KINDLE AND REASONS TO HOPE

During Christmas-time in Williamsburg, my mind was brimming with blog ideas , a process which continued when I got home. But so many things intervened that I’ve pretty much forgotten what I wanted to say. Oh my, what precious gems may have been lost! Or maybe what icky dross you may have been spared.

At any rate, I’ll plunge in. I received a Kindle for Christmas. My family will tell you that my initial reaction was not enthusiastic. They could read my thoughts, “Oh my, why did they get me this. It doesn’t suit my way of reading, marking places in the book with sticky arrows and later using them as guides to type book notes into my computer. Now I’ll be holding a mechanical device which won’t accept sticky arrows.” And then I studied my new Kindle, and I love it. I don’t need sticky arrows, because I can just highlight interesting places – the ones that would have had the honor of a sticky – and the highlighted piece stays in my Kindle. Not only that, I can adjust the font. The fact is, given any ordinary publication, I can read it fine, but my eyes tend to get heavy and I get drowsy. With the larger font, that doesn’t happen. Hooray! And then the magical fact that I can order a book for $9.99 and as soon as I place my order, it’s on my Kindle, ready to read. My first order was for Greg Mortensen’s “Stones into Schools.” More on that later. My second order was based on Lisa’s recommendation, “Autobiography of a Yogi.” That was only $0.99, and in the search process I discovered that, if I wanted to, I could get Sherlock Holmes for $0.00. Yup! For nothing. Marketing …

Just for the fun of it I looked on the list of available books for my “Mrs. Job.” She wasn’t there. I knew there was an ISBN number for it as an e-book, so I contacted the powers that be at iUniverse and found I could get it listed for a $99.00 fee. I didn’t do that.

As for Greg Mortensen’s book – How happy I am that it was written and that I read it. What a beautiful example of fighting a war through waging education, and in the process responding to people’s real needs – not the ones we think they should have. I was also thrilled to discover that our military leaders were making “Three Cups of Tea” required reading for our troops. Sometimes I find reason to be hopeful.

The lesson is, I guess, if you can get someone else to pay for it, you can acquire books for lots less. I haven’t yet tried audio books, but it’s supposed to work.

And now I’m home, wearing my tire-tread shoes for the first time in several years. Bumpy ice is everywhere, and there’s no sign that Mrs. Job will hit the best-seller list so I can winter in Newtown in Williamsburg. But then, it was cold there too. I was fortunate flying on December 20 when Washington D.C. and other places were completely closed down because of the snow. My layover was in Atlanta – no visible snow – with ultimate arrival at Newport News – no measurable snow there either. Not like the arrival in Richmond that same day for Doug and KJ returning from the Galapagos. With nothing but their bare hands they had to dig their car out from under the snow. It didn’t seem to bother them much, though. The Galapagos trip is, apparently, magnificently worth any pain encountered on the return.

In Williamsburg, I gave a copy of Mrs. Job to Lisa’s neighbor, basically trapping her into reading it. I learned something from her reaction. She said she loved it, but she’d been scared to read it, ‘cause she thought it would be difficult academic stuff. So now I have to make sure that people know that it’s an easy-to-read love story.

The major thoughts today, after all this stuff I’ve been talking about, are for the folks in Haiti. The destruction is horrible, as is the aftermath. But I’m particularly horrified learning the history of why Haiti is such a poor country. Two factors stand out for me: (1) that the French basically raped the land way back when it was under their control, and (2) that the rebellion of the slaves, setting themselves free and driving the conquerors out, was met with boycotting by the major countries, including the U.S., who still held slaves and wanted not to support slave rebellions. Feel free to Google it and check out what I’ve said here. I hope something positive will come out of this awful event -- like the world pitching in to help the Haitians develop the kind of country and government they want.

I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t remember all the things I wanted to write about, because you must be suffering eye strain by now. Sorry …