We are what we… read?

At least according to the Big Think article The Books You Read Really Make You Who You Are: “The takeaway from all [the studies] is that no matter the culture, humans are intimately attached to stories. They’re part of our makeup as a species. Stories can literally transport us into the mind and body of a character. They can move us toward empathy or action. Nothing has the power to inform, change our minds, unlock our potential, or transform us and our society in the most powerful and profound ways. Now, we’re starting to unlock the neuroscience behind this and … Continue reading We are what we… read?

There’s a story here somewhere…


This abandoned car is oh, I don’t know, maybe a half mile or so from my humble yet lovely abode and it’s been parked right there for as long as I’ve lived in my said humble yet lovely abode, which has been oh, I don’t know, maybe eighteen years or so.

Every time I pass the beautiful, wabi-sabi of a relic on one of my walks, I always think to myself, I bet there’s a heck of story to go along with that thing…

And I also always tell myself that one of these days Ima gonna write my own story about it.

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Goodreads, Goodreads… Wherefore Art Thou Goodreads?

You know, I’ve tried and I’ve tried…

I really have!

I have tried and I have tried to maintain a loving relationship with Goodreads.

I’ve done everything it’s asked me to do.

I’ve set up both a user and an Author account…

I’ve added all my books, both the ones I’ve written and (most of) the ones I’ve read…

I’ve sent out friend requests to other users who seem to have like literary tastes as I…

I’ve friended those who’ve requested the same of me…

But after nearly a decade of trying to find meaning and purpose in my relationship with Goodreads, all it’s ever shown me has been indifference and insurmountable complexities.

It and I just have never been able to click.

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Two Learnings from My Recent Rememborizing Efforts: One cool; One cautionary

As I discussed in my last post, I’ve embarked on an effort to memorize stuff that interests me. I’m finding that the more I memorize stuff, the easier is to memorize and retain new stuff.

So as I just finished up memorizing the poem Invictus, I decided to go large and take on the grandest, and perhaps greatest, of all letters penned on behalf of these United States, The Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, maybe I am getting a little cocky/in over my head taking on such a significant body of work — significant as in packed with meaning, and, especially, significant as in packed with a lot of words. One-thousand, four-hundred and fifty-eight of them to be exact.

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Rememborizing*

I have whined a lot here in the past, and I mean a lot… no, really… a lot, about how screwy my brain has become ever since I caught the leukemia bug nearly a decade ago and was deluged with excessive amounts of chemo.

Not to mention I still take a daily dose of the stuff as a prophylactic so I don’t come down with that nasty little bug ever again.

Anyway, long story short — I have developed some pretty heavy duty vestibular issues and other funky brain-related stuff as a result, so for the past little while I’ve been working on various techniques and exercises to try to strengthen the ol’ noggin up a bit.

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KNOW THE WARNING SIGNS

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You know, in the past, regardless the president in power, it has always pretty much been a constant whine from all the many millions of gun lovers toting their many more millions of guns that their Second Amendment rights are under constant attack by a relentless blizzard of liberal, commie-shaped snowflakes… so their steady stream of bawling blather has always been received by me as nothing more than unintellig-ent/ible, self-flagellating noise.

But now, with our First Amendment rights under a for real attack by Trump and his pack of stooges, it pains me to have to assume that those same Second Amendment Peters who were constantly crying Wolf about losing their rights are now happily standing by, armed and ready, to support and even help facilitate our Wolf-in-Chief achieve his vicious autocratic goals.

Unbelievable.

Seriously.

I never could have believed, and still can’t, that we in the United States of America would ever have to be seriously concerned about seriously losing our First Amendment rights…

But, alas, here we are so very seriously concerned.

So concerned, in fact, that PEN America felt the need to publish an article entitled DEFENDING FREE EXPRESSION: A TOOLKIT FOR WRITERS AND READERS.

If you aren’t familiar with the freedom-defending organization, this is what PEN America is about:

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

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Here are some “bullet” points from the toolkit for our intellectual self-defense:

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