A portion of the book stack that awaits me next to my bed.
I just finished reading a marvelous book of essays about Chicago and Chicagoans, Neil Steinberg’s You Were Never in Chicago, recommended by a friend. It was educational, engaging, and made me think a lot about what makes Chicago unique and what makes someone a Chicagoan. It also left me further behind in my planned/desired reading than I was when I started it. Continue reading
Machines that think are already among us. They’re also so far out in the future that they might never arrive.
Machines that think give us reason for great hope. They also should cause us great concern.
We might be thinking in entirely the wrong way about machines that think. Continue reading
I made about 300 Christmas cookies this weekend (literally), saw my first opera, painted toys to give to underprivileged children, finally bought those Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies we watch every New Year’s Eve, and did some good Christmas shopping–meaning, at the bookstore, where I always feel I’m getting gifts people will enjoy and also supporting writers. Oh, and I read some poetry, too.
Welcome to the holidays; it’s all good! Continue reading
I’m having a Thankful Thursday.
There was no guarantee of this when the day started with me oversleeping my alarm by nearly an hour. And by the end of my workday things weren’t looking promising. That’s when I realized that I had lost an earring–one I really like. That made me late leaving work. And that put me in rush-hour traffic.
No picnic that.
But when traffic on my expressway backed up and came to a grinding halt ahead of me, I bailed out and escaped onto side streets. Still no picnic, I assure you; but it turned out to be just what I needed. Because not half a mile from the expressway, I drove past a restaurant sign that changed my attitude and saved my day. Continue reading
This year’s Thanksgiving pies: pecan, pumpkin, and peach-blueberry. Facebook just offered me my 2013 Thanksgiving pie photo as a memory, and it shows the same three pie flavors–in the exact same photographic arrangement. See what I mean about ritual?
Holidays bring out the ritual in me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Who doesn’t have some sort of ritual associated with major holidays?
For me, it starts with the food:
Just a couple of days before our whopping November snowstorm, this is how it looked.
It’s that time of year, of course, when we’re inundated on social media by “be thankful” memes. You know the ones: “Join me in a month of thankfulness.” I don’t begrudge my friends their participation in these observances, and I actually enjoy reading them sometimes. But I have to say they usually make me feel just a teensy bit guilty for not joining in.
So I have been thinking a bit about gratitude lately, and trying to pay attention to things for which I am grateful, even while not actually sharing them publicly. It’s not that I’m making any sort of statement by not sharing–more that I know if I promise to share daily, I will inevitably falter. So I am not setting myself up for failure or a broken promise.
That said, there are a few reasons why I truly am feeling grateful.