Some Random Thoughts From This Week After Being On My Own
Passage of time, anthologies, and song lyrics (sort of).
My husband has been away on a business trip this week, meaning that it’s been just the cat and me. Since I am now pretty much all work-from-home, I didn’t have a lot of in-person human contact until my daughter showed up last night to keep me company.
It’s interesting what odd random thoughts you have when you are on your own. Or maybe I always have such odd random thoughts, but they don’t stick out so much when someone else is around, I don’t know. Anyway …
You are now further from X than X is from Y: You’ve seen those things on social media pointing out how much time has passed both since some event and before that event and one other, yes? Like, “We are further away from the release of the movie Gone With the Wind than its release was from the Civil War.” Or, to pick an event I actually remember, “We are farther away today from Ronald Reagan’s presidential election in 1980 than his election was from the start of WWII.”
I decided to find one of those based on my birth year, or at least something close. Best I could do: I am now farther from my birth year than my birth year was from the first pro-football game, the Klondike Gold Rush, the first Boston Marathon, and the establishment of Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. Not earth shattering or much gee whiz factor, but kind of fun.
Why do almost all anthologies seem to be Sci-Fi? I like reading fiction, and particularly series with characters that I like. I sometimes also like short stories and will search out anthologies (collections of short stories by different authors, usually with a common theme). A few years ago I found a sci-fi anthology I really enjoyed, with a series of short stories by different authors about different events of the first ship of colonizers sent to another planet, from taking off to trying to survive and adapt, to some years after they landed: The Founder Effect. I was recently looking for something new to read, maybe some historical fiction, maybe even an anthology. And it struck me that anthologies all seem to be sci-fi, with some fantasy thrown in now and then. Why is that?
I did find a couple of western anthologies, though they seemed to be put together recently (that is, they were not published that way originally), but even those contained only a few short stories with the rest being single chapters from larger novels. Oddly enough, I found one historical fiction anthology, which was just published this month - The Ring. I bought it to try, but haven’t had a chance to start it yet. We’ll see.
Anyway, while there are obviously are some anthologies in other genres, that type of collection is overwhelmingly sci-fi. I don’t know if that is because sci-fi is specially suited to that or it’s just a practice for that genre and not others.
Making up my own lyrics. Growing up my family did a lot of singing of songs on car trips, at family reunions, and just when we felt like it. Camp songs, patriotic songs, funny songs, etc. I know some other families that did that, but I also have friends who look at me sideways when I mention it. 😊 One of the things we might do is come up with our own silly lyrics to a song. I made up some silly song lyrics for my kids growing up, too, just for laughs.
But a lot of kids’ songs are meant to help them learn things (the ABCs song, for example), because putting things to remember to music helps a person remember better. This week I came up with some lyrics to the tune of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” to help me remember what I need to grab before heading out the door:
Keys, shopping list, and phone (list and phone)!
Keys, shopping list, and phone (list and phone)!
And wallet, glasses, directions where to go!
Keys, shopping list, and phone (list and phone)!
That actually does help me remember. Which both makes me laugh, and also think I’m heading into my second childhood already if I need a song to help me remember what to take along…. Sigh.
Anyway, I hope you have a great weekend!
Audra
Psalm 139:2 You know when I sit down and when I get up. You understand my thoughts from far off.