I’ve already written about the 2 major events of my March: my long birthday weekend and our trip to Pittsburgh (part 1 and part 2).
I have mixed feelings about Daylight Savings Time, but I appreciate the extra daylight at the end of the day and the sign that winter was coming to an end. And I also appreciate that other sign of spring: the start of the baseball season. Prior to the start of the Major League season, I kept myself entertained with the World Baseball Classic and the Indian Wells Masters.
We had some unwanted drama at the end of the month. There was a chemical spill in the Delaware River that had the potential to affect our drinking water. Luckily, it never did, but it took several days before we knew for sure.
Photography
The weather has slowly been getting better so I’ve been out shooting film a few times. I finished 2 rolls and hope to post about them soon.
Toward the end of the month, I was close to finishing a roll in my Olympus XA. It was quite nice out the last Sunday in March so Holly and I took a long walk. Since I was close to the end of a roll, I also brought along my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with my 24-105mm f/4 lens. I ended up not taking many photos with it but was glad to have a 2nd camera with me for when I was done with that roll of film.
It was during this walk that we got the emergency alert about the possible chemical contamination which certainly undermined what had been a lovely walk.
Reading
I had a good reading month in March, finishing 4 books.
Early in the month, we watched Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car based on a short story by Haruki Murakami. I had read that story a few years ago when I read his story collection, Men without Women. I am a big fan of Murakami’s short stories so I wanted to revisit Drive My Car after seeing the movie. I was able to get the collection from Overdrive via the Free Library of Philadelphia. Initially, I intended to only re-read Drive My Car, but once I read that, I decided to re-read the rest of the collection. I’m glad I did since the film version pulls from a couple other stories in that collection in addition to Drive My Car.
I had picked up a copy of Rachel Cusk’s Outline a while ago at our local used bookstore, Neighborhood Books. Cusk has been on my radar for a while, and I wasn’t disappointed when I finally got around to reading one of her books. Outline focuses on a writer who goes to Greece for a conference. There isn’t much in the way of plot but it’s a fascinating study of the various people the main character encounters. Outline is the first in a trilogy so I’m looking forward to reading the next 2 books.
My good reading month continued with Ed Yong’s intriguing An Immense World which analyzes the various ways animals perceive the world. Yong investigates not only the senses humans use but also senses like pain, vibrations, and magnetic fields, among others.
Finally, I started reading José Saramago’s amazing Blindness on our long train ride to Pittsburgh. I quickly finished it after we got home since it was an intriguing tale of a world where the majority of humanity loses their ability to see. The novel focuses on the initial people who lose their vision. Out of concern of the seeming contagiousness of the blindness, the government sequesters the victims in an abandoned mental asylum. Things deteriorate quickly. Every time I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. It was a tough read but well worth it.
Books Read in 2023
So far, I’ve read 9 books in 2023:
- Modigliani Up Close, various authors
- Daddy, Emma Cline (library book)
- Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker
- White on White, Ayşegül Savaş
- The Direction of the Wind, Mansi Shah (Kindle book)
- Men without Women, Haruki Murakami (Kindle book)
- Outline, Rachel Cusk
- An Immense World, Ed Yong
- Blindness, José Saramago
This Creative Midlife Posts in 2023
- New Canon 28mm Lens
- December 2022 Update
- Favorite Photos from the 2nd Half of 2022
- Canon AE-1 with Lomochrome Metropolis
- January 2023 Update
- Minolta XE with Lomography Berlin
- Mandalas in Procreate
- Minolta X-700 with Ilford HP5 Plus
- A Visit to the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
- February 2023 Update
- Long Birthday Weekend 2023
- Pittsburgh Trip 2023 Part 1
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