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Here and There…Now and Then |
Tulips
We’ve had a vase of tulips on our dining room table for a few days. Obviously they are a little past their prime, but I find them quite pretty even in this state. It’s more about color and form than about them as flowers qua flowers. I think I could have done a bit better to eliminate the background from this. Perhaps taking it with a black background would have been better. But, it’s what it’s, as we like to say.
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
We went for a walk on the C&O Canal this afternoon, heading northwest from Pennyfield Lock. We saw a few great blue herons Great (Ardea herodias), including this one who posed for us very nicely. It was a lovely day and really good to be outdoors. The canal is nice, especially a little ways out from Great Falls Tavern, because it’s open and there aren’t a lot of people. More people than on some trails but not so many it’s a pain, trying to keep our distance from everyone.
Rusty Gears
Cathy and I went for a walk at the Montgomery County Agricultural History Farm Park today. There’s an area with old farming machinery on either side of the road and I took a few photos there. I’ve always liked machinery and sometimes think mechanical engineering would have been a good career choice for me. If I had been a better student when I was a student, it might have been possible, even. There’s not much use playing the What If game, though, I suppose.
Note, I generally try to post photographs at least reasonably close to when thy were taken. In mid January I ran out of space on one of my hard drives and it’s taken me until mid April to get the new one installed (laziness, mostly). It’s finally up and running and I’ll see what I can do about getting caught up. Thanks for your patience.
Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)
We walked on a section of Muddy Branch trail today that we hadn’t been on before. We went roughly 1.8 miles each way and enjoyed being outdoors. We saw a few belted kingfishers (Megaceryle alcyon) and there were lots of small songbirds in any thicket we passed. There were a few places with standing water and a few of them had a skunk cabbage plants (Symplocarpus foetidus) growing in them. It’s one a small number of thermogenic plants, which produce heat by chemical reaction and raise their temperature above that of the surrounding environment. Pretty cool.
Juniper Leaves and Berries
One of my favorite color combinations is the blue of juniper berries and the green of their leaves. I especially like it on an overcast day, when the colors are more vivid. Either color on its own is attractive and in the running for a favorite color, but the combination is especially nice.
Cathy, Dorothy, and I went for a walk on the Blue Mash Trail this afternoon and that’s where this photo was taken. As usual, it was nice to be out in the woods and meadows for a while and we always have plenty to talk about.
Sandy Spring
We went out for a walk this morning, going somewhere new, but it turned out that W.S.S.C. property requires a paid permit. The signage was very ambiguous, giving regulations for walking on the trails but then with big “No Trespassing” signs, but without an explanation of what constitutes trespassing. We decided to walk to Sandy Spring and enjoyed the walk very much. There is a champion white ash (Fraxinus americana) on the route, as well, which is a very handsome tree. There were other people out but no so many that it really affected our walk. The last time we came here we walked from Woodlawn Manor on the Underground Railroad Trail.
Sunrise
Long weekends are nice. Our company only started giving us Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off last year so it’s something we’re still getting used to, but of course we’ll take it. I slept in this morning until about 7:00 AM and then stayed in bed awake until I noticed the color in the sky. Considering our bedroom windows face west, that suggested there was some good color in the east, as well. So, I got up and grabbed my camera and went out front to get a few pictures before the color faded. This is actually a bit darker than it was, so not necessarily an accurate representation of what I was seeing, but it’s pretty.
Our New Roof
The roofers finished late enough yesterday that it was a bit dark to get a good photo of the front of our house, which faces eash-northeast in any case. So, here’s a photo of the front of our house taken this morning and without anything in the driveway. Getting a new roof is one of those things you don’t notice unless you’re specifically looking for it. Or I suppose if the old roof was leaking and now it’s dry inside when it rains. But when we bought the house the inspector told us the roof was pretty warn and we should plan on replacing it pretty soon. Soon became 14 years, but we beat the odds and haven’t had any significant problems. And now we should be good for a long while.
I compared this photo to one taken when we bought the house and the two holly trees, one by the driveway and the other at the left corner of the house, are much larger than they were then. Otherwise, the house doesn’t really look at that different.
Roofer Madness, Day Two
Continuing with our ongoing roof replacement, the contractors were back this morning to handle the “bump” and the garage. Some of the houses in the neighborhood have a one story piece between the main part of the house and the garage and others—like ours— have a two story section. We call the two-story version a “bump”. Anyway, the roofing went on that and the garage today. The garage roof needed more repairs to the plywood but the joists were sound, anyway. Once they finished they spent quite a while on clean up. There’s a fair amount of debris, although they put drop cloths down, it didn’t catch everything. They also went around with a magnet picking up nails and staples. Tomorrow I’ll show you the finished product.
Roofer Madness, Day One
As mentioned yesterday, we are having our roof replaced. The materials were delivered yesterday and the crew showed up this morning and got to work. Of course, getting the old roofing material off is a big part of the job and we had two layers of shingles that had to be removed. The plywood on the front half of the roof was in pretty good shape although there were a couple places on the back that needed to be repaired with new plywood. We also had them remove the chimney from our furnace, which is no longer being used, so that’s one less opening in the shingles to worry about going forward. It’s a noisy business, especially when they are tacking down the underlayment. Then they start up their compressor for their nail guns and it’s blam, blam, blam, for the rest of the afternoon.
Roofing Materials Being Delivered
The kid in me still loves big trucks and heavy machinery. Put a crane on a truck and lift pallets of shingles onto a roof, and I’ll watch. Needless to say, I enjoyed the process of preparing for our roof to be replace tomorrow. The truck needed a surprising amount of space, because it has seriously long outriggers so they can reach the crane out to the side as far as this, positioning the materials as close as possible to where they will be needed. We had work done on our chimney in December, so we’re all set to have the roof replaced now.
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
We went to the Tridelphia Reservoir this afternoon to two different parking areas and walked out and back along trails from both. The first wasn’t as nice as we had hoped, although we saw two types of clubmoss, Diphasiastrum digitatum (fan clubmoss) and Dendrolycopodium obscurum (ground pine). The walk from the second parking area was really nice. It was an easy walk except for a few places where there was mud on the trail but it wasn’t hard to get around. We were about to turn around when Cathy spotted this great blue heron (Ardea herodias), who let us get quite close. We just stood and watched it for quite a while.
Burke Lake
We met our good friend Jean at Burke Lake this afternoon. We’ve never been there before but it was quite nice. There were a lot of folks there but we walked along the shore on a trail that was less used and it was very nice. The wind coming across the lake was fairly cool but the sun was shining and there were birds and it was lovely. Of course the main thing was seeing Jean, and that would have been nice anywhere, but it’s always better to be outdoors, if you can (unless the weather is really nasty, and then it’s great to be somewhere cozy, instead).
Sunset
After saying I was going to stop taking a photo a day, I actually went two more days taking pictures. After this one, there will be a gap before the next photo was taken. The timing was good, because I threw may back out on the morning of January 3 (writing this after the fact) and getting pictures every day this week would have been hard. So, we’ll end the streak of consecutive days at 10 years plus five days—three before I officially started and two after I officially ended. But as promised, photos will be posted when I do take them.
Rain
It was a rainy day today, a quiet way to usher in the new year. In spite of the rain, though, we wanted to get outdoors. We went to a small park owned by the Isaak Walton League and walked around their pond and into the woods for a while. There were hooded mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) on the pond and I got a few photos of them, good enough to identify them conclusively but not really that great. One of these days I’ll get a long lens but today is not that day. We also saw a hawk of some kind, which flew away from us in the woods. We’ll probably come back here in the spring or at least when it isn’t raining.
Cathy
For Christmas, 2010, Cathy gave me a new camera. It was a Canon 60D to replace the 10D that I had been using since 2003. On January 1, 2010 I decided to try my hand at something a co-worker had been doing. It was called Project 365 and the idea was to take at least one photo each day for a year. I posted those photos on Facebook and managed to establish a (very) small but loyal following. At the end of the year I set up this blog and continued taking at least one photo a day. I’ve been doing that for ten years now and I think that’s a pretty good accomplishment.
I have decided that as of today, I will no longer be taking a photo a day. I still expect to take my camera with me when I’m out and I still plan to take pictures, just without the pressure. I figure 3,652 consecutive days and over 180,000 photos is enough. So, some days there will be photos and other days there won’t. To my small but loyal band of followers, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you all.
The first photo in this project (see Saturday, January 1, 2011) was of Cathy and I thought it appropriate that I end ten years with another of her. Yes, we’ve both aged a bit in ten years, but we’re still here. God bless you all.
My 2020 Reading
This year was something of a landmark for me in terms of reading. For a while now I’ve been trying to read some of the books that I should have read in high school or college (or perhaps that I should have been supposed to read, if you follow me). Over the last dozen years or so, I’ve gotten through a significant number, including fiction by Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Dufoe, Hardy, Melville, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Zola, to name but a few. I’ve read some of the classics, including Greek and Roman historians, playwrights, and philosophers and some significant modern non-fiction, as well. Late last year, though, I decided to step it up a notch. My goal was to read 26 books with some significant number of them being big, important or serious books. As it turns out—and no one is more surprised than I am—I aimed low.
All the books I read this year are pictured here. Some of them are short and very easy to read, but a few of them are what Dorothy and I have taken to calling “Lifetime Achievement Books.” Specifically, the three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago (weighing in at a combined 1,818 pages), Moby Dick (‘only’ 459 pages but seriously, get to the whale already!), The History of the Peloponnesian War (574 pages), The Tale of Genji (1,139 pages), and War and Peace (1,136 pages).
My 2020 Reading
Here is the full list of books read in 2020 in the order I read them. Overall, I’ve enjoyed much of what I read. Some were not so much enjoyable as worthwhile. For instance, The Gulag Archipelago is not light or enjoyable, but it’s important. Personally I think it should be required reading, along with The Hiding Place. Obviously Jack London, the Narnia books by Lewis, and a few others are on the other end of the difficulty spectrum and provided a needed respite.
| Order Read |
Title | Author | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Karenin Anna Karenin | Tolstoy, Leo (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) | 1878 | I actually started this on December 23, 2019, so only a third or so was read this year. My first book by Tolstoy and I have to say I really enjoyed it. |
| 2 | Gulag Archipelago 1 The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1 | Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008) | From 1958 and 1968, English translation by Thomas Whitney, 1974 | I believe this should be required reading at some level (high school or college). Although the Soviet Union no longer exists as it was, what happened there can—and almost certainly will—happen again, although in a different guise. |
| 3 | Brideshead Revisited Brideshead Revisited | Waugh, Evelyn (October 28, 1903 – April 10, 1966) | 1945 | A miniseries was made in 1981 that is pretty faithful to the book. But the book is still better. Enjoyable and even a little thought provoking. |
| 4 | Moby Dick Moby Dick | Melville, Herman (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) | 1851 | One of those books that everyone knows but few have actually read. You could make a much shorter, abridged version and not really detract from the story. I mean, seriously, get to the whale already. |
| 5 | Silas Marner Silas Marner | Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans, November 22, 1819 – December 22, 1880) | 1864 | A lovely short story. I really enjoyed it. |
| 6 | Man With The Gash The Man With The Gash | London, Jack (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) | 1901 | Short Stories, set in the arctic. |
| 7 | In Parenthesis In Parenthesis | Jones, David (November 1, 1895 – October 28, 1974) | 1937 | A book length, modern poem about the First World War. |
| 8 | Tristram Shandy Tristram Shandy | Sterne, Laurence (November 24, 1713 – March 18, 1768) | between 1759 and 1767 | I bought this because the title seemed familiar to me, bit I’m not sure if I’d classify it as a classic. Enjoyable but not great. |
| 9 | Beowulf Beowulf: A New Verse Translation | Unknown, translated in 1999 by Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939 – August 30, 2013) | 8th century | I haven’t read Beowulf since collece and when I came across this new verse translation, I thought I’d give it a read. It has the Anglo-Saxon on the left and the modern English on the right. |
| 10 | Republic The Republic | Plato (circa 425 – circa 347 B.C.) | 375 B.C. | My goal is to read all of Plato’s dialogs. |
| 11 | Frankenstein Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus | Shelley, Mary (August 30, 1797 – February 1, 1851) | 1818 | Not really much like the movie, in case you are wondering. Much more nuanced. |
| 12 | Confessions Confessions | Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430 AD) | A. D. 397 | I read an old translation years ago but wanted to read it again. I saw this new (2001) translation by Philip Burton and figured the time was right. |
| 13 | Jugurthine War The Jugurthine War | Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus, 86 – circa 35 B.C.) | 44 B.C. | The Jugurthine War was fought between the Romans and the Numidian King Jugurtha from 112 through 105 B.C. This book also has a second work, The Conspiracy of Catiline, dealing with events in Rome in 63 B.C. |
| 14 | Macbeth Macbeth | Shakespeare, William (circa April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616) | around 1606 | You know the story, probably. Don’t do what he did. |
| 15 | Genji The Tale of Genji | Murasaki, Lady (circa A.D. 970 circa 1030) | early 11th century | This is a long novel (three pages longer than War and Peace), written about 1,000 years ago, set in imperial Japan. Quite fascinating to read, although a cheat sheet with names would be helpful. |
| 16 | Recovering Eden Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes | Eswine, Zack (born 1969) | 2014 | One of the few books written by a living author this year. I understood what he was saying and basically agreed, but I found his way of talking a little to hip for my teste. |
| 17 | Hobbit The Hobbit | Tolkien, J. R. R. (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) | 1937 | The classic (and much better than the movie). |
| 18 | Lives of the Twelve Caesars The Lives of the Twelve Caesars | Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, circa A.D. 69 – sometime after 122) | A. D. 121 | About (not too surprisingly): Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian |
| 19 | Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales | Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340s – October 25, 1400) | between 1387 and 1400 | Like the edition of Beowulf, this has the modern English along side the original, which I find interesting. I can’t say that I enjoyed this as much as I thought I might. |
| 20 | Practice of the Presence of God The Practice of the Presence of God | Lawrence, Brother (c. 1614 – February 12, 1691) | late 17th century | Compiled by Father Joseph de Beaufort around 1692. I love this little book and try to read it every couple years. I also try to put Brother Lawrence’s practice into practice, but without a huge amount of success. |
| 21 | Death of Death The Death of Death in the Death of Christ | Owen, John (1616 – August 24, 1683) | 1647 | The introduction by J. I. Packer is probably worth the price of the book. This is a fairly lone defense of the doctrine of limited atonement. |
| 22 | Alice Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Carroll, Lewis, (a.k.a. C. L. Dodgson, January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898) | 1865 | This book contains Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through The Looking-Glass (1871), and The Hunting Of The Snark (1876). |
| 23 | Consolation of Philosophy The Consolation of Philosophy | Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, c. A.D. 477 – 524) | A. D. 524, | I found this quite interesting. How philosophy personified came to the aid of a man in desperate circumstances. |
| 24 | History The History | Tacitus (circa A.D. 56 – sometime after 117) | between A. D. 100 and 110, | More first century Roman history, written around the time of Hadrian. |
| 25 | History of the Kings of Britain The History of the Kings of Britain | Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1095 – c. 1155) | 1136 | Covering Britain from the earliest time, from its founding by Brutus, great-grandson of the Trojan Aeneas through King Cadwaladr in the latter half of the 7th century. |
| 26 | Five Dialogues Five Dialogues | Plato (circa 425 – circa 347 B.C.) | 5th or 4th centuries, B.C. | More Plato |
| 27 | Peloponnesian War The History of the Peloponnesian War | Thucydides (circa 460 – circa 400 B.C.) | circa 400 B.C. | Published as The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War War, 1996, by Robert B. Strassler. This was easier to get through than I expected. Athen’s really should have left Syracuse alone, though. |
| 28 | Magician’s Nephew The Magician’s Nephew | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1955 | I decided to read through the seven Narnia books in chronilogical rather than publication order. This one deals with the founding or creation of Narnia by Aslan. |
| 29 | Lion Witch and the Wardrobe The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1950 | The four Pevensie children find themselves in Narnia. |
| 30 | Horse and His Boy The Horse and His Boy | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1954 | Set during the time of the Pevensie kingdom, this is the story of Shasta and a horse named Bree. |
| 31 | Prince Caspian Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1951 | The Pevensie children return and meet Prince Caspian and help him in his fight against his uncle Miraz. |
| 32 | Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Voyage of the Dawn Treader | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1952 | The two younger Pevensies, Edmund and Lucy return to Narnia with their cousin, Eustace Scrubb, and travel with Prince Caspian. |
| 33 | Silver Chair The Silver Chair | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1953 | Eustace escapes to Narnia with his classmate Jill Pole and they travel with Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle to rescue Prince Rilian |
| 34 | Last Battle The Last Battle | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1956 | The end of the old Narnia and the beginning of the true and better Narnia. |
| 35 | Fire Next Time The Fire Next Time | Baldwin, James (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) | 1963 | This is a very worthy book on race relations and rightly a classic. Baldwin sometimes paints with too broad a brush, but then, it’s hard not to, sometimes. |
| 36 | Nicomachean Ethics Nicomachean Ethics | Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) | 4th century B.C. | I think I’m more of a Neoplatonist than an Aristotelian. But we need to read people we don’t always agree with and this is a classic that should definitely be read. |
| 37 | Hiding Place The Hiding Place | ten Boom, Corrie (April 15, 1892 – April 15, 1983) | 1971 | I was given this book last year and once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended. |
| 38 | Purgatory Purgatory | Alighieri, Dante (c. 1265 – 1321) | 1308 | Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, (June 13, 1893 – December 17, 1957). I read the first portion of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno, in late 2015. Of the three parts, I think I enjoyed Purgatory the most. Are we allowed to enjoy purgatory? |
| 39 | War and Peace War and Peace | Tolstoy, Leo (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) | 1869 | With the exception of a few sections, I enjoyed this book almost entirely. If you dropped out Tolstoy’s philosophy of war, there’s really be nothing to complain about. It’s long, but worth reading. |
| 40 | House of The Seven Gables The House of The Seven Gables | Hawthorne, Nathaniel (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) | 1851 | I think I was biased against Hawthorne because we had to read him in school. But this story is really nice. Not necessarily happy, but nice. |
| 41 | Gilgamesh The Epic of Gilgamesh | Unknown | possibly 18th century B.C. | Probably the oldest thing I’ve read, from a time and a place we know little about. |
| 42 | Paradise Paradise | Alighieri, Dante (c. 1265 – 1321) | 1321 | Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, (June 13, 1893 – December 17, 1957). The third and final part of Dante’s Divine Comedy |
| 43 | Roumeli Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece | Fermor, Patrick Leigh (February 11, 1915 – June 10, 2011) | 1966 | Fermor writes beautifully and if you have any ethnographic interest in Greece, then this book is for you. His writing is like stepping into a time machine. |
| 44 | Mill on the Floss The Mill on the Floss | Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans, November 22, 1819 – December 22, 1880) | 1860 | Not as happy a book as Silas Marner, but a beautifully written, sad tale of life. |
| 45 | King John King John | Shakespeare, William (circa April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616) | 1595 | The first of Shakespeare’s histories. My goal is to read through them all. This one, unsurprisingly, is about John, King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. |
| 46 | Lord Jim Lord Jim | Conrad, Joseph (December 3, 1857 – August 3, 1924) | 1900 | Dark and somewhat mysterious. I’m not sure whether or not I’m a fan. |
| 47 | Mani Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese | Fermor, Patrick Leigh (February 11, 1915 – June 10, 2011) | 1959 | This one wasn’t as interesting to me as Roumeli, but still worth a read if you’re interested in the area. |
| 48 | Beat to Quarters Beat to Quarters | Forester, C. S. (August 27, 1899 – April 2, 1966) | 1937 | Originally published in England as The Happy Return. If I want something light to read, I often look to either Horatio Hornblower or Matthew Hervey. Chronologically, this is the eighth Hornblower novel. |
| 49 | Gulag Archipelago 2 The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 2 | Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008) | From 1958 and 1968, English translation by Thomas Whitney, 1974 | These three volumes are not easy to read. But, again, I believe they should be required reading. |
| 50 | Cybernetics Cybernetics | Wiener, Norbert (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) | 1948 | This was a book my dad had. It was written by a the famous mathematician and philosopher who was a professor when my dad was a grad student at MIT. I can’t say I understood all the math, but there was some interesting concepts that make the book worthwhile. |
| 51 | Problem of Pain The Problem of Pain | Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) | 1940 | One of the best by C. S. Lewis. |
| 52 | Gulag Archipelago 3 The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 3 | Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008) | From 1958 and 1968, English translation by Thomas Whitney, 1974 | It’s easy to find used copies of the first volume of this trilogy but I had to hunt to find one copy of volume 2. I never did find volume 3 so I had to buy it new. |
| 53 | Rumours of War Rumours of War | Mallinson, Allan (Born February 6, 1949) | 2004 | I mentioned Matthew Hervey above. He’s sort of the Horatio Hornblower of the Light Dragoons. |
| 54 | Early History of Rome The Early History of Rome | Livy (59 B.C. – A.D. 17) | 29 to 27 B.C. | Books 1 through 5 of Livy’s 142 volume History of Rome, which cover the period from the founding of Rome to 386 B.C. |
| 55 | Old Man And The Sea The Old Man And The Sea | Hemingway, Ernest (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) | 1952 | This is the first book by Hemingway I’ve read and I enjoyed it quite a bit. |
| 56 | Out of Africa Out of Africa | Dinesen, Isak (a.k.a. Karen Blixen, April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962) | 1937 | I sort of expected this to be a novel, but it’s really an autobiography. Still, interesting glimpse into a time and a place that’s changed since then. |
| 57 | Under The Greenwood Tree Under The Greenwood Tree | Hardy, Thomas (June 2, 1840 – January 11, 1928) | 1872 | I find that I really like Hardy’s novels. This is a short one and was written early in his career. Recommended. |
| 58 | Crime and Punishment Crime and Punishment | Dostoevsky, Fyodor (November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881) | 1866 | The third book by Dostoyevsky that I’ve read, after The Brothers Karamazov and Poor Folk and Other Tales. This is more of a psychological thriller. I liked Brothers K, for the most part. This is very different but also a great read. |
| 59 | History of My Times, (Hellenica A History of My Times, (Hellenica) | Xenophon (circa 430 – 354 B.C.) | 4th Century B.C. | Covering Greek history in the years following the Peloponnesian War. |
| 60 | Smith of Wooton Manor Smith of Wooton Manor and Farmer Giles of Ham | Tolkien, J. R. R. (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) | published in 1967 and 1949, respectively | This is a short book with a pair of fun stories. |
White-tailed Deer
Cathy called me from the basement this morning as I was finishing up my breakfast. She had looked out the back window and seen these two white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) that appear to have spent the night in the pachysandra at the back of our garden. I took a few photos from inside through our not-so-clean windows and then risked opening the kitchen door to see if I could get any without the extra glass in the way. They looked at me as I opened the door and continued as I walked out onto the patio. They didn’t actually get up until I moved out into the lawn and even then they didn’t seem too concerned.
Stuff
This is the top of a small hutch in our dining room. Most of the things on the shelf have appeared on the blog at one time or another but I thought I’d post a photo of the whole collection (or this shelf’s worth, anyway). On the right is a nurse that my grandmother made the clothes for and that was in a store window during the war as part of a display about collecting for the community. In front of her are three matryoshka sets including a traditional one on the left, one with Russian political figures in the middle (that’s Leonid Brezhnev), and a east Asian one on the right. The wine bottle was found in what is now the ghost town where my grandfather was born. Next to that is a figurine that Cathy got from her family of a baby sucking on its thumb.
Genna and Dorothy
Dorothy and a few of her friends are flying to Florida to visit another friend for a few days. When they get back they will quarantine together for two weeks. Three of the friends came over this evening to spend the night here so I could take them to the airport early in the morning. While we were all talking I asked if I could take a few photos. This is Genna, one of Dorothy’s housemates and friends. Lydia and Tony also came but didn’t make it in time for the photo.
