Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“By August 1, all of New York was talking about the disaster.” Edward P. Kohn, Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt.

“The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog.” Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing.

 “Under a sliver of moon, on an island off the coast of China, a twenty-six-year-old army captain slipped away from his post and headed for the water’s edge.” Evan Osnos, The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.

“Twenty miles from here, twenty miles north, the funeral mass was starting.” Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers.

“He would cross and re-cross the East River thousands of times, including the day before his last on earth.” Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” Anna Burns, Milkman.

“Sally Horner walked into the Woolworth’s on Broadway and Federal in Camden, New Jersey, to steal a five-cent notebook.” Sarah Weinman, The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World.

“I might have been ten, eleven years old—I cannot say for certain—when my first master died.” Esi Edugyan, Washington Black.

“Jean McConville was thirty-eight when she disappeared, and she had spent nearly half her life either pregnant or recovering from childbirth.” Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

“When a high-powered rifle hits living flesh it makes a distinctive—pow-WHOP sound that is unmistakable even at a tremendous distance.” C.J. Box, Open Season.

“Deep in Honduras, in a region called La Mosquitia, lie some of the last unexplored places on earth.” Douglas Preston, Lost City of the Monkey God.

“The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.” Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I thought that Ross Perot, who recently died and is now largely forgotten, looked like Howdy Doody, but Howdy had a more engaging more personality. And sometimes I lie awake at night listening for that “giant sucking sound.”

If the 2016 election brought increased sales for Brave New World and 1984, will the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein do the same for the marvelous and deeply disturbing Lolita? Or for The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman that chronicles the abduction of a young girl, an episode that mirrors and may have influenced Nabokov’s book?

I am Donald J. Trump.

I never admit a slump.

My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek,

Of my brain, thou shalt not speak.

The handyman had come to look at a small project. I was wearing an anti-Trump shirt. He said that he liked it. I replied that I was careful where I wore it. He said that I should be because people got so angry nowadays. I realized that he had not absorbed all the writing on the shirt when he said that Trump had been sent from God. He had only limited times to do the job this week because of church obligations and volunteer work at a Christian radio station. He was an evangelical. And he was black.

I don’t understand many things. For example, I don’t understand many Americans’ fascination with British royalty.

A reason that I am not a conservative: I do not believe that wealth equates with moral worth.

My ears perked up when I heard that the podcast Planet Money was reporting from where I grew up, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The story focused on how employees in a time of strong employment were gaining power. To illustrate its point, it discussed Kohler Company, which the podcast said was in Sheboygan, and interviewed one of its workers. I wanted to correct the report. As a native of Sheboygan, I never would have said that Kohler is in Sheboygan. It’s in the village of Kohler, which is in Sheboygan County, but not Sheboygan. Sheboygan and Kohler are separate places. The studio reporter asked the man in the field where the Kohler employee might go if the workers’ demands were not met by the company. He replied, “They could go to Sargento Cheese or Johnsonville Brats.” The studio guy sounded amazed, asking, “They are all in Sheboygan?” This Sheboygan native rebelled at the affirmative reply. Sargento is in Plymouth and Johnsonville Brats is in, hold your hat, Johnsonville. Both near Sheboygan, but not in Sheboygan. But then the field reporter said with a hint of smile in his voice something I had not known from my years there, “Sheboygan is a feast for the senses.” Even so, I am not planning a move back.