Daily exercise and Homer… I don’t know if I can keep this up, but I am spending 20 minutes running in place each morning, plus some light exercises like sit-ups (6 this morning!). My plan is to continue this. Also, I have been translating a line or two of Homer’s Odyssey daily for the last three days in addition to my usual study.

I finished reading In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. I savored it. Mueenuddin tells troubling stories that are simple on the surface but have complexities inside them. I liked all the stories. The one called, “Lily,” hit home with me. The story is of two people who meet and fall in love. Lily is a jet setter type American who parties hard. but has an interesting interior life.  Murad her eventual Pakistani husband is rich, elegant, and sensitive. The story is divided into two parts. The first is their romance and marriage (which shocked me a bit… I didn’t think they were heading towards that). The second is the story of the inevitable break down of their relationship. Both characters can be attractive to the reader. But in the second part we see their weaknesses. Lily is unable to keep up a respectable life with her husband. For his part, Murad is no where near as flexible and exciting as he appeared. Lily wants to make their sex life varied and interesting. He is much less experienced and very conventional in his love making.

What troubled me was as Lily grows away from Murad, she violates a promise and reads his private diary This actually happened to me in my first marriage. This story helped me understand that a bit better. But like all of Meenduddin’s stories, it troubled me. Drawing this reaction is one of the things I think is admirable about his writing.

I listen to podcasts. Now I guess I will listen even more since I’m doing a daily twenty minute jog in place. I may eventually use audible.com since I recently discovered that having a Prime Amazon account includes this.  Audible.com always put me off because I was under the impression that you had to subscribe to their service and sort of rent a book or two a month. So instead I have purchased synced readings to some of the Kindle books I own. These turn out to be available on the Amazon Audible app. Who knew?

Anyway, I have a lot to listen to on podcasts so I’m not needing to mess with Audible.com but I probably will eventually.

In the meantime, here are two podcasts that I have listened to and am quite struck by.

Kickass News: Jared Diamond on Nations in Crisis

I have read and enjoyed Jared Diamond’s book, On Guns and Steel. He talks about his new book, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, on this podcast.

One of the things he says is that he sees the world as being in a neck and neck horse race between the Horse of Destruction and the Horse of Hope. He gives hope a slight edge but points out that both “horses” are speeding up exponentially.

I have been thinking about the proliferation of negativity via social media and other internet exchanges. I suspect that the terrible things happening in the world are continuing to happen at the rate they have in the past. It’s just that negative info is so much more interesting than mundane hopeful info.

But I’m convinced that there are many, many good things that happen quietly all around the world. I have no idea of the proportion between the two extremes, but I know that  many quiet good things happen because of people as well as awful and atrocious things.

It sounds a bit Pollyanna which is annoying but leads me to my next link.

Emma Cline Reads Miranda July | The New Yorker

Some of you may recall David Sedaris  hilarious rendition of “Roy Spivey” by Miranda July. It was voted listeners’ favorite podcast in the first ten years of the New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast.  The link above is to another story by July and I think it’s spiffy. I have been interested in veiled complexity lately (as Daniyal Mueenuddin’s marvelous stuff). July is not exactly veiling her complexity as clothing it with an eccentric surface. I’m not going to go further in hopes that a few of you will listen and/or read this excellent story called “The Metal Bowl.”

Ray Buursma: Street performing and flawed laws

Finally, I have to share this. Even as I write this, this conference is streaming live on YouTube. This is from yesterday. Jeremy Daum, my son-in-law, is looking good. Eileen and I have it boomarked to check out together sometime. I have to say I am proud of Jeremy!