Revelation about my one (Mormon) colleague...

...that was buried in the footnote of an article that he sent me, since for our "summer book club" we're going to be reading an ancient heretical text that's he studied and written on, in conjunction with a new commentary on it that's out: A few years ago, he was writing major national museums in order to try to track down this one famous amulet used in astrological medicine by an ancient heretical sect, that was photographed and put up for auction and has subsequently disappeared from public view. And it's just something that seems to have been very time-consuming and that he just went and did, and never talks about it. It's like unearthing someone's strange and deep part of them, but in a way that makes you respect them more. I think now that we must get along in part because of our obsessiveness, and concern for the truth. It's also very interesting since our scholarly interests overlap in major major ways, but he's grounded more in the ancient and I'm grounded more in the modern, though we've both worked and written on both of the chronological ends of things... As I've told him before, it's refreshing to see his interests, since I can point to them and tell other people that I'm not so strange! He also told me once before that he's kind of envious that I've spent the last few years working on this one ancient language that he wants to learn, since it's also a tangent to the stuff that he's working on.

Somber prediction...

...of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair): The worsening economic situation of rising generations will only really start to hit the Baby Boomers when many of them realize that not only do their retirement savings not cut it, but also that their kids don't have any money to spare and are just scraping by on the other side of the country with nothing to give them.

A sight the other day in my kitchen:

A small (brownish-black) beetle very slowly walking on the sharp edge corner of the counter-top, at the front edge of the sink. And I mean, very slowly walking.

A reflection on the young.

Like a month ago when I came home at night, the (engineering student) college kids in the house next to me were having some basement party with a band playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and then like a week ago when I was doing some rote presentation prep work, I was listening to Madonna's "Music" album, and I got to thinking about the kids in the front house, and how they were probably infants when that song came out in the early 2000s. I do wonder now what those songs sound like to them; they probably have an old and perhaps retro chic and even slightly ironic feel, like the Bee Gees do to me (the Bee Gees were big like a few years right before I was born). To hear through the ears of the young!

Stereo problem:

The other day I was listening to my Original London Cast Recording of HAIR on my CD player, and somehow on the last song I missed the lyric I like about "We starve/ look/ at one another/ short of breath/ walking proudly in our winter coats/ wearing smells from laboratories..." At first I thought I was distracted or that maybe I had confused some song and its reprise, but then when I replayed it, I noticed that somehow one entire vocal line might have fallen out, and then when I replayed another portion of the CD, I also noticed that in this other song half of the lead vocals were gone from there too. THere must be something wrong with my stereo, or perhaps on that one particular CD.

Some recent reflections...

...by my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair that I'm friends with): 1) When people feel bad for you economically, they often individualize it and take the worsening shape of the economy as-is, and never stop and step back and reflect and say things like, "It's just a shame that we don't pay positions like teachers/social workers/etc. more." 2) He feels so often nowadays that the generations are flipped, where the older generation is feckless and selfish and impulsive, and the younger generation is crying out that we should be wiser and think more for the long-term. 3) "you know one of the things that bothers me about facemasks is that when you are on public transport you can't tell anymore the good muslims (the moderate hijab wearers) from the bad ones (the extremist niqab wearers)."

Radio as a crutch.

I notice more and more in my life that I have the radio on at certain times of day, and that sometimes I can't seem to turn it off at night, even when quiet would be better, and that sometimes I get into crazes with programs, like how I have to listen to the radio news at this one time of day, or to Saturday afternoon opera. I would almost think of it as a crutch, and it is, but I have to remind myself that we're in a pandemic and I'm still pretty isolated, and so everything that I do is okay. I tell myself the same thing when I find myself spending way too much time doing jigsaw puzzles.