Balancing the reading journey
One.
Over the past two months, as a debilitating protest in Bangkok took hold and shadowy groups have operated with impunity, I have crouched behind furniture in hotels when grenades exploded on the street outside. I stood on a wide avenue as dozens of dead and wounded protesters were carried from the carnage of a failed military crackdown. I hid behind a telephone pole during an hourlong crackling barrage of gunfire. And on Thursday, a man I was interviewing was struck in the head by an assassin's bullet and collapsed at my feet.
Two.
I went to see a minister a few days after his death, which was as swift as it was inexplicable — he had been only 43 and remarkably fit, with no history of heart problems. Neither Steve nor I were religious but I wanted to talk to someone. She was wonderful; she did not bring up God or heaven or anything. She was more like a doctor, explaining a diagnosis. "Suffering a devastating loss is like suffering a brain injury," she said. She spoke really slowly, which I appreciated. "You walk around like a zombie. You can't think straight. You feel drugged–"
"For people who are looking for a church, that's a good way of sorting through the good and the bad. But to go deeper, I'm against that consumerism when it comes to community," Wicks said. "People ought to choose to be part of a community and embrace the flaws of that community and work to fix them."
Four.
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.
Five.
The big issue is whether LeBron is going to make a basketball decision or one geared toward marketing, exposure and his personal life. After talking to several veteran NBA players and several club executives over the past 48 hours, it was somewhat surprising to hear that few people believe LeBron will make primarily a basketball decision. Nobody I talked to believes LeBron was humiliated by the loss to Boston. None of the players I talked to believes LeBron is motivated by winning in the same obsessive way Magic, Bird and Jordan were, or Kobe is. They believe that LeBron thinks he has years to win, and isn't particularly pressed at the moment to do so.
Six.
One year after taking the college phenomenon Stephen Strasburg — considered by most scouts to be the best pitching prospect since the Major League Baseball draft began in 1965 — the Nationals can now pick what many view to be the best teenage power-hitting prospect since perhaps Mickey Mantle. Better than Darryl Strawberry, the top selection in 1980. More advanced than Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Joe Mauer, other first-pick prodigies to whom Harper best compares.
Looking at different picture books can feel like taking different kinds of walks in the wood. As you turn the pages the pictures influence the pace at which you read and the attention you give to the images. Some books may feel like being in a forest with tree branches beckoning forward, encouraging you to move at a steady pace down the path. (William Steig is the master of this kind of book, his drawings, easy-going and efficient, so inextricably linked to his words that they lead effortlessly to the conclusion.) An other kind of book may feel more like a great allée of oaks where you are inclined to stop and admire the whorls and indentations of particular trees. In yet another, the experience is more akin to walking through an arboretum, where every turn brings you face to face with an exciting new specimen of bush or flower.
Durable, evocative, stale, weary;
renewable, exhaustible, and placid;
benign or neutral, shifty as the moon;
obedient to undeciphered laws:
What we take for granted
vanishes, reconfigures, disappears.
