Thursday, June 09, 2005

A House Made of Books, A World Made of Books

Go to this link to take a photo tour of a really wild house. I wish my house looked like that, but it doesn't. I'm just back to a world governed almost entirely by reading.
If you think of reading as virtuous, reflect on this. I'm reading this book right now, by Ernie Lopez and Rafael Perez-Torres called "To Alcatraz, Death Row and Back: Memories of an East LA Outlaw." Ernie Lopez, whose life story it is, was beaten hideously by his father, whose sole occupation was, according to him, to sit in the house reading all day, "that was his life, reading, and he would read every day, all day long up until midnight." Despite his education, he was cruel to his children. It really was because of him that little Ernie became a criminal. Because his father demanded that Ernie make money for the family by selling newspapers during the height of the Depression, he found himself stealing in order to make enough money on bad selling days.
I read all day today too. Today it was Gerald Horne's book on the Watts uprising of 1965. A thought provoking account that I wish I read before seeing "Bastards of the Party."
As for what's going on in the world today, I heard Brian Lehrer talking to Steven Spinola and Gifford Miller about the various development plans and it sounds like at least some people are going to try to do the stadium anyway. Noooo! I'm glad that at least someone on the show (Lehrer) pointed out that there's a glut of office space in NY and a housing crunch. It doesn't make sense even to build high-rise office space in downtown; Golderberger's right. Make Ground Zero into housing, puhleese.

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