On Mar 25, 9:02=A0pm, Dover Beach <moon.blanc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I'm looking at the list of 100 books, and I'm thinking that although
> I've read some of them (I couldn't be arsed to count) I read them a long
> time ago. =A0And you know why?
>
> Because I can't focus on anything anymore. =A0Here is my reading so far
> this afternoon, after I got the taxes to the CPA. =A0I started by
> wondering about the book S**** Pit. =A0Can't remember what triggered it.
> Oh, yes I do -- I heard a recording of Sylvia Plath reading her poem
> Daddy on some XM channel. So I started thinking about crazy chicks and
> political analyses of crazy chicks.
>
> So I used one of my gray-market library cards and found a 1979 article
> about the difference between the movie and the novel (S**** Pit, that
> is), analyzed in political/feminist terms. =A0The woman who wrote S****
> Pit was sort of lefty and it was unclear whether that was partly why she
> had been committed. =A0That article made reference to the Children's
> Bureau publication from 1914 called Infant Care. =A0So I read that.
=A0Wel=
l,
> partway. =A0It got boring about how to fold diapers. I got through at
> least 10 pages, though. I noticed that Julia C. Lathrop was the head of
> the Children's Bureau. =A0In 1914? =A0A woman was head of a gov't agency
i=
n
> 1914? =A0So I looked her up and it turns out I really should have known
> about her because she was in with the Jane Addams/Alice Hamilton
> Hull-House crowd.
>
> So back to my online library account. =A0I looked up Julia Lathrop and
> found some correspondence between her and a working class woman from
> right around 1914-15 and it was just riveting, and heart-breaking,
> because I swear conditions for poor women in Chicago have actually
> gotten worse in the last 100 years. =A0Then I got led off into a puzzler
> about the Progressive Movement and the conflict between the radicals and
> the reformers, and found some material that described the criticisms of
> the Settlement House programs, which were assimilative and promoted hard
> work and sobriety and a bunch of other conservative, unpopular stuff.
=A0
>
> Then I needed some M&Ms and I thought about how I really probably would
> have been better off if I had just sat down and ground my way through
> some more of Plath's poems, and just thought about those, but my head
> just constantly explodes and with teh Intarweb being universally
> available I now cannot stay focused on anything. =A0
>
> I'm sorry, what were you saying?
Yes. I'm not much for abstaining from anything in an organized way,
but lately I've been staying offline for the bulk of the day, just
checking email and surfing a bit once in the morning. It's been a
great victory. Though I've been feeling more like being outside in
the sun, doing some sort of physical something rather than reading a
book. The other day I spent the whole damn day driving around not
buying a boat, which was another great victory, of a sorts.
Huh. I wasn't even trying to ramble, there. It's worse than I
thought.
--
Kevin
|
