Just A Peck 0035 // Penka, Pella, Powers
Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I’m glad you’re here! New issues come out most Sundays. Unsubscribe at any time.
- Journal
- What I Watched This Week
- What I Read This Week
- Memories
- Quick Links
- What I'm Excited About
- My Favorite Quote of the Week
JOURNAL
On Sunday, I was able to swing by a birthday party for my friend Sean, who is turning (can you believe it?) a sprightly 55 this year! (Not really.)
We’re close to the end of the third month in which our house’s east wall has been torn apart. But some good forward progress happened this week. The replacement windows arrived, and watching the crew winch the huge, heavy panes of glass up thirty or forty feet was impressive (and tense). I’m not sure how much longer this project will continue, but I see a light at the end of the tunnel. (Or maybe that’s just the light coming through the newly replaced windows.)
On Friday, it was SPENCER’S BIRTHDAY! He somehow turned 29 this year! (Birthdays for our kids are always startling to me these days.) We didn’t get to see him in person, but we called him Friday night and had a lovely chat between events on his packed birthday schedule. By the time we got to have our birthday phone visit, he’d had brunch, spent five hours at a museum, and gotten his beard trimmed.
I spent all day Saturday with my awesome friend Jason. We drove the Twin Cities and saw Sirat at the Main and Sentimental Value at Emagine White Bear. We grabbed Punch Pizza for lunch, and lattes at Yellowbird, but the highlight was a day filled with great conversation.
WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK
WHAT I READ THIS WEEK
Finished:
The English Understand Wool, by Helen DeWitt. What a marvel this novella is! Published as part of a new series from New Directions which aims to deliver “the pleasure one felt as a child reading a marvelous book from cover to cover in an afternoon.” I highly recommend you read this without knowing anything about it.
In Progress:
- My Ántonia, Cather
- Middlemarch, Eliot
- Hollywood: The Oral History, Bassinger, Wasson
MEMORIES
Ten Years Ago:
Ten years ago, we were in Stevens Point to see Spencer in his college production of Midsummer (and to celebrate his birthday). I’m pretty sure this is the biggest Spencer’s hair has ever been.
Fifteen Years Ago:
Fifteen years ago, the mobile gaming startup that my friends and I created was featured in the Star Tribune. I’m not sure what the average lifespan is for a mobile game, but QONQR is still going over fifteen years later.
QUICK LINKS
- This new documentary about the Lumière brothers has over 100 newly restored films.
- Harrison Ford's acceptance speech for his Lifetime Achievement Award
- Someone built the Duluth Union Depot in Minecraft as it looked in its early years
- The 100 Greatest Cinemas in the world right now
- The greatest Minnesota celebrities of all time
- Rivers are living beings
- Tove Jansson illustrated the Swedish translation of the The Hobbit?
WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT
MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that–if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is–I wouldn’t give twopence for him”– here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers– “whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.”
-- George Eliot
That’s it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!