Good morning!
A quick digest before we get rolling for the week.
Writing: The blog post I tossed up yesterday morning on NCR’s recent series on EWTN, has received some attention. Go here for that.
Today’s the feast of St. Martha – maybe take a look at last week’s blog post on the occasion of a Martha-centered Gospel.
Remember – I have books for sale here. All prices include shipping.
I’ll be in Living Faith tomorrow.
My story The Absence of War is free until midnight, Wednesday.
Watching: Still not much, although I will recommend The Taco Chronicles – a documentary series available on Netflix. If you don’t understand the differences between all the tacos at your local taqueria , this is an excellent primer. It will also, I guarantee it, make you want to hop on a plane and head south. Immediately.
Reading: I keep checking out novels from the “new books” shelf at the library, bringing them home and immediately losing interest. I suppose I should try to do more than judge a book by its cover.
So this weekend, I’ve just pulled out my Cheever short stories from the home bookshelf, and I’m glad I did. Cheever gets such an inaccurate rap – as nothing more than the chronicler of upper-middle-class midcentury suburbia. He’s not that at all, unless it’s through an almost magical realist filter. I’m not a fan of each and every story, but in general, the experience is revelatory. How he generally starts in one place, seems to meander (although it’s not meandering) to a different place, seemingly forgetting about the first place, but then circling back around, in one way or another. Saying one thing, pointing to another, ending up in another place, hiding and revealing. Given his life: seriously alcoholic, married father, secretly bisexual – all the hiddenness and circuitousness is more revealing than any straightforward storytelling would be.
Well, thank you library books for disappointing me this time. It bore good fruit.
Cooking: Again with the work and social schedules, cooking is a dicey proposition. But I did make pizza dough the other day, and perhaps will finally use it today. This is the recipe – and it truly is at its peak of flavor 2-3 days after making, so everything worked out.
Traveling, etc: Nothing on the docket for the next couple of weeks. We have a lot going on.