We cleaned out the garage recently. We have to make room. This was a first pass at the garage. The goal: more floor space.

Of course, we did throw a lot of things away. A lot of VHS tapes, for example.

But I found some books I had begun to read and had not finished.

One in particular I have been wanting to finish: George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

I picked it up on the cheap somewhere, and therefore it lacked the finish line that my library book have. I have a deadline to complete the book, or abandon it as a dud. Because I owned this one, I mislaid it without consequences.

First of all, Orwell is an incredible writer. I love him. 1984 is good in a freaky sci-fi kinda way, and Animal Farm is cute and creepy. But it wasn’t until I read Down and Out in London and Paris that I saw him as the keen observer.

Homage to Catalonia is another  story about his experiences. I really want to read it. However, this one takes some homework.

In the course of human events, some events loom huge and then shrink to nothing. I mean, try to tell a teenager today what it felt like to worry about nuclear war. It seems a million miles away to them, and they have to think really hard about it.

Or how about that nasty bout of the flu that hit the western world right after the First World War? Didn’t know about that? Well, it killed more people than the war. Can you imagine the devastation and the wailing? but…it doesn’t gt that much press any more.

That is what Homage to Catalonia is writing about. About this fork, this super-important at the time, and really for forever after moment in time, about the Spanish Civil war.

Coincidentaly, Chris got a book for Christmas
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

He is always the smart history-book reading kinda guy. I asked him to tell me about it, because I could see he started reading it. His answer “It’s kinda hard to explain.”

My husband can explain anything. This shows what a MESS that war was, and how utterly incomprehensible it is to our modern mind.

Another book in this chain
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

Okay, back to Orwell. One of the reasons I put it down (although the prose was very engaging) is that I realized I had no idea what he was talking about. He went to Spain? Why? What were they fghting for? WHAT WAS GOING ON?!?

Thing is, at that time, when he wrote the book, it was timelier than your wristwatch. Everyone knew what he was talking about, and everyone had a picture of what it was about.

At least, anyone who had any interest in idealistic politics.

Here is what the introduction says (written in 1952)
 

 In a politics presumed to be available to everyone, ideas and ideals play a great part. And those of who set store by ideas and ideals have never been quite able to learn that just because they do have power nowadays, there is a direct connection between between their power and another kind of power, the old unabashed, cynical power of force. We are always being surprised by this. Communism’s record of the use of unregenerate force was perfectly clear years ago, but many of us found it impossible to admit this because Communism spoke boldly to our love of ideas and ideals. We tried as hard as we could to believe that politics might be an idyl, only to discover that what we took to be a political pastoral was really a grim military campaign–or that what we insisted on calling agrarianism was in actuality a new imperialism. And in the personal life what was undertaken by many good people as a moral commitment of the most disinterested kind turned out to be an engagement to an ultimate immorality.

That brings us back to liberal fascism. So much of the 20th century had to do with the idealists and those with a will to power working out the theories of Marx & friends.

The spanish civil was was a petrie dish for the axis and the allies…send the red ants against the black ants (the brute neighbors). Mussolini and Hitler were socialists. There were trying the ideas of Marx for themselves, and bucking the Mecca of Moscow. Remember? Nazi meant “National Socialism”–meaning their own nation, not Russia.

…which leads me to think a lot about what that guy said…”those of who set store by ideas and
ideals have never been quite able to learn that just because they do
have power nowadays, there is a direct connection between between their
power and another kind of power, the old unabashed“.

Tread carefully…that kool-aid party had a sign up “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”…advice they obviously didn’t take…

It seems to be that remembering the past is not good enough. We need to understand it.

I have a lot of reading to do.

It was today, 8 years ago that I professed interest in my future husband. We’d been hanging out–very friendly–for two months. We were having fun, but I just couldn’t tell. I couldnt’ tell if he liked me that way.

And if I had learned anything from my time online, I had learned that it was  very slippery slope to obsession. I had to nip this in the bud, and it had to be fast. Because if I let my feeling grow without knowing they were reciprocated, then that was just asking for heartache.

I had been nerving myself up to find out whether he felt that way about me. For at least a week, maybe two.

So when I had the day off, I made plans to go watch a movie with him. It had to be..I had to do it..It had to be now.

I did not know I would MARRY this guy. I didn’t know what to expect.

Funny how things work out.

I finally bought the hula hoop I’ve been wanting.I want to train Lucy to jump through it.

But she is very uncertain about this yellow circle. It hisses when it moves. I wish it didn’t do that.

I hope she will feel more comfortable with it soon. You can’t rush these things, or you lose the animal’s trust.

So far, I have taught her to sit, shake hands, lie down, spin around clockwise, make a circle around me, and this one I call “Sleeping” where she lies flat on her side–

NO, Lucy, head on the floor. Good dog

She’s making progress with heeling, but I have not been able to take her on her walk since last wednesday because I am trying to get over the sick I caught.

But she is a loving dog, and has learned on her own to give kisses.

I have high hopes for the hula hoop. It took her some time to get used to bouncing balls too…but she loves them, once she gets used to them:

So, I’m beginning my first attempt to get certified.

There are a billion and one kinds of certifications in the information techonology field.

I’m going for Project Management Professional- PMP

I have resisted certifications.  I resist them, because the ones that apply to me seem to be just a piece of paper to say that I can do what I already could do before I got the piece of paper.

But this one looks appealing. Honestly, I handle projects all the time. But I see that this is the sort of paper that lets you get a raise. So..I would do a little work to make more money.

I got the exam prep book today. Just finished reading the first chapter.

I am so excited and already sad. They are talking about how things SHOULD be. They even admit…all over the place…that projects don’t happen like this. They say things that are true and yet are not practiced.

The book admits this. It recommends that you pretend as if you do things the right way (like keeping records and documentation on projects) even if you have never even thought of doing that before.

It’s heartbreaking. I so often ask myself why I create forms and file them as records of work done. Why am I doing this? No one asked me to do it. No one is checking to see if I did it.

BUT HERE! Here in this book they confirm that keeping records is the right thing to do, while admitting that tons of people don’t.

It takes faith, I think. It takes faith to do the right thing when everyone around you is indifferent, or even mildly critical.

To me…this sort of thing is a bit like Scripture. Perhaps it is my German blood that thrills to the idea of work done elegantly and efficiently.

I”m gonna go read chapter 2.

That’s what Chris says anyway.

So…I have been messing with Shelfari. Posted about that already. I have a link on this site to my currently reading list: writtenbymurphy.com/wonderblog/book-page.html

But i’ve been messing with Shelfari…and they don’t have all the books I want to post that I’ve read.

Here is another site, though…where they invite people to share their bookshelves. A PHOTO of your bookshelf

Omnivaracious is associated with Amazon, as is Shelfari. But..well..I don’t know about the photo part. To be honest, I think the photos look posed. no WAY are the books that neat.

But besides, I have a thing about owning books. I own some, yes. But the  majority of books I read I do not keep. Lord, I can’t buy all those books! I would be in the poor house. I get them from the library, and I return them when I’m done.

What I have on my shelves are usually books I intend to read but haven’t. Or maybe not. Some of them are books that meant so much to me that for some reason or another I cannot part with them. Gifts, or ones that pierced my heart with truth or  beauty.

I don’t know. Maybe I should take a photo and see what it reveals.

and staying home.

Normally, I wouldn’t have done that. Normally, I would have gone to work.

But since I got MS I have learned to fear my immune system. I want to keep it quiet, so I have to pay attention when I am sick. I have to pay attention to the little bit of sick so that it doesn’t get more sick and wake the sleeping giant of my auto-immune responses.

I’ll be drinking liquids and resteing today

long day, waiting at the bus stop for the bus.

I was just glad I hadn’t missed it yet. I was tuned into my headphones, standing at the stop with all the other people waiting. It was the other people waiting that let me know I hadn’t missed it.

I sat down in the first seat row. It was a crowded bus. A tall guy in a dodges jacket got up to give a woman in high heels his seat. I had to scoot over and adjust my backpack because this was a full ride.

The woman pointed to my badge. “I didn’t know you worked for [X].”

I didn’t know this person would have known anything about me whatsoever. How could she be surprised that she didn’t know who I worked for?

But I said, yes, and asked her if she worked there too. Obviously she did.

She said that some of the other people at the bus had been talking about me. I had been pointed out as a fellow employee..

“Oh yeah,” another said. “She works at the HQ buiding”

“No,” the other said. “You aren’t allowed to wear jeans there. She can’t.”

But my seatmate had discovered the truth. She saw my badge.

I always thought I was invisible. But I guess not.