Phone part 2

 Duolingo, or "Baby Owl," as it is known to the boys, is the one app on my phone that they are regularly allowed to play with. I am strongly considering getting them an iPad just so that they can't make off with my phone every time I'm home doing school with them. James has an account to learn Latin, and Owen is theoretically learning Spanish. It's hard to make much progress when the only aural practice you get is on a little phone speaker with a math lesson competing in the background, but at least he's learning to pay attention to grammar and that there might be different words for the same thing in the world. My own Duolingo account I use mostly to practice French (which I do every day) and recently Modern Greek, which I've also been good about keeping up with on a regular basis. I finished the Latin course a long time ago, and wish that they would add more onto it. (It only had two main "trees," so there wasn't a whole lot of course to do.) I've also made a stab at the Modern Hebrew course and the Arabic, but haven't touched either in a long time. The French is good practice, though, and I'm currently keeping up a 1000+day streak. Some of it is incredibly useful practice (conjugating verbs in all of their different forms, practice de/du rules) and some of it is ludicrously useless. (Je vais acheter un helicoptere rose)

The next app is OverDrive, which is my link to Kindle and Audiobooks. I have an account through the Monroe County Public Library System and also (thanks to either Martha or Calvin, I don't remember which) the New York Public Library System, which is open to residents of the entire state. Listening to Audiobooks has been a relatively recent development for me, and there are certain books (like Chernow biographies) that I wouldn't go near on an audiobook. My favorite books to listen to are ones that I already know and want to internalize even further, or good mysteries. I am listening to To Kill a Mockingbird on my drives right now, and then will keep on going through the Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot stories once that's finished.

A recently unused app (I've gotten away from using it for my warmup) is Seconds, an interval timer that is theoretically designed for athletes to exercise with, but that I repurposed for trumpet practicing. Every couple of months I write something on a post-it note in thick capital letters and stick it to my stand in the basement. It's always some variation of "You're playing too loud, shut up!" or "Take your time, idiot. Rest more often and don't spend your whole hour with the mouthpiece screwed into your teeth." Sometimes, when the piccolo trumpet is involved, the language is even stronger. The Seconds app, like these post it notes, is an attempt to save myself from my own worst instincts. It beeps insistently at me every 6-8 minutes and forces me to rest. But then again, I have to actually turn it on, which I haven't been recently. Might be time for another post-it note...

Our bank app (we are with M&T) is next, which is pretty boring, except that now whenever I login I can see the boy's savings account totals as well. In a perverse twist of fate, it's possible to transfer money from our main account into their savings accounts, but when they "owe" us money I have to actually go to a bank and fill out a physical form. Owen still owes us $13.25.

I keep eBay in business. I'd like to think that I break even with buying mouthpieces, because I sell a lot of mouthpieces too. But eBay does pretty well preying on the eternal optimism of trumpet players who think "if I could just get this but with a flatter rim or with a little bit bigger backbore." Here is my complete list of "saved" eBay searches. (I get a notification every time a new item in one of these comes up) 

Bach 25A C Trumpet (it's a rare leadpipe configuration that I'd love to have on a spare C trumpet. Yes, if my wife is reading this, I know that I only need one C trumpet)

Bach 7DW (piccolo mouthpiece)

Bach 7E (piccolo mouthpiece)

Bach 7EW (piccolo mouthpiece)

Bach Artisan Piccolo Trumpet

Bach ML Bore C Trumpet (I don't think I'd buy one of these...but it's nice to keep an eye open)

Balibaris Trench (I tried one of these coats on at a men's clothier in Paris and loved it, but it cost 500 euros brand new...)

Buffalo Bills Lapel Pin (Go Bills)

Cornet Underpart (possibly to build a hybrid piccolo mouthpiece with)

Curry 1.5 Mouthpiece (the rim combination for my regular mouthpiece)

Curry 7 Trumpet Mouthpiece (for high notes)

Curry 7P cornet (I actually have one of these...I should delete this search)

Curry 8.5P (piccolo trumpet mouthpiece)

Getzen 3810 Cornet (I don't have a C cornet...)

J Crew 38R slim (It's nice to get a new jacket)

J Crew 38R White Tuxedo (The white tux that I've had since my first RPO gig is way too big)

Ludlow Dinner Jacket 38R (Another name for the same search as above)

Malacca Walking Stick 

Parkhurst Boots 11

Schilke G Trumpet (Would just be fun to own)

Severinsen Akright Bel Canto (This is the trumpet that Maurice Murphy recorded the Star Wars movies on)

Youtube is the next app on my phone. Current video history: Josh Allen Stiff Arming/Trucking people; an Aebersold backing track to On the Sunny Side of the Street (this is like jazz karaoke--it's a combo playing the chord changes so that you can practice improvising over it), A Last Week Tonight episode, then about 10 games worth of highlights that the boys watched on a Monday evening while I was practicing in the basement and J was out teaching.

BPM is a great app, although it only has one use. You tap the screen, and it gives you exactly the beats per minute that you are tapping. It's like a reverse metronome. You can use it to figure out how fast something is going that you don't have an exact marking for. (It's great for settling arguments)

SPQR is my Latin dictionary app, and the right below it is my Ancient Greek Dictionary (just called Ancient Greek) which is by the same developer. Both apps come with some vocabulary cards and texts, but are mostly useful just as straightforward dicionaries.

Keeper is our password app. It's annoying in that it flashes an upgrade screen to you every time you log in, but it does store all of our passwords securely, and J and I can pool our info in the same place.

Quizlet is a flashcards app that I love. This is another reason why we are thinking about an iPad for the boys. I currently have decks to review of Ancient Greek particle rules, Taxonomic names of animals, Cocktails by ingredients, Ancient Greek preposition rules, Capitals of Canadian provinces, countries of the world by map identification, etc...

The last app on my front screen is the HondaLink app, which is completely useless. I thought, when I downloaded it, that I'd be able to see my fuel efficiency and other driving data. It turns out that those features are only for hybrid vehicles. I need to delete the app.

Bonus story: Owen was driving everyone nuts and generally entertaining himself by being obnoxious when he declared that he was now big enough to fight me and win. J asked me to please fight him. I came in from the other room and told him, "I'm going to enjoy this." Sensing his mistake, he tried to run away. I picked him up, pinned his arms behind him, and sat on him. Then I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and begged for mercy. As soon as I stood up he scrambled over to the stairs and yelled, "I won! I beat Dad! I mean, it was at least a tie!"

My Phone

 I don’t know if you can tell a lot about a person by how their phone is organized, but I think that there is at least one useful rule for snap phone judgments: The person who has a red bubble alert for 1,000 (or 10,000) unread mail messages probably does not get their library books back on time.

Going from the top left corner, my phone starts with my mail app. (I don’t have it in ‘permanent’ bottom row, and I don’t ever have 1,000 unread messages.) My email address is the first bit of evidence in the growing case that I am becoming an old man. I’ve had a yahoo email address for years, and that’s already bad news—maybe not quite as bad as a Hotmail or an AOL address, but still not a young person’s mail server. But it isn’t just that I have yahoo mail, it’s that I can’t figure out how to use any other mail platforms easily. Each of my university jobs has tried to set me up with a gmail-hosted school email address, and I invariably send emails before I’m done writing them by hitting enter, or being unable to find something that I flagged for later. The big downside to using the yahoo account (which I know) is that some servers automatically flag it as spam, which gives my college students a ready-made excuse to pretend that they never received the emails telling them when they were supposed to have their lesson or what they were supposed to be practicing. It may be an old man’s email, but it’s the email I know.

 

Next up is the calendar. This is the app that makes it possible for J and I to be married to each other, because there is automatic sharing. This app is also the arbiter of all final misfires about scheduling problems. (Did you put your gig in the calendar? If I can’t see it in the calendar, you don’t have a gig.) Looking at the calendar is how we know how many babysitters we need. (Answer: A lot of babysitters.) If you know of any more babysitters, please tell us. We’ll pay them really well if they can drive themselves here. None of our kids even poop their pants anymore. At least not very often.

 

The next app over is photos. I’m always telling myself that I should take more photos of the kids or more photos of J, but my camera roll is actually full of boring things like photos of weekly rehearsal sheets or of lesson plans for the kids that I didn’t want to write out twice. Out of curiosity in writing this I opened up my photo library and noticed that I had 83 selfies. I think I’ve owned a smartphone for about 10 years now, and there is no way that I’ve taken 83 selfies. I investigated, and there were about 80 photos from when one of the kids (mostly Owen) got ahold of my phone and took photos of himself making faces at it, and three great selfies (that I did take) of me with J in a two-piece that she’ll probably never let me post online, even though (or possibly because) she looks really hot.

 

The last app in my top row is the camera, which is apparently (as evidenced by the rest of my camera roll) mostly used for taking videos of myself practicing in the basement. That camera has seen a lot of etudes. It is yet to record me throwing the trumpet against the basement wall in frustration, although we’ve come close a few times.

 

The Weather app is up next. This time of year you only get bad news. My saved weather places are Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, Paris, Marrakech, Toronto, and Rehoboth Beach. Any one of the last four options sounds spectacular right now. (It is only 19 Fahrenheit in Toronto as of my writing this, but I’d still be down for a Canada trip)

 

The Settings app is a chance for Apple to try to make some money off of me, because they can perpetually remind me with a little red pop-up bubble that my iPhone hasn’t been backed up in 20 weeks. (And that my iPhone can only be backed up when it is connected to power.) I’ve fiddled with my iCloud settings enough to squeeze out some extra backups, but I think that I’d need to delete all of my message history to actually accomplish another backup. Or I could pay $12 for a little bit more storage…but it feels like that would be a moral failing.

The next app is my first non-Apple application—a practice tracking app called Andante. It’s pretty bare bones, but it times your practice sessions throughout the day and also keeps stats. There is a simple recorder, metronome, and notes app built in. I can see from the app that I’ve been playing the trumpet for an average of 3 hours and 14 minutes each day this week, and I can look back and see what I did during each session. It’s the sort of app that I’m tempted to require my students to buy, but I don’t want to encourage them to lie to me any more than they already do.

Next up is the notes app, which is one of the best features of my iPhone. I think that it’s worth having a smartphone just to keep a list of all of your employer’s addresses, phone numbers, and EIN numbers. (I did our 2021 taxes today, so it’s on the brain.) Here’s a sampling of some of my notes: A saved pdf of the mileage form for Houghton College, a saved pdf of my vaccine card, a list of all of the terrible things that happened to our cars from November to January of this year that I was going to turn into a blog but decided was too whiny/depressing, a list of LOC call numbers of rare books to look for whenever I’m in a public library, a list of gift ideas for my wife, a shopping list from July of 2021 (I guess I can delete that), the original sketch of repertoire ideas for our movie music recital, a page of quotes from the kids that I thought I would turn into a blog at some point and never got around to.

Owen, standing on the beach at Lake Ontario: “Is there a lot of mud here at Lake Ontario?”

Me: “Yes.”

Owen: “Nuts.” Whispers to himself  “Stingrays…”

 

James, pacing close to me then walking away, then pacing up again, and walking away again. Finally working up the nerve to ask: “How do you say ‘goo’ in Latin?”

 

Felix, sagely: “Know something that’s cool? Birds are airplanes. BUT…airplanes are birds.”

 

I also have a note reminding me of where we keep our spare key. (It’s a secret), a list of movies that we want to see at some point, a list of donations that we made to a Goodwill in 2020 for tax purposes (I guess I can delete that now), a sketch for a trumpet method book that I could write (an update to the Arban “Art of Phrasing” using modern music, our travel bucket list (Scotland, Morocco, Maine, New York, Montreal, Key Largo, Boston, Greece, France again), a list of our regular babysitters and babysitter ideas, a list of Flock of Uncles repertoire to try, the police report number from when Owen scratched up an SUV, a different note reminding me of where we kept our previous spare key before I looked for it and couldn’t find it when we were locked out of the house (I guess that can be deleted now), a list of the scientific names of several species of lily, and the measurements several windows around our house.

 

In a similar vein, the Reminders app is incredibly useful. I currently have overdue reminders to clean out my trumpets (I try to do this once a month), to write a Valentine’s day card to J, to clean the kid’s room, and to publish a blog. (I’m about to check that one off). The reminder to clean the bathrooms is going to go off tomorrow. I get a reminder to clean them once every two weeks, alternating with cleaning the kid’s rooms. I don’t feel guilty about whatever state they are in until I get the reminder. (I’m probably going to feel guilty tomorrow, because I don’t think there is any way that either the bathrooms or Owen and Felix’s room is going to be clean by the end of the day.) I also have stored future reminders to submit the boy’s 3^rd and 4^th quarter homeschool reports, to write to various grandparents, and to check to see if a pair of boots that I’d like are back in stock.

 

Yet another listing app is Clear, which one of my teaching colleagues introduced me to back when I worked at LCS. Clear is great, mostly just because it’s a very satisfying swiping motion when you cross things off of your to-do list. There is some redundancy with the Notes app, but I have 16 lists on my Clear app in various stages of completion. There’s the main “To-Do” list, which has mundane stuff like sending out my teaching schedule and answering various emails, and then there’s “Stocking Stuffers for J” (I guess that can be deleted), “Winter 2022 projects, “IKEA” (we are hoping to make a first-ever pilgrimage sometime this year and are looking for kitchen storage) “Date Ideas,” “Sacred Music Projects,” “Things to look up on Youtube,” (what does just v. even temperament actually sound like on a piano, how can I do a better job of wrapping presents?) “Things to look for in Libraries,” “Things to do with the Boys” (swimming lessons, an aquarium visit, making a pinata, etc.), “Trumpet Ideas,” “Household Projects,” “Long Term Expenses,” and “Blogging Ideas.” (That folder is empty most of the time.)

 

The last app for now is TE tuner, which is absolutely the best 4.99 I ever spent. Not only is it a great tuner, but you can adjust it to several different intonation systems and set the key signature, then slow down your playback so that you see exactly which notes are flat and sharp within the key that you’re working in. (Unfortunately, the tuner only ever has bad news for me. Slow, sad, out of tunes.) This one I DO make my students buy. As a slight consolation for all of us who struggle against the trumpet, the app gives you a green smiley face when you happen (by some strange coincidence) to hit a note in tune.

 

I had intended to write about all of the apps on my phone, and I’m only through the first quarter of them! It turns out that this was a more fertile idea that I had initially thought. Part 2 coming sometime soon…

January

 Everyone knows what you're talking about when you describe "high summer." The days are long, the grass is sweet, the sunlight is glorious, and all of our tanned legs are bare.

Is the corresponding time in winter "high winter" or "low winter?" Whichever is the correct term, this week was the zenith of high winter. It wasn't a particularly bad week, but every morning started in darkness, and I didn't get home until long after the sun had set and the cold seeped back into the house. 

The driveway and walk are both permanently frozen in dirty ice, shoveled out enough to get your car in and out but not safe to walk across easily. No matter how careful you are, you will always get snow into your dress shoes. 

The temperatures have been in the single digits whenever I start my car, and the windshield is covered in salt-rime. (I'm listening to an audio book of the Norse myths, and driving in a cold and dirty automobile feels like a closer experience to Jotunheim than anything else in the modern experience.

Not everything is unpleasant about High Winter, though. There is a magic in a shot of espresso cascading down that just isn't the same in the middle of august, and the whistle of the tea kettle is friendly. There's also something lovely about having social permission to be a little miserable. I am at Wegmans with an enormous stack of books right now, and I even have my earbuds in (with no music playing) just in case someone I know walks by and is tempted to start a conversation.

The Bills are out of the playoffs again, which makes the cold feel colder. I also started the spring semester of teaching. In both of my studios I have a tall window with a spectacular view. I've decided this semester to spend more of my teaching time admiring the view out of my window and less of the time getting frustrated at college students for not having practiced. 

Another tell-tale sign that we have reached the days of High Winter is that the kinder are all going crazy. They want to go outside every day, even when the wind chill is below zero. They need help getting bundled into their snow things (still damp and cold from the day before) and then they need help taking it all off again when they realize that they actually do need to go to the bathroom. (This involves tracking in a lot of snow, no matter how careful you are.)

They play outside for a bit, and you periodically shout at them to stay in the backyard. Then they realize how cold they are and start screaming, and you have to put your own boots on to pull them out of a snowbank. And then they are upset at your for not giving them hot chocolate, even though you told them that we aren't having hot chocolate today, because they are so cold that they will never be warm again. And they get you all wet and cold as you take their snow things off, and your hands inevitably smell like wet socks.

But the alternative to letting them go outside is keeping them in, and when you do that Felix will repeatedly fill up a sippy cup and dump it out on his floor for no reason at all. (With Owen in the room and being fully aware of what's going on, but not telling any adults about it.)

I think Low Winter is the right term.

Owenisms

 Owen: "Do you know why Mom wanted to have lots of boys?"

Me: "Who told you she wanted to have lots of boys?"

Owen: "Well, she has three sons."

Me: "Right, but that isn't exactly the sort of thing that you get to decide."

Owen: "Yes, but she HAD three boys. And do you know why she wanted them?"

Me: "Why is that?"

Owen: "It's so when--and I'm not saying that I WANT this to happen--I'm just saying that when you die, we can remind her of you."

-------------------------------------

Owen lost another tooth, and the tooth fairy didn't come the first night. Sometimes the tooth fairy just wants to go to bed at 7:45 once the kids are in bed and listening to the Amerks game on their radio. That being said, it isn't unusual to wake up at 1:30 in the morning and find that the kids all fell asleep with the radio on. 

The tooth fairy didn't come the second night, either. Owen grew concerned. We told him that maybe the tooth fairy doesn't work weekends.

I snuck two quarters into the pocket of my pajamas and crept into their room at 10:30 PM on the third night. Half of the problem with this tooth fairy business is finding where the old tooth is. We give them a plastic baggie and tell them to put it under their pillow, they usually don't sleep in traditional arrangements. (Under blankets with their heads on a pillow.) We find them on the floor, or in each other's beds, tucked into the pillowcase like it's a sleeping bag. Or without any blankets but under a few dozen stuffed animals. Or on top of three pillows from the couch that they aren't supposed to take upstairs.

I started with Owen's bed pillow. It was abandoned at the edge of the bed, and the pillowcase had been plucked off. Nothing underneath. Then I crept to the other end of the bed. One of Felix's pillows was there, but it also had no tooth underneath. I could tell Owen was in the middle of the bunk, so I crept over to where he was. Was his head on a pillow?

I tried to find his which end of the blanket his head was sticking out of. I found his head, and his eyes were wide open. Without blinking or moving he remarked to me, "I was thinking about Spanish. Especially the word 'interesante!

Owen the Entrepreneur

 

Page One
January 13th, 2022
To Whom it May Concern:
Hello, my name is Owen Smith. I'm 7 years old. Would it be okay if I make some color-by-number sheets of the NFL logos and sell them for 50 cents each? We are going to Hershey Park this summer and I need to raise money. I've also always wanted a business of my own. (Next page)

(2nd page)
I've also seen many people do color-by-numbers and love them. Sincerely, Owen Smith
(address)

National Football League
345 Park Avenue, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10154
Attn: Copyright Permission

James and Owen at the Bank

 When I was six years old my parents opened a Junior Savings account for me at the M&T Bank in Oakfield that was next door to my Dad's new photography studio. Not the studio that they built, but the old redbrick storefront on the other side of town. The studio and the bank shared a parking lot, and my Mom took me over one morning to deposit my savings. I kept about $3 in that account for most of my childhood and it was still active when we applied for our mortgage back in 2014.

All three of the boys did very well for themselves with Christmas cash this year (they have generous great grandparents) and I decided it was time for them to open their own accounts, mostly because I couldn't stand to help them keep track of the cash in the house any longer. James immediately put his cash in his Eagles wallet, the location of which he intelligently keeps a secret from Owen. 

Owen kept his money in a ziploc bag and counted it daily. Owen has had several piggy banks, including a T-Rex piggy, but it's hard for anything to survive very long in his room. Owen talked about his money often, making big plans about how he was going to spend it at Hershey Park, or perhaps on a LEGO set, and then definitely on a set of plastic football guys like the ones James has, and then definitely on 20 boxes of tic-tacs. 

Owen also tried to make a number of dubious "trades" with Felix, who doesn't understand that the different denominations of bills are different dollar amounts. We made them nullify the trade where Owen gave Felix 9 $1 bills in exchange for Felix's $20, $10, and $5. (Felix, of course, thought that he had given Owen "three dollars.")

But perhaps the biggest driver for getting the money deposited was Felix, who regularly carried his bills around downstairs (perhaps, understandably, to keep them away from Owen) and then left them lying around on the library floor under stacks of half cut-up art projects and toddler detritus. He would forget where they were, freak out until we found them, carry them around again, set them down, and the process would repeat itself. We needed to get the money out of the house.

J was having coffee with a mom friend that morning and had brought Felix along. I came to a good stopping point in school with the older two and got them into their coats and masks.

"Now boys," I said "this is your first time riding in my new car. It's going to be fun. But I'm going to ask you please, PLEASE do not smudge up the windows or put muddy feet all over the seats. I know that all of these things are going to happen eventually, and that's fine. But just for a little bit can we try to keep the car clean so that we can enjoy having it new?"

"Yup!"

"Owen, I'm looking at you."

"I SAID yes."

"You also said yes when I asked you about the same thing with the rental car."

"Right."

"And do you remember how you wiped your muddy feet all over the seats, and how you opened up the car door really hard into the side of the house, and how you scratched the car because you were trying to eat ice off of the side of it."

"Right. I won't get muddy feet on the seats."

SIDE NOTE: I have a new car. The Corolla is gone, and I'm now driving at 2017 Honda Fit. I can't bring myself to write about it yet, but let's just say that as a result of an accident in which all parties (police, insurance, other driver) all agree I was 0% at fault I've still somehow ended up buying or paying for major repairs on 4 separate automobiles in the last month.)

We stepped outside, and Owen immediately ran to the muddy patch in the yard to step in it and crunch snow into it.

"Owen, is that the best idea if you're going to try to not get muddy footprints on the car?"

"Right! Okay, I'll remember not to put my feet on the seats."

We drove to the bank down the road. Owen asked whether we thought he ought to have a motto or not. He also complained to me that James was telling him Canada was a make-believe country. James denies this.

We arrived at the bank and headed in, then headed right back out because Owen had somehow lost his mask between the car and the bank door. (It was in the car.)

We met with a kind man named Justin to open the boy's accounts. 

Justin: So...do you boys have the day off of school today? (It was a Thursday at 11 in the morning)

James: (not making eye contact and mumbling unintelligibly into his mask) We're homeschooled.

Owen: Excuse me, can I ask some questions?

Justin: Uh, sure. What are your questions?

Owen: Can you count my money?

Me: Owen, we can count your money here before we deposit it.

Justin: No, it's fine. Let me show you how I count it. (He organizes the bills from largest to smallest and rapidly counts them out.) You have $72.47.

Owen: I think you're wrong. Count it again.

Me: Owen, you'll need to ask more politely. And he's not wrong, I watched him count it.

Justin: It's fine. Here, watch me count it again. (Counts out $72.47 again.) Yup, it's $72.47. How much did you think you had?

Owen: I had $74. Probably somebody stole some. But my target is to get $100.

Justin: Well, maybe you can get to $100 if you can earn money?

Owen: Yeah, I'll need 26 more dollars. Hey Dad, are there any jobs I can do for money? Like cleaning my room?

Me: I'm not going to pay you to clean your room.

Owen: What if I do the dishes?

Me: Those are the sorts of jobs you have to do for free just because you're in our family.

Owen: Yeah, I'll probably just go ask Ms. Nicole for $26. (to Justin) Hey, are you going to put my money in a box?

Justin: We'll deposit your money in a special big box we have called a bank vault.

James: (mumbling inaudibly) I don't want to surrender my money.

Owen: Cool! Can I go into the vault?

Justin: No, we can't just let anyone into the vault.

Owen: Are you going to pay me money to keep it in the vault?

Justin: I wish it was more, but you will get a few pennies of interest every year for keeping your money in the bank.

Owen: I was thinking that it should be more like ten dollars. Can you do that?

We wrapped up shortly thereafter and said thanks to Justin (Owen effusively, James awkwardly and looking away), and then went back to my new car, with Owen stopping to step in snow along the way.

About a block down the road:

"Hey Dad, don't be angry, but I forgot about not putting my feet on the seats. Don't worry, though. There's not TOO much mud!"

Bonus Felix story:

Felix received a bounty of art supplies for Christmas...a crafting kit, pencils, crayons, scissors, and a whole ream of his own blank printer paper. (We're trying to stop him from stealing the paper out of our printer.) The other night he was sitting at the table drawing with his pencil. He put his left hand down on the paper and painstakingly traced it out. "I drew my hand!" He switched the pencil to his left hand, shifted the paper, and awkwardly traced his right hand on the other side of the paper. "I drew my other hand." He then sat up a bit in his chair, looked down, and shifted down again. He moved the pencil from one hand to the other, tried to scooch closer to the table, then looked up. "How am I going to be able to draw my penis?"

Bonus Owen story:

"Hey, who's this guy on my $10 bill?" 

"That's Alexander Hamilton. Do you know who that is?"

"Hey, yeah, I do! He's the guy who wanted everyone to be counted when Jesus was born!"

2021 Reading

 

2021 Reading

January

Basket Case (Carl Hiaasen)

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

The Eyes of the Heart (Frederik Buechner)

Odyssey Book 5 (Homer) in Greek

L’Appart (David Leibowitz)

Plan B (Jonathan Tropper)

Argonautica (Apollonius) in English

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare)

How (Not) to be Secular (James K.A. Smith)

My Year with Eleanor (Noelle Hancock)

The Wife Between Us (Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen)

La Chute (Albert Camus) in French

Christ, the Heart of Creation (Rowan Williams)

Odyssey, Book 6 (Homer) in Greek

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Nature Girl (Carl Hiaasen)

War on Peace (Ronan Farrow)

A Promised Land (Barack Obama)

February

Odyssey Book 7 (Homer) in Greek

This is Going to Hurt (Adam Kay)

You Are Not Alone (Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen)

Metamorphoses Book 3 (Ovid) in Latin

Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)

Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller)

The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris)

Native Tongue (Carl Hiaasen)

Rage (Bob Woodward)

The God Problem (Robert Wuthnow)

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkein)

Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare)

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

 

March

No Longer Strangers (Greg Coles)

Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard (Pierre de Marivaux) in French

Odyssey Book 8 (Homer) in Greek

The Idea of the Holy (Rudolf Otto)

Daddy-Long-Legs (Jean Webster)

Villages (John Updike)

Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope)

Preface to Plato (Eric Havelock)

Wine Girl (Victoria James)

Icebound (Andrea Pitzer)

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

The Case Against Education (Bryan Caplan)

The Jedi Doth Return (Ian Doescher)

The Ditch (Hermann Koch)

Everyday Drinking (Kingsley Amis)

The Deep Dark Descending (Allen Eskens)

The Finish (Mark Bowden)

Eiger Dreams (Jon Krakauer)

Lethal Passage (Erik Larson)

Moo (Jane Smiley)

Surprised by Scripture (N.T. Wright)

 

April

The Well Trained Mind (Susan Wise Bauer)

Counterpoint (Philip Kennicott)

The Moth and the Mountain (Ed Caesar)

Something Happened (Joseph Heller)

Three Cups of Deceit (Jon Krakauer)

Shameless (Nadia Bolz-Webber)

Odyssey Book 9 (Homer) in Greek

Metamorphoses Book 4 (Ovid) in Latin

One by One (Ruth Ware)

Squeeze Me (Carl Hiaasen)

K2, the Savage Mountain (Charles Snead Houston and Robert Bates)

The Language Instinct (Steven Pinker)

The Witches of Eastwick (John Updike)

Living with a Dead Language (Ann Patty)

The Alphabet of Grace (Buechner)

Sick Puppy (Carl Hiaasen)

The Great Gilly Hopkins (Katherine Paterson)

Classic Krakauer (Jon Krakauer)

What Einstein Told His Cook (Robert Wolke)

The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe)

Invictus (John Carlin)

Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Paterson)

 

May

The Wednesday Wars (Gary D. Schmidt)

Natural Born Heroes (Christopher McDougall)

Now and Then (Joseph Heller)

No Fond Return of Love (Barbara Pym)

Troubled Blood (Robert Galbraith)

Music in the Castle of Heaven (John Eliot Gardiner)

Under a Flaming Sky (Daniel Brown)

Peak (Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool)

The Master of Disguise (Tony Mendez)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

The Queen’s Gambit (Walter Tevis)

The Other Side of Everest (Matt Dickinson)

Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon (Eugene Marin Labiche and Edouard Martin) in French

The Godfather (Mario Puzo)

Sooley (John Grisham)

K2 (Ed Visteurs)

Let Me Tell You What I Mean (Joan Didion)

The Making of Biblical Womanhood (Beth Allison Barr)

 

June

Stormy Weather (Carl Hiaasen)

Odyssey Book 10 (Homer) in Greek

Pacific Crucible (Ian Toll)

Tourist Season (Carl Hiaasen)

Annapurna (Maurice Herzog)

All Creatures Great and Small (James Heriot)

Educated (Tara Westover)

A Breviary of Sin (Cornelius Plantinga)

Nomadland (Jessica Bruder)

The Cuckoo’s Calling (Robert Galbraith)

Jesus and John Wayne (Kristin Kobes du Mez)

The Maidens (Alex Michaelides)

The Conquering Tide (Ian Toll)

Holes (Louis Sachar)

All Things Bright and Beautiful (James Heriot)

Twilight of the Gods (Ian Toll)

 

July

The Silkworm (Robert Galbraith)

If You Lived Here You’d be Home By Now (Christopher Ingraham)

Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks)

Babette’s Feast (Isak Dinesen)

Career of Evil (Robert Galbraith)

Lethal White (Robert Galbraith)

Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel)

Kata Loukan in Greek

Death March; The Survivors of Bataan (Donald Knox)

The Princess Spy (Larry Loftis)

Metamorphoses Book 5 (Ovid) in Latin

Lovely War (Julie Berry)

A Delicate Truth (John LeCarre)

All Things Wise and Wonderful (James Herriot)

Espistles of Ignatius (in English)

This is Your Life (Meg Wolitzer)

Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (Sarah B. Pomeroy)

The Ingenious Language (Andrea Marcolongo)

Agricola (Tacitus) in Latin

Savage Summit (Jennifer Jordan)

Mythos (Stephen Fry)

Dance of the Reptiles (Carl Hiaasen)

A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson)

Three Many Cooks (Maggy Keet, Pam Anderson, Sharon Damelio)

 

August

Stephen Fry in America (Stephen Fry)

The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkein)

The Lord God Made Them All (James Herriot)

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

The Dig (John Preston)

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

The Premonition (Michael Lewis)

Complications (Atul Gawande)

The Burning (Tim Madigan)

You Are What You Love (James K.A. Smith)

Next: The Future Just Happened (Michael Lewis)

The Parthenon Enigma (Joan Breton Connelly)

Belinda, a Screenplay (Martha Smith)

Homer’s Daughter (Robert Graves)

Six Frigates (Ian Toll)

The Bomber Mafia (Malcolm Gladwell)

 

September

The Four Winds (Kristen Hannah)

Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)

Daughters of Sparta (Claire Heywood)

Freedom (Sebastian Junger)

Come As You Are (Emily Nagoski)

Shape (Jordan Ellenberg)

Flyboys (James Bradley)

Young Men and Fire (Norman Maclean)

Odyssey Book 11 (Homer) in Greek

Count Belisarius (Robert Graves)

Everest the Cruel Way (Joe Tasker)

Drinking French (David Leibovitz)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare)

Persuasion (Jane Austen)

Blue Bottle Craft Coffee (Caitlin Freeman, James Freeman, Tara Duggan)

 

October

High Crimes (Michael Kodas)

Titan (Ron Chernow)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John LeCarre)

Lucky You (Carl Hiaasen)

All the President’s Men (Woodward/Bernstein)

The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry (David Musgrove, Michael Lewis)

Odyssey Book 12 (Homer) in Greek

Devil in the Grove (Gilbert King)

Home Game (Michael Lewis)

Facing the Mountain (Daniel Brown)

In Eutropium (Claudiun) in Latin

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (Mark Bowden)

Denali’s Howl (Andy Hall)

The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt)

Candide (Voltaire)

Cover-Up (Seymour Hersh)

 

November

Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets (Rowling) in French

Argo (Antonio Mendez)

Skin Tight (Carl Hiaasen)

Odyssey Book 13 (Homer) in Greek

Team of Rivals (Doris Kearns Goodwin)

Code Warriors (Stephen Budiansky)

Noise (Daniel Kahneman)

Chain of Command (Seymour Hersh)

Bringing the Heat (Mark Bowden)

Killing Pablo (Mark Bowden)

Coach (Michael Lewis)

John LeCarre-The Biography (Adam Sisman)

Belzhar (Meg Wolitzer)

The Utopia of Rules (David Graeber)

Sleepwalking (Meg Wolitzer)

 

December

Worm (Mark Bowden)

The Best Game Ever (Mark Bowden)

Cup of Gold (John Steinbeck)

Silverview (John LeCarre)

The Secret Sharer (Joseph Conrad)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)

The Judge’s List (John Grisham)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J.K. Rowling)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling)

Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis)

Congo (Michael Crichton)

Perelanda (C.S. Lewis)

Sweet Thursday (John Steinbeck)

Liber Iob (St. Jerome) in Latin

After You Believe (N.T. Wright)

Odyssey, book 14 (Homer) in Greek

Beowulf (trans. J.R.R. Tolkein) in modern English

Finders Keepers (Mark Bowden)