ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Murder of Sleepy Hollow by Michele Pariza Wacek

    I have said it here often, I am an indiscriminate reader. That is how I ended listening to part of an audiobook then speed reading (and now reviewing) The Murder of Sleepy Hollow” by Michele Pariza Wacek. According to my research into Wacek and The Murder of Sleepy Hollow, belongs to a sub-genre of fiction Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Gustavo Gutierrez

    “Charity is today a ‘political charity.’. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: POETRY REVIEW: Written in Very Early Youth, by William Wordsworth

    “Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on MARCH 15, 2012. This is one of Wordsworth’s earliest poems. Even though it is early in his career, it contains much that we would consider to be lyrical and “Wordsworthian”: nature, emotion, and the individual. Enjoy! Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Dracula’s Chair” by Peter Tremayne

    I came across Peter Temayne’s perfect Dracula short story “Dracula’s Chair” in a collection called Coffins: The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler. For a lover of Stoker’s Dracula, it is the perfect anthology. It contains stories by writers like Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and F. Paul Wilson. Tremayne’s short-story is about a writer who Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    Sherlock Holmes stories are something I return to quite regularly. In the month of September this year, I reread the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. For those who have not read it, the story begins with Dr. James Mortimer visiting Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in London. He presents them with a Read more

  • LITERARY COFFEE: D.H. Lawrence

    “Let us go into the town,” he said, and he rushed her into a train, moving to the town station. They went to a cafe to drink coffee, she sat looking at people in the street, and a great wound was in her breast, a cold imperturbability in her soul. ~ D.H. Lawrence. The Rainbow. Read more

  • The Cost of Everything and the Value of Nothing

    Last September here, I wrote a post about my attempt to understand and appreciate the “new” baseball stat of WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. Here is a link to that article. Now, after a year more of struggling to understand it and why it has become so widely accepted, here is how I am thinking Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Birds” by Daphne Du Maurier

    In August of 1961, I was 16-months old, and lived just between Santa Cruz and Capitola, California. On August 18th of that year in the middle of the night there was an invasion of sooty shearwaters. Apparently confused by the dense fog the birds “invaded” the town, slamming into houses, cars, and stores. Windows were Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Anthony Marsella

    “Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, courage over fear, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.” ~Anthony Marsella Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker

    “Dracula’s Guest” is a short story by Bram Stoker, first published posthumously in 1914 in the collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories.  It is widely believed to be an excised or early draft of the original opening chapter of Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula.  It is about a young, unidentified Englishman, en route to Transylvania, found Read more