Oh those Oilers; Posthumous thrillers; Einstein poems.
Oh those Oilers; Posthumous thrillers; Einstein poems.
3 Things this week and a poem.
Petra and I went out for a nice dinner together to a new Italian place in town that friends repeatedly recommend. It was fun to spend our children’s college fun eating fresh mozza, focaccia and having uninterrupted conversation.
I hope your last week of June is filled with great food and conversation. Thanks for spending some of your weekend with Things I Wrote Down.
1. Oh those Oilers
Talk about historic. The Oilers’ journey to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals is one for the books.
No good thing is easy and if they make history on Monday night with a come-from-behind, down 3-0-win over the Panthers, they'll have a city, a nation and Shania to thank.
The scenes from Edmonton are inspiring. From the national anthem belted out in Rogers Centre to fans decking out pickups in foil to look like the Cup, it's hard not to see the unifying power of sport.
Everyone seems at their best here. The players on the ice, the fans, the sports writers and commentators (see the pre-game spot for Game 5 below), the event planners, the film editors. What a ride!
Posthumous thrillers
Michael Crichton's wife has partnered with the thriller writer James Patterson to publish a book the late author always wanted to publish.
This article in Variety breaks down the story of how it came to life.
I think it’s fascinating to be on the reading end of these posthumous works. Remember all the controversy when, after her death, Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchmen was published? (I read it and really enjoyed it and still admire Scout and Atticus).
While I make no comparisons to Lee or Crichton as writers, and there seems to be no controversy with the publishing of his posthumous Eruption, it’s always a bonus, in my view, to have more words from authors you enjoy.
3. Einstein poems
Safi Bahcall, author of Loonshots1, a book I really love, shared a photo of an unpublished poem written by Albert Einstein, typed in German with a handwritten translation. Einstein wrote it to mark a friend's son's bar mitzvah.
Of the poem Bahcall says this:
Einstein's poem by itself is not much. But for me it's a symbol, a reminder of Einstein the person not the legend; his values not his equations.
Who you admire reveals what you value. Speaking at the eulogy for his mentor, Hendrik Lorentz, Einstein said that Lorentz's work was "of such consistency, lucidity, and beauty as has only rarely been attained in an empirical science." He also said about Lorentz: "Though he had no illusions about people and human affairs, he was full of kindness toward everybody and everything." Einstein ended with a description that sounds familiar: "A subtle humor guarded him, which was reflected in his eyes and in his smile."
Who you admire may also become who you model.
A poem
I love the apocryphal story of Jesus as a little boy bringing a sparrow to life. It’s a fascinating thought. This poem has an image like that. And suggests at any moment, at any stage, God can reach into the heart and revive it with hope, set it alight and into flight.
May hope stoop down into your circumstances, breathe and jolt your heart with the electric truth that you are free.
Where the crumbs fall On the floor where the crumbs fall where beggars prostrate, faces hidden from sight empty palms stretched open tailbone and heels shoulder blades pressed into the ground is how I lie I imagine your hand grab hold of my sternum, turning it back on its hinge reach inside to lay hold of my heart plump as a chickadee before the first snowfall clamp your hand around it entirely pinch the hard ridge of its beak and, like the beggar you open your palms too set to flight what was given wings let out a whoop freedom the much used coin left in my hand ©️ 2024 Andrew Kooman
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