A Reading Challenge

Toward the end of December 2015, I decided I wanted to read more books in the new year.  Things had been quite busy and my reading was suffering.  There were so many new books I had found and had added to my bookshelves, but hadn't had time to read.  So I decided I would read 50 books in 2016 - I tend to like nice round numbers.  I realized that it meant I would be reading an average of almost a book a week.  I quickly decided that some of the smaller mysteries I have, like the Spenser series by Robert B. Parker, might do nicely to fill in some of those times when I need to get through a book quickly to keep on track to reach my goal.  

I've always been a reader, and it hasn't been until fairly recently that I've fallen behind on reading. Life gets busy. Life gets complicated.  There are so many things to do and so many ways we can have our attention drawn elsewhere.  Reading for pleasure is an activity that is easy to put aside when things get busy and time is short.  But like all things that are truly important, you'll find time for it if you want to.  I guess at the end of 2015 I decided that I wanted to, that reading was important to me. So I'm putting the challenge out there in public, to keep myself honest.  Fifty books really doesn't sound like all that much, but I'm sure I'll find times that I'll wonder how I ever thought I could really reach my goal.  Stop by from time to time to see how I'm doing, offer encouragement, or just chuckle at how far behind I really am.  

Oh, my first book of 2016?  City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte (448 pages). 

Potholes R Us

If you live in a large northern metropolitan city in the US you most likely have experienced a winter that just won't quit.  From the snow at Thanksgiving to the latest round here in March, winter has been dumping precipitation in one form or another on a major portion of the northern half of the country.  And because the sun has been higher in the sky and we've had a few patches of warmer days, the ice and snow and moisture have done their thing to the streets of most major cities - expand, contract, crack the pavement.  The result: potholes. 

The city of Chicago has supposedly filled over 200,000 potholes.  I say supposedly because you'd never know it, mostly because there are about 10 times that yet to be filled! Even our potholes have potholes! Now I understand that the work crews are the same guys who are out plowing the snow and salting the ice and that we've had plenty of that this year.  But between the winter weather conditions, the potholes, drivers trying to avoid hitting potholes, utility work crews, the shoulder snow plowing on sunny days to get rid of the obstructions and the general snarliness of drivers fed up with winter, driving has turned into quite an adventure.  

You plan your route - which way has less potholes (and no, the Pothole Tracker the city has on their website doesn't really help). You plan the time of day when less traffic is on the road (yeah, it's a major city so that doesn't really happen). You watch the Weather Channel to see when the next round is supposed to hit and try to get out before that happens.  And if you're very very lucky, you don't damage a rim or get into an accident - or worse, get stranded for hours by a road closed by a chain reaction accident.  

Spring will come, though in our case it normally goes right into summer, the potholes will be fixed, well, some of them at least, and life will go on.  Will we remember the cold Chiberia weather and the ice and snow when the temperature reaches 90? Probably not.  We'll complain about the heat, we'll complain about the humidity (because every good Chicagoan knows it's not the heat, it's the humidity), and we won't remember the chill of winter.  That is until we round the next corner, and find a few dozen potholes that didn't get filled.  We may complain about the cold of winter and the heat of summer and not remember the opposite, but the potholes will be with us always! 

Looking Toward the Future

On July 17, 1955, when Disneyland opened in California, one of the original ‘lands’ was Tomorrowland, with Rocket to the Moon and The Nautilus.  Our 1950s view of the future showed the possibilities we were sure could be achieved in the next couple of decades.  On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy challenged America before a joint session of Congress.  “…I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. “  It was important, and difficult, but “no single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space.” When The Jetsons first aired in September of 1962, we envisioned robots helping with everyday tasks and travel by flying cars and jetpacks.  Star Trek premiered in 1966 and showed a future that was not only full of technological innovations but social ones as well. 

While these visions didn’t entirely come to pass, many of the dreams and imaginations of the 1950s and 1960s found their way into our everyday life in the 21^st century.  In addition to reaching the moon, we reached Mars in 1975, with Viking sending back the first images from another planet.  Spin offs of NASA technology were adapted for treatment of medical ailments, for breathing apparatus for firefighters, and for protective coatings on The Statue of Liberty and The Golden Gate Bridge.  The flip phone was inspired by the Star Trek communicator. 

But do we still look toward the future today?  Individually we plan for the future, we dream about what we may be or where we may go.  But on a societal level, do we dream big?  Do we dream about those things that can only be done over a long span of time not by an individual person but by a nation?

It seems as if we are consumed by concerns of the present. We worry about jobs and health care and our financial well being; whether GMOs are safe and what’s in the dog food we give our pets.  These are all good issues, but do we have the desire to look toward the future, and dream and imagine?  We ‘see’ a dystopian future from The Hunger Games or Divergent.  But what about a positive future, one we might actually want to live in?  What we imagine the future to be like, what we dream might happen is a first step toward making that future a reality.  Are our best dreams behind us?  Or do we still dream of a bright, shining Tomorrowland? 

What dreams do you have?  What advances do you see in the world of the future?  Whether your vision is of flying cars or virtual realities, human-like robots or a peaceful world community, share your dreams, share your vision.  For your dreams may be brought to reality by somebody else who didn’t even know they, too, had that same dream.