Simplify -- I don't consider canned or frozen orange juice simplifying. I consider it a typical way we complicate our lives. A commercial way that involves factories, additives, plastics/ disposable containers. The fruit comes in a natural container that is biodegradable.
Our family is simplifying Christmas. The idea was tried last year and we were all happy about it. Although there are four children and they will receive toys that I consider dreadful but that they will be excited about ... for a week or a month, there are seven adults who do not crave electronic anythings. We have the electronics that we need or want and get along just fine, thank you very much. We will once again gift each other a book -- a book we may or may not have read but one which we think the giftee will enjoy. The book does not have to be purchased new, it can be passed on. It may be prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, fat or thin but the giver will think it is a book the giftee will enjoy. So we'll all have a half dozen new-to-us books to read after Christmas gifts are unwrapped. The idea was a success last year. The most outstanding success was a dark horse of a book.
My oldest grandson gave me The Boys In the Boat by Dennis James Brown, a book about the sculling team from a small California college that eventually won the US collegiate championship in 1935 and then was able to go the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936. They had to work hard to find financial support, they trained hard. They discovered that they were give the least likely position from which to win the race. That year the Olympics were to be Hitler's great sporting success except two American competitors bested favored Germany athletes: one was Owens who ran the first one-minute mile. And the other was the scullers who, against all odds managed to win their race. The book was so well paced, so well written that I, who has never been to a regatta, could ride in that scull with the young men, feeling what each of them felt and holding my breath as I read.
I passed the book on, by summer all of us had read the book. Other books were passed around although some were of more specific interest to their recipient and not to others. I have been thinking about which books to give to whom for a couple of months and now have only to wrap them up. Wondering what books will come my way is as good as waiting for Santa Claus. Not that I have a need for more books. I just finished the 77th book of the year last night, I have two others partly read and started a new one -- I generally have at least two going at a time, and sometimes more.
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