Sunday Sundries, 287

I know: This has become a habit--posting "Sunday Sundries" on Mondays. Might have to change the name: "Monday Sundries"? "Sunday Sundries on Monday"? I find I just can't do as much on Sunday as I used to, and in the Energy Department, bread-baking is Number One!

1. HBOTW: All those who are struggling mightily to get by in these COVID times. So many uncertainties for so many people, so many jarring transformations of lives, so many handling it with dignity and determination.

2. I finished just one book this week (hey, I've been reading an 800-pp novel by Joyce Carol Oates--give me a break!).

     - I met author Len Spacek when he joined the Harmon (Middle) School faulty in Aurora in the fall of 1996. I had announced my retirement for mid-January 1997, so the district had hired him to replace me, and he joined the faculty right away, filling in here and there, observing my classes (and others). And then ... it all became his ...

His new book is a collection of YA sports stories called Game On! Nine Sports Shorts. It's a gathering of tales that proceeds season by season (begins with soccer, ends with boxing), and each story features a young man who has talent and desire--knows how to (or learns in the story how to) work hard to achieve his dream.

All the young men also have various personal issues to work through--family, death, memories--and it's in this regard, I think, that Len's stories distinguish themselves. What becomes important to us as we read is not so much whether the young man will triumph on the field (or surfboard or whatever) but how he will deal with the difficulties that his life has laid before him.

Len has some fun with the stories, too. In one (the surfing story) readers will think, "This is like Karate Kid!" And, sure enough, Len mentions Mr. Miyagi, the karate mentor for the young boy in that 1984 film.

 

Len also has some pedagogical goals here, for each story is followed by some questions and suggested activities--oh, we teachers just can't surrender that role!

A very good book for young readers--aimed, of course, at young male athletes but relevant to all sorts of readers.

3. I finished streaming Horrible Bosses. 'Nuff said.

4. Perry Mason (HBO) took a surprise turn last night (we're one episode behind). I had wondered how Mason, who in the early episodes seems more like some foul-mouthed derelict than anything else, would begin his transformation into Raymond Burr. Now I know ... We like seeing how familiar characters from the old TV series are gradually becoming more prominent in the HBO prequel.

5. Good Lord, but Waking the Dead is grim! It's almost as if they sit down after each season and ask themselves, How can we make this even more gross! And then they do it. But ... we're 8 seasons in to a 9-season run, so we can't quit; instead, I do a lot of pausing ...

6. I started streaming The Firm (the Sydney Pollack film, 1993, based on the eponymous John Grisham thriller) with an impossibly young Tom Cruise in the lead. I've seen it several times (though probably not in the last, oh, 20 years). When Joyce joins me in bed, I immediately find something more ... Joycean ... to stream. (Link to some video.)

7. Last Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers.

     - from dictionary.com    I am positive about the source of some words I know--I just remember clearly how I learned them. Anfractuous is one of those. Back in the day I used to write down words I didn't know when I read or heard them, go look them up, then practice them. This one I read nearly 50 years ago in a piece by William F. Buckley, Jr., who had a vast vocabulary, some of which he loved to unleash on unwary opponents!

anfractuous [an-FRAK-choo-uhs ]

Adjective: characterized by windings and turnings; sinuous; circuitous: an anfractuous path.

ORIGIN: Anfractuous ultimately comes from the Late Latin adjective ānfrāctuōsus, a term in rhetoric meaning “roundabout, prolix,” and first used by St. Augustine of Hippo in one of his sermons. Ānfrāctuōsus is a derivative of the noun ānfrāctus (also āmfrāctus) “a bend, curve, circular motion, digression, recurrence,” formed by the prefix am-, an-, a rare variant of ambi– “both, around, about,” and a derivative of the verb frangere “to break, shatter, smash.” Anfractuous entered English in the early 15th century.

HOW IS ANFRACTUOUS USED? 

Then, as the road resumed its anfractuous course, clinging to the extreme margin of this tumbled and chaotic coast, the fun began. JONATHAN RABAN, "THE GETAWAY CAR," NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 10, 2011

 …. He started with a turbulent flight from Syracuse, where the Pawtucket Red Sox were stationed, to Detroit. Then another flight from Detroit to Tampa. CHRISTOPHER L. GASPER, "'THAT WAS AWESOME, DUDE!' — MICHAEL CHAVIS ENJOYS HIS RED SOX DEBUT," BOSTON GLOBE, APRIL 21, 2019