This will have to be quick. I am up a bit late on Sunday morning and I have to leave soon.
I think beginning my morning reading poetry by several poets is a calming experience. It reminds me on a daily basis that feeling and thinking are part of being human. That authentic voices are waiting in the actual lines of the letters of the words of these people who lived and breathed, observed and commented on being alive.
This morning I also started reading in a second biography of T. S. Eliot, T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life by Lyndall Gordon. Although, due to a prohibition by the man himself, biography on Eliot is scant, this book by Gordon actually combines her two previous volumes into one and incorporates freshly released material.
In fact, in this century the prohibitions are falling away and I look forward to more information about Eliot.
I picture myself alternating chapters between Gordon’s book and Peter Ackroyd’s book I read in yesterday. That would be a fun way to read these books. They are both unique and eccentric in their approach. Probably won’t actually do it, but it’s a thought anyway.
Eileen and I went out for breakfast yesterday then Christmas shopping.
We brought home a tree. We set it up in the living room. This actually was a bit of hassle since the tree was unevenly cut on the bottom and we had to do a lot of adjusting to get it balanced.
Then we took the silly ceramic Christmas tree I bought for my Mom over to her room. She seemed satisfied with it. She even adjusted the nativity set I brought up from her storeroom. She is more engaged in Christmas this year than she has been. We rigged up an easy way for her to turn the little Christmas tree lights on and off.
I did manage to get over to church and practice organ and prepare for today.
I am weary of church. I still enjoy many aspects of it, but having to deal with stressed people is hard on a lifelong introvert. I mostly try to do no harm as they say. But of course I continually fail at that.
It’s difficult because people often do not realize how much they are telling you with their words and actions about their own distress.
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Looking for America – NYTimes.com
Some salient comments on the killing this week. I long for some sensible prohibitions on the distribution of semi-automatic weapons.
when a gunman takes out kindergartners in a bucolic Connecticut suburb, three days after a gunman shot up a mall in Oregon, in the same year as fatal mass shootings in Minneapolis, in Tulsa, in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, in a theater in Colorado, a coffee bar in Seattle and a college in California — then we’re doing this to ourselves.
Gun deaths this year. Appalling.
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Man Stabs 22 Children in China – NYTimes.com
It’s hard to compare this to the Connecticut tragedy, but they happened on the same day. No one was killed in China as far as I can tell.
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Most Governors Refuse to Set Up Health Exchanges – NYTimes.com
People don’t govern so much these days as mount battles and resist each other. See the recent coup of Republicans in my own state.
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Catch Limits Put on Menhaden, Unglamorous but Crucial Fish – NYTimes.com
I have never heard of this fish but find the ecological web that makes them important fascinating.
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Bill O’Reilly Has Had It With the Name-Calling
At least name calling from the left, anyway.
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