In Seattle, summer doesn't really start until after July 4. True to form, that's what happened this year and this week we've had some lovely days-- okay, two really sunny days and a few mixed days, and a little bit of rain. Sean and I went camping over the holiday weekend, but arrived home the evening of July 4 to find all the neighborhood businesses closed and many house and lawn parties happening all around.
Reading Notes
I read several essays in a hot pink and purple book of McLuhan criticism published in 1967,
McLuhan hot & cool: a critical symposium (with cool striped ampersand and lower case titles throughout). It was interesting to see what was then a hot topic from a perspective of 44 years later. Television was new(ish)! In the future, people would work from home from closed circuit television; airplanes were "horizontal elevators." I haven't actually read McLuhan himself, but from the essays I read, I gathered that he thought the new generation reared on television was more global and tribal because they were using more senses simultaneously, as opposed to the linear mindset fostered by the "Gutenberg Galaxy" and the onset of moveable type.
I also read two novels by authors I've read previously:
On Beauty by Zadie Smith and
Poor George by Paula Fox.
