Living sans TV no disaster
Poor me! I'm living without TV. I'm getting a lot of reading done, though, so it's OK, I guess. To explain, there was no room in my car, mov here from Arkansas City, recently, so the old TV set had to be left behind, in storage.
And I was unable to go and get it this past weekend. Perhaps this weekend. The few shows I really miss are "24," "Six Feet Under," "That 70s Show" and "Everybody Loves Raymond."
And the news, both at 5 and 5:30 p.m. State, local and national. So, I'll have to retrieve my 22-year-old set (it's been repaired a couple of major times, but still "works good") one of these days.
Without the "idiot box," as some call it, I finished (reading) "The Dante Club," by Matthew Pearl, a great book, last Wednesday. It's a "literary murder mystery" about a series of ghastly murders, based on Dantean themes of revenge and retribution.
Major characters, besides the suspects, are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell. and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.. and various luminaries of the publishing profession who really did exist in 19th-century Boston-Cambridge, Mass., also populate Pearl's first novel.
It's a creepy, crawly, horrible, wonderful, suspenseful read.
Pearl, who is about 28, has a bachelor's degree in English and American literature from Harvard and a law degree from Harvard Law as well. He is also a recognized expert scholar on the works of Dante, the 13th-century Italian author of "The Divine Comedy."
Set in 1865, it has a lot to say about race, racism and the Civil War, too.
Still in "moving mode," not knowing what's in what box or sack, I picked up (from my living room floor) "Street Kingdom" by Douglas Century for my next leisure-time read. (I got it, a $25 book, for $1.50 at a Barnes & Noble clearance sale.)
It's subtitled "Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse." A non-fiction tome about "race, rap and violence," as author Leonard Kriegel called the book in praising it.
Ark City has a very nice library, for a city of about 13,000, although a 19-year-old intern from Canon City, Colo., who worked for The Ark City Traveler for a while last year, did not think much of it. I guess he was spoiled by big-city Colorado libraries.
But they say the Marion Library is terrific. I'm going over there soon!
I was looking at the Marion listings in the telephone directory last Wednesday afternoon, for fun, to see if anyone I knew was here. I came upon the name "Goering John Rev & Beverly."
I know this guy, I said to myself. About a half-hour later, he came into the Record office to say "hi."
John was a coach and industrial arts teacher "way back when" at Ransom, when I was in high school. He coached football, basketball, and track, besides all those teaching duties.
He was a really good teacher, I know, even though I didn't take any of his courses. His students perpetually won lots of prizes for their creations.
But he was my coach, in basketball. And a good guy. Until Wednesday, I had not seen him, I don't think, in 36 years!
— JERRY BUXTON
