ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

January 2025

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Henri Lefebvre on Capitalism

    [U]p until now ‘progress’ has affected existing social realities only secondarily, modifying them as little as possible, according to the strict dictates of capitalist profitability. The important thing is that human beings are profitable, not that their lives be changed. As far as is possible, capitalism respects the pre-existing shape and contours of people’s lives. Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Making Certain It Goes On” by Richard Hugo

    Here in the North Country Richard Hugo’s name does not come up in many discussions. He is a Western poet after all, not a Midwestern one. There is a difference: in tone, subject, and in edginess. Hugo’s volume of collected poetry takes its title from this poem. “Making Certain It Goes On” is one of his Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “As I Lay Dead” by Fletcher Flora

    I have mentioned here before that Noir and Hardboiled fiction are my guilty pleasures. The tough, cynical protagonists, the fast-paced, action oriented plots, the tone, the dialog, and the style all appeal to me in a way that no other fiction really does. Manhunt first appeared in 1952. According to information Here is some information Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Cat” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

    My pursuit of short stories available in the Public Domain has led me to discover a number of very fine 19th Century writers that I did not previously know. One of those writers is Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. I have now read a number of her short stories and will no doubt be reviewing more Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Technique

    The coffee maker was almost ready to bubble. I turned the flame low and watched the water rise. It hung a little at the bottom of the glass tube. I turned the flame up just enough to get it over the hump and then turned it low again quickly. I stirred the coffee and covered Read more

  • AI & Me

    I have been using the AI feature that comes with WordPress lately to create many of the “illustrations” that come with my blog post. Including the one that is here. I am not sure how I feel about it. The convenience is great. The results erratic (as in the picture below). Yet I struggle with Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Thoreau

    If I wished to see a mountain or other scenery under the most favorable auspices, I would go to it in foul weather so as to be there when it cleared up. We are then in the most suitable mood, and nature is most fresh and inspiring. There is no serenity so fair as that Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry

      Wendell Berry is a writer and an activist. He has written novels, short-stories, essays, and books of non-fiction on subjects as varied as farming, economics, politics, and Christianity. Yet in the end, he is a lyric poet. I have certainly not read all of his prose work, but enough to suggest that it is Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “XINGU” BY EDITH WHARTON

    Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. (cf. Wharton, Edith. Xingu.) I continue to balance out my reading of Noir, Hardboiled, Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes

    At first blush, the marriage between Ovid, that most latin of poets, and Ted Hughes would seem as unlikely a match as any you could imagine. Not in ability, of course, but in language and temperament. Hughes as a poet has always seemed to me one of the most earthy, physical, and Anglo-Saxon of all Read more