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2023: A “Common Year” Ends
A “common year” ends tonight at midnight. 2023 was a common year. The previous common year was 2017 and the next common year is 2034. What? You don’t know what a common year is? Neither did I until today. A “common year” has 365 days as opposed to 366 days in Leap Year, yet more specifically a common year begins and ends on a Sunday. I was born on a Sunday, and this year my birthday fell on a Sunday. I’m partial to Sundays. Like many of you readers, I am spending this last day of 2023, a Sunday (also known in Christian circles as “the LORD’s day”), reflecting on…
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Kennedy Assassination Revisited Every Year
Remember and Reflect 11-22-63 Even if you were not alive in 1963 or you were too young to remember that day, listen to the voices of those who were there. Anywhere in the entire country, the whole country felt the shock. And the grief. And the questions. Anyone who remembers that day will remember where they were, what they were doing, as well as what came next. “Presidential assassinations leave a deep scar on our collective memory and consciousness as a nation.” This quote comes from a 1993 book published by Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX, which included surgical details of the injuries sustained from gunshot wounds to John…
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Eclipse: to block out, obscure, or conceal
My daughter and her husband took their kids on a two hour drive to Midland to see The Ring of Fire Eclipse on Saturday, October 14, 2023. I hadn’t paid attention to this solar eclipse, even though the path for viewing was nearby. But then I started thinking about my mom, Carly Simon, and Annie Dillard. Annie Dillard Annie Dillard wrote an essay titled, “Total Eclipse,”[1] which was published in The Atlantic in 1982 and later included in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. Her experience took place on February 26, 1979 when she and her husband drove from the Washington coast to central Washington. Early the next morning…
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The Life Is in the Book: Characters Have a Life of Their Own
Last week, I closed the book Tom Lake, at the part where the character Peter Drake is introduced. I already know what happens because I listened to the book on Audible, read by Meryl Streep. Fantastic reader, by the way. After turning out the light, I went from sleepy to wide awake as I started trying to “cast” the characters in this book for a movie. Who could play Peter Drake? Tom Cruise is too short and Tom Hanks isn’t handsome (though he has throughout his career portrayed endearing characters). I thought of them first because they both have dark hair, yet knowing they are too old now to portray…
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Some People Never Learn
And that’s a shame. A tragedy. A waste. Some people keep repeating the same mistakes. I used to think the red-pencil marks on papers judged me. Me as a person. A failing grade amounted to failure. The red flags waved, “Why didn’t you know the answer to that question?” (Ignore all the questions you got right.) Education establishes a model where learning takes place in a particular context that includes tests over the material taught. But the real tests of what we learn take place in life beyond the classroom. A Recent Test At the first season performance of the Symphony at the Buddy Holly Hall, a woman seated near…
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A Very Small Stage
Dear Footnotes Readers, Unofficially and unannounced and unexplained, I took the month of July off from writing a weekly blog. I understand that a lot of blog writers take off all or part of the summer. I failed to announce a break and I apologize for not letting you know. In the meantime, I have been putting together an ebook, editing a memoir manuscript that is starting to grow fur like the fungus on mushrooms, and gone back and forth to our little cabin in the woods of Southeastern Colorado, with a grandson’s wedding in-between. Miles and smiles and more than a few dilemmas, as even in summer, daily life…
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Too Marvelous for Words
Just for fun Friday (JFFF), enjoy this short video that celebrates both artistic creativity and the past. I’m into manual typewriters. More later.