Sunday--

Bread baking day. I found a recipe for dark rye to try. And I need to review my seed/plant lists to whittle it down a bit more. I already scratched the passion flower. It is perennial and perennials don't thrive in my gardens even though the variety I saw is rated hardy to zone 3. My containers freeze in the winter and even hardy plants may not survive frozen roots.

Interesting critique on American reading habits. I have heard the complaint for years that we aren't reading. A Doonesbury cartoon of the 1990s summed up the complaint of the college level professors about their students. The lecturer recapped his recent experience whittling down his assigned reading list from a dozen texts, some of them quite lengthy, to three quite short books while one of the students protests "Whoa, three!!??" I remember some of the very disapproving remarks about a graduate student in another department who was writing her thesis from material found entirely on line. But the situation Jackson Bliss describes reflects my own recent history. I read almost from the moment I wake up (with breaks for bread baking, needlework, gardening, chores, eating, etc.) until I turn off the e-reader and computer just before I go to bed. And much of that is skimming--for particular information (like the rye bread recipe I found on line), to eliminate articles I read on another site, to avoid topics I am totally uninterested in (the Kardashians and their ilk). But I have also found links and citations to valuable material. Back when the only reading option was print on hard copy, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury quipped "Good writers touch life often. Mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies." The same holds for our digital reading matter in, probably, the same proportions: a few good, more mediocre, and a hell of a lot bad.

I notice the article didn't mention how much interest Amazon's customers would be charged for the "convenience" of being able to charge large purchases.

This is hilarious!!