Falter-ing

I am reading Falter, by Bill McKibben, at exactly the right time: right after Hope in the Dark and Men Explain Things to Me, both by Rebecca Solnit, who mentions him, as they are active together in trying to save the world...and, I hope, in time to save the world.

McKibben's subtitle, Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, is an important question, and might mean there isn't time, but, like Solnit, he approaches the complexity of climate change with great hope and as a realist, not an optimist or a pessimist. So I hope to learn a lot.

I am reading it on a Slattern Day (in the blog), after doing a lot of housework these past few days, post-holiday. My daughter and her boyfriend left last weekend, and my son left on Tuesday, and I took down the Christmas tree the very next day. A bit of a sentimental slattern, I should confess that this was the same Christmas tree that was up and decorated since the previous Christmas. It was my hope in the dark all last year. No doubt I will do a bit more housework yet today, rousing myself from rest and reading, because it's still there to do. It has occurred to me that I should wear kneepads for cleaning the toilets. TMI?

I just finished reading No Crybabies Allowed, a delightful memoir of the first 12 years of her life by Terri Ryburn. I'm in a writing group with Terri and went to her book release reading on December 29 at Ryburn Place, her shop in the restored Sprague Super Service, along the 1926 configuration of Route 66. She also wrote a book about Route 66! Her memoir is in vignette style, and I have heard her read or tell excerpts from it before, and she is a stand-up comedian, so there's a lot of humor here, and poignancy. This volume ends in Oregon with a sneak preview of Volume 2. You can get it at her shop or on Amazon.

My fingerprints are faltering. My work with paper, plastic sleeves, booktape, and glue-dissolving cleansers--plus, probably, age and dryness--is apparently rubbing them off. This poses a wee bit of a problem as we set up my new phone to recognize my faltering fingerprint! My son tells me my brother has the same problem because he is a lawyer, and lawyers handle lots of paper. Who gnu?!