Three Beautiful Things 09-24-2026: Gibbs Gets Groomed, Mortality, Take an Interest

 1. I picked up a clean and spiffed up Gibbs from the groomer today. 

2. I don't know much about post-apocalyptic fiction (or movies). But reading The Dog Stars and the thoughts the main character Hig has about his life before the book's pandemic struck and about his life now with few people left in the world is making me think that having a keen sense of our mortality inspires us to self-examine, determine what in life matters most to us, and do the best we can to love others. 

3.  Debbie and I had a long conversation this evening about the variety of books we've read over the past several months, how joining the Science/Nature book club has helped shape some of our reading and the questions we ask of ourselves and about the world, and how we read and think about books. So has attending Northwest Passages evenings in Spokane. 

I thought back to all those years I taught English and how I tried to impress on students the fact that an important aspect of an education is learning now to take an interest in subjects and ideas. Often students would resist essays or books I assigned, telling me they weren't interested in what the book/essay was about. I would respond, "Try taking an interest." Why? I thought an education was about expansion. 

Well, in my retirement (it's been twelve years since I last taught a class), I'm following my own instruction and have taken an interest in new things:  empty lots in Austin, TX, rivers in Ecuador, India, and Canada, how plants satisfy our desire for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, the history of mosquitos, the long history of Earth's moon, discovering species of birds, the medicinal qualities of plants, a fictional world of hunting for lost pianos in the Arctic, Josh Brolin's memoir, and more. 

I do my best to put aside the question of whether I like a book and focus more on these questions:  What is the nature of the world of this book? What is the writer inviting me to learn about this world? Is this book changing how I experience and understand the world I perceive myself to live in? 

All of the books I've referred to in this post have taken me into unfamiliar worlds and have changed how I experience and understand things. 

Talking about this stuff with Debbie was a terrific way to bring an end to our day.