2018 Summer September 10 Monday

2018 Summer September 10 Monday

58 degrees this morning, walk 34:35 minutes, 97% humidity.

Obviously cool walk this morning.  For the first time in a long time I wore a neck/mouth warmer and a warm (although light)  hat pull-over.  May have been overkill, but it felt good.  

While I was walking i hated to think that soon 58 degrees will be considered “warm”!    Of course three will be some more hot weather before the really cold weather arrives.  

Pace was 16 seconds slower than my goal.  

Start of another work week, a five day one this time!  Overall good weekend, could have used another day!  

The Sunday paper yesterday had a “State Fair” brochure, which basically means that Fall weather is coming.  (For some reasons the normal “State Fair rain” came early this year.!)  

Actually, I just realized the Summer of 18 only has about another ten days, then Fall will start.  

Started doing part of my “Personal Strategic Plan” which is to read a bunch of “Cliff Notes” type book summaries I have.  Many of them are books I have read (currently “My Antonia”).  I want to see how I react to them after the passage of years and different experiences  and see how I interpret them or react to them.  

After I read the summaries, I may read some of the books again, but I literally don’t have time to read or res-read all the books I would like too.

I was surprised to think back and realize many of the books/plays I reacted to emotionally were plays or stage shows I saw, specifically “Death of a Salesman”, “the Glass Menagerie”, and “Streetcar Named Desire”.  

A lot of books impacted me. It would be hard to pick out just one, or even 10.  One, “Of Mice and Men” sticks out in my memory. I never have re-read it because it was so depressing. It doesn’t take long to read it, I was in college when I read it the first time, I need to read it again with with the perspective of my life.   

Of course, a lot of stories and short novels had a huge impact on me because I read my older brothers and sisters literature books (no tv, no computers etc. made for a lot of time to read!), probably numerous times.  

Some of them, I read years later and realized I completely misunderstood them since I didn’t have the life experience of knowledge to comprehend them.  One that really sticks in my mind is a short story (probably from a novel) about a future civilization where many roads are avoided since they are “poison” or words to that effect.  Of course it is a story set in the post-nuclear war era after the world is destroyed by nuclear war and all of the highways etc. are basically remnants of a past civilization.  I didn’t realize what the meaning of it was for years.  

This journal takes strange meanderings, I had no intention of writing about this when I sat down!  That is what makes it so rewarding and why I keep on doing it.

That’s it for now, Monday, September 10, 2018.