Resolution, Same Old, Same Old

[this is one of my joyous little diary quilts -- seems appropriate for celebrating a new year]

In 1960 I made a resolution: I will read 100 books a year for the rest of my life. I was about to graduate from college, I did not want my education to end when I left the classrooms. Every year I have made the same resolution. A few years I actually read 100 books -- but only a few. I think the low point was 29. Lately it's been over 50 for a good many years. It will be 72 for 2006. How do I know this? I have a little notebook, every book I've read is noted there, for all 46 years. Magazines and short plays don't count -- sometimes, during years when I was reading a lot ofr plays, I'd count three as one book. Reading, along with classical music [listening and playiing it on the piano}, seeing art shows [which includes art quilts] -- these are the bread and butter, the daily vitamins and minerals of my mental, imaginative, creative life.



This is the Tyson public library in Versailles, Indiana. When I was in grade school I think I read every book in the west [right in the picture] side of the library, starting with the bottom shelf in the southwest corner which was where the beginning readers were. Then I made my way to the adult side. They had only a handful of art books; they had one book on handwriting analysis, hardly any poetry. I knew I wanted to study literature in college ... I have never stopped studying literature. I seem to read randomly, but I do not purchase books haphazardly.

Sometimes I join the mobs of people who resolve at New Years to lose ten pounds ... and keep it off. Like most of them I try, lose the ten pounds for the umteenth time ... and gradually gain it back. ... Now I wish, but I don't resolve. So many things I wish ... that would be all night typing. Midnight will find me with a book in my hand, it usually does.