The idea of underlining to note good content led me to look again at my reading list from 1980. I wondered which books had meant the most and would probably have the most underlining, had I been an underliner. In a course I taught where we reviewed the books we had ever read during our whole lives, I usually listed these books as important in my life and thought:
Kemeny - Introduction to Finite Mathematics
Lewis - Mere Christianity
Barzun - The House of Intellect
Holt - What Do I Do Monday?
Macrorie - Uptaught
Thoreau - Walden
As I read over the list, I ran into a couple of titles I wanted to look over again.
Pelletier - Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer
Short - The Gospel According to Peanuts
I just learned a little about Joanna Macy, a Buddhist Quaker environmentalist. I looked her up and found that she is 87 years old. She has quite a few books, including an autobiography "Widening Circles (2007)".
Pelletier, Short and Macy are all books that are a bit too old and too specialized to be in Kindle form so I thought I would stop by the university library and borrow copies. I found that the building was locked but a young man emerged so I asked if the library was closed. "No, the person forget her key." I waited and a woman did come to the doors and unlock them.
She seemed a bit distracted. I asked her if she had misplaced her keys. She thought she had left them in a jacket by accident. I was reminded of bizarre circumstances in 1967 when my keys were picked up by accident and caused a stir for a short time.
I did download my Google Searches using Google Takeout and found them mildly interesting. I remembered some of what I was doing when I made those searches a few years ago. I see, though, that passing time more or less blends the urgent searches and the casual searches together, the hot moments and the cool moments into one great pile.
