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Commentary
Monday, May 20, 2019
The long college application process may be the last great opportunity to hone our parent-child relationship.
Even if our past collusions haven’t always been edifying let’s make the several months it takes to arrive at the college decision wonderfully memorable.
This is the first decision of great magnitude our rising freshman has ever made.
Let’s guide him through it without taking it over.
We’ll read the literature on college selection.
Discuss it as we might a shared novel.
Avoid second-guessing.
Avoid imposing our own preferences.
Avoid doing any part of the process for them, including filling out the forms.
Encourage them to speak often with their school’s guidance counselor.
Visit the colleges with them.
By all means, visit the colleges with them.
Be his best friend and make the visits quality vacation moments, sharing the excitement.
Be upbeat.
Be a good listener and reticent to proffer an opinion.
He will inevitably seek it out.
I loved to hear my daughter complain that I never told her what to do; only presented her choices.
Cherish this moment.
The long college application process may be the last great opportunity to hone our parent-child relationship.
Note:
“There are currently 442 colleges still accepting applications with 38 having admission deadlines closing within the next thirty days. 399 schools' application deadlines have past and are now closed for new applicants for the Fall 2019 term.”
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Announcement
Monday, May 20, 2019
Apologies for the lateness of yesterday’s post.
A glitch in the teamwork with our new delivery system.
Wish I could say it won’t happen again.
I suppose I could say it.
A day of real warmth.
What fun!
Let’s enjoy this weather, each day of it.
The hours are ticking away and if we don’t make the most of our time another day will soon click past.
Unnoticed.
Unappreciated.
Tick Tock.
In clock language:
Enjoy today.
Enjoy the week.
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Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Monday, May 20, 2019
Our 409th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
After 409 posts we’re at the 8.18 percentile of our commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.
Time is 4.01am.
On Monday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 79* with a feels-like of 90* with the risk of a thunderstorm.
Really?
Dinner tonight is Roast Chicken to demonstrate the process as she gets ready to move to NYC with her boyfriend and set up her own household. Being an intern at the Atlantic doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the art of French or any other cooking.
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Question of the Day:
Monday, May 20, 2019
Who is Ross MacDonald?
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Chuckle of the Day:
Monday, May 20, 2019
His friend asks, “How was the honeymoon?”
“Not so good. Neither of us is talking.”
“What happened?”
“So stupid. When we finished making love on the first night, out of habit I put a $50 bill on her pillow.”
“No wonder she’s pissed. But why are you pissed?”
"She gave me $20 change!"
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Born Kenneth Millar
Ross Macdonald was his third name change.
Answer to the Question of the Day:
Monday, May 20, 2019
Who was Ross MacDonald?
Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye Lew Archer in the 1946 short story "Find the Woman" (credited then to "Ken Millar").
A full-length novel featuring him, The Moving Target, followed in 1949 and was the first in a series of eighteen.
Macdonald mentions in the foreword to the Archer in Hollywood omnibus that his detective derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew(is) Wallace, author of Ben-Hur, though he was patterned on Philip Marlowe.
The novels were hailed by genre fans and literary critics alike.
The Lew Archer novels are recognized as some of the most significant American mystery books of the mid 20th century, bringing a literary sophistication to the genre.
The critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist".
He has also been called the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries.
Macdonald's writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters.
Their plots of "baroque splendor" were complicated and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of upwardly mobile clients, sometimes going back over several generations.
Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels.
Critics have commented favorably on Macdonald's deft combination of the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller.
Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Screenwriter William Goldman, who adapted Macdonald's stories to film, called his works "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American".
Tom Nolan in his Ross Macdonald, A Biography, wrote, "By any standard he was remarkable. His first books, patterned on Hammett and Chandler, were at once vivid chronicles of a postwar California and elaborate retellings of Greek and other classic myths. Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity, the family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present. He brought the tragic drama of Freud and the psychology of Sophocles to detective stories, and his prose flashed with poetic imagery."
When I read detective books, I read a lot of them, like a lot of writers, I write down my suspicions.
Truth is, I’m not right a lot of the time time.
Actually, never,
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Good Morning on this Monday, the twentieth day of May, 2019
Our commentary spoke of the opportunity for a parent and child to work together.
We apologized for yesterday’s last posting and then posted the weather and date and tracked the number of postings to date.
We added a comment from Ann H who liked Saturday’s post.
We posted a chuckle.
The q and a talked about Ross MacDonald, a terrific mystery writer.
And now? Gotta go.
Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?
See you soon.
Your love.