1,000

This is what my first 1,000 days of Daily Devotional Readings (about 20 minutes per day) looks like. By my count (it's not as easy as you'd think, since there are several variables to consider) I've read 13,449 pages in my first 1,000 DDR days...for an average of about 13 1/2 pages per day. 

Just for the record, that's

A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, Volumes I - XI

History of Civilization in England by Henry Thomas Buckle, Volumes I - III

Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works of Henry Thomas Buckle Volumes I - III

Civilization and Capitalism, 16th - 18th Century by Fernand Braudel, Volumes I - III

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Fernand Braudel, Volumes I - III

This Happened In My Presence: Moriscos, Old Christians, and the Spanish Inquisition in the Town of Deza, 1569-1611, edited by Patrick J. O'Banion

The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates by Des Ekin

Peat and Peat Cutting by Ian D. Rotherham

I'd have to say that the best read of the first 1,000 days was Buckle's History of Civilization in England. I would actually like to read that one (and by one, I mean three) again someday. If I live long enough. 

The books I would not recommend to anybody else would be The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Fernand Braudel and The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates by Des Ekin. I'm not sorry to have read them myself, but I don't think the payoff warrants recommendation. There is better Braudel...and Ekin is a shitty writer. And after all, there are so many other great books to read.

My initial goal was to read 15 minutes per day. Somewhere along the line in A History of Philosophy that shifted to 10 pages a day, since the 15 minutes was only getting me through about 7 pages per diem, and I like to avoid math whenever possible. And somewhere else along the line it shifted to 20 pages a day, then shifted back to 10-ish. Then it pinged around a little. But 10 pages a day seems like a reasonable goal--unless the book is particularly dense...or particularly rare.* It usually amount to 20 minutes or less per day. 

The thing is that you do it every day. So that meager 10 pages a day becomes 70 pages a week, which becomes 300 (-ish) pages a month, 3,650 pages a year. 

I'm pretty happy about how it worked out. 

And now I'm ready for my second millennium.

* dictionary.com says:

thinly distributed over an area; few and widely separated

having the component parts not closely compacted together; not dense

Antkind / Coincidences

I can't remember where I heard about the movie Three Christs, but I watched the trailer sometime in early June (at least), and I was looking forward to seeing it as soon as it came out. I had marked its release date (June 16th, 2020) on my calendar and was planning on seeing it in the theater, so I'm wondering if I actually saw the trailer even earlier on...when we still went to see movies in theaters. At the very least it was at a time wherein it seemed possible that we wouldn't be on Lockdown for a very long time. (Sigh. Those were the days.)

June 18th: I'd found out that the movie was based on a non-fiction book, so I looked for The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach online, read the Amazon preview over the next few days, and wondered if I should buy it. Then looked to see if the public library had it. They did...but only in solid form. So I placed a request for it.

June 20th: rented Three Christs from Amazon. Watched it all by myself that evening. Thought it was great.

June 21st: watched Three Christs with Joe in the early afternoon, as time was running out on my rental. It's not exactly Joe's kind of movie--he favors explosions and a high death count--but he stuck with it until the end.


July 10th: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti finally became available for me at the library. (I'd had to wait some time as books are quarantined before they are released. Seems to me that that indicates a serious misunderstanding of Covid-19 transmission, but hey, you can't be too careful.) Took me a few days before I went to pick it up, then it sat on my book table for a few weeks, untouched.  For one thing, because I was pulling hard to read The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates by Des Ekin (July 17th to July 23rd). For another thing, Charlie Kaufman entered the scene.


July 22nd: received an email alert that the ebook of Antkind by Charlie Kaufman was available. I had recently heard about this book and had read the Amazon sample. Thought about buying it, but found out the library had a copy (ebook only) and reserved it. It took a few weeks for it to become available to me.

July 23rd: downloaded and started reading Antkind.

July 26th: spent several hours looking for my Allen Wrench set. This is not something I usually do. In fact, it's been so long since I used my Allen Wrench set that I have no idea where it could be, which is why I spent hours searching for it. I'm now wondering if I still own an Allen Wrench set.

July 27th: (early early morning...like 3 am) read this in Antkind:

July 27th: a few minutes later read this in Antkind:

Yeah, I know. But it still impressed me.

ADDENDUM: 

July 28th: read this (around 2:30 am this morning):

After years of thinking, "I should read some Octavia Butler," I am currently listening to Kindred on audiobook AND reading a comic book adaptation of it simultaneously. So there's that.

Peat and Peat Cutting by Ian D. Rotherham

Day One (DDRD 996): July 24, 2020

I bought this book in a bookstore in Belfast, Ireland, in November of 2010. I was visiting my eldest son, who was doing a study abroad semester at Queen's...University, is it? Seems like it was College when he / I was there, but I don't trust my memory. ANYway...it was a little bookshop, and it was there that I discovered Stuart Neville's most excellent first novel The Ghosts of Belfast. And then I spotted this lovely item. Of course I had to buy it. My son had quite a laugh at me, and then just to add insult to injury, the bookseller himself laughed at me. I guess people think it's a little odd to be interested in Peat. And / or Peat Cutting. 

I've been meaning to get around to reading this ever since, but for some reason it never became an urgent need, so here I am, nearly a decade later. I checked to see if it was still available, hoping that it was now selling for thousands of dollars on the collectors' market, but found that even though Amazon U.S.A. has never heard of it, Amazon U.K. has, and offers it as a Kindle Edition for £7.19, and as a Paperback from £17.96 (1 Used from £24.10, 2 New from £17.96). A disappointment, but still, I paid a mere £5.99 for my copy, so you can see that that was a very wise investment.

It's a mere 64 pages from first page to last, the text itself is from page 4 to page 60, and there are quite a few pictures...some of which are full page illustrations. So I am probably not going to need 5 days (UNTIL DDRD 1000!) to finish it off, but we'll see how it goes. Who knows, perhaps the intricacies of the Peat World will be so intriguing that I will find myself reading a mere 12 pages per day and pondering on them deeply for several hours afterwards.

Let's see, shall we?

And...it took a mere 12 minutes to read the first 12 pages. But I stopped myself there, thinking that (1) I was just going to enjoy my leisurely stroll through the bogs for the next five days and (2) I have been going at it for 995 days with only one break for an emergency room stay, so maybe a little low pressure zone is called for? Not that I feel that I need it, but still.

At any rate, I stopped. It's quite possible that I'll go back for more later today, or that tomorrow I will not stop. We'll just have to see about that, won't we. I'm fairly sure that I could knock this book out in an hour today if I so desired. 

But (3), I did just get Antkind (by Charlie Kaufman) from the library, and since (A) it is 720 pages long and (B) I only have 14 days to read it, I'm thinking I'll need to push hard on that one...I've read 100 pages already (in part thanks to the generous sample Amazon allows on Kindle...something like 70 pages!), but that still means a 44.3 pages per day average, so I might need the extra minutes which would normally be devoted to my Daily Devotional Reading.

ANYway...the first 12 pages...which were actually only about 4 1/2 pages, what with the Table of Contents and lots of pictures ...were quite enjoyable. In fact, I feel the need to point out two specific bits:

Bit 1: Ian (may I call you Ian?) refers to the fact that peat was used for baths and in health spas, and notes that "For the right price you could be immersed in hot peat and have electric currents passed through you, or you might even opt for the hot rectal peat douche." I repeat: Hot Rectal Peat Douche. If that is not the perfect name for a punk rock band, then I don't know what is.

Bit 2: When people were not packing hot peat up their asses, they often used it to heat their homes or places of business. Ian (...?) tells us that "Famous cottage fires and particularly those in old inns burnt continuously for decades or even centuries." I've heard of the eternal lights in churches (is that just a Lutheran thing? or is it ecumenical?), but never in a non-parochial setting.

So there's that.

I'm actually looking forward to reading more of this. Is it too soon to suggest that it could make for a quite interesting movie? Imagine the possibilities of a documentary...just extrapolating scenarios from Bit 1 and Bit 2. But I will probably wait until tomorrow to read more here. And do some hard time with Charlie Kaufman.

By the way...at some point I am going to have to make at least one Peat Pun, so let's get this over with right from the get-go: 

If I were going to write a review of this book, it would be entitled "For Peat's Sake." 

If I ever write a documentary script for this book, it will be entitled, "For the Love of Peat."

Oh, wait a minute...that might be it. For some reason I thought there would be so many more. Well, time will tell.

Also...I am 97% sure that this

is the bookstore from whence came Peat and Peat Cutting...though I don't think it had such a gaudy facade back in the day. I didn't remember the store until I Googled Queen's College, Ireland (and Google chastised me immediately, noting that I should be looking for Queen's UNIVERSITY), then hit the NEARBY button and typed BOOKSTORE, I got this

and saw the proximity of No Alibis to the UNIVERSITY...and simultaneously remembered the name of the bookstore. So, yes. 97%. Perhaps even 98.6%. I just thought you should know.


Day Two (DDRD 997): July 25, 2020


A much more reasonable 22 minutes of reading time today to get to page 24. The print is very tiny.

Interesting stuff today on several counts: etymology, sociology, and David Bowie.

Etymology: Ian (...?) notes that both of the phrases "bogged down" and "putting on the dampers" originate in the world of Peat and Peat Cutting. The former is obvious, I suppose, but the latter refers to the fact that when you want to go to bed at night you'd put a wet bit of turf on the fire so that it would burn at a lower level. The wet bits were the dampers.

Sociology: peat was the fuel of the poor...because coal couldn't be (or at least wasn't) transported very far from the coastal regions and because there wasn't a whole lot of wood around. And cowshit was needed to fertilize the fields, so using it wasn't the best choice. (Funny detail: Ian (?) notes that the smell of burning cowshit was sweeter than you'd think it would be.

Bowie: There are a couple of references to the Norfolk Broads. You remember Bowie's "Life on Mars?" of course? Well, there's a line--

See the mice in their million hordes

From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads

--which I never got before. (Not being English. Or even British.) Well, turns out that The Broads (as they are called) are a series of lakes which were formed by...wait for it...flooding the peat fields. Thus making some navigable waterways. 

So there you have it. Quite a nice little canter.

Day Three (DDRD 998): July 26, 2020

Today I was introduced to the hard facts about how to cut peat and what to cut it with...including the Fenland Beckett, which (once again) I thought would be a fine name for a band. Oddly enough, when I put those words into quotation marks and Googled them, there were only two hits:

And, as you can see, one of them is irrelevant, and the other is a reference to the book I'm reading. Taking away the quotation marks led to "About 502,000" hits...but none of the top twenty had anything to do with the Fenland Beckett, and I really didn't have it in me to continue looking after that. 

I also did an image search, and 11 of first 17 images were of Samuel Beckett. 

So obviously this tool for the cutting of peat is not a household term.

So there's that.


Day Four (DDRD 999): July 27, 2020

Read to page 48, and there were some quite interesting details. Who knew there was such variety when it came to peat cutting tools, for instance? Which reminds me, early on...maybe even on Day One...there was a reference to the fact that the Romans invented the iron shovel. Apparently shoves were made out of wood or bone (!) prior to the Romans. Also, there's another reference to people thinking that taking a peat bath was a good idea, and there was an advertisement (from Germany) which emphasized the fact that their peat was "radicao-active"...apparently high in radon...which was presumed to be a good thing. Hmpf. Also, there were experiments in making paper from peat, but apparently that didn't go very well.

So that's just about that. Tomorrow is the big day! You know, I haven't really thought about what I'll be reading next. I have plenty of things to choose from on hand, though, so I'll just wait and see what calls out to me.


Day Five (DDRD 1,000): July 28, 2020

Finished. Finito. Accompli. I didn't notice until almost the last page that this little book actually had a sewn binding. Man, those Europeans actually give a shit about quality.

The book ended on an interesting note--a brief discussion of the environmental consequences of peat cutting and the peat industry. Also some amazing pictures of women...not young ones, either...bent over with huge baskets of peat on their backs. One of them was knitting. Yowza.

So it only took me ten years to get around to it...and five days to read it. 

And that's it for my first 1,000 days of Daily Devotional Readings. 

I put a picture up on Facebook of the books I'd read during my first 1,000 days--

--and asked if anybody wanted to join me for the next 1,000. Didn't really expect an answer, but got one yes, one next time, and one can I read my own book of choice. I thought that last was pretty funny. I mean...I'm not the book police. Anyway...I thought I was going to read Leviathan next, which is what I mentioned in the FB post, but I actually don't seem to have a copy of it on hand. I looked at the ebook version the library had, thinking that might tide me over, but the format on it was shite...looked like it was written for a third grader, with maybe two paragraphs per page. So I'm thinking I will go for something else first and order a copy of Leviathan. That will give my cohort time to acquire a copy, too, if thon does not yet have one. (Yes, I am still reading Antkind. Hit the halfway point this morning around 3 am. Hmm? Yes, I do have shitty sleeping habits. Bad dreams. Mostly about teaching or my second ex-wife.) So I'm thinking that the thing to do Right Now (and by Right Now I mean tomorrow, DDRD 1,001) would be to read Milton Rokeach's The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, since (1) I'm interested in it, (2) I just watched the movie, (3) twice, (4) I have a copy from the library on hand, and (5) it's only 342 pages, so it wouldn't take too long to knock out.

But hey, that's tomorrow. Who knows what will happen between now and then?

Trump Press Briefing July 21, 2020

"U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February...." The Washington Post


"The China virus is a vicious and dangerous illness, but we’ve learned a great deal about it and who it targets. We are in the process of developing a strategy that’s going to be very, very powerful." Trump Press Briefing 7/22/20




Six months. No plan. 144,000 deaths in the USA.

Question: Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison, and so a lot of people want to know if she’s going to turn in powerful people. And I know you’ve talked in the past about Prince Andrew, and you’ve criticized Bill Clinton’s behavior.  I’m wondering, do you feel that she’s going to turn in powerful men?  How do you see that working out?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t know.  I haven’t really been following it too much.  I just wish her well, frankly.  I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach.  But I wish her well, whatever it is.  I don’t know the situation with Prince Andrew.  I just don’t know.  I’m not aware of it. Trump Press Briefing 7/22/20


I am beginning to think that there's no use in trying to continue a discussion with my Trump supporting Facebook Friend. Because if yesterday's Coronavirus Press Briefing didn't make her re-think her support of Trump, then I don't think that anything I have to say will have any effect. 

The Slamming Doors

I first ran into The Slamming Doors when I was putting together an album of St. Lucy songs for Jacqueline. Their song "Lucy"--which isn't actually about St. Lucy, but hey, close enough for rock 'n' roll--was so good that I stuck with them & started following them on Facebook. 

Well a minute ago (as the crow flies) I got this message (below, in Courier Font). If you just want the highlights, there are 2: (1) small bands make little or no money from the streaming services, so if you want to support them, buy their music & (2) bandcamp is a great place to buy music. (P.S. If you happen to find yourself on bandcamp, do yourself a solid and pick up Melissa D's LITTLE GIRL ep. It's the bee's knees.) 

Here's the long version, straight from The Slamming Doors:

Hey guys, been thinking... at this time we are not going to be putting this EP out on iTunes/Spotify/etc... These companies make a lot of money off of the backs of working musicians, and pay them VERY little. It would take 8334 streams to just break even on the costs to submit the EP to them. That's $.006 per stream (on average.) Or, on the other hand, we would just need to sell 10 downloads at $5 at Bandcamp. That's it. 10. And if you can't, or don't want to spend $5, you can have it for $4, or $3, or $2...or hell, even just an email address. No big deal.

I understand the convenience of Spotify/ iTunes and I'm not against them as a consumer per se, and the final full album will probably end up there sometime later this year.

What I'm asking from you, dear friends and family, is to share this album directly with 3 people that you think would enjoy it. That's all. It was a good group of people that worked on this album, and it's worth a listen. Thanks friends!