Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer-prize-winning 1985 novel, is one of the books Ivi is reading for her American Lit class this term. Since Ivi was recently at home sick in bed, Kim revived an old family tradition and started reading it aloud. I soon caught the apparently-same illness and while staying home from work for a few days, I listened in and also took up the reading chores. We got through about 250 of the novel’s nearly 1,000 pages by the time Ivi had recovered and decided to read it silently on her own to quicken the pace. I hope to return to the thing soon because, while I thought the 90s TV miniseries — my only experience with Lonesome Dove to this point — was pretty decent, the darn (“dern” in cowboy-speak) book is flat terrific: colorful, hilarious, gripping, detail-rich, and almost impossible to put down. Only 750 pages to go …
Eighteen Years On
Today, on the occasion of Ivi’s 18th, I came upon an early Polaroid, dating back to her very second day (sorry, tried to find the authentic first day, but not yet) …
Calculus, Documented
Upon hearing considerable laughter at a late hour last night, I came upon this scene. But I was shown that Nik and Ivi were simply comparing Nik’s college-level calculus with Ivi’s high school variant last night. Please forgive the handheld one second exposure, but documentation of actual study time doesn’t happen every day.
Man In A Blizzard
Here is an utterly remarkable short film made on December 26 — and astonishingly completed by the next day — of the recent New York City blizzard. Watch it here, but don’t miss the back story on Roger Ebert’s blog.
Casualties of the Blizzard
Today, while walking to work in near-blizzard conditions in the very early morning, I noticed that the high winds were doing their work on a neighbor’s inflatable Christmas lawn decor.
Early Morning Walk
From last weekend …
Reads For All Of Us
Just a sampling of the books that appeared under the tree this year …
A Balancing Act
An Idaho State foul shot …
More discussion here.
All Jazzed Up
From the December 17, 2010 Baker City Herald:
On The Cloning Of Ivi
Today, Ivi took on a new project …
Well … great natural window light today, but nobody would wait long enough to let me grab the tripod for the needed long exposure …
So, anyway, this morning Ivi showed up with a couple of her friends and they — no boys allowed for a while — proceeded to cover Ivi in a layer of saran wrap followed by a layer or more of duct tape. The outcome was a sort of armature or dress dummy (dubbed Viola) to be used in Ivi’s project to design and fabricate her own prom dress from recycled whatever. More project documentation:
More documentation may emerge over the life of the project.