Parallel decades blog.

June 6, 2004 – Schaumburg, Illinois.

Summer is here without a doubt, a cold morning, or relapse into a cool rainy spring. It was very warm all day, but not boiling hot. Though it was windy, I was able to start and maintain a fire in the ovoid barbecue, and cook hamburgers for lunch. We spent a lot of time on the deck, and then in the park near our home; Yuriko and Lilly rode their bicycles, and I walked; and all the while, one or another informal baseball game was going on in the field southwest of our back yard.

June 6, 1994 – Bangkok, Thailand.

Koh Samet [an island off the east coast of the Gulf of Siam] was a pleasant change after a week in congested, noisy Bangkok. The days on the island, from the 31st to the 4th, had an agreeable sameness to them. Eat. The food’s good here, especially the squid. Sleep. The cool wind blowing off the sea at night is particularly restful, but warding off nighttime mosquitoes means using the bed’s cumbesome mosquito net and keeping a coil burning. Read. Been reading short stories in a fat collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer that I picked up in Hong Kong. Write letters and postcards. Walk. I walked about half the length of the island, but that sounds more impressive than it is, since this is a small island. Ogle girls on the sly. Some of the other non-Thai visitors to this island worship the sun very seriously, and bare almost everything to it.

June 6, 1984 – Nashville, Tennessee.

I spent a long time at the proofreaders’ block today, maybe nine hours, at my brand-new job at Advantage Cos. Read a story, among many others, about recent legal decisions concerning health care, by a talented legal writer, I thought. Read another article co-authored by two professors. Clear prose must be part of the prevailing paradigm that they’re out to smash. No wonder academics have a reputation for obfuscation. They have a talent for it.

After work, I went down to Southwinds [the first-floor bar] with Patti, Terri, Connie & Amy and drank a bit of beer. More than anything else, I listened to endless Advantage scuttlebutt. For such a small company, there’s a lot of gossip. More entertaining, sometimes, than going to a movie would have been.