[WITI No. 78] Loaning a book means giving it away, milestone events that affect your life forever, which environmental change how quickly you "grow up"
End of Sommer greetings! School has started and Labor Day is upon us. The pendulum swings toward bitter appreciation of workers from economical disdain as retail outlets like Starbucks and Trader Joe’s employees vote to start labor unions. We’ll see how that plays out. Are you keeping track of this whipsaw economy? Gas prices decreased for over 70 days yet other things have not. Have you eaten at restaurant lately? I hope you’re doing fantastiche, dear reader.
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I replaced a book from my library that I gifted to someone. I’m not sure what possessed me to replace it. It’s a beautiful book - more beautiful to which I’m normally accustomed. It has a cloth cover (though it might be clothette) with a ribbon bookmark is pretty unusual for the books in my library.
I got to thinking about other books I’ve given to people. You can’t loan a book because it never returns and it’s way too much work to track down it down. The title that came to mind was a book I picked up in Japan while I was visiting Hiroshima called The Day Man Lost by the Pacific War Research Society.
Visiting Hiroshima was heavy - I was alone. It’s difficult to recreate the weight of feeling alienated and lonely and contemplating the scale of destruction that the first atomic bomb, ironically named “Little Boy” could render.
I loaned, uh er, gifted that book to a WWII Pacific Veteran who could not contemplate my reasons for visiting Japan. It simply proves the idea that a foundational experience can forever change your outlook. If living through a depression could change your outlook about economics, fighting in a world war certainly will also. Morgan Housel talks about this in his most recent book, The Psychology of Money.
I’ve been trying to use TPoM (Housel’s book) as a template for my own book where I condense my own book into 10-20 tight chapters where my book is incredibly useful and doesn’t waste the readers time. I’m unsuccessful so far.
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We visited a city high school yesterday for my niece’s volleyball game. My son was not impressed - though I’m not sure how familiar he was with the sports culture in his own high school.
My own impression is that the kids seemed older though they weren’t. This got me thinking about an idea from a book called Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Alan Miller & Satoshi Kanazawa. This book is about evolutionary psychology. They reference a study where girls mature i.e. begin menstruating, due to environmental conditions such as living a single parent household.
It got me thinking about if something similar occurred in parts of the city where
less parental supervision & involvement because parents were worked longer hours and had less free time.
kids are forced to enter the job market prematurely in order to help support their households.
other factors I haven’t considered like trauma or poverty which would take separate essays to unpack.
Word of the week
This is another cognate from Spanish that would have fooled me. In Spanish, temer means to fear also. The anglicized spelling would have thrown me off.
Find of the week - When you don’t believe in climate change…
Have a different take on gifting, (i.e. loaning with no hope of ever receiving it back) books from your library? What are your thoughts on those unexpected life markers that forever change your life? Let me know down below:
Feel a need to share this modest publication?
Don’t worry, I will not track you down to have you return it.
Das ist alles für dieses Woche. (That’s all for this week)
Auf Wiedersehen. (till we see each other again)
-George
What the hell did they think was going to happen. It’s a glacier you’re downhill from it, run. I know what you mean about city kids seeming older. It’s a strange phenomenon. I think it’s a form of self preservation.