Deep Throat

Today, Woodward and Bernstein's infamous Watergate source was revealed (free registration required). W. Mark Felt, then second-in-charge at the FBI, proved to be the critical informant.

Coincidentally, or not, I watched Shattered Glass this evening. The film recounts fabricated stories at The New Republic, whose Chuck Lane had to manage the mess. Lane, of course, now covers the legal affairs beat for The Washington Post (free registration required). Good movie, incidentally. Worth watching.

Intriguingly, I just watched Network this weekend, too. The thought-provoking film - originally released in 1976 - fairly predicts the slovenly depths to which many of today's so-called "news" programs have fallen. You should check it out, if for nothing else than Peter Finch's inspiring performance as Howard Beale, who slings such zingers as this:

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything.'

Delving Into Proust And More

How'd I go almost forty years without reading Proust? If Swann's Way is any indication, I'll soon be spending more to grow my library to include all of Proust's eight In Search Of Lost Time volumes. Penguin's just now releasing a newly revised series of translations, which I'm learning make quite a bit of difference.

Not content to rest with just one heady novel, I have four books in the works, and several more on deck. Intriguingly, the various texts I'm currently reading intersect one another in odd ways. Updike's The Early Stories makes several mentions of Proust (which is undoubtedly one of the reasons I felt spurred to crack the series open). The Bible For Dummies - whatever your faith, a good text with which to become familiar - meanwhile, is proving very enlightening, particulary as to the importance it places upon differences in translation (something I've also seen said about Proust).

If You Want To Walk On Water, You've Got To Get Out Of The Boat is an in-you-face evangelical read. I try to keep a few of these type a year on my list, as they're inspiring in their confidence and demeanor. Two years ago I delved deeply into John Eldredge's Wild At Heart and Waking The Dead. Interesting reading, but not for the faint of heart, as the man's serious about his faith. Plus, he drives a Jeep, so how bad could he be?

On another note, I was trying to describe the pleasure of gnawing through packs of Now and Laters to the family. Why describe it when they can try it? I surfed through several sites before finding a decent price for an assortment of the lime-, grape-, cherry- and orange-flavored candies. The box should be here this week.

Saturday Morning Redux

I'd planned many activities today. I was going to paint two windows, run three miles on the trails, tackle two new books on blogging and RSS that O'Reilly sent this week and even catch up on a few work projects. But I wound up stealing a scene from my childhood.

I parked myself on our deck swing. The weather was beautiful, with a steady breeze. I heard the mailman's truck, and I'd been expecting an Amazon package. Low and behold it arrived. Soon I found myself reclining on the swing, Proust's Swann's Way in hand and a fresh pack of Necco Wafers by my side. This was just how I spent innumerable afternoons of my youth, lazing away fretless summer days of childhood with books from the Way Public Library and candy fromn Houk's Drug, which stately held its corner in the shadow of Commodore Perry.

I spent hour after hour in my parents' white-wooden garden swing, handmade like the model my grandparents frequented in "the country." I'd rock, ceaselessly working my way through the rainbow-colored packet of sugary discs while endlessly devouring novels. Rocking. Reading. Eating: multitasking was in my blood and in genes long before it became fashionable.

How appropriate, it occurred to me and remembering all the activities I'd planned, to be stealing more moments reading Proust, who's remembrance of childhood events proves a hallmark in his writing.

But reality intervenes. I'm reminded I must learn RSS, so I return to the plugged-in world of my PC. And the phone rings - a friend, good friend, reminding me how much I love to ride. So soon I'll load the bike on the Jeep and hit the trails. And I'll be glad I did.