Welcome, May!

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The past few weeks have been stressful. Training new employees, dealing with difficult customers, not sleeping well, not exercising (I’ve gained 20 pounds in the last two years), getting through family drama (two life-threatening events in the same day, 2000 miles apart: my dad’s heart attack in NM and a 9 year grandchild starting the rest of his life with Type 1 Diabetes) . . .  My CrossFit lifestyle withered into oblivion when I lost my job at the University in 2020, as Covid got going. Deep depression brought me to a standstill as I took a few months to try to reset. Since then, my physical status has been on steady decline. Now my daily schedule looks something like this: Work 3-11 pm (on a good day), Go to bed at 4 am, get up between 10:30 am and noon, get booted up and go back to work. If I get one day off a week I’m fortunate. At least I don’t have to work all night for now. That was the worst.  So I haven’t had time or energy to do much, even read, much less write. And since my

Revelation (of sorts)

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One common feature of a university campus is the book-sale: some arranged in a list and posted (and frequently re-posted) on bulletin boards; while others are physically displayed in some fashion whether in boxes or outside offices, on shelves.

A daily routine frequently brings me by one of our seemingly permanent book-sale fixtures here on campus. Today, one title caught my attention so I picked it up. This is not the kind of book that would usually interest me, but today I could not keep my hands off--today the book was nearly irresistible. I picked it up, impressed by it’s hardback the relatively good cover condition. I flipped it open.

An entire page was underlined. I turned a few pages. More underlining—entire pages. I thumbed through the book to discover that some reader had meticulously (or perhaps not so much so) underlined the entire book as it was being read. Reaching the end of the book, the glaring omission of underlining suggested to me that these few pages had been completely ignored.

Curiouser, I noticed through my flipping that nearly every colon used by the author was circled by the reader.

A creeping feeling came over me and I re-shelved the book. I may have absent-mindedly wiped my hand on my shirt.

My parting glace at the title was filled with hope that the previous reader got much out their reading. It must have been a revelation.  

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