[Vision2020] Summer Reading Was:The little gray cells (are turningto mush)

[Saundra Lund]

Chas wrote:
"Hey, I have an idea!

I'd bet that most of the contributors to Vision2020 are at least nominally
literate, which should mean that they like to read.

Come on, Visioneers, what is on your recommend reading list for this
summer?"

Wow -- great idea!

One of my absolutely most favorite works of newer fiction is _I Know this
Much is True_ by Wally Lamb.  Here's an excerpt:

"I was forty-one years old the year I lost my brother and found my fathers –
the one who had died years before and the one who’d been there all along.
In the years since, I have become a wealthy man, a little girl’s father, and
the husband, once again, of the woman I always loved but thought I had lost
for good.  Renovate your life, the old myths say, and the universe is yours.

I teach American history now, at the Wequonnoc School – a different kind of
history than Mr. LoPresto used to teach.  My students balk at tests,
complain that I give too much work, and learn, I like to think, what I have
learned:  that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the
oppressed.  More than anyone, it was my maternal grandfather, Domenico
Onofrio Tempesta, who taught me that.  I have come, finally, to a kind of
gratitude for Papa’s legacy – that troublesome document by which he tried
and failed so miserably to prove his “greatness” to “Italian youth.”  God –
life – can be both merciful and ironic, I have come to believe.  Papa
approached his true worth only when he rolled that rented Dictaphone
equipment onto the porch, sent home the stenographer, and retreated to the
backyard to face his failures.  Until he had humbled himself.  Papa, I
treasure your gift.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled
from the dark woods of my own, and my family’s, and my country’s past,
holding in my hands these truths:  that love grows from the rich loam of
forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists
in the roundness of things.

This much, at least, I’ve figured out.  I know this much is true."

From:  I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb


Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
- Edmund Burke


-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Chasuk
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 1:59 PM
To: heirdoug at netscape.net
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Summer Reading Was:The little gray cells (are
turningto mush)

On 5/16/06, heirdoug at netscape.net <heirdoug at netscape.net> wrote:

> Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age (Sloan Technology 
> Series)

Thank you.  I'll have the opportunity for leisure reading this summer, and
I'm compiling my reading list now.  I appreciate your contribution.  :-)

I can recommend Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett.  It is a
thought-provoking read, beautifully written, regardless of your feelings
about the conclusions of the author.

Hey, I have an idea!

I'd bet that most of the contributors to Vision2020 are at least nominally
literate, which should mean that they like to read.

Come on, Visioneers, what is on your recommend reading list for this summer?

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