ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter


Books

  • “Dracula embodies the fear of the unknown and he personifies the ‘nothing in the darkness’ that keeps children awake at night.”  — Steve Roberts Another year and yet another rereading of Dracula. To be honest, I am no longer sure at this point how many times I have actually reread this classic. I only know that I… Read more

  • Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on March 11, 2020 In one of my favorite chess quotes, writer Edward Lasker (not to be confused with chess great Emanuel Lasker) once said, “It has been said that man is distinguished from animal in that he… Read more

  • Indoor Baseball

    On this day in 1965, the outer Astrodome ceiling was painted because the sun’s glare made fielding fly balls hazardous. The cost of painting it was $20,000. Painting the roof caused the real grass turf to die and spurred the introduction of artificial turf. So far this season, most of the Minnesota Twins home games… Read more

  • A Thaw and Re-Reading

    Here in the North Country, we had a few days of 50-degree weather, but yesterday it snowed again. Those few days of warmth, though, were a foretaste of the feast to come. We are told that ICE is drawing down its numbers here in Minnesota, but reports on the ground remain unclear as to whether… Read more

  • I have lost count now of how many times I have actually read this classic adventure. Yet in October, I got an urge yet again to give Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson another rereading. Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle are the prose writers who have the most amount of work that I regularly find myself returning to… Read more

  • Book: The Last Kind Words Saloon, by Larry McMurtry Style: Western-Mythish Plot: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and other historical western characters like Buffalo Bill Cody and Charles Goodnight interact with fictional characters in a mythic West. Lines from the Opening Paragraphs:     A hat came skipping down the main street of Long Grass, propelled only by the wind, which… Read more

  • My tendency here so far at ClimbingSky has been to review books, short stories, and poems that I like. But as an indiscriminate reader that is probably not practical. When you add in the fact that I am also a fan of anything to do with Bram Stokers’s Dracula (not necessarily vampires per se), it… Read more

  • On the Art of Rereading

    “Rereading, not reading, is what counts,” ~ Jorge Luis Borges.  “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before,” ~ Cliff Fadiman.  ““If a book isn’t worth reading over and over again, it isn’t worth reading at all.” ~… Read more

  • The Loyal Friend

    I love books and reading. And I love collecting quotes. Here are just a few of my favorite quotes about reading and books. I hope you find a few you like and maybe a few for your own collection. Quotes on Books and Reading I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the… Read more

  • What Matters

    Believe it or not, this blog posting for the first Saturday of March 2025 is actually being written on December 23rd, 2024. That is how far ahead I am working now on ClimbingSky. I am not certain if that is a good thing or a bad thing from a reader’s point of view. But for… Read more