I’ve learned from experience that I can’t give myself open-ended or extremely long-term lifestyle goals.  I need a foreseeable mile-marker to keep in mind otherwise I will quickly lose interest.

So with that said, I am giving myself two January resolutions – as opposed to 2012 resolutions.

1. Drastically reduce sugar intake

I have gotten lazy about eating well. Mark teases me about being a vegetarian who doesn’t eat many vegetables.  This must change. Not only do I need more veggies, but I also need more grains and legumes for proteins. More about my tracking tool below.

2. Work out at least 4 times a week

Fortunately I have a good start on this one since we got a treadmill at home this past Fall.  Another thing I know about myself – I don’t go to gyms, no matter how convenient or nearby they might be.  Having a treadmill at home has been wonderful! I’ve already gone from being able to run 30 seconds at a time to 3 minutes, plus lots and lots of walking.

The Tools

1. Home Equipment

As I said, the treadmill has been a boon in getting me started.  The only other equipment I’m using so far are dumbbells, an aerobic step to act as a bench for certain exercises, and a yoga mat.

I wanted a treadmill rather than an elliptical or nordic track because I knew I would need to multi-task to get interested in exercising at first.  The treadmill we have, combined with a bathtub shelf and the iPad, is the walking desk I’ve been wanting. When I’m doing a C25K routine, I simply remove the shelf and I have lots of room for the running segments.

2. Websites / Apps

C25K – Couch to 5K

There are C25K websites and C25K apps galore (even for treadmills!). It’s a nine-week program that alternates walking with running, building you up to run a 5K. If you need extra time, you can do each week multiple times until you’re ready for the next one.   I highly recommend using an app – you start up your playlist, then start your C25K app and a voice will tell you when to walk and when to run.  Usually your music will fade a bit for a moment so you can hear the instructions.  I like this Ease Into 5K app because I can choose a pleasant chipper British voice to tell me when to run, when I’m halfway done, and when to cool down.  She makes it sound so easy, of course.

200×2 – Abs and Arms

I got the idea for this from the 100 Push Ups and 200 Sit Ups programs – similar to C25K in that they build you up to a goal over several weeks.  Instead of just focusing on these specific exercises, I’m making a more general Abs and Arms program using the sets and reps of these programs (so I have some sort of target each day), and mixing up the exercises so I get some variety.  I put the numbers together into a weekly plan. This way, I can alternate days of the week between C25K and 200×2 – hopefully working out 6 times a week and easily meeting my resolution goal.

Fitocracy.com 

Fitocracy is still in beta with some beta quirks, but so far I’m loving it.  Basically, you get points for working out – anything from traditional squats and bench presses to dancing, fencing, or drumming. They have quests you can do for even more points, and these are what I find really valuable.  The quests give me ideas (or at least motivation) to try exercises that I would not have done otherwise. The list of possible exercises is fairly long with (hit or miss) descriptions – very helpful for giving me variety in my 200×2 routines.  I think it really helps to be in a group with people you know.  I’m in a small group with Mark, his son, daughter, son-in-law, and brother-in-law.  It’s nice for encouragement and competition.  However, I haven’t found a way to export exercise history or data, or back it up elsewhere.  That worries me a bit, but I am tracking some of my workouts in other places, too.

My Fitness Pal

For food, I’m using My Fitness Pal – a free website and app I heard about thanks to fellow librarians on Twitter.  It has a huge database of ingredients and meals, but the thing that really sold me was the barcode scan search for the iPhone/iPad app.  I scan the code on my soymilk, for example, and immediately have all the information per serving size filled in.  All I have to do then is fill in how many servings I’ve had.  This has been *wonderful* for curbing post-holiday snacking, and also to get a picture of where I’m falling short in my diet.  After the first few days, I can already see that I need way more vitamin A and iron in my foods.

Looking Ahead

Like I said at the beginning, these goals are just for January.  I’m having fun with both Fitocracy and My Fitness Pal now, but I don’t think I could keep it up for a whole year.  At the end of January, I plan on enjoying a dark chocolate sea salt bar from Trader Joe’s while I evaluate how well I’ve done on my goals, and how well these tools have worked for me.  From there, I will decide what the goals or projects for February should be.  Stay tuned.

(1) The Sparrow and (2) Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

Early in 2011 I read two books recommended by one of our English professors at my university.  I’m surprised I had never heard of them before.  They were (1) The Sparrow and (2) Children of God by Mary Doria Russell.  Basically, the books are about a team of Jesuits (yes, Jesuits) who become the first humans to visit Alpha Centauri after catching snippets of song on a SETI satellite.  Imagine the stories of the Spanish missionaries and treasure hunters who came to the New World in the 1400′s and later, retold as a sci-fi alien contact parable.  These were books that stayed with me for a long, long, long time.  I still think about things from these books and it’s been almost ten months since I read them!  The characters, the cultures, even the details for the logistics of the trip itself are laid out in details.  I will warn you, though, that the second book – Children of God – can be a harrowing book in some parts.  It’s when everything breaks down, just as things inevitably did when our Old World met New World.  Highly recommended.

(3) An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

I enjoyed reading Steve Martin’s Shopgirl a few years ago, and I want to know more about the art world someday so this little book seemed like a good choice for me.  Overall, it was just okay, but I’m including it on this list because of the way he wove the artwork and the experiences of seeing the artwork into the story.  In the edition I had from the library, there were even color images of the paintings in question sprinkled throughout the book.  But for anyone who thinks ebooks can’t improve on their paper counterparts, this would be an example against that claim.  I would much prefer to have read this as an ebook on the iPad with hi-res images for the paintings that I could make full-screen and really absorb.  The little bitty images in the paper book did not do justice.

(4) Among Others by Jo Walton

I read this book on the heels of other similar stories about awkward kids discovering some unknown ability or world and battling their own monsters, imagined or otherwise.  The other books included Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  I chose Among Others for my list because I think it was the best written and the characters stayed with me far longer.  Most importantly, the protagonist had a deep and abiding love of books that delighted me.  Seeing the way the character thought about books, people, and places felt like stepping into someone else’s life.  This one of the few books written as a diary that actually felt like reading a diary.

(5) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I’ve seen wildly different reviews for this book – seems to be a love it or hate it item.  I myself absolutely loved it and can’t wait to own a beautiful hardcover mint condition copy of my own.  I think the “hate it” crowd wanted stronger characters or plot or something, though I didn’t see much lacking in those departments for what it is — a fantasy/magic realism fiction.  I think those same critics are pleased as punch with writers like China Mieville – who I also enjoyed this year, with his book Embassytown.  But here’s the thing that a writer like Morgenstern has, that a writer like Mieville does not:  Style.  Mieville’s prose is clumsy and choppy.  The words trip over themselves, the dialogue is stilted. But his story ideas are fantastically brilliant and original.  Morgenstern, on the other hand, writes beautiful prose with gorgeous descriptions.  She sets a scene and you can practically walk in it.  You can smell the circus food, you can hear the gravel crunching, you can feel that breeze go by.  I only wish her circus had more amazing tents so I could read her descriptions of them.

(6) The Late American Novel, edited by Jeff Martin

Now we get into my Two Thirds Book Challenge books.  Though, of course, I am reading themes not books.  This one comes from my Writing theme and it was an excellent choice.  Dozens of writers of various genres put in their two cents about the future of writing, reading and books.  The reactions are all over the place, the styles vary dramatically, and the different voices are very strong.  Out of all these essays, there were only a couple I found myself skimming through rather than reading carefully and soaking up.  I took many notes and in some places laughed out loud.  Ironically, I read the book in the Kindle app on my iPad.  I would love to get a paper copy and read it again in a year to see how the predictions are faring.  Highly recommended for personal collections and gift giving.

(7) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

One of the motivations of using themes in my Two Thirds Book Challenge was to broaden my reading palette, but so far I’m still stuck in fiction, which is the theme of my next couple books on this list.  Gaiman was one of those authors that seemed to be too hyped to me, so I avoided his books for a while.  Then a year or so ago I read Good Omens by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett — lots of fun.  After that the Twitter book club 1 Book 140 picked Gaiman’s American Gods and I read along.  Enjoyed that, too.  All sorts of mythology and legends being pulled together and brought into a modern age that doesn’t know what to make of mythology or legends. The Graveyard Book is no exception to that trend — Gaiman takes Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book and changes the setting to a graveyard.  He pulls it off in a wonderful way, and without a tacky ending.  I would love to see more stories with these characters.

(8) The Magicians and (9) The Magician King by Lev Grossman

When Magician King came out, I saw all sorts of interviews and reviews on book blogs discussing the allusions and references to writers like C. S. Lewis, J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkien, Neal Stephenson, and many others.  Just like my fascination with retold myths, I was intrigued by this series that admitted to so many influences.  It took me a couple times to start The Magicians — Quentin is not the most sympathetic character, after all.  But once I pushed through the first few chapters, the book really took off for me and the second book was even better.  Now I’m contemplating a return to the Narnia books that I haven’t read in … 25 years??  Though seeing them through the jaded, skeptic eyes of Grossman’s characters makes me hesitate, too.

(10) and (11) … ??

I’m not going to pick these yet because I still have ten days in the year left – ten days that include quite a few hours in airports, airplanes, and away from work.  Who knows what I might read next?  Maybe even (gasp) a nonfiction book!

Right away I made my own list for the challenge but didn’t take the time to post it anywhere.  I could cheat, use the same list, and declare myself halfway done … or I could revise the list and still give myself a decent challenge.

The original list:

• Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative
• Technology Training in Libraries by Sarah Houghton-Jan
• Project Management book
• Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutcher
• Serendipities by Umberto Eco
• Lectures by Nabokov
• Lectures by Calvino
• Lectures by Borges
• Romantic Moderns by Alexandra Harris
• Late American Novel edited by Jeff Martin
• The Complete Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• a poetry handbook or criticism book, of which we have several
• at least three fiction books from author’s I haven’t read yet

Of those books, I have since finished The Late American Novel (excellent!), more than three fiction books by new-to-me authors, I’m halfway through the Technology Training book, and I dismissed the project management book I had in mind because it turned out to be awful.  Also, I am going to be honest with myself and admit that I will probably not read any of the Lectures books until possibly late December.

I’m also learning something about myself over the past year of trying to read various “lists” of books — I don’t really do specifics.  As in, within six weeks of listing a specific title, I probably won’t want to read it anymore if I haven’t read it already.  But I do follow themes.  Themes and general topics with plenty of room for options works very well for me.  Therefore my Two-Thirds Book list will not be a list of titles, but of themes that I want to pursue, with some potential titles as examples.  If I can read from two-thirds of these themes over the next twelve months, I will be very happy indeed.

With all that in mind, here is my new list, with links to the respective GoodReads shelf I’ve created for each:

• Creativity
• Language
• Writing
• Erudition
• Tech
• Fiction

One of the benefits of looking at my books in themes and then setting myself the challenge of reading from at least two-thirds of the themes is the opportunity to get more diverse reading in.  I’ve been a glutton for fiction lately, and my GoodReads list shows that — 34 books to read in fiction!  No other “theme” gets even close to that.  The next highest is a shelf called “Books on Books” with 18 titles, some of which overlap with the “Erudition” shelf listed above.

If you’d like to participate in the challenge, create a list of books (or themes) somewhere and put the link in a comment on Mark’s blog.  Happy reading!

Last week I started reading Jane Eyre since we made plans to see the new movie adaptation, directed by Cary Fukunaga. I had read Jane Eyre many years ago, but didn’t have a good memory of it at all, which became more and more apparent while Mark was reading it for one of his classes this semester. I finished the book the day before we went to see the movie and loved the story all over again.

Before I go on, let’s just get some things clear: First, I do not expect a movie to strictly adhere to any book it might be based on, especially if said book would require an epically long film or miniseries to squeeze in every last character and story thread. I don’t think movies *should* try to follow the book closely because a movie is a different animal altogether.   Secondly, here be spoilers. Lots of spoilers. About book and movie. So if you’re planning to either read the book or see the movie soon, just go ahead and add this little blog post to your Read It Later or Instapaper and we’ll meet again sometime.

Okay then. You caught that part about the spoilers, right?  Just checking.

Let’s start with the casting.  In short:
Jane (Mia Wasikowska) – too timid, not enough “direct glare” as she’s famous for in the book. Though the kid playing young Jane was perfect, I thought.
Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) – too handsome, but the voice was right on, better than I expected.
St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) – not handsome enough, but adapted well. This is a character that could have been simplified into really annoying or really tyrannical, but was handled very well and given a good balance.

The too handsome / not handsome enough complaint might seem petty but it struck me as an important distinction in establishing Jane’s feelings for the two men. On this point the movie actually added a scene that didn’t appear in the book but was superb for the film [spoiler]: when Jane is alone in her schoolmarm cottage on a bleak snowy winter night, she hears a pounding on the door and opens it to find Rochester in all his dark, brooding, sexy glory storming in to kiss her passionately. Alas, it turns out this was just a fantasy for Jane and it’s actually St. John at the door. The difference and disappointment for her is made unmistakable in that scene. Beautiful addition.

Another change that helped the movie was near the very end when Jane returns to Thornfield to find a burnt out ruin. In the book, she hears from the innkeeper at the pub what happened, and Mrs. Fairfax is explained away by a line from Rochester. In the film, Mrs. Fairfax finds Jane at the ruins and tells her what happened. I like this much better. But maybe that’s because I think Dame Judi Dench is the bomb and I loved seeing her show up again.

I found special pleasure in seeing this movie with a crowd.  It was pretty clear that many folks in the theater either hadn’t read the book or hadn’t read it recently. I heard murmurs and giggles during certain key dialogues that came straight out of the book, and one of my favorite moments was when Jane returns to Thornfield and the camera pulls back to reveal the damage.  Audible gasps from the crowd. Loved that.

This is all to say that the film did get some things right. Unfortunately, on the whole, the film was weak. I think it assumed that the audience would have read the book, and tried to fit in pieces from every storyline without actually developing any of them. Where the book had time and space to follow these story lines carefully and develop some delicious tension between Jane and Rochester, Jane and Blanche Ingram, and Jane and St. John, the film just flitted from one snapshot to another without finishing a thought. I wish someone had suggested to the filmmakers, “You don’t have to cover everything in the book.  Leave out the whole childhood, for example, and make the relationship  between Jane and Rochester stronger.” With such a great Rochester, I feel cheated that we didn’t get the gypsy fortune teller scene, or the duet between Rochester and Blanche. In fact, we only see Blanche for maybe 5 minutes? No jealous tension whatsoever.

The filmmakers also seemed to be scared of scaring us. The novel of Jane Eyre has plenty of creepy bits, and to leave those out is to deprive the story of half its identity.  The movie weakened everything that should have been spooky —  the red room at Gateshead was not actually red or dark or gloomy or haunted in any way whatsoever. We never hear a single crazy laugh at Thornfield, just the occasional thump on the floor upstairs. We don’t get crazy Bertha ripping up Jane’s bridal veil. Rochester has both his hands at the end.  Why soften it so much? Why hold back on these parts?

Overall, I guess I have to give it a B for effort. It was beautiful to watch.  If you see it without reading the book, I’d love to hear whether or not it made any sense to you. For me the film, like its Jane, needed to be much bolder.

“Sit still and come back to the breath. Center your attention in the rhythm of sensations that make up the act of breathing. Let the agitated mind settle, then expand your awareness to include the rest of the body. With calm alertness gradually increase the field of awareness until you encompass the totality of your experience in this moment: what you hear, see, smell, taste, and touch, as well as the thoughts and emotions that arise and fade in your mind.”  (p. 69)

Meditation is one of those things, like painting, that I really, really hope I learn to do someday but at this point in my life such activities require a focus and patience that I do not seem to possess.  Not that I’m giving up hope!  In fact, I have tried a couple of Batchelor’s little meditations and actually found them very helpful.

Which brings me to the second book I’m reading right now — An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin.  I won’t go into whether it’s a good book or not, I’ll just say this: I love this book so far.  I love how Martin writes about looking at art, wanting to own art.  I have re-read this one paragraph several times already:

“… paintings are layered… first, ephemera and notations on the back of the canvas. Labels indicate gallery shows, museum shows, footprints in the snow, so to speak. Then pencil scribbles on the stretcher, usually by the artist, usually a title or date. Next the stretcher itself. Pine or something. Wooden triangles in the corners so the picture can be tapped tighter when the canvas becomes loose. Nails in the wood securing the picture to the stretcher. Next, a canvas: linen, muslin, sometimes a panel; then the gesso – a primary coat, always white. A layer of underpaint, usually a pastel color, then, the miracle, where the secrets are: the paint itself, swished around, roughly, gently, layer on layer, thick or thin, not more than a quarter of an inch ever — God can happen in that quarter of an inch — the occasional brush hair left embedded, colors mixed over each other, tones showing through, sometimes the weave of the linen revealing itself. The signature on top of the entire goulash. Then varnish is swabbed over the whole. Finally, the frame, translucent gilt or carved wood. The whole thing is done.” (p. 81)

The same day I read this beautiful passage, the Husband and I went to our local art museum to see a show that just opened – Andrew Langoussis: What Was, Is, and Will Be.  I was stopped in my tracks by paintings as tall as me like this:

And especially this:

(you are hereby encouraged to click through and look at the large size image…)

And as we wandered through the gallery, I realized that taking in images like these was the closest I came to meditation.  Perhaps that’s why the passage from Steve Martin’s book stood out for me so much — it captures something of the viewing process, viewing experience.  And if you look back and compare the quote from Batchelor with the quote from Martin, you might see a sort of parallel in the way each writer walks the reader through a series of layers in awareness.

“This moment was a secret among the Avery, the Scotch, and Lacey, and she saw clearly something that had eluded her in her two years in the art business. In a few minutes of unexpected communion, she understood why people wanted to own these things.” (p. 57, An Object of Beauty)

The last time I specifically remember being enthralled with a painting like this was when Marty Maehr had some pieces up in a little gallery in downtown Urbana.  I love the splash of his colors and shapes.  How could I think about everyday distractions when following lines like these?

So even though I was very tempted to immediately jump into the sequel to the space traveling Jesuit story, I did myself a favor and picked up Haroun and the Sea of Stories.  I had heard about this book at the ALA Conference this past summer in D.C. when I had the great privilege of seeing Salman Rushdie at an author talk.  He was charming and intelligent, and his story about the beginnings of this book had me hooked.

This is a children’s book with some obvious, but playful, political messages.  Rushdie wrote this just after the fatwa against his life was announced, wondering each day if he would see his son again, to whom the book is dedicated.  So we get greasy politicians, evil tyrants, and egotistical princes.  We also get some absolutely delightful bits — like the chapter headings: The Shah of Blah, An Iff and a Butt, and a wonderful nod to Beatles’ lyrics.

My timing in reading this book was good and bad.  Bad – the pace and humor of a children’s book felt kind of jarring when I was in the middle of a stressful, high-stakes work week.  Good – the pace and humor of a children’s book jarred me out of thinking about the stressful, high-stakes work week … for a few minutes at a time, at least.

I also had to rethink my reading style for this book.  See, I’m anal.  I know it.  I admit it.  I use folded sheets of paper as bookmarks so I can take notes while reading, and I even do this with fiction books.  It’s a habit I developed after reading Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Educated Mind (very highly recommended as a book to own).  I have a 3-ring binder full of old book notes from pre-grad school, and now a nice thick manilla folder of book notes post-grad school.  But children’s books do not lend themselves to taking notes, at least not for me.  I tried taking basic fiction notes at the beginning of the book — things like characters and place names — but finally I just put the pen down and read the book for the sake of reading.  Pleasure reading.  Personal pleasure reading.

This truly is the work of a storyteller.  Sure, it might not be the best story in the world, or the most developed characters, or strongest plot, but it’s not supposed to be.  This is a book that was meant to be read aloud at night to children, or read aloud to anyone who needs a distraction.  And if you feel like being anal about it, well, read the short glossary at the end about the names in the book and then get on with the story.

“Believe in your own eyes and you’ll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess…”   — Iff, the Water Genie (p. 63)

Once again, all my worlds colliding in interesting ways this week.  For starters, I got Mark watching Doctor Who — he’s working his way through Season 4 with Doctor David Tennant on Netflix Streaming, and whenever the red envelopes show up, we slowly work our way through Season 5 with Doctor Matt Smith.

What the heck could this possibly have to do with Delicious.com and Commonplace Books, you ask?  Excellent question. Here goes…

In the Season 5 episode “The Time of Angels” River Song reappears with her intriguing blue TARDIS book, which basically serves as her commonplace book of all things Doctor-related.  But I didn’t think of it as her commonplace book till I saw some tweets coming out of THATcamp about digitizing them, plus Amanda Watson’s Ngram comparing commonplace books to scrapbooks. On top of all this, I’m reading Steven Johnson’s new book Where Good Ideas Come From (*highly* recommended) and I just came to the part in chapter 3 where he talks about the magic of commonplace books, particularly in regards to Darwin, who wrote copious notes and re-read them later to compare with other notes.

So with my brain churning around questions about commonplace books, a seemingly unrelated event happens — rumors spin out of control about my beloved bookmarking site Delicious.com riding off into the dot.com horizon, and suddenly I (and thousands of other people) start really thinking about where to keep our treasure troves of both useful and forgotten links (I’m toying with both Diigo and Pinboard, for what it’s worth…).

But then tonight I came back to Steven Johnson, where I’m still in the middle of musings about commonplace books – especially John Locke’s system of indexing his books and the Enlightenment habit of treating text as a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, here-and-there kind of thing.  And I realized that these commonplace books proved invaluable to their writer-owners because they held everything … reading notes, letter drafts, observations, recipes … sound familiar?  How many times have you tried to devise a Thing To Hold All Thoughts for yourself?  Be it a filing system, a gadget, a piece of software, or a website — many of us are constantly waging this battle to reinvent the commonplace book in a digital age.

I realized that I don’t need a Delicious replacement.  I need a whole bloody completely different way of doing things.  What can serve as my commonplace book?  My home laptop…? My Evernote account …?  Do I go back to paper journals…?  Right now I have ideas and snippets and quotes scattered across all of these places, which means I have a hard time finding that one recipe I’m thinking of or that one short story I have another idea for. So the good news for me is – Delicious and Yahoo aren’t the problems at all. The bad news is – I need to think about a much bigger picture and do my future self a favor by making up my mind and condensing my workflows.

Speaking of the future … a bit ironic that River Song is still using good old paper as her commonplace book centuries from now, isn’t it? *

*Yes, I know it’s fiction, silly.  But I also know the writers can dream up things like sonic screwdrivers and time-eating stone angels, yet they still trust memories to paper.  I find that very, very interesting.

It was a little chilly that day, but we would fly with the doors open, we wanted to help make his wish come true. He wanted to be a helicopter pilot when he grew up, he wanted to experience what we did daily yet we took it for granted. When we strapped Tommy into the helicopter the sun was shining, it was an early fall day in Rapid City, South Dakota. Tommy was only twelve years old, but he looked so mature for someone of his age. Tommy had already lived a lifetime of pain. Yet he had such a good attitude – he smiled even though you could see the pain in his eyes. He had an ashen gray appearance, you see Tommy had leukemia.

As we prepared to take off Tommy’s nose started to bleed, we almost thought we weren’t going to be able to fly him. He was a little weak but with a tissue and a cotton ball, he was good to go. We were on a “Make a Wish” mission. Tommy had requested to fly in a US Air Force helicopter and see his family farm from the air. This was the farm his grandfather had started and passed on to his dad. It would have been Tommy’s some day; at least that was the plan. As we ran the check list and started the engine on our single engine Huey, Tommy’s eyes were filled with excitement, our Flight Engineer kept a close watch on him and we made sure he could talk to us. Tommy wore a standard Air Force Flight Suit and aviators flying helmet that engulfed his head. He had on Nomex flight gloves under the Velcro of the flight suit sleeves.

As we lifted off, a huge grin came to Tommy’s face; the first step of a dream came through. You almost feel weightless as the helicopter is hovering just a few feet above the ground. We were cleared by tower to hover taxi. We performed our last pre-takeoff check list, were cleared for a west departure, pulled collective, pushed forward on the cyclic, a touch of right rotor petal and wop, wop, wop wop, we were on our way. Some people say helicopters don’t fly; they beat the air into submission. We arrived at our cruising altitude of 1000 feet and headed toward Tommy’s farm. We chatted with Tommy, mostly small talk; we offered to answer any questions he might have about flying or the helicopter. Tommy didn’t seem to want to talk much, just absorb the experience like someone slowly enjoying a much desired meal.

As we reached the family farm, there were two houses, a barn, and a fenced area with horses. One of the horses was Tommy’s he used to ride him every day.  As we descended to 300 feet and flew a racetrack pattern around the farm, Tommy’s Grandfather and Grandmother came out and waved and waved. His Grandmother looked like so many you would expect to see, she had on an apron and cotton dress, his grandfather had on his overalls, both were smiling and waving at Tommy. That was the happiest we had seen Tommy the whole flight. His parents had also come out in the yard along with his dog and followed the helicopter by turning this way and that so they could keep eye contact with Tommy. We made several passes as Tommy waved and explained to us some of the important features of the farm, his horse and dog.

It was bitter sweet when we landed and Tommy unstrapped from the helicopter, he was able to realize a dream. He gave us far more than we gave him, it has been over 20 years and I still remember the experience, the patient consideration Tommy demonstrated, the look in his eyes and the optimism as he talked about the future. Two weeks following this flight, Tommy went on to be with the Lord.

– by Faron Thompson, December 2010

Thank you, Dad.

I have a long-standing love/hate relationship with Christmas.  I prefer to celebrate the Winter Solstice instead and I wish I could ignore the whole gift-obsessed culture of the holiday season all together.  At the same time, I end up getting a new holiday CD every year, I love it when people wear Christmas hats to work, and I think decorating for the season is way super fun.

Over the past few years I’ve been struggling to come up with my own holiday customs and rituals.  This is the first year Mark and I will spend the holidays together as a married couple and now I feel the setting of traditions to be even more important.

Recently I met someone who gave me a wonderful idea.  A retired schoolteacher is meeting with Mark once a week for a writing group.  She’s an incredible, sharp-as-a-tack woman.  The writing she brings each week is short stories — often true stories from her own experiences.  Some of these she hopes to develop into a children’s book, others are simply stories to pass down to her grown kids and their kids.

Think about that.  Stories to pass down.  Real life, this-happened-to-me stories.  Do you know how your parents met?  Do you know how your mom/dad broke a leg at 10 years old?  Do you remember when you first learned the truth about Santa?

We lose so many stories, and yet there is such a wealth of incredible, personal stories out there in our families, among our own friends. How awesome would it be if we exchanged short stories this year in lieu of store-bought gifts?  I would be THRILLED if someone gave me a story.  It’s a beautifully satisfying gift on all kinds of levels — the obsessive collector, the curious busy body, the affectionate relative, or the estranged long-distance friend.

In a way, that’s what people were doing with the old custom of holiday family newsletters.  A friend of mine used to write us all a poem at the end of each year that summed up her adventures for the past 12 months … and it usually rhymed!  I’ve already asked my parents to just give me a story – any story – for Christmas this year.

Sure, writing a story is harder than just picking up something at a store … or is it?  I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to sit at home, looking out the window, composing a little memory on my computer than go outside in the cold, drive through slushy crazy traffic to a crowded store or mall, and figure out which knick-knack will not be completely useless to the gift recipient.

My only regret is that I didn’t start asking for stories sooner.

On my original 12 Books, 12 Months blog post (http://epist.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/latecomer-to-12-books-12-months/), I listed out the Connie Willis related books as such:

1. - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, 1992
2. - Three Men in a Boat, to say nothing of the dog by Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
3. - To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, 1998
4. - Black Out by Connie Willis, 2010
5. - All Clear by Connie Willis, 2010

Here’s the gist of this series:  It’s the year 2057, time travel has been invented but only the history departments of major universities even bother with it since the money holders found out they can’t steal things from the past (no really, they physically cannot remove objects from the past, no matter how hard they try).  I don’t recall any of the historians trying to visit the future, but then … all the time travelers are historians, not futurists. Most of the stories focus on visitng England in World War II.  Doomsday Book, however, is focused on the Black Plague, and To Say Nothing of the Dog (TSND) centers around 1888 – Victorian times.

But in my 12 Books 12 Months list, I forgot about the story that started it all — Fire Watch, from the 1984 short story collection of the same name.  So I read that first and I’m very glad I did.  Even though this story was published first, the events in it actually take place *after* the events in Doomsday Book, which came out in 1992. Fire Watch is a good place to start not only because it’s the first story in the series, but because it takes the reader right into the heart of Willis’ style.  Our hero is a PhD student in history who has to do “field work” in London, England during the Blitz.  He is stationed at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Have you ever seen war ruins? Have you visited a church or a school that has remained in shambles for decades as a reminder of how stupid war can be?  I visited such a church in Stuttgart, Germany while I was a freshman in college.  The roof was gone, the windows were empty eye sockets.  There were large laminated black and white photographs around the ruins showing what it looked like before the war.  It was beautiful.  Even as a heathen atheist, I could see how beautiful and special this place was.  And it was dead now. Fire Watch reminded me of that church and then it showed me what it would have been like to be there when it happened.  Bombs, incendiaries, fires, and more bombs.  The Fire Watch was the group of volunteers who stood guard at the cathedral and tried to put out as many fires and incendiaries as they could, often getting killed in the process.

Strange as it may sound, this novella set in World War II reminded me how painful it had been to read Doomsday Book set in 1348 the first time.  So I decided not to read it again after all.  Doomsday is a very good book — historical fiction done as historical fiction should be, but man, was history depressing sometimes.  I don’t remember the story very well, but I remember crying at least once. I don’t want to be depressed when the days are getting shorter and the weather colder so I moved on to Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K. Jerome – a comedy travelogue about three chums taking holiday on the Thames in a pleasant English June.

But first I will tell you about the book that got me here.  I first read To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis when I was a sophomore in college.  I found it on a “take one, leave one” shelf at the college library and completely fell in love with it.  I was a history major with crazy, delightfully eccentric history professors, and the book seemed to be made specifically for me.  One of my requirements of an excellent book is that it leads me on to other excellent books.  In the 10ish years since I first read it, I have worked my way through some of the other classics that it introduced me to — The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, the Sherlock Holmes canon, and – of course – Three Men in a Boat.  My re-read this time around has given me more to look up that I forgot about — Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and Dorothy Sayers’ mystery novels.

Call me a heretic, but I actually think the Connie Willis sci-fi is a far better book than the Victorian classic.  I did enjoy Jerome’s anecdotes and (some of) his tangents into English history and sentimental descriptions.  I have to admit that the Victorian elements of TSND made a LOT more sense after reading Jerome.  My advice would be to skim through Jerome’s book (it is free out on Gutenberg and FeedBooks) and get the taste of Victorian flourish and a dose of good humor before traveling through time with Willis.

Willis definitely has her own sense of humor and uses it very well in TSND — especially where dogs and cats are concerned.  I also love that sci-fi in this instance is not about the gadgetry but more about theory and thought puzzles.  In TSND, the thought puzzle revolves around time, paradox, and whether or not history can “correct” itself.  I won’t go more into it because I would just confuse us both, trust me.

Also, she doesn’t simply quote from other works, she weaves them into the texture of the story.  One of her characters uses examples from Agatha Christie’s Poirot to try and solve a problem, and another character relies almost entirely on Tennyson’s poetry for everything he says.

TSND cries out to be a hyperlink novel. Unfortunately, the ebook edition available on Amazon is pathetic.  Granted, I only looked at the sample chapter, but the format of the chapter headings was ghastly and it did not include any table of contents.  Why?  Why would you not have something as basic as a table of contents for an ebook?  I read the entire Jerome book in the Kindle app on an iPad and it had the same problems – no table of contents and clumsy formatting in the text.  Being able to quickly look up obscure Victorian terms by simply tapping made the reading much easier, though. I realized that my experience in reading these books now is very different than it was ten years ago thanks to the online search tools that I keep close at hand.  I first read TSND around 1999.  Google Images and Wikipedia didn’t come out till 2001 – which I used this time to find what the heck a penwiper is supposed to look like and to follow the route along the Thames.