Tank Park Salute

I spend part of Father's Day attaching a stroller-carriage to my bicycle, which was one of those projects that tests my few mechanical and direction-following capabilities. The inaugural ride went okay, although Caleb spend the whole ride trying to remove his bike helmet.

I received from my wife a DVD she made of pictures of the kids from our first visit with them proceeding to how they look now. This was a fantastic gift, particularly since Kirsten is not the software nerd in the family (and Kirsten is even more direction-averse than her husband).

Here's the short version: The pudgeballs we first met.

The little boys we have to chase after now.

What tore me up, unexpectedly, were the pictures of the day they officially and legally adopted us as their parents. I'm not a person who believes in divine or karmic predestination, but it's hard to imagine that these two boys found their way into our lives simply by accident or a series of phone calls. As I often tell the boys, we're so lucky they found us.

And, of course, thanks to our Dads for their wisdom, humor, and counsel. And for making the moments above possible for us.

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BRLP Book Five/Week Five:

Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is written in an egaging creole of urban slang, Spanish, and sci-fi allusions. There's a heavy involvement with the last century of politics in the Dominican Republic, including footnotes for unfamiliar readers like me, and with the last 40 years of adolescent male speculative literature, the references to which go un-footnoted. Interestingly, the authorial assumption that we can catch off-handed references to the Lord of the Rings or Jack Kirby but will not catch similar references to the Parsley Massacre or Joaquín Balaguer adds up to an accusation, and a just one, about where we choose to lay our attention.

America 1908, meanwhile, does not contain any information about the founding of Wolski's Tavern, which was founded -- it is an institution, after all-- in that year. It was interesting to read about the Wright Brother's patent worries and Admiral Peary's need for fundraising -- we tend to think of inventors and explorers as altruistic types, doing what they do for the good of mankind or in the name of science, when they are just as interested as us regular schmoes in making a living. Also worth reading for coverage of the Great Race, Henry Ford's ideas about what a car should mean, and the Giants vs. Cubs National League penant race. The solution to the problem of transmitting real-time baseball action from New York to Chicago (or vice versa) in an era before radio is particularly cool. (Hint: telegraph wires + this.)

Also, as I say in a previous post, Theodore Roosevelt was totally coo-coo, looney-bird screwball crazy. But loveable all the same. I'm eager to read a biography, once the BRLP is over.

Page-to-Date BRLP page count: 1,460
Days-to-Date BRLP calendar count: 28 Days
Page-per-Date BRLP reading rate: 52.14