Well, hello to the end of another month. I for one welcome March, tornadoes and all: I am very ready for spring! This was an unusual month for me personally because I had no computer for most of it: mine abruptly stopped powering on after only a month and a half of use, and while it was under warranty getting free repairs meant mailing it off to California. That meant more time reading, though I also fell into a homesteading hole on YouTube and discovered a new-to-me favorite channel, Anne of All Trades. I was also interviewed for an hour over Selma history for some kind of documentary: I’m not sure what kind, but I’m happy to yak about the Hotel Albert or Benjamin Sterling Turner, even if on camera. (Fun fact, if you click that Hotel Albert link you can see a digital library I’ve been developing the last few months.) February was also black history month for all the kids, so the library has been overwhelmingly busy the last few weeks with kids doing poster projects and the like. (It’s still going today: I had five requests in fifteen minutes.) Whenever someone came in requesting Mae Jemison I made a point of mentioning she did a cameo on Star Trek and suggesting it would be fun to include a still from that. I also greatly enjoyed watching speeches from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a compelling international conference that featured an interesting mix of religious leaders, historians, artists, scientists, journalists, etc. There were familiar personalities and authors there (Bishop Robert Barron, Mary Harrington, Niall Ferguson) as well as a lot of new names that I’ll be digging into. I must say, a conference that includes Coptic archbishops, country/folk singers, and charts about global energy sounds like my kind of party.

Science Survey:
The Ends of the Earth, Neil Shubin
Conversations with Carl Sagan, ed. Tom Head

New Acquisitions:
Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. Technically this isn’t “new”: I read it back in November 2008, and count it as one of those books that altered my worldview, destroying the facile Victorian nonsense about the medieval era being one of intellectual stagnation.
Technopoly, Neil Postman. Another worldview-maker from 2008 that I want to revisit.
The Ends of the Earth, Neil Shubin. My only new purchase (the rest were used copies) and it was using gift card loot.
One No, Many Yeses, Paul Kingsnorth. Paul’s visits with people resisting…not globalization, per se, but something broader. Would be an interesting one to pair with Jihad vs McWorld, which I’ve meant to read for years.
Real England: The Battle against the Bland, Paul Kingsnorth. Will save for April and Read of England.

All of these save for Shubin are used paperbacks. I’m trying to heed Kingsnorth’s admonition that “matter matters“.

The Grand Tour:
Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light (Portugal)
The Mature Flâneur (Portugal)

I also read a third of Spain: Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country and am…figuring on continuing, but frankly it’s not all that interesting. It’s been more about party politics and less about culture, but I’ll keep pecking at it.

Coming up in March:

Lent begins March 5, and Opening Day is March 27: my baseball reading may start before that, though, since April is Read of England. I also plan to post a review today