Trying a New Feature

On my other blog I started doing a monthly update a few years ago, mainly a record of what books I happen to be reading, in order to increase somewhat the number and frequency of posts there. I thought I would try something similar here, fifteen days or so apart. The idea here was that I would just write about something about the days themselves, in the hope of opening up my stifled mind and get it thinking (or at least seeming more alive) again. What one wants, of course, is for other minds to emerge that are receptive to the produce of one's own, and that one can be receptive to mentally in turn, which is an experience I have not had in a very long time. What material is there to work with though(?) I will start by going over my day yesterday, which was the 21st, the scheduled day for this report.


Woke up at 6am to take my 14 year old to a swim meet in White River Junction, Vermont, about an hour away. I don't mind this drive during the daytime, it is quiet and reassuring, and I always am happy to go to Vermont, even just over the border it is quainter and less up to date than New Hampshire. I have a hard time maintaining conversation with my older children now, the teenagers, they are not exactly sullen but they are content to be mostly quiet. I feel I should be imparting all kinds of advice and information to them about such things as I have any knowledge about, yet I don't seem to be able to do much of this. I think, for example, that I know more than or at least as much about colleges, in terms of how good they are/how smart the students at them are (and this still seems the most important thing to me), than most people do, yet I have not begun to expostulate on my theory of all of this yet, whereas at Christmas other relatives quite freely and naturally began to tell my oldest (a sophomore in high school) that it was time to start preparing for the process, and to ask him whether he wanted to stay in the area, what he wanted to study, whether he had any places he was interested in, which I hadn't begun to think of introducing yet, because I feel I don't have a clear enough idea of how advanced or talented a student he is. On the other hand these other people probably have a clearer understanding that the questions they asked better mirror the way life actually plays out if one is to be a part of it. I am nearly fifty and am still trying to figure out where exactly I slot in in the intelligence hierarchy (not highly, based on re-reading this post), what useful talents I might have had and which would have been fruitful for me to pursue, etc. So it likely that my helpfulness in this whole process for my children might not be of any great extent.


Swimming is not a sport that is in my background, plus I have many (other) children involved in endless sports and activities, so I am not as intense at the swim meets as many of the other parents are. Track, basketball, baseball are all sports I have played or followed so I have more of a sense of what a good time is, whether the coaching is any good, and so on. The atmosphere at the pools is probably good for my sanity, getting to rub elbows with adults (i.e. the other parents) who mostly have something on the ball, though it is very warm in most of the venues where the pools are and this makes me drowsy.


My son finished 4th and 5th in the events he was entered in, though he did not lower his time in his best event, which he needs to do by 2 seconds in order to qualify for some regional mega-meet in Massachusetts. He didn't want to linger around Vermont at all as he might have done in the old days, so we came home and were back by noon. My wife wanted to take the four younger children to the park to sled and ice skate. Originally I was going to rest at home but she decided she needed help so I went along too. The main park in our town actually has a historic marker which I stopped to read for the first time. The land was donated by one of the founders of the American Express Company. Another historical figure with associations to the park, though he was not named on the state sign, was hockey legend and alpha male Princeton classmate and alleged idol of F Scott Fitzgerald Hobey Baker, who founded a hockey tournament on the park's pond during his time at St Paul's Prep School that is still revived annually.


Then I went home and watched the end of the Patriots winning the AFC Championship game and then watched the Philadelphia Eagles, my childhood team which I supposed I must say, given the amount of time and thought I gave to them over the course of many years, I at one time at least loved as much as one loves any entity outside one's self, also advance to the Super Bowl, which they have still never won. This certainly looks like the best Eagles team of my lifetime....


I will stop now. This wasn't the worst thing I've ever written, I don't think (actually,...).