Stuff

It seems that the moral authority of moms across the land is once again being challenged. After telling decades of telling kids to eat their spinach, government agencies are now siding with kids, telling them what they knew in their gut all along, “this stuff can make you sick.” Unfortunately, I’ve long gotten over my natural dislike of greens and now enjoy spinach (along with collards and kale and turnips), but I don't like my spinach laced with e-coli. I much prefer a vinegar and oil dressing.

Three months after getting this laptop, I’ve finally got around to installing a “screen saver.” It’s a 16th Century painting by Peiter Brueghel titled "Tower of Babel." The original is in a muesum in Rotterdam. Of course the tower looks like it’s built next to a northern European port (like Rotterdam) and not in Mesopotamia, but why let little details bother me. I like the painting. It has great details of construction and of life around the tower. And wonderfully deep red hues. But I mostly I like the painting for it reminds me of human limitation and inabilities. I idea that I needed to get a screen saver was brought to the forefront by a series of posts by a fellow blogger who has a lot more time than I do to pick out the perfect screen saver(s).

I’m down to the last 20 pages of Taylor Branch’s, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, which I plan to finish before bed. Hopefully I’ll get a book review of it out before I head to the desert, where I will be reading Craig Childs, Soul of Nowhere: Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land. It may sound like a religious book, but Childs is a water hydrologist who spends most of his life tramping around the desert southwest. I envy him. Speaking of water (and too much of it), I’m currently listening to David McCullough’s The Johnstown Flood on my ipod. McCullough is a great storyteller. I expect I’ll also review this book.