Monthly Archives: August 2021

About Tuesdays with Morrie

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I’m re-reading Tuesdays with Morrie right now. I have a few more pages to go but I feel I can write about it because a) I’ve read it before; and b) anybody can figure out how it ends. So no spoilers here: Morrie dies in the end.

Tuesdays with Morrie is part of my (Death or) Near Death Collection. This book is shelved, if not physically on my bookshelf (because remember I did that color thing with my bookshelves), in my head along with When Breath Becomes Air and The Last Lecture. All three of these books deal with the imminence of death and what we can learn from it.

Death is not really a subject I shy away from. Just yesterday, I went for coffee with an older friend and we talked about how we both aren’t drinking as much coffee anymore but choosing to really enjoy the ones we have left in our lifetime caffeine budget. I fully embrace the concept that Neil Pasricha explores on his 3 Books podcast: we only live for about 1000 months, so let’s read the best 1000 books out there. And my husband and I religiously watch and read murder mysteries together: right now it’s Criminal Minds at supper and Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache Series before bed.

It was on this very day that I’m publishing this blog post 37 years ago that I was first confronted with the complete unreasonableness of death when an 18-year old friend – the most popular girl in school with all of her unlived life ahead of her – was killed in a car accident. Everything stopped. Every moment I had had with her, I tried desperately to remember. Every waking moment was pain and fear at the thought of death cutting short such a vibrant living person. I was acutely aware that It Could Have Been Me.

It’s that imminence that Morrie wanted his audience to whom Mitch Albom was writing to keep in mind. Morrie had learned the lesson early – by nature of just being a very thoughtful person – that money and ambition aren’t the things that matter in the end. Although I chuckle at the Joan Rivers’ line, “People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made,” – I suspect that Morrie is the one who is right and that even Joan knew it, too. Everyone knows that money can buy you a nice car, a big house and a lot of pizza, but in the end, Morrie could no longer drive, he lived in his wheelchair and he could no longer eat solid food. It’s not a great advertisement for a book, but the gold is there, demonstrated firsthand between the author Mitch and his old professor, Morrie, who meet on Tuesdays so Morrie could teach his last class. His thesis? That the real riches in life is relationship, for however long that might be. And Morrie lived that way, long before Life had sent him an eviction notice.

Don’t wait till you’re old to stop caring about the things that don’t matter and to start caring about the things that do.

About Why I Keep Blogging

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Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

It’s nearly birthday time for me and since I started this blog on my birthday two years ago, it’s time for my annual checkup: How’s the blog doing? Am I still enjoying it? And maybe, most important: Do I keep going? Or in a paraphrase of Dr. Phil: How’s it working for me? Although I’ve had the occasional blank mind in the last year when it came time to write my post of the week (resulting in one of my Throwback Thursdays) I would have to say that the blog IS working for me. Or maybe I’m working for it. Either way, the writing is getting done.

I will keep blogging because it’s good for me. The every-week self-imposed deadline makes me write AT LEAST one blog post a week. I am trying hard to establish a healthy writing habit but the daily-ness escapes me. I’m working up to it. The blog lets me say, “Yes, I’m still writing!”

I will keep blogging because I believe in the written record. It makes me unreasonably happy when I read something I wrote twenty years ago that I would probably never remember if I hadn’t written it down. It’s why I keep writing erratically in several journals at a time and keep ridiculous notes on my computer. It all might come in handy someday, even if it’s just to reminisce when I’m one hundred years old, at the tail end of my journey of a century.

I will keep blogging because it keeps the pump primed. I’m working on a book and as I said before, sometimes it’s hard to get my writing in. While it may seem counterintuitive to write something else when I should be working on a chapter, the blog keeps me honest. It legitimizes my desire: I write, therefore I am a writer. Therefore, I should be able to write a book. Whether or not I ever get it published, I have to keep going because it’s in me and it wants to get out. I just need to trust the process that all this “extra writing” is part of the process not unlike the gardener who plants an extra zucchini seed or the photographer who takes a thousand pictures to get “the one” or Connor McDavid who just keeps practicing every single day.

I’m thinking in the next little while this blog may evolve a little. I might narrow my focus, I might spend a little more time on the bones and the makeup and make it look a little different. It’s worth spending the time on it because it gives so much back to me.

I will keep blogging.

About the Heat

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Photo by Laura Rivera on Unsplash

So, how about that heat, eh?

It’s been a record-breaking kind of summer when it comes to unusually hot days, not only here in Alberta, but all over the place, really. At the beginning of July when the forecast continually over-delivered on daily temperatures, it was easy to say, “Oh, that’s nice – we finally get a hot summer.” And by summer, we usually mean “about two weeks”.

But here it is August and the other day I heard myself saying to my husband, “Geez, it’s only gonna get to 18 today.” Which goes to show how quickly one can become acclimated to something. Not that I particularly love the hot temperatures. Or the dead grass, the abundance of grasshoppers or the sad looking crops in the fields.

In fact, the lack of rain has made me wonder if we’re entering another Dust Bowl Era. Thankfully, we have had a couple of half-decent rains in the last couple of weeks. It had been so long that when we heard the rain from the basement (where we regularly go to escape the late day heat), we ran upstairs and opened up the blind on the big picture window and just watched that like the latest episode of Planet Earth. If you shut your eyes and listened carefully, you could hear commentary from David Attenborough.

Not that I’m complaining about any of it. I mean really, it’s weather. Whatchagonnadoaboutit? We just deal with it by seeking out cold basements and air-conditioned stores for respite. Or we buy snow blowers and fuzzy slippers and snuggle in. The view outside the front window is always changing.

The forecast says it’s gonna be hot again this weekend. And that’s just gonna be alright.

About 3 Books

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Lately, all my conversations are interspersed with me saying: “On that great new podcast I discovered, I just listened to an interview with (fill in the blank with the name of a person who just discussed the very thing we are talking about.)” Or not. As a friend of ours says when she wants to change the topic at hand: “Speaking of something completely unrelated…”

You see, I get a lot of input from the outside world via podcasts these days. And not necessarily new ones either. I know some people who shake their head sadly at me when I demonstrate complete ignorance at what is going on in the world on a daily basis. But if I fall in love with a podcast, I will happily go back two, three, four years into the catalog and “catch up”.

I was thinking about my podcast history recently – basically trying to remember when I started downloading and binging. It was definitely over ten years ago when my sister-in-law and I discovered an iTunes show about – wait for it – scrapbooking. But I always listened to the shows on my computer and it was painful waiting week to week for the new episode, because there was “nothing to listen to” in between. It wasn’t until I got an iPhone that I figured out how to listen to more “iPod broadcasts” – hence podcasts – on the go and that’s when I discovered This American Life. And then the whole syncing with the car radio thing happened and voila! Here we are in 2021 with the serious problem of hundreds of podcasts and thousands of episodes to choose from. And I’m sure I’m being conservative.

That tidbit about where podcasts got their name? I just heard it on this great new podcast I discovered. It’s funny, because I’m actually kind resistant to adding new podcasts to my repertoire because I have my favorites and keeping up with all those episodes can be hard enough. Chances are you’ve heard of Neil Pasricha before – he started a blog counting down 1000 Awesome Things which then was turned into The Book of Awesome. And all that was to counteract some bad juju that happened in his life. I was intrigued by this approach which I first heard about when he was interviewed on another one of my favorite podcasts What Should I Read Next? which is “dedicated to the answer that plagues every reader” what they should read next. Which I was ALSO resistant to listening to until she was endorsed on yet ANOTHER one of my favorite podcasts – basically it’s the Faberge Organics Shampoo commercial for how I got here: “…and you tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on…”

What’s great about 3 Books with Neil Pasricha is 1. It’s about books. (Hello?) 2. He has really AWESOME guests (see what I did there?) and 3. He’s Canadian – which is just always a cool thing to be. The whole schtick that Neil promotes is to interview his guests about their three most formative books – in a somewhat personal quest for him to read the 1000 best books on the planet before his thousand months is up – the average lifespan for us humans. He touts it as “the world’s only podcast by and for book lovers, writers, makers, sellers… and librarians.”

I think what I like so much about this particular show is the conversations (not interviews). Neil flies in to wherever each guest is located (Key West to talk to Judy Blume, San Diego for Frank Warren, New York to meet up with Mitch Albom) and they have a real sit-down-and-chat with the actual three books in their hands. Listening to Angie Thomas talk about reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Tupac Shakur’s The Rose That Grew From Concrete demonstrates a pretty straight through-line to her novel The Hate You Give. And I love sitting in on conversations and getting writing advice from the likes of Dave Barry and Tim Urban. Awesome.

Occasionally, one of those great guests has a great podcast, too. Sigh. I still have a couple years worth of 3 Books to go. I know I don’t have to listen to ALL the pods or read ALL the books. But I can just enjoy one conversation at time about 3 Great Books.