Okay, I'm trying something new.  I love music.  All kinds of music, except for what passes for country nowadays.  I also love to share music that influences my writing and creativity in general.  I go through phases.  One week I will listen to The Decemberists, the next Max Richter or Alexander Balanescu.  This week, though, it's Jazz.

A long time ago, I wanted to be a DJ.  Not like DJs today, playing at raves and clubs.  A radio DJ, playing jazz in the wee hours of the night.  That which was inside me at age 20 is still there.  Maybe some day there will be independent, non-automated, radio stations.  There are still a few left I am sure.

​​Each week I will feature an album or artist playlist that I feel the need to share. Please feel free to opine in the comments below.

Today, for the initial playlist entry, I present to you Song for My Father by Horace Silver.  It was recorded in 1965 and personnel include Horace Silver on piano, Joe Henderson on tenor sax, Gene Taylor on bass, and Roy Brooks on Drums.  The melodies may sound slightly familiar.  This album influenced Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder.  I'm sure you know the songs to which I am referring.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  And please, turn up the volume...
​

​My efforts to read more are foundering.  I am stuck on the the book I am currently reading, Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk.  It's not the author's fault.  MacDonald is an excellent writer.  I am finding myself not interested. So, for now at least, I will put it aside.

One would most likely think if one wanted to read more that making a list of books deemed "difficult" would be counterproductive.  It's probably true.  However, there are many books out there that I have always felt I should read.  Books considered classics, books that many say are challenging, books I should have read in high school or college, books I did read years ago but want to re-read.  And yes, books others have warned me about "Oh that's a terrible book..." 

I started this list in my head, on the drive home from work.  It is just the start.  Some are difficult due to their length, some are simply difficult to read.  I need a reading challenge but never seem to want to read books that others recommend.  Just by saying "You HAVE to read this book" automatically triggers a lack of desire to ever read it.  I can't explain.

So, having said that, this is not a list of recommendations.  Most of the following books I have never read.  Some, like I mentioned, I have read but it's been so long ago I feel they deserve a re-read. My deadline?  I hope to read as many of the books on the list by one year from today.

Here's my Onerous Reading List for 2021-2022

• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) by Herman Hesse
• Little, Big by John Crowley
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Death on the Installment Plan by Celine
• The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
• Das Kapital by Karl Marx
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
• The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler (if I ever find a copy of it)
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
• The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ( I read it in high school but need to re-read it)
• Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
• On Revolution by Hannah Arendt
• We Have Always Lived in a Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Love in the Time of Cholera by  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The list is by no means complete. I also plan, for the sake of sanity, to pepper in "light reading,"  (my guilty pleasure of detective or horror fiction) I want to see how many of these I can finish in six months and re-evaluate then.  Until then, wish me luck.  I'm going to get started and read a bit before I go to bed.
 

​
It's coming.  It's only a matter of time. We were warned and most heeded that warning.  But the cadre of the willfully ignorant, as usual, made things worse.
​
One does not have to be clairvoyant.  Having a little education helps. Anyone can see the signs if they choose to see.  We are most certainly heading toward another Covid-19 related shut down. This time it will be far more brutal and strict. Those who were mewling and puking about the freedoms they were deprived of will be even more inconvenienced. I will lay it all at the feet of these anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, and the self-proclaimed "patriots" who deemed the last shutdown as "fascist" and "government control." They are the ones who are to blame, it was their doing (or, their non-doing) that this virus wasn't thwarted the first time. The so-called Fox News is also complicit. Now it seems there is a new variant weekly.  With the arrival of the MU variant, we are getting close to running out of Greek letters. And we are most certainly running out of time. 

I am however, preparing for the worst.  We have food, coffee, toilet paper, soap and other toiletries.  I hope that we don't run out and I doubt we will. And yes, these are essential. But still I am hoarding a couple things, the pandemic notwithstanding. 

Most of you know I have an extensive collection of typewriters.  I think I'm up to seventy now.  Admittedly I am running out of room for them.  I have never intended on keeping all of them. I recently opened an Etsy shop to sell some of my inventory. At this point I have only two listed.  Of course, there are more to come. I am hoping to supplement my income restoring and selling typewriters.

And what else am I hoarding?  If you haven't guessed from the photo: Books.  Lots of books.  Anywhere from light reading, non-fiction, literary fiction (the ones that should have been read in high school and college) and many others.  I will never be able to say I don't have enough books. Or, well, I might say it but it doesn't stop me from buying more. Books are essential to my mental health.

I'm not kidding myself.  Because of my job I will not be able to stay home due to a lockdown, when it happens.  Yes, I'm deemed an essential worker, employed by a clinic in the UW Health system. In the last lockdown, I and my co-workers showed up every day they were able.  We didn't have patients, but there were always calls to be answered. 

But if it came down to it, when (not if) the lockdown occurs, Valerie and I will have the things we need.  Coffee, books, food, shelter, and above all, each other.