ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

  • Typing

    I hope to incorporate my typewriter into ClimbingSky going forward. But I will need to experiment with the best way to format for blog reading. Obviously I have the margins too wide here. But I am going to post it anyway. Read more

  • Easy on the Tongue

    I am not certain when or how the insult jackwagon first entered, or more likely re-entered, my daily vocabulary. But it has. Words are just that way. Sometimes we will find a word waiting for us on the tip of our tongues and we have no idea where or how it got there. Was it a word we recently… Read more

  • Catchers and Pitchers Report

    This week catchers and pitchers report to Spring Training. The long, dark days of winter are coming to an end. For baseball fans, Spring Training means hope and possibility. Here are some of my favorite quotes about Spring Training. Spring training means flowers, people coming outdoors, sunshine, optimism and baseball. Spring training is a time… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Problems

    You know something? It wasn’t so bad having a cup of coffee with her. I mean this was the first time we were alone together and she had a very sweet way about her. But what the hell, I had my own problems. (cf. The Best of Manhunt 2 (p. 398). Stark House Press. Kindle… Read more

  • The Year of the Short Story: A Check-In

    I am a little over two months into “The Year of the Short Story” and I thought I would check-in. As of the morning of Saturday, February 8th (when I am writing this post), I have read 101 different short stories. Yes, I am keeping a record. My goal has been to read two short… Read more

  • Why We Love Books

    Sometimes it is easy to forget why we fell in love with books to begin with. This is especially true I think of those of us who were English Majors in college. Honing your ability to analyze books and styles, it becomes all too easy to take your eye off the ball. Ultimately we first… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Einstein on Class

    A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life arid… Read more

  • On Prayer

    I have been thinking about prayer of late. I used to attend a Lutheran church where one of the pastors insisted that any event held at the church required a prayer. It was her view that something going on at church needed to have a “Christian” component to it.  Though she never said so explicitly, it was… Read more

  • On the Art of the Book Cover

    Some of my earliest and fondest “book-memories” are of the kind of paperback books my father and uncles used to read. The kind of books I would find on tables and shelves in various bunkhouses or in the”office” (trailer) at the city dump where my Uncle Carl used to work: westerns and detective fiction… cheap… Read more

  • The Perfect Office

    Over the 35+ years of our time together, Sue and I have often had at least one “extra” room that could be made into an office. The kind of “room of my own” I thought I needed to read and to write. Book-filled spaces that inevitably filled with the flotsam and jetsam of my various… Read more