Hello everyone, today is Tuesday, April 29. Jody and Jen wished me a happy birthday. That is so sweet and thoughtful and pretty funny.

I went to a cheap alumni lecture tonight on what makes great books great or important.  And wow it was so interesting.  And I feel that some corrections to thought were presented, as well as the idea of some of the greatness being out of reach for some readers, or blocked.  So that there could be subjective factors and reader greatness to consider.

I was sad to hear a section about heart of darkness but it did at least catch me up on stuff I forgot about that novel.  But I thought of that novel as inherently racist.  I don't totally think of Huckleberry Finn that way although I think the N word problem is severe and a lady in the audience said she could barely read it because of that. However I think that modern candidates for great books mostly lack that "I'll go to hell" moment, which simply was profound in Mark Twain's book. As for Scarlet Letter, I wasn't ever that into it but think that the nobility of a shunned character is in fact kind of classic. Like it is a good thing to present the attractive heroine despite worse than low status. These books were in the lecture outdone by things like "Their eyes were watching God." Which Zora Neale Hurston to me was a special genius and the title kind of does enough on that one, and when you think whatever population that was, you know that it is true, no matter what is in the book. I liked her other books.  I forgot the names of what I read.

What else was mentioned.  Wow, The Jungle, and Silent Spring. I never knew what the term "Silent Spring" referred to. I thought it was like a bubbling brook.  But it is a dead silence from pesticides killing nature. How freaking sad and moving. And those books are hero books to NYU people: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, and Silent Spring all had national impact against some of the bad guys.  So that was neat.  And it was like a protest for literary snobbery with no purpose.

I did not read "Invisible Man" because it is too long.  Sorry I just couldn't read it.  I like James Weldon Johnson who was an NYU guy.  And I like all the Harlem Columbia people.  Everyone already knows this about me. But people might think I am wrong about myself but I don't think I am.

I think what we might see now is that all my liberalism was foisted on me directly from God as a mercy.  And we don't know why except that I did want to stop sinning. And it was hypocrisy and the remedy was severe mental illness and it did work.  People say no it is Jesus that saves. Well of course but that is not what I am saying. I am saying for the raging battle, God had a strategy.

Anyway I did not mean to get on that tangent. I gave Dr. Baer a copy of Horizon Cow. Would it have been funnier or more generous to give The Pinnacle of Human Folly.  I do not know. I think I did okay and I am going to give my new friend Geri the Pinnacle Book that I have.

Right now it is 11:30 and I need to take my medicine right now. But I do not want to. I want to wait until midnight but I will probably take it right now.

My jokes are doing okay. I will probably hit about 8000 each.  That is less than normal but not too bad.

I might have messed up with my video share but it is okay. 

I also still need to post other people's books. I might do a few posts like that, break it up after the video, and then in a few days send it around.

I kind of got sucked into the computer for a couple of days but hopefully will snap out of it.

I do not want to take my medicine right now but I think I will.