Thursday, July 24, 2014

Three Beautiful Things 07/23/14: Accident Anniversary, Modem Gone, Learning to Read

1.  On July 23, 1973, forty-one years ago today, at the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant in Kellogg, Idaho, I fell to the bottom of a flash roaster filled with sulfur dioxide gas and dust from zinc and other minerals and survived the accident.  I posted on Facebook that today was the anniversary of this accident and asked anyone who read the post that I would be raising a toast today to my good fortune that I'm still here and have lived so many years after coming so close to losing it all. For anyone reading this blog post, if this anniversary is news to you and if you happen to be having a drink today, whether it's water, an excellent beer, or anything else, please raise your glass toward where I live in Virginia, raise it to the sky, and say, "Cheers!" 

 I'll love that.

2.   I got a few more things taken care of involving our move from Eugene.  Ha!  Century Link doesn't want their old crappy modem/router back and I don't have to box it up and so I can get rid of it.  I don't know why that pleased me so much -- I guess getting rid of it is less hassle.

3. I drove north to Potomac Yards today and bought three novels:  The Moviegoer, Great Expectations, and Crime and Punishment.  I haven't been reading much and I have quite a bit of time to read these days and these are novels that I've always wanted to read, especially because I won't be reading them for professional reasons:  no thoughts about "how to teach them" or about literary criticism or theory or any of those m natters I've retired from.  I really want to learn how to read all over again, in a way, for its own sake, not for the sake of the profession I retired from.

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