cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All of One Breed One gable end overhang is now done and framed, barge rafters and all. It is very satisfying to behold. I like building gable end overhangs. I think that when I build the roof for the new house I will go with 4 foot overhangs all around. Not a drop of rain will ever hit the side of the house or the foundation, meaning that it should last damn near forever. I picked up a hitchhiker this morning on my way to work. Nice guy. Old black man who has lived near my road since he was a kid and knows the history of every house that I could point to. Pretty sharp about politics, too. By that of course I mean that he agreed with me. I'll make a point of looking for him and picking him up again when he needs a ride into town. I think his name was Robert. Excellent man. Invited me to a barbeque at the firehouse next week. I read 'The Old Man and the Sea' last weekend. Re-read it, that is. I'm also about a quarter of the way through 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' After I'm done with it, I'll read 'The Torrents of Spring' since it should be such a fast read. Then I've got to get through 'A Movable Feast' and 'A Farewell to Arms.' At that point, following everything else of his that I have read in the last 6 months, coupled with my on-going application to the short stories during idle moments, I will be able to make the general statement that I have 'read Hemingway.' I really don't think it's necessary to apply one's self to the posthumous stuff or the ones that Hemingway himself said were junk unless one intends to write a doctoral thesis or something. I should ask Erin's advice about whether any of that stuff is worth bothering with. Who next? It's a shame that E.B. White leaves us with so little in the way of actual books. I've read 'Stuart Little,' 'Charlotte's Web' and I suppose that you could count 'Elements of Style.' Leaving me with only 'Trumpet of the Swan.' For someone who spent so much time publicly ripping apart other people's books in the pages of the New Yorker, White wrote precious few books of his own. Oh, I've got to get some shooting done this weekend. Last Sunday's skeet shooting was canceled on account of rain. We're trying again this weekend and Gabe might come along as well. Gabe is the National Geographic photographer, just back from chasing the rhinoceros in the jungles of India for several months. The one-horned variety of rhinoceros. He sent me the most wonderful video not long ago that he personally filmed from the back of an elephant while the elephant was being suddenly charged by a rhinoceros. This particular one-horned rhinoceros actually had no horns at all. Or just a sort of stub of a horn that had broken off. Which detracted not at all from the overall terror of the situation. Anyway, Gabe is back in country and has a bit of down-time before heading off to Montana to film mountain lions or something. He's going to come over along with the blacksmith and we're all going to shoot shotguns and have a good time and then he might help out a bit with getting some sheathing on the roof. Gabe used to build timber-framed houses and knows how to do this sort of thing. He's never met the blacksmith but I'm sure they'll get on well. People who really do things as opposed to sit at desks and then go home to watch television until falling asleep tend to like one another. Now admittedly I must sit at a desk all day, but then I go home to build things and hunt food and brew beer and write a book that nobody will ever read. So we are all still of the same breed. Soldiers and carpenters and blacksmiths and hunters and mechanics are made of more or less the same stuff in this age. I've never met an American fisherman, but I suppose that it must be the same way with them. All of us could be doing something else that is less physically demanding, but we choose this work for our own reasons. 10:57 - 2008-05-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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