An Overstuffed Book Bag

Last week I went to the German-Polish bookstore during the lunch hour at work, and picked up We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I've been reading his Twitter feed and, more enterprisingly, a few of his Atlantic articles for a while. The book began with a brief retrospective on the Restoration era directly after the Civil War, where for a few halcyon years African Americans enjoyed the political franchise not only as voters but also as congressmen. Then it moved to a personal perspective on the author's life in 2007, when nobody would hire him and he was officially unemployed.

Because of my own 'funemployment,' I didn't want to linger on these passages much. It is still a sore subject. For example I find that a lot of knowledge I gathered then is useful now, and that I am happier being employed but haven't blossomed into virtue I didn't already have. So: maybe I should have been less harsh on myself, instead of thinking that when I am not working I am the worst, laziest, and least competent person in existence. — For many unhappy years, as I wrote about in this blog back then and would rather not dig up again.

On a happier note, I think I have more than enough books to read on the U-Bahn now. To recapitulate: Structure and Evolution of the Stars is an ongoing struggle, and I have Aristotle's Politics where I am reading the introduction at present, Augustus' record of his achievements in Res Gestae Divi Augusti,  Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, and then this.

I have been burning to write about Culture and Anarchy. But I feel badly informed about the Victorian-era religious and political environment; and, secondly, feel too grumpy through no fault of Matthew Arnold (since he is not a contemporary figure, much less a work-related Client From Hell), to do him justice. So... maybe some other time?