"Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away"

 It's been a BRUTALLY cold week in Rochester, but that hasn't kept the boys inside. They go outside to play a game that they call "Lateral," which looks to be similar to what my brothers and I called "Kill the Carrier" when we were kids. I sit inside and watch them from my desk with hands at wildly different temperatures.

My hands are at different temperatures because the Library turns into an icebox when there is any kind of westerly wind up. One of my hands, tucked into my bathrobe, stays reasonably warm. My right hand, holding a pen and writing at my desk, is a block of ice.

It was so cold yesterday that when I went for a run in the morning I couldn't feel my feet as I ran through the snow on the sidewalk. I did notice that something on my left foot felt wet once I came inside. "That's odd," I thought "because these shoes are just a few weeks old and I don't think they have any holes yet." I found out when I took my sock off later that it was blood. I never felt my one toenail cutting open the neighboring toe because I didn't have any feeling in my foot at the time. (It hurt plenty afterwards.)

I had a look at the insulation on the original structure of our house when I was perched up on a ladder last summer, installing a vent fan above the bathroom. It turns out that there really isn't any insulation. There is a layer of aluminum siding that went on at some point in the 80s, and then there is the original cedar shake siding. And that's it. 

We haven't been completely remiss about weatherproofing over the years. When we were first in the house we qualified for a free New York State energy efficiency upgrade that basically paid for two contractors to seal every crevice in the basement with an ugly expanding spray-foam. I've caulked, sealed, and patched various windows and rotten wood spots over the years. And this fall I secured the two dryer vents on the western side of the house, discovering in the process that what stood between the vent opening and the inside of our house was...absolutely nothing. (A mouse or two also discovered that this fall, which was what led to the re-sealing. The mice subsequently discovered my mousetrap collection.)

None of this bothers James, who came downstairs this morning in a t-shirt and shorts. It was 9 degrees outside.

"Aren't you cold?"

"Not really."

And apparently he wasn't. I made him put on a coat before we got in the van, but he took it off once we were driving. 

"I'm too hot."

They do look pretty chilly by the time they come in from playing Lateral/Kill the Carrier/Tackle Each Other Into Snowbanks, but I sometimes wonder if this is just an act to plead for hot chocolate. (It's a good act. They always get hot chocolate.)

Next week is supposed to be a bit warmer--a balmy 20 degrees of most of the week, if my weather app proves to be reliable. (It hasn't proven to be very reliable recently.) I will be ready for warmer weather. But there is a small part of me, perhaps the part that fathered James, that doesn't hate the cold of January. It's good to feel like you're alive and fighting when the world has turned so frosty and that it feels intentionally hostile.

But I'm not going to go so far as to start wearing shorts.

"And he, repulsed, a short tale to make, Fell into sadness"

 Aunt Martha was over last night, and we somehow ended up reading old blogs aloud. I enjoyed the brief season when the kids were doing all the writing for me, but I think that it might be over. And, alas, they want to know why I don't post stories about them anymore.

"Because I don't get home until 11 at night, and then I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning to start prepping the heat-fixed slides for your Biology homework!" is the snide answer. But really, I should be taking some time to write down memories. I wouldn't remember any of the hilarious things that Owen said when he was 3 years old if I hadn't blogged about them.

So, we try again. I am digging for blog prompts, and J gave me a great one the other day. She's having her class (she is teaching a spiritual formation class for work) do an exercise this week, and I was the guinea pig. The assignment was to write two stories. One is in the "A Stranger Comes to Town" genre, and the other in the "A Man Sets Out on a Journey" genre. One was supposed to be closed and other open-ended, but I didn't remember that until after I'd written them. But anyway, here I am, attempting to write regularly again. 

A STRANGER COMES TO TOWN
The announcement came over the loudspeaker into my classroom: “An admissions counselor from Houghton College will be in the Guidance Office from 9 AM to noon today to speak with seniors who might be interested in attending Houghton College next year.”

I was several weeks into my Sophomore year of High School and desperately unhappy. I hadn’t even made it through the first week of school before I began skipping classes again, an offense that had led to worried parent-teacher conferences and empty disciplinary threats the year before. I wasn’t getting into trouble—I was sneaking out of Gym class and out of Introduction to Agriculture to practice in the band room. When my lips were too tired for any more practicing, I’d go to the library and read.

Most of my teachers turned a blind eye. I wasn’t a disruptive student, I had no trouble with the classwork, and I was usually discreet. But I was miserably bored and unhappy, and I couldn’t imagine facing another three years of high school under the current conditions.

So I lied. I pretended that I needed to pick something up at the Main Office, walked down to the Guidance Office, and introduced myself to the Houghton admissions ambassador. I don’t remember anything about them now, but they were probably just a recently graduated college kid. What I do remember was that I made a series of completely improvised bluffs. 

“I already have nearly all the credits I would need to graduate,” I explained, “but I’m technically…TECHNICALLY…just a sophomore. I’d be very, VERY interested in attending Houghton next year. Can you tell me whether Houghton has any policies about a minimum age to enroll?” (I had just turned 15.)

The admissions counselor, whether they believed me or not, played along. And that playing along led to a formal application and an audition that buoyed my spirits beyond measure. I suddenly felt hope and had a tangible goal in my future. I didn’t end up going to Houghton, but I did leave High School at the end of my sophomore year after putting in a furious year’s hard work to pass all the necessary college entrance and high school Regents exams without having taken half of the coursework. 

I have no idea who that admissions counselor was or what happened to them, but they unknowingly changed the trajectory of my life just by showing up on a Monday morning in Albion. They gave me an opportunity to work towards a meaningful goal and to be transformed from a bored, irresponsible, slacking teenager into a hard-working student who was seizing life with both hands. 

A MAN LEAVES ON A JOURNEY
I had no interest in Bible Quizzing. Among other reasons, I was convinced at the the tender age of 10 years old that I was going to be an important scientist, and I considered memorizing quotations from the Bible to be a waste of my valuable scientific time. 

My parents brought me to our church (Albion Free Methodist) early on a Saturday morning, and I piled into a 15-passenger van with a crowd of much-older teenagers. Our youth group leader and quizzing program head had spent several weeks of Sunday School time attempting to prepare us for the upcoming quiz meet, and I’d barely remained conscious, let alone attentive, throughout the preparations.

Once we arrived at the church which was hosting the meet I started to feel some butterflies in my stomach. This felt suspiciously like an examination, and I HATED looking foolish in exams. I began to rapidly read and re-read the pocket sized portion of scripture that I was supposed to have studied and memorized 4 chapters of. 

I quickly found (to my intense relief) that most of the other quizzers were not any better prepared than I was. And I also was surprised to learn that either by osmosis or by Sunday School literacy I was able to answer questions on a good bit of the material just from prior knowledge. I ended up taking 3rd place in the Individual Competition, and was handed a small trophy. I was hooked from that moment on.

It was unadulterated selfish ego—pure competitive teen insecurity—that made me stay up late, pacing back and forth in the hallway as I memorized the New Testament. And I’m so glad that I did. I only wish that I’d memorized the Psalms with the same intense effort (back when my brain was younger) that I devoted to the gospels and the letters of Paul. I’ve been collecting interest on that selfishly undertaken work for years now, and for whatever reasons I did it I am grateful for having such a large chunk of scripture carved into my memory. My relationship with scripture is far from finished, and the work that was started at that first quiz meet—wrestling with my own ignorance of the Bible, recognizing the power of knowing its stories, and seeing within myself a mixed bag of motivations for engaging with it—has continued for the thirty years after and still goes on.

"the occasion of my sudden and more strange return"

 

"But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading"

 2025 Reading Log

January

The Last Gentleman (Walker Percy)

The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)

Longitude (Dava Sobel)

A Little Less Broken (Marian Schembari)

Sharpe’s Rifles (Bernard Cornwell)

Why We Die (Venki Ramakrishnan)

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

Metamorphoses Book XV (Ovid) (in Latin)

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

Blue at the Mizzen (Patrick O’Brian)

 

February

The Perfect Mile (Neal Bascomb)

Sharpe’s Havoc (Bernard Cornwell)

A Quoi Revent Les Jeunes Filles (Alfred de Musset) (in French)

21—The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (Patrick O’Brian)

The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh (Kathryn Aalto)

Better (Atul Gawande)

Honey, Olives, Octopus (Christopher Bakken)

Sharpe’s Eagle (Bernard Cornwell)

This is New York (E.B. Whie)

Couples (John Updike)

Time’s Arrow (Martin Amis)

Master and Commander (Patrick O’Brian)

Jaws (Peter Benchley)

Merrily We Roll Along (George Furth)

The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City (Margaret Creighton)

Iliados Book IX (Homer) (in Greek)

 

March

The History of the Medieval World (Susan Bauer)

Through the Language Lens (Guy Deutscher)

Sharpe’s Gold (Bernard Cornwell)

The Hunt for Planet X (Govert Schilling)

The Small House at Allington (Anthony Trollope)

The Art of Travel (Alain de Botton)

A Burning in My Bones (Winn Collier)

Dead Lions (Mick Herron)

I Am Charlotte Simmons (Tom Wolfe)

On Looking (Alexandra Horowitz)

Reconstruction (Mick Herron)

Georgics, Book 1 (Virgil) (in Latin)

Smoke and Whispers (Mick Herron)

Atomic Habits (James Clear)

Post Captain (Patrick O’Brian)

Careless People (Sarah Wynn-Williams)

 

April

Morality (Jonathan Sacks)

My Year of Running Dangerously (Tom Foreman)

H.M.S. Surprise (Patrick O’Brian)

Andre de Sarto (Alfred de Musset) (in French)

My Father’s Tears (John Updike)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Truman Capote)

The Urban Naturalist (Menno Schilthuizen)

Real Tigers (Mick Herron)

How Do We Look? (Mary Beard)

The List (Mick Herron)

Museums and Women (John Updike)

The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Amy Tan)

True Companions (Kelly Flanagan)

Things That Go Bump in the Universe (C. Renee James)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (David Foster Wallace)

Letters to Children (C.S. Lewis)

Iliados Book X (Homer) (in Greek)

Henry V (William Shakespeare)

The Marylebone Drop (Mick Herron)

The Absence of Mr. Glass (G.K. Chesterton)

The Catch (Mick Herron)

The Last Dead Letter Drop (Mick Herron)

The Kitchen God’s Wife (Amy Tan)

Standing By the Wall (Mick Herron)

Altared (Pamela Almand)

 

May

The Mauritius Command (Patrick O’Brian)

The Geometry of Love (Margaret Visser)

Spook Street (Mick Herron)

Georgics, Book II (Virgil) (in Latin)

On Booze (Ernest Hemmingway)

A Book of Voyages (Patrick O’Brian)

Trivium21c (Martin Robinson)

Uncommon Measure (Natalie Hodges)

True Raiders (Brad Ricca)

Desolation Island (Patrick O’Brian) 

Ancient Egyptian Literature (Miriam Lichtheim)

The Taking of K-129 (Josh Dean) 

Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)

Le Caprices de Marianne (Alfred de Musset) (in French)

Table for Two (Amor Towles)

Sharpe’s Escape (Bernard Cornwell)

Knife (Salman Rushdie)

Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Paterson)

Memorial Days (Geraldine Brooks)

 

June

Dolphin Junction (Mick Herron)

The End of Your Life Book Club (Will Schwalbe)

Oh, What a Luxury! (Garrison Keillor)

The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian)

Birdie’s Bargain (Katherine Paterson)

What Are People For? (Wendell Berry)

Sharpe’s Fury (Bernard Cornwell)

The Cuckoo’s Calling (Robert Galbraith)

Iliados Book XI (Homer) (in Greek) 

The Silkworm (Robert Galbraith)

Career of Evil (Robert Galbraith)

Microbe Hunters (Paul de Kruif)

Reclaiming Quiet (Sarah Clarkson)

Lethal White (Robert Galbraith)

The Idea of the Holy (Rudolph Otto)

Georgics, Book III (Virgil) (in Latin)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard)

 

July

The Surgeon’s Mate (Patrick O’Brian)

London Rules (Mick Heron)

Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)

Sharpe’s Battle (Bernard Cornwell)

Fantasio (Albert de Musset) (in French)

Original Sin (Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper)

Summer of the Monkeys (Wilson Rawls)

The Afterlife (John Updike)

The Housemaid (Freida McFaddeN0

Iliados, Book XII (Homer) (in Greek)

The Ionian Mision (Patrick O’Brian)

A Man in Full (Tom Wolfe)

Fever Beach (Carl Hiaasen)

 

August

Sharpe’s Company (Bernard Cornwell)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe)

Troubled Blood (Robert Galbraith)

The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkein)

The Ink Black Heart (Robert Galbraith)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John LeCarre)

The Running Grave (Robert Galbraith)

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Anon)

Georgics, Book IV (Virgil) (in Latin) 

How It Went (Wendell Berry)

My Friends (Fredrik Backman)

The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde)

The Suppliant Women (Aeschylus)

The Last Chronicle of Barset (Anthony Trollope)

Oedipus the King (Sophocles)

Oedipus at Kolonos (Sophocles)

The Only Problem (Muriel Spark)

Joe Country (Mick Herron)

Philoktetes (Sophocles)

Slough House (Mick Herron)

 

September

Treason’s Harbour (Patrick O’Brian)

The Hallmarked Man (Robert Galbraith)

Bad Actors (Mick Herron)

Virgil Wander (Leif Enger)

Clown Town (Mick Herron)

The Wild Birds (Wendell Berry)

Our Only World (Wendell Berry)

Fear of Flying (Erica Jong)

Tales from the Pit (Mark Gould)

The Finishing School (Muriel Spark)

Sharpe’s Sword (Bernard Cornwell)

Pretty Good Jokes (Garrison Keillor)

 

October

Class Clown (Dave Barry)

So Brave, Young, and Handsome (Leif Enger)

Updike (Adam Begley)

The Descent of the Dove (Charles Williams)

Antony and Cleopatra (William Shakespeare)

The Frogs (Aristophanes)

A Parliament of Women (Aristophanes)

The Far Side of the World (Patrick O’Brian)

Resurrection Men (Ian Rankin)

Lysistrata (Arisophanes)

Lorenzaccio (Alfred de Musset) (in French)

Ginger Pye (Eleanor Estes)

After I Do (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

Long Live Latin (Nicola Gardini)

The Reverse of the Medal (Patrick O’Brian)

When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows (Steven Pinker)

The Girls of Slender Means (Muriel Spark)

A Shropshire Lad (A.E. Housman)

 

November

The Chosen (Chaim Potok)

Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)

Complete Fragments of Sappho (in Greek)

The Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkein)

Epistles of Erasmus (in Latin)

Total Recall (Philip K. Dick)

The Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot)

The Memory of Old Jack (Wendell Berry)

The Tempest (William Shakespeare)

Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving)

Strip Jack (Ian Rankin)

Persuasion (Jane Austen)

John Williams (Tim Grieving)

The Histories (Herodotus)

An Immense World (Ed Yong)

Running Man (Charlie Engle)

Love’s Labour Lost (William Shakespeare)

 

December

Left for Dead (Beck Weathers)

My Man Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)

Race in a Post-Obama America (David Maxwell)

Sharpe’s Storm (Bernard Cornwell)

The Inimitable Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)

Standing by Words (Wendell Berry) 

The Highly Sensitive Person (Elaine Aron)

The Letter of Marque (Patrick O’Brian)

Algorithms to Live By (Brian Christian)

The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen)

The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkein)

The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide (Ted Zeff)

Truth and Lies (Mark Bowden)

Classical Rhetoric (Edward Corbett)

Going Postal (Terry Pratchett)

Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

The White Goddess (Robert Graves)

"This twofold force"

 

"What news?"