Perchance you heard the story of the Seattle Special Olympics 100 yard race. It’s a sweet, warm hearted tale, but… wrong

Books read in June. Five favorites with astericks.

Poe’s Heart and the Mountain Climber: Exploring the Effect of Anxiety… by Richard Restak, M.D.
Born Naked by Farley Mowat*
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Reporter by Seymour M. Hersh
Thomas Eakins: The heroism of Modern Life by Elizabeth Johns*
The T-Shirts I Love by Haruki Murakami
Kayak Morning by Roger Rosenblatt
Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness by Doug Peacock*
Medieval People by Eileen Power
A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind… by William Manchester
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Twilight World by Werner Herzog
Esther by Old Testament
Uppity Women of Ancient Times by Vicki Leon*
The Joy of Sexus by Vicki Leon
Money Secrets of the Amish by Lorilee Craker
Hombre by Elmore Leonard
American Characters by Lewis & Lewis*
Travels in the Americas ed. by Jack Newcombe
How To Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Things I Didn’t Know: A Memoir by Robert Hughes
Give Your Heart to the Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men by Winfred Blevens*

Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs about them.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Nietzche was stupid and abnormal.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Oregon Schools Cratering…

Academic Weightlifting

Happy Birthday, Mel Brooks

Phones at School Are a Disaster

How much time do you spend on your phone?

Anti-Social Socialism Club Fun (lengthy!) essay on the present day insanity, including asexuality and “crotch spawn.”

Just in. From the end of the world. McMurdo Marathon. Or worse, the Ultra.

Books read in May. Five favorites with astericks. Favorite book of 2023 with two (read twice).

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell**
Himalaya by Michael Palin
Kit Carson’s Autobiography edited by Milo Milton Quaife
Evelyn Waugh and His World edited by David Pryce-Jones
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family
by Yoshiko Ochida*
Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt*
How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D.
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
North Korea Journal by Michael Palin
The Same Man: George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh by David Lebedoff
Reading in Bed by Brian Doyle
Herzog By Ebert by Roger Ebert, forward by Werner Herzog
The Oldest Cure in the World by Steve Hendricks
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant*
What I’d Say to the Martians and other veiled threats by Jack Handey
The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch
Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave by Bill Buford*

—

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.
-Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Consider: Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei

Who is Werner Herzog?

Didn’t really pay attention until this scene.

Favorite Herzog films:

1. Grizzly Man
2. Little Dieter Needs to Fly
3. Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
4. Wheel of Time
5. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
6. The Enigma of Kasper Hauser