Month: April 2023

04/30/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s windy bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I listened to today: I Will Find You, by Harlan Coben

Amazon abstract:

Five years ago, an innocent man began a life sentence for murdering his own son. Today he found out his son is still alive.
 
David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love–until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall. 
 
Half a decade later, David’s been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison—a fate which, grieving and wracked with guilt, David didn’t have the will to fight. The world has moved on without him. Then Cheryl’s younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a vacation shot of a bustling amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive.

David plans a harrowing escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. But with his life on the line and the FBI following his every move, can David evade capture long enough to reveal the shocking truth?

A few top reviews from the United States:

vegasbill

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great story from this author

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

Harlan Coben can spin a yarn! Once again he has proven that in I Will Find You. This intricate plot is populated by a colorful and interesting cast of characters, especially the two FBI Special Agents, Max and Sarah, assigned to this case. They provide the comic relief in an otherwise very serious story of murder and a missing child. While cracking wise to each other they manage to cut through the distractions provided by Coben’s other characters and home in the most important issues.

David Burroughs is accused and convicted of killing his three year old son. While in prison he learns the son might still be alive, a scenario which makes no sense as the son’s body was found in his bed, beaten to death. In order to find out if that is true David must find a way to get out of prison and find his son.

The story is compelling and moves swiftly with lots of suspense and things that keep the reader guessing. If there is any flaw, there are parts of the plot which sound more like a soap opera rather than a murder mystery. That didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I recommend this to all who enjoy a good mystery/thriller.

KC

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben at his best!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

The story begins with David Burroughs five years into serving a life sentencing for murdering his son. He feels his life his over and never fought his conviction since he felt his life was over without his son. He never felt he would have murdered his own son but he had no memory of the night in question. David refused visitors in his first years at the prison until one day when his sister-in-law, Rachel, shows up requesting to see him. The visit causes him to question if his son is actually still alive. The book is an another great by Harlan Coben! I couldn’t put it down until the last page. I highly recommend this book and this author.

Daniel Kramer

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Ride

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

I Will Find You has a premise which I have not found in another novel. A man convicted of murdering his child, who thinks that he may have done it in a drunken moment of hysteria, finds out that the murdered child in his house that evening was not his son and that his son is still alive. Great idea for a book. How will Harlan Coben bring the pieces together so that it makes sense and gives the reader a thrilling ride? I will divulge nothing other than Harlan Coben did a really nice job of giving me the ride that I was hoping for.
Is the book perfect? Am I still a little confused by the ending? Yes. Does it matter? No. The book is a roller coaster ride which you should take if you like thrillers or you have read everything that Coben has ever written.
His best book ever was The Boy From The Woods. By far, that book was perfect and exceptional. This book is right up there and worth your time.

Jodie Short

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben has done it again!! This book will be your favorite this year!

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

Wow! The storyline in this book is beyond! I didn’t know if I even wanted to know the truth behind how it happened, but I had to know! That is what makes Harlan Coben a standout beyond all the rest! The characters, as usual, you will fall in love with and some you will love to hate! His style of writing is the reason I love to read! I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone! I already recommended it before I even finished it myself! I gave this book a five-star rating because Harlan Coben gets an A+ and every area of his writing! The plot, the characters, his style of writing the mystery! He has ramped up the edginess in this one!

John Steinbeck on the Creative Spirit and the Meaning of Life

Here’s the link to this article.

“The free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

A decade before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968) wrote East of Eden (public library), which was eventually adapted into the 1955 film of the same title starring James Dean and which Steinbeck originally addressed to his two young sons. (The elder one, Thom, later became the recipient of Steinbeck’s magnificent letter of advice on falling in love.)

The thirteenth chapter of the novel features some of the most beautiful, poignant, and timelessly transcendent prose ever written — a gorgeous meditation on the meaning of life and the essence of the creative spirit:

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then — the glory — so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

Writing in 1952, and writing for his two young sons, Steinbeck peers into the future, perhaps our present, with a concerned and prescient eye:

There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

He extends a poignant reminder of what anchors us to life and what makes that life worth living:

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Complement East of Eden with Steinbeck’s six tips on writing, a fine addition to the collected wisdom of great writers.

About the Holy Bible, by Robert G. Ingersoll (1894): Part X: Why Should We Place Christ at the Top and Summit of the Human Race?

This is a very long article. I’ll post it by part.

Here’s the link to the full article.

X: Why Should We Place Christ at the Top and Summit of the Human Race?

Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than
Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect
was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior
to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s?
Was he grander in death—a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of
thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the
equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race?

If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be
interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution
would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that; thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons
in darkness, filled with pain. He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip
and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fe. He knew what creeds would spring like
poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests,
building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the
instruments of pain. He heard the groans—saw the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning,
martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the
Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him.

He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would he waged, and he knew that above
these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping
banner of the cross.

He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned—that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from
the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the
discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason’s holy light and leave the world without a star.

He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain.

He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women’s breasts unbabed for gold.

And yet he died with voiceless lips.

Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: “You shall not burn, imprison and torture in
my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men.”

Why did he not plainly say: “I am the Son of God,” or, “I am God”? Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not
tell the mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not say
that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God? Why did he not write the New Testament himself? Why did he leave his words to
ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the
tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the rights of man, of the liberty of
hand and brain?

Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt?

I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know.

04/29/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I listened to today: I Will Find You, by Harlan Coben

Amazon abstract:

Five years ago, an innocent man began a life sentence for murdering his own son. Today he found out his son is still alive.
 
David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love–until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall. 
 
Half a decade later, David’s been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison—a fate which, grieving and wracked with guilt, David didn’t have the will to fight. The world has moved on without him. Then Cheryl’s younger sister, Rachel, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a vacation shot of a bustling amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive.

David plans a harrowing escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. But with his life on the line and the FBI following his every move, can David evade capture long enough to reveal the shocking truth?

A few top reviews from the United States:

vegasbill

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great story from this author

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

Harlan Coben can spin a yarn! Once again he has proven that in I Will Find You. This intricate plot is populated by a colorful and interesting cast of characters, especially the two FBI Special Agents, Max and Sarah, assigned to this case. They provide the comic relief in an otherwise very serious story of murder and a missing child. While cracking wise to each other they manage to cut through the distractions provided by Coben’s other characters and home in the most important issues.

David Burroughs is accused and convicted of killing his three year old son. While in prison he learns the son might still be alive, a scenario which makes no sense as the son’s body was found in his bed, beaten to death. In order to find out if that is true David must find a way to get out of prison and find his son.

The story is compelling and moves swiftly with lots of suspense and things that keep the reader guessing. If there is any flaw, there are parts of the plot which sound more like a soap opera rather than a murder mystery. That didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I recommend this to all who enjoy a good mystery/thriller.

KC

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben at his best!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

The story begins with David Burroughs five years into serving a life sentencing for murdering his son. He feels his life his over and never fought his conviction since he felt his life was over without his son. He never felt he would have murdered his own son but he had no memory of the night in question. David refused visitors in his first years at the prison until one day when his sister-in-law, Rachel, shows up requesting to see him. The visit causes him to question if his son is actually still alive. The book is an another great by Harlan Coben! I couldn’t put it down until the last page. I highly recommend this book and this author.

Daniel Kramer

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Ride

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

I Will Find You has a premise which I have not found in another novel. A man convicted of murdering his child, who thinks that he may have done it in a drunken moment of hysteria, finds out that the murdered child in his house that evening was not his son and that his son is still alive. Great idea for a book. How will Harlan Coben bring the pieces together so that it makes sense and gives the reader a thrilling ride? I will divulge nothing other than Harlan Coben did a really nice job of giving me the ride that I was hoping for.
Is the book perfect? Am I still a little confused by the ending? Yes. Does it matter? No. The book is a roller coaster ride which you should take if you like thrillers or you have read everything that Coben has ever written.
His best book ever was The Boy From The Woods. By far, that book was perfect and exceptional. This book is right up there and worth your time.

Jodie Short

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlan Coben has done it again!! This book will be your favorite this year!

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

Wow! The storyline in this book is beyond! I didn’t know if I even wanted to know the truth behind how it happened, but I had to know! That is what makes Harlan Coben a standout beyond all the rest! The characters, as usual, you will fall in love with and some you will love to hate! His style of writing is the reason I love to read! I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone! I already recommended it before I even finished it myself! I gave this book a five-star rating because Harlan Coben gets an A+ and every area of his writing! The plot, the characters, his style of writing the mystery! He has ramped up the edginess in this one!

About the Holy Bible, by Robert G. Ingersoll (1894): Part IX: Is Christ Our Example?

This is a very long article. I’ll post it by part.

Here’s the link to the full article.

IX: Is Christ Our Example?

He never said a word in favor of education. He never even hinted at the existence of any science. He never uttered a word in favor of
industry, economy or of any effort to better our condition in this world. He was the enemy of the successful, of the wealthy. Dives was sent
to hell, not because he was bad, but because he was rich. Lazarus went to heaven, not because he was good, but because he was poor.

Christ cared nothing for painting, for sculpture, for music—nothing for any art. He said nothing about the duties of nation to nation,
of king to subject; nothing about the rights of man; nothing about intellectual liberty or the freedom of speech. He said nothing about
the sacredness of home; not one word for the fireside; not a word in favor of marriage, in honor of maternity.

He never married. He wandered homeless from place to place with a few disciples. None of them seem to have been engaged in any useful
business, and they seem to have lived on alms.

All human ties were held in contempt; this world was sacrificed for the next; all human effort was discouraged. God would support and protect.

At last, in the dusk of death, Christ, finding that he was mistaken, cried out: “My God My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?”

We have found that man must depend on himself. He must clear the land; he must build the home; he must plow and plant; he must invent; he must
work with hand and brain; he must overcome the difficulties and obstructions; he must conquer and enslave the forces of nature to the end that
they may do the work of the world.

Remembering Aaron Swartz: David Foster Wallace on the Meaning of Life

Here’s the link to this article.

“Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

I recently attended the heartbreaking memorial for open-access activist Aaron Swartz, who for the past two years had been relentlessly and unscrupulously prosecuted for making academic journal articles freely available online and who had taken his own life a week prior. A speaker at the service read a piece by one of Aaron’s personal heroes, David Foster Wallace — an excerpt from Wallace’s famous Kenyon College commencement address, the only public talk he ever gave on his views of life, which was eventually adapted into a slim book titled This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (public library).

I’ve written about the speech previously, but the particular excerpt read at Aaron’s memorial resonates with chilling clarity in light of recent meditations on the meaning of life, how to find one’s purpose, morality vs. intelligence, and whether money can really buy happiness. Wallace remarks:

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F59517060

Also speaking at the memorial, data visualization godfather Edward Tufte captured the essence of Aaron’s character:

Aaron’s unique quality was that he was marvelously and vigorously different. There’s a scarcity of that.

Hear This Is Water in its entirety, with notable excerpts, here. Help fight the broken system that mauled Aaron here. Honor his legacy with a contribution to Creative Commons here.

Portrait: Aaron Swartz by Fred Benenson under Creative Commons