Loose Ends, # 6

The Un-Civics

As an 8th grader, I took a genuinely old-school class called "Civics" that was required of everyone.

Civics was a class in government, similar to the subject taught today. But at least in my school Civics was more. It included an element we might call citizenship, the point of which was to help us become good citizens. If a democracy functions on the strength of how informed and responsible its people are, as our forefathers clearly believed, a certain amount of civic awareness is essential.

My classmates and I were not particularly strong on the practical tools of responsibility -- at least the boys weren't. Despite the odds, that class provided practical lessons that I still remember.

Among the projects that we immersed ourselves in was a city planning project, in which we laid out a town, devised a charter, elected a town manager (a configuration we preferred to "mayor"), and addressed issues of infrastructure, such as where to put streets, where to locate schools, when and how to put up necessary signs, how to raise money to pay for it all, and so forth. You might call these necessary government functions. Some things just need to be done.

We also held a primary election. Given that New Hampshire was in a Republican state, during that primary season our mock-primary election featured Republican front runners -- Nelson Rockefeller, Margaret Chase Smith, and Barry Goldwater. There was no Democratic contest that year as the other candidate was an incumbent president.

Through a process that I no longer recall, I was chosen to run as Barry Goldwater. I am certain I protested that I was a poor choice and, furthermore, that it was unfair to give me Goldwater.  Rockefeller was a popular moderate Governor from New York; Smith was a very popular moderate Senator from Maine, which, given that Maine was 10 miles away, meant we knew a lot about her; but Barry Goldwater was from Arizona and known even among Republicans as an "extremist."

We were told to campaign for our mock election by forming a campaign committee and then by giving a speech. Voting to determine the winner would follow the speeches.  I don't know what my committee actually did besides making posters on construction paper, but I was on my own for the speech.

To cut a long campaign down to tolerable size, I approached my speech in a totally uncharacteristic fashion: I prepared. I bought Goldwater's book, The Conscience of a Conservative, and I read it.   I am not sure whether it was more impressive that I paid the 50 cent cover price or that I read all 127 pages, but I will let the preparation speak for itself.

I spent hours on my speech, making sure I understood Goldwater's ideas. As if that were not enough, I made sure my language forcefully articulated the issues his campaign was about. When it came time to deliver our speeches, my opponents clearly had not prepared.  Rockefeller's stand-in said two minutes worth of  things like "my opponent is a chump." He got laughs. Margaret Chase Smith apologetically noted that women could be worthy public servants.

For the young, this election was in 1964, a long time ago.  Nostalgia aside, we have been through a lot since 1964 that should not need to be repeated. Few of us really want those days back.

From time to time, I think about what I learned in Civics class. This extremely long campaign season I have had many opportunities to do so. The American people, as candidates like to say, have been subjected to enough ignorance and stupidity to embarrass a class of 8th grade boys -- and they don't embarrass easily.

There are lots of ways to express opinions that will one day embarrass us: signs on lawns that say "America vs Obama," for example. They are just wrong. In every way wrong. Claims that Obama is a socialist or, as I read two weeks ago in a local paper, that he is a communist, are so glaringly out of touch as to be laughable if they weren't also indicators of how badly informed our electorate can be. And those urgent warnings by folks with religious views like my own who claim this President is anti-religion.

Countering these claims would take up too much time and space in an already long blog. Best to consider them this way. Like the jack-o-lantern above, they are pretty scary in the dark.  But in the daylight, with the flame of rumor extinguished, they are . . . well, they are something else entirely.

It all makes me wonder why Civics was not required at every grade level like Math and English. Maybe it should be a requirement for voter registration.

Tomorrow I plan to vote for the President. After work, I will stay away from election coverage and go to bed early with a good book.

I am praying that the President wins. But either way, I will sleep well. I have every confidence that God is still sovereign.

PS
My 8th grade campaign speech took 12 minutes. I touched on all the crucial points of Goldwater's platform, including the developing war in Vietnam and Civil Rights.

I don't have the speech any longer for reference, sadly, but I think it was one of the most effective political speeches ever.

For the record, I won the mock election in a landslide. I know I made my mother proud.

Loose Ends, #5

High Tides and Report Cards

Call me shallow, but I have had two bits of good news this week.

The first was the emergency created by hurricane Sandy.  As I write, the rains and wind are still blowing leaves from our trees, bringing an abrupt end to what little remained of the fall leaf-viewing season.

Beyond the coincidental fact that skeletal trees work better for Halloween than leafy trees, however gorgeous, this leaf-drop is not necessarily good news. Sadly, the trees outside my workplace, which produce leaves of various vivid colors and patterns, are nearly bare now.

Sandy has also caused deaths and created enormous hardships for millions along the Atlantic seaboard.

On the other hand, for my narrower purposes, Sandy has brought with it a brief, though temporary, hiatus to the political windstorm that has raged for, well, for nearly four years. Any respite, clearly, is welcome, even if it is delivered via the costly disruption of a late season hurricane.

I live in a community that is largely Republican and in a county that likes to express its "conservatism." I registered as a Democrat when I moved here nearly thirty years ago, in part to refute the received wisdom that all God's people vote Republican. Most of the time I vote for the Democratic candidate, but not always.  Sometimes there is no Democrat on the ballot in this county. Once or twice I even voted for the Republican, perhaps as lesser evil.

More importantly, if I were registered Republican, I would count as one more undifferentiated statistic in the great political discussion that allows amateurs to masquerade as experts.

I like to maintain what we might call a "thinking posture" and attempt to reserve my vote for the better choice. I read history, for example. I am also among the shrinking number of those who still read the newspapers; and I watch several newscasts, beginning with the BBC. What I don't do is watch political talk shows, although they are hard to avoid.

One immediate benefit of my position is that I understand how some problems have a longer shelf life than four years.  Think "wars in the Middle East" here, for example. Or Roe v Wade. Or poverty in America. Or the persistence of race as an issue in a post-racial America.

Sadly, my "thinking posture" is not necessarily shared, a judgment I make based on the quality of lawn signs and TV ads that appear locally with increasing frequency as the election nears. Some apparently believe this is the most important election of their lifetime, as the urging usually goes, although it is not the most important election of my now considerable lifetime.

This brings me to my second bit of good news.  In the mail yesterday I received my first ever "Voter Report Card."  Guess what?  I not only received an "Excellent" for voting in the last five general elections, but more importantly I also scored better than my neighbors! Being a good neighbor is important, but being better than my neighbors is simply great!

Imagine my excitement when this Excellent Voter Report Card arrived on a day that the campaigns took the day off.

What has me a bit worried, however, is the sentence on my Report Card that indicates my rating is based on "public records for your current address only." I have lived in a number of places during my adult life.  What do you suppose a check of other addresses would turn up?  Voter fraud?

I am planning to vote for the President, as one might expect. Now that I have a streak going, I would be remiss to skip this election, wherever it ranks on the "important election" list. All in all, it's not actually a hard decision for me. I have a long memory.

More important than my personal choice, however, is this:  On Wednesday after the election, while all the things that annoy us are still fresh in our minds, let's start thinking about campaign reform.  We should start by limiting the political season -- not only to improve our quality of life, but also to allow elected officials time to concentrate on doing their jobs rather than campaigning.  Then we need to find a way to reign in campaign financing. The PAC system is frightening. Then, if anyone is left standing, let's tackle the tricky question of truth in advertising.

These are highly political issues, of course, so clearly we need a commission that is non-partisan rather than congressional.  But I think it can be done if we set aside the what's-in-it-for me and the I'm-a-victim positions that have come to characterize our political thinking.

Let's treat it as a problem to be solved, a problem that needs to be solved. That's what Americans are good at, right?

Loose Ends, Number Four

Snapple Facts -- 

Or Why I Hate American Politics

Several years ago I began collecting lids from the glass Snapple bottles. Each lid comes with an arcane "real fact" printed on the underside.

I don't collect all "real fact" lids, just the ones that fit a category that lies a tad beyond bizarre and decidedly to the vaccuus side of trivial. This is where the true genius of the "facts" themselves lies.

Case in point is Real Fact" #880, "A Venus flytrap can eat a whole cheeseburger."

The cheeseburger fact is empty but compelling,. It is a bit like the accident you can see happening but can't turn away from. The information itself is beyond useless.  There is no way to verify the truth of the statement should you even want to -- unless you had a Venus flytrap and were willing to sacrifice it to the cheeseburger experiment.  I am dead certain that the cheeseburger would kill the little vegetable meat-eater.

Perhaps there are Venus flytrap researchers out there who might also supply the data for us, but I don't have the ambition to track one down.

Apparently there are hundreds of these "real facts" out there waiting to be encountered.  The highest numbered "real fact" I have is #917, which says that "The average lead pencil can draw a line 35 miles long or write roughly 50,000 English words."

Consider that: over 900 facts that have no use and no value, but are, nevertheless, genuine curiosities, real brain grabbers.

Fact #917 appears reasonable, by the way, although I have no idea how close it is to being true. As with the flytrap - cheeseburger question, I am not motivated to find out. For all I know, a pencil researcher just "did the math" and never drew any lines at all. A smart mathematician could devise the formula, couldn't she?  At least that is what mathematicians always claim -- math can explain everything.

I keep my "real fact" lids in a metal can that was once filled with mint balls.  Uncle Joe's Mint Balls, to be precise, made in Wigan, England, according to the can; they are made of cane sugar, oil of peppermint, cream of tartar, and NO artificial additives.

The can also claims they are "PURE" and "GOOD," although I can't attest to either. I ate the last one decades ago.

This is, I suppose, a strange subject for meditation, although I am seized with an odd conviction that may give it a certain rationale. A few days ago I came across a Snapple lid that gave the real name for Barbie, of Barbie-doll fame. Amazing.  I mean, I had no idea! Barbara Millicent Roberts. A tad pretentious, perhaps, but good to know.

What really struck me about this Barbie "fact' is that my immediate reaction was to connect it to Sarah Palin, for some reason.  Huge cognitive shift here: I remember how relieved I was to be in London during the off-year election in 2010 since the London papers generally ignored the political noise and nonsense from back home.

I was asked once at a men's prayer breakfast to explain the American fascination with Sarah Palin as potential national candidate. These good Christian men were hoping for some insight.

Sadly, I was no help, being mystified myself.

My confusion got me a few laughs. The English, apparently, find us amusing when we are not trying to be too impressed with ourselves.

Now, after what seems like eternal presidential campaigning, during which a little other-worldly wisdom from Sarah Palin might be amusing, I would be in favor of exchanging campaign seasons for this: have each candidate write on a 3X5 card why I should vote for him and publish it in the newspaper every day for the first week of November.

This brief foray into the political realm reminds me of a few more "real facts" I am strangely fond of.
Number 893, fitting for October, reads, "Jack-O-Lanterns were originally made out of turnips."

I want very much to believe jack-o-lanterns were originally made of turnips, as it suggests simpler times, when politicians were public servants, men of substance. Still, I am finding it hard to believe anyone would go to all the work of hollowing enough space in a turnip for a lit candle.

Another favorite falls into the campaign promise kind of category.  Real Fact # 823, "Sailors once thought wearing gold earrings improved eyesight."  This one, far-fetched as it appears, sounds about right.  Because, why not? Sailors have not always been the brightest stars in the sky.

My actual point here is that much of what we call political rhetoric is largely of the same order, curiously fascinating but essentially pointless. And even should we think it true, it's hard to judge the actual value of the information.

"Real Fact" 795: "Hawaii is moving toward Japan at the rate of almost 4 inches per year."

Should we be worried?  Is the key word here "almost"? Or is 4 inches likely to create international issues during my children's lifetime?

My all time favorite "Real Fact" is the lid that got me started in the first place,  # 786: The brain operates on the same amount of power as a 10-watt bulb.

Kind of makes you wonder doesn't it, what that says about those of us who can't get enough of the political talk?

Loose ends, # 3

A Good Death

My fifth grade Sunday School teacher, Mr. Taylor, scolded us one Sunday morning for showing up without a writing instrument.

It was a small matter, I suppose, carrying a pen, but I remember his admonition; I am seldom without a pen.  Now, of course, I always carry a book too, just in case I have "down time." These days I am willing as well to speak in public on short notice or to write should the opportunity arise.

One such opportunity came this last winter just as the "Busan Journal" focus of my blog had, finally, run its course.

We received an email from my cousin Minda that one of my mother's twin sisters, Viola, had died after a period of failing health. Aunt Viola and Aunt Alberta, the surviving twin, were approaching 94; they had lived near each other, except for short periods, their entire lives.

Both of my aunts, like my mother, had lost their husbands decades ago. Both were feeble physically but sharp mentally. My mother, two years younger, has been losing ground to Alzheimer's for several years.

The only other bits of detail you might need for what follows is that my mother and her sisters had a brother, Dean, who died from an infection when he was fourteen.

Time, distance, circumstances, obligations being what they are, I did not go to my Aunt Viola's memorial service.

Instead, I wrote the following short piece, which my oldest brother read at the service as an expression of affection from our side of the family. I offer it here, now, because it is one of the more important -- and hardest -- things I have ever had opportunity to write.

In Memorium, with Gratitude

"We had anticipated that we would be hearing this news sooner rather than later.  Nevertheless, I found myself silenced by it.  For a person who works with words all the time,  I frequently find myself confronted by the need to be silent.  Let God work in that silence.  Let Aunt Viola continue to live in that space in my heart where she has been my whole life. I think I am ready, now, to offer some words.

"I have benefited many time, as we all have, by Aunt Viola’s good life.  Now, at this sad moment, I feel I am benefitting by her good death. I hope that will not be thought an insensitive thing to say. As always, she led by example, and it is a good example, to be honored, to be emulated even if it comes to that. Thank you, Aunt Viola.

"I have many memories of Aunt Viola, but the one that jumps to the foreground at this moment is from the early 1960’s.  My father was building a house for us on Faculty Road in Durham, NH, with Grampa Nordstrom’s considerable help.  During that construction filled summer, the two Aunts come to New Hampshire to help.  Maybe that was not the original plan, but true to their character once they arrived and saw that help was needed there was no question but that they had come to help.  They would help. Period.  Over what seemed to me (as a 12 year old) to be endless weeks, we had set up an assembly line in the living room to paint siding.  It is a big house, and there was a lot of siding.  How vividly I remember Aunt Viola painting strip after strip of siding set up on saw horses, starting early, staying late, working steadily and quickly, singing hymns, telling stories, arguing from time to time in that familiar way the sisters had, alternately encouraging and admonishing me to keep the pieces coming or to take them away, setting an example of hard work, cooperation, and good cheer for a boy who wanted more than anything to be done already. As a 63 year old man looking back 50 years, I must say, the memory and the lesson are vivid.  They have served me well. Thank you, Aunt Viola.

"My wife, Donna, remarked when we first shared your email, Minda, that Aunt Viola’s passing was the beginning of the passing of that generation.  A deeply sad beginning, however much expected. Aunt Albert has had health problems that have weakened her constitution.  We have been losing my mother slowly for some years now, a loss that creates a different kind of grieving.  I know what Donna meant; we always think of the three sisters together.  For all of their children, I imagine, it has been “Mom and her sisters.”  Now Aunt Viola is gone from our daily lives.

"What occurs to me now is that we have lost a lot of that generation already.  We lost Uncle Dean Nordstrom before we even had opportunity to know him.  We have lost all the husbands what seems like generations ago:  Uncle Anton first; Uncle Milford; my father.  All comparatively young men.  So it is not, for me at least, so much that Aunt Viola’s passing is the beginning of the loss of this generation; that began long ago.  For me, the remarkable thing is that God has granted us this long reprieve, this extra time.  We have had the sisters with us for far longer than we might have hoped.  What a blessing that has been.  For these extra years of Aunt Viola’s life, I am profoundly grateful. Well done, good and faithful Aunt.  You have blessed us in and through your life.  Now you have blessed us in leaving. Your note, Minda, that you heard a knock on your door that must have been Aunt Viola leaving, sounds exactly right.  She would have departed without fanfare, but letting you know “I’m going.”

 

Loose Ends, # 2, Geezer Rock

Are We Rollin', Bob?

Saturday, last, Stefan, my youngest son, and I went to a rock concert. Bob Dylan. Dylan.  The Bobster. Creator of the anthems of my generation.  Icon. Voice of Old Man River himself, in person.

Dylan was playing Tags in Big Flats, an outdoor venue that would be considered small by rock concert standards, capacity being in the neighborhood of six thousand or so.  Reserved seats, for which the concert goer pays primo prices, were white plastic lawn chairs set up in front of the stage and set off with a yellow rope. We bought cheaper lawn tickets, rented two white plastic lawn chairs for $5, and set them just outside the restricted area.

I am not much traveled as concert goer, but I have now seen a number of Dylan concerts and have the T-shirts as evidence.  Both Stefan and I wore concert Ts, as required, for this cultural exposure. 

A concert like this can prove to be a bonding experience between a grizzled boomer and his offspring.

"Tell me what it was like back in the day, Pop."

My take on the performance itself is essentially the same as Pete Seeger's response to Dylan's performance at the Newport Folk Festival all those years ago when Dylan plugged in and, thereby, offended nearly all the "folk music" purists. Seeger is reported to have said that he wanted an ax to cut the cables to Dylan's amplifiers.  Years later he explained that it was too loud -- he could not actually hear the music.

Little has changed in that regard.  Dylan is still kicking out the slats, blasting the faint of heart into the next county, rockin' with the best and baddest of the rockers.  All the cliches apply. Too loud for nuanced analysis. 

I listened hard during each number to catch a line, lyric or melody that would tell me what song I was listening to; but it was generally hard going. I leaned over to shout a title at Stefan when I figured out what we were hearing.  That happened for maybe half the numbers, although I know every song on the playlist that we found on Google later.  Consequently, I shall not evaluate the finer points of the concert.  A very clear, detailed, and presumably accurate assessment of Dylan's new arrangements, shifts in lyrics, and the implications of these things for Dylan-watchers appeared in the New York Times shortly after Labor Day for those who want a real review. For most of us at Tags, nuance was beside the point.

The audience was clearly a veteran Dylan audience, closer in median age to Dylan, who has passed 70, than to my son, who is 26. Most of us sat down for the concert, comfortable in our plastic lawn chairs. No crowd surfing that I am aware of, although several beach balls surfaced early in the concert, but they sank fairly quickly.

Most of the dancing in the aisles seemed to be in the direction of the latrines, which were a cultural experience in themselves.  For the men, at least, the latrine consisted mainly of long aluminum troughs that reminded me of junior high summer camp. The aisle dancing, beer drinking, and the latrines were linked in a direct and urgent way.  I caught only one brief whiff of grass during a concert that lasted the better part of two hours, not the now legendary saturation fogging that were rumored to produce contact highs. And I spotted only one forty-ish dude with the intense glazed deadpan look indicating he was experimenting with serious brain chemistry.

To be fair, a few other observations of the crowd are in order before I quit. There were many vintage concert T-shirt, most of which were tented out by paunches and broad hips. As one might expect, there was a high per capita incidence of bad grey pony tails, curiously braided beards, and geezer-hip clothing choices. On the whole we were generally a tame bunch; most of us looked just like middle class white people flirting with retirement.

Due to the 10 p.m. "noise curfew" in Big Flats, the concert ended on time. We called Bob and his band back for a new treatment of "Blowing in the Wind," and then we all responsibly left to find our cars. Most of us are cautious of the dangers of night driving these days. I suspect we are also more mindful of bed time than we were a half century ago when Dylan first plugged in and jolted the music scene.

Still, it was a fun night rocking in the free world with my boy -- tripping, musically speaking, in our plastic lawn chairs.  As another geezer band wrote in an earlier age, "I know it's only rock'n'roll, but I like it!"

Loose Ends, Number One

In late January I posted the last of my Busan travel blogs.

At the time, I had a new awareness that travel writing can only be convincing if one is actually traveling.  Once the traveling ends, the identity of the blog begins to fade; it loses urgency for both the writer and the reader.

Consequently -- the hiatus.

In 1998 -- at the end of the last communication-technology Ice Age -- I began writing a column for a local newspaper.  My column was one of four columns written by Houghton people to be published weekly, in rotation; each of us planned to write one column every four weeks.  We had contracted together with the newspaper and were to be paid, at least initially, $15 per column -- not quite enough even in 1998 to allow me to quit my day job, but enough to push our work into the professional category.

A newspaper column is a bit like a blog, or can be.

The four of us all did something a bit different, as one might expect. My column was called "Something to Chew on" -- what I thought at the time was a clever, though indirect, nod both to my tendency to choose eclectic subjects and to our location in dairy country.  I had charmed myself by imagining that I chose to observe the world around me in a kind of wide-eyed bovine wonder.

Don't think about that too long, please. My point here is actually with the end of that column rather than with its inception and intentions.

I submitted my last column in 2003.  By then I was the last columnist standing from the original four.  Two of the writers had, in a manner of speaking, written themselves out.  The third, Jack Leax, a well published local poet and writer, had already gotten a book out of his columns, Out Walking, and did not want the column deadline any more.

I will add that conditions at our newspaper had changed as well.  A new editor had replace the editor we had been working with and the money, for no apparent reason, had stopped coming.

I had hoped to continue writing my column.  But I discovered I could not. Something significant had changed.

[Views of St.Paul's from the far end of the Millennium Bridge, London, October 2010.]

My last column ran a month before the US military began its "Shock and Awe" operation in the Middle East. In that column I had suggested that if there were an alternative to war the Administration was obviously preparing us for -- if an alternative existed, we ought to try it.

I would like to think that had I continued to write my column, I would have tried to express the anguish I was feeling over the Administration's decision to fight. In any case, I was literally unable to continue writing the short pastoral essays that had been my column for five years.

Maybe not continuing was a bit of cowardice on my part. Maybe it was simply writer's block occasioned by my inability to detach myself from the horror of war, albeit from my safe side of the globe.  At any rate, although I wrote or started many drafts for columns, I was not able to submit any of them. They refused to come together.  I was not able to see my way forward from that point with that column.

Something of the same sort has happened with my travel blog.  Eight months ago I realized I could no longer find my way forward with my Busan Journal, given its focused identity and assumptions.

What I have determined is that I will launch a new blog in the old space, featuring the same old writer but with a new identity that will gradually make itself apparent.  While that is playing out, I thank you for reading past blog posts.  And I hope you will want to read the new ones.

Travel Impressions and Images

Crumbling Walls and Bare Naked Trees

When I began my blog in August 2010 at the outset of our year of travels, I hoped to learn from doing. I knew only that I did not want the blog to be a diary or a journal.  But beyond that limitation, I had no clear sense of what I would find myself doing.

The starting point for our trips, which I thought might be reflected in what I wrote, was to see and to listen; to understand without judging; and to record the places, the people, the events, and the culture as we encountered them. Or maybe I should say, as I understood them. I intended to experience without prejudice.

Built into our program was the possibility that we might settle, however temporary and however oblivious, into the cultures hosting us. But because we intended to be residents not tourists, I suppose you might say we began with prejudice:  that to be a resident would afford a better understanding, a clearer view of whatever the culture offered.

It was, I think now, a high ambition, full of hope and leavened with optimism. It required a kind of quiet patience, such as shown by the little dog who waits patiently on the doorstep of the vicarage at St. Augustine's Church. Or at least a willingness to adapt to whatever life requires, as, I suppose, is true of this vine we found at a Buddhist temple in Busan.

And after a post or two, someone suggested I add pictures, since people like pictures and without them the words have a tendency to pile up.  So I learned to include pictures. It took a while, despite the ease of the process, because even simple technologies do not seem at all obvious to my manually oriented mind.

I had been taking photographs already, first as a memory aid for the writing that would come later, and then once persuaded to use them, as a way to illustrate in my blog.  A picture may not be worth a thousand words exactly, but it is worth a handful of words at least if it can be managed properly.

Almost immediately I realized I did not want to use pictures simply to illustrate my narratives. I don't have a story to go with this very Korean stone wall, so un-British, so un-American, yet I find it fascinating. Clearly the photographs would never be just a memory spur or just a way to fill out my word pictures.  I somehow came to understand that photographs are a source of information, emotional as well as logical, in their own right. 

At some point, they simply became a way of seeing things.

All that to say, the photographs are their own reason for appearing in the blog.  It would be too disturbing, I suppose, to say that they are a window into my mind. They are, rather, partners with the writing in exploring the territory, whatever that is.

And sometimes, as with these pictures of Grace Oh's babies taken at a restaurant in Seoul last March, they tell their own stories.

New Year Book Review

 On Reading, Korea, and the Long View

 

End of the year commentators are in agreement apparently that 2011 was, well, bad news all around and we are well to be rid of it. Much of this badmouthing arises from national or global events about which there is little room to argue, although many people have felt personal unhappiness as well. Some would just like life to get better; others have gone to the trouble of making resolutions to correct their woes.

While there are areas of my life that might well benefit from improvement, I am not making resolutions myself.  And while 2011 had its share of catastrophes, I can't say that it was worse on average than many other years. By December most of us have grown tired of what we have and we'd like a fresh start. 

For me personally, however, 2011 was actually a wonderful year, the highlight of which was spending 19 weeks in Busan, Republic of Korea. 

2011 was also a bumper year for reading books --  for me, at least. I finished the year at 57, a total that may not be a personal record but is certainly in the top two or three totals for any year since I have been keeping track.

For nearly forty years, I have recorded the books I read.  I note down, usually, title, author, genre, and the month I finished.  For a while I did not include books that I finished for a second or third time; but now I do.A second reading is not necessarily a faster reading, and I am by nearly any measure a slow reader.  Not a promising characteristic in an English teacher.

It took me a few years to establish the habit -- the habit of recording what I read, that is -- and I have modified the particulars from time to time. I typed the titles on 4x6 cards for a few years, for example, which I then stapled into the notebook, a modification that clearly involved too many unnecessary steps.

There are some notable gaps in my record keeping as well, especially when I was getting started. The gaps pain me a bit now because I would love to know what books I actually read during my college years.  Or during high school, when presumably I actually did read a few books from cover to cover.

My first entry is dated December 1973, the year I finished my Masters Degree and also the year I began teaching -- which means I have no record of what I would like to think of as extensive reading for my Masters program, nor of what I read as I struggled to learn how to teach during that painful first year. Both of these "missing" lists of titles might provide insight given where my interests have taken me.

The fact that I finished 57 books in 2011, a tid-bit of personal trivia, is largely unremarkable. There are many faster and more prolific readers around. Furthermore, any literary detective worth her salt could easily point out that 9 of these books were poetry, which, as we all know, are usually thin volumes with considerable white space. Another half dozen are short fictions translated from Korean, no more than 100 pages or so.  Admittedly, 57 is a misleading number.  Still . . .

If the number is notable at all, it is notable for two reasons.  The first is practical:  I have no more room in the notebook that I have used since 1973 to keep my yearly lists. [A footnote here that may be of interest: the notebook itself was rescued from a friend who was discarding it as "smoke damaged" after a fire ruined it.  Apparently, a bag of garbage in his entryway smoldered for several hours and filled that end of his house with heavy black smoke.  The notebook still carries smoke marks on its cover.]

In a way, not surprisingly, my book count embraced and benefited from my months in Korea. In addition to the short fictions mentioned above, by such writers as Gong JiYoung, Kim Dong-Ni, Ch'ae Man-shik, and Hwang Soon-Won, and the poetry of Kim Chiha,So Chong Ju, and Ku Sang, I found myself drawn into the work of Korean-American writers in a way I had not anticipated. Reading Chang-rae Lee in Korea, for example, illuminated his characters in a way that simple reflection would not have afforded.

Most of the Asian poetry and some of the fiction was given to me by our good friend Lee Joo-yub, who understood that I needed a systematic grounding in a literature that I had been randomly picking at. So my reading, and my four month immersion in Korean life, and one of the people who made our time not only possible and profitable, but also enjoyable came together nicely to make 2011 a very good year, all in all. 

With the new year, I have closed the old notebook, so to speak, and begin a new one.  I made my first entry this morning, so I am off to a good start for 2012. I don't expect to read 57 books this year, nor do I expect to keep making entries into the new notebook for the next 39 years.  But I will give it a shot anyway.