June 2021

A List: St. Augustine--The City of God.....................................................................176/867

B List: Thomas Mann--Buddenbrooks......................................................................105/748

C List: Madeline L'Engle--A Moment of Tenderness..................................................26/285

I also got up to page 73 or so in Zena Hitz's Lost in Thought which I am reading in small snippets in between these other books.

Am I going to absorb much of The City of God? Remember the arguments? Probably not, although supposedly the really good part of the book are in the later sections. Right now I'm still in the part where he is discussing the role God played in various developments in the history of the Roman Empire, which if nothing else is a good review of those personalities and wars, which I would like to have as thorough a grasp of as possible. Besides, it amuses me to read this. I used to sit in a particular chair in the basement of the old library at St. John's and do my seminar readings and take naps, and this chair was right beside the shelf which had about twenty copies of The City of God on it, and I would frequently take it down and flip through it, because it was a handsome, solid looking book that for some reason I liked holding in my hands. And then I have always wanted to have had something of a real Catholic upbringing in my background (without the hassle of painstakingly having to acquire it in adulthood), and this gives something of the flavor of that whole scene as well.

The Madeline L'Engle book is a collection of short stories that were unpublished in her lifetime (1918-2007, another life more or less contemporaneous with Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Phil Rizzuto), most of which seem to have been written in the 1940s and 50s, and all of which are around 18-20 pages, which is about the length of the classic New Yorker stories of that era. The 1st one and half of these stories that I have read so far definitely seem to be going for that style, and why not? It was a good style and a good period for that form. I am impressed with what I have read so far. The conceptions for the stories are quite good, and the writing is sure of itself without straining for effect. The first one ("Birthday") did not land a particularly strong ending, and I wonder if that will be a pattern with the rest of the stories. But it is not a bad book. 

My pictures this month are good but kind of melancholy. I know a lot of people are getting away from putting up pictures of their children online due to privacy concerns and the like and I have wondered whether I should do that, but on the other hand I have not really gotten a grasp on how to preserve and curate all of these thousands of digital photos that one takes very well. I don't know for example where all of our pictures are from the pre-cloud era, 2008-2012 or so, are, apart from the ones I put up online at the time. I certainly don't get a lot of general attention as a middle aged man without a compelling internet persona or even local importance.... 

I'm running out of time. Short captions on the rest of the pictures. Above: Mother's Day with 2 older boys.

I don't like being caught with the mask on, but this was the Science fair (outside under the tent), and someone wanted a picture.

Cherry tree, early May.

View of Manchester, NH from a nearby hill. 

On top of the same hill (South Uncanoonuc, if you are scoring at home). This was just Saturday, when it was over 90 degrees.

Lake Uncanoonuc, which is at the bottom of the hill.

Not among the really large rocks of New England that we have visited over the years but an impressive sized one for this minor hike.

At the end of the day a storm comes over the lake.

This is from another walk the week before (Memorial Day Weekend) when it was 48 degrees and rained two of the three days.