people who disagreed with him. He left too much to individual states. The government had a full year to figure out how to get this distributed and has not done very well so far, or so it seems. There are stories as I write this about vaccines sitting in cold storage awaiting use. Perhaps that is true, perhaps not. 

The next president will do much better. He believes in the federal government and will take more of a hard line to make people take the vaccine. He will compromise, cajole, bend and twist arms and get this thing taken care of. He will push a federal plan and will stop the silliness of states like Minnesota that have advisory panels to advise the governor on why their favorite disadvantaged group needs the vaccine the most. He will do it in a way that causes us to think collectively, as fellow citizens, about how to solve the problem, and not as individuals entitled to some special treatment. We will like it. 

There were some minor personal impacts. We were made to wear masks in public. I did not like this but went along with it. (The President did not like masks and set the example that people should not wear them. Some people said the mask came to be seen as a political sign. If you wore one it meant that you did not like the president. This is myth, in my view. Most people simply believed the President's opinion was wrong and chose to play it safe and wear a mask. Most of his supporters ended up wearing masks and were somewhat irritated that he chose not to). I spent the night in only three states: Minnesota, Missouri and Tennessee. Normally I would travel to a dozen or so. I stocked up on a few things that I would normally not have around, bullets and whiskey. You never know how crazy things are going to get. 

We did not get to go to church as much as we would have liked. Initially here, services were limited to around 10-25 people. That did not last long as the Catholic Church made it clear that they would not abide by so severe a restriction on worship. Most protestant churches agreed with the Catholic Church on this. Distribution of the Eucharist was changed drastically, with the precious blood of Christ restricted to the priest and deacon only, in many churches. While receiving the body alone was wondrous, and no less miraculous, it still did not seem the same. Priests were behind plexiglass walls for distribution at some churches. It was pretty weird. There were lots of outdoor services, which I did not like and did not attend. 

At my gym I tried to find times to go when no one else would be there. But when they changed the rules to make people stay 12 feet apart and wear a mask while exercising, I gave up. No way you can run laps around a track or on a treadmill with a mask on. Can't get enough breath, just bad in every way. 

Professional and college sports were severely curtailed. No crowds in the stands, coaches wearing masks, etc. Made the whole spectacle much less interesting. I watched sports much less. Many events cancelled. 

It was a year of racial strife, a topic outside the scope of this blog. I have nothing more to add to what has already been said. I do not have any insight that would be of any help to the reader. My opinion on what transpired is evolving.    

As we enter the second year of this lockdown I will read a lot and work on some other hobbies. I have a couple of projects to consider. Perhaps 2021 will be better in some ways, but in may others ways will be hard to beat. Don't think I will be getting two new grandchildren this year but it's only January. If I can get all the current crew to Roan Mountain in September, that will be good indeed. 

The books I read in 2020

Perhaps I read more books in 2020 than any other year. All of those listed below are good, and worth reading again, except for those at the end, which were mainly a waste of time.  The best ones? Probably The Great Divorce, which I have probably read a dozen times.  One drop in a Sea of Blue gave me a new perspective on the life of soldiers in the Civil War and fighting both humans and the elements for four years. By What Authority is an excellent defense of the spiritual authority that God has bestowed upon the Catholic Church, and only the Catholic Church. It dives deep without losing the reader. The worst book I read was One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is a great example of how a poorly written book can achieve international acclaim when  tapped by the hip intelligentsia.  

Worth reading Again Essays of a Catholic - Hilaire Belloc The Spiritual Combat and A Treatise On Peace of Soul - Dom Lorenzo Scupoli The Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis Say Nothing-A true story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland - Keefe The Catechism of the Catholic Church St. Ignatius of Antioch - The Epistles One Drop in a Sea of Blue, The Liberators of the Ninth Minnesota - Lundstrom By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition - Shea Earth Abides - Stewart The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer - Cowen Hartland to Capitol Hill - Gunderson Pouf - Hall Rome Sweet Home - Hahn, Hahn The Church History - Eusebius The Great Divorce - Lewis In Cold Blood - Capote Hank and Jim - Eyman Ignatius Catholic Study Bible - New Testament (and all footnotes) - RSVCE Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey - Clint Hill The Passage of Power - Robert Caro Master of the Senate - Robert Caro Means of Ascent - Robert Caro The Path to Power - Robert Caro Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence Civil War: Volume 3 - Foote Civil War - Volume 2 - Foote The worst of the bunch: The Desert Fathers - Sayings of the Early Christian Monks Enemy of all Mankind - Steven Johnson One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez On his own terms: the Life of Nelson Rockefeller - R.N. Smith

Running the bases

 When was the last time I ran the bases on a ball field?

 6am on the morning of December 22nd, 2020. It is the first full day of winter and it is dark. 

A nearby neighborhood has a ball field. Rarely is it used. 

But it was on this day, in freezing temps, while on a run, when no one was looking, this 64 year old man, did something that would have looked odd in daylight. I ran the bases. Twice. Not just this day, but the next as well. 

It brought back memories of a sandlot in Myrtle Grove, Florida where from age 7 to 11 I spent almost every Saturday, and many weekday afternoons. There were no schedules or teams or coaches. Just some boys with a bat, weathered from hitting rocks and oyster shells across the yard, and any kind of ball. Sometimes I would walk to the field alone, lay on the grass, stare up at the clouds, and wait for someone else to show up. Eventually David Cosson or Karl Hoewt, my best friends, would. We called it "the field" and ignored the claims of Tonya Jackson that her daddy owned it and that we needed her permission to play there (even if he was the richest man on the street and our landlord). Something about that place is stuck in my memory and it seems so much bigger, as if my whole world was somehow connected to that spot of sand and centipede grass, sand burs and horned toads. 

I have been back to the neighborhood several times growing up. I believe the field is gone now, replaced by houses. Funny though, I am not certain of this. Perhaps it is that the impression from my childhood is so strong that I cannot perceive anything else there, just the familiar worn out spots in the sod where the bases go, and sandy paths that link them in our version of a diamond. 

Every kid needs a field like that. I hope that there are some children near here who see this one as I did. Who will think on it fondly in 2070 or 2080, and maybe, when no one is looking, run the bases.