Journal of a Sabbatical

September 9, 2000

blog blog blogging along

Today's Reading: Thunder and Lightning by Natalie Goldberg, The Outermost House by Henry Beston, The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez

Charla wants me to join her blog. To do that apparently I have to start a blog too so I did and called it stercos. I meant to call it stercus, but it will be even more obscure with the typo in it and the "os" ending makes it seem vaguely technical. It refers to my favorite quotation from Cato's De Re Rustica:

Sterquilinium magnum stude at habeas. Stercus sedulo conserva, cum exportabis purgato et comminuito.

Study to have a great dungheap. Carefully preserve your dung, when you carry it out, make clean work of it and break it up fine.

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First thing Priscilla wanted to know when I arrived to walk with her and Joan-east today was whether I had seen Bryce Florie get hit in the eye last night. I had shut off the TV and gone upstairs to listen to the ninth inning on the radio so I was spared the actual sight of it. It happened so fast: the crack of the bat and the crack of his eye socket breaking were close to simultaneous. If that had been an aluminum bat, he'd be dead. The news broadcasts this morning all lead with the "guarded prognosis" for acceptable vision. Scary. The broadcasters doing today's game mentioned that Florie's parents were in the stands when it happened. That must have been awful.

Priscilla watches all the games on TV. Her husband Harold is not interested in the slightest. He goes out on the porch and listens to books on tape while she watches the Red Sox.

Don't have much to say for either journal or blog. Must get ready for China.