The Glasses for It

Teddy Roosevelt apparently suggested, and not so subtly bragged, that he tried to read at least two books a day.  Pamphlets, sure.  Novels, maybe.  But do that and have time to run the country?  Pre-Evlyn Wood, one wonders just how deeply Theodore read.  He had the brio.  He had the glasses for it.  There were no radios, nor televisions, nor internet nor phones.  Perhaps it was simply how he spent multiple hours every day. 

I read more than two books today.  They weren’t pamphlets.  Two were collections of short stories, by Etgar Keret, two-hundred pages and one-hundred-and-sixty pages long, respectively.   I was coming off of having read two books the day before as well and this morning I finished off the second half of yet another novel, I’d particularly enjoyed: “Let It Be Morning” by Sayed Kashua.  Before it I had read “The Inheritance” by Sahar Khalifeh and “Men in the Sun” by Ghassan Kannafani and the first of the Palestinian works I’d considered a collection of poems, by Mahmoud Darwish.  I’m off to Israel tomorrow afternoon and I’m gobbling up many things in preparation. 

Presently it’s the somewhat autobiographical reflection by of kibbutz life by Meir Shalev “My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner.”  More than halfway through I’m hoping it will take off soon.  Yes, I have a number more ready to imbibe once the Shalev is through.  None of these is more than three-hundred pages long.  A more imposing offering is by Israel’s Nobel Laureate: S.Y. Agnon ‘s “Only Yesterday.”  That looks like it will command an entire trans-Atlantic air flight and then some.

My wife and I were dueling.  I drew her attention to the beautiful, human-like call of an owl out in the trees, beyond our home’s lot.  “You see, that’s not a coyote.”  I convinced her to play some coyote call’s on Youtube.  “There.  It’s clear.  That is definitely not a coyote. “And it wasn’t.  She agreed.  “Play the call of a “Great Horned Owl.” She did and to be fair, that too was different from what we’d heard.  “Um, try “owls of New York.”  We listened to a few other owls and they all sounded a bit different.  And after a few it was difficult to say just what the call we’d heard really sounded like anymore.  I’d heard too many.  She remained unconvinced.  Our research, inconclusive.  Very unsatisfying. 

Monday 02/03/20