Two more books as the year is half gone

Does rereading books count toward a year's total? In this case, yes, and I finished two more this month, bringing to 15 read as the year is half gone.
When cleaning out books to give to my daughter, Booked to go, I parted with my Tony Hillerman books, except for one I had forgotten about.
It is a tattered and signed 1970 first edition of his first book, The Blessing Way, before he became famous. I bought this book at a Society of Professional Journalists silent auction here years ago. 

If you didn't know, the late Hillerman was an Okie and first a journalist and covered Oklahoma politics and more for UPI. In fact, his novel A Fly on the Wall, set in a fictional state capital, which is obviously Oklahoma City and the state capitol building. 
 He'd given this book to a friend and another Oklahoma journalism icon, Carter  and Loretta Bradley, and they donated it to the auction. 
 Reading it again was like reading it for the first time, because it had been so long ago. In it, Joe Leaphorn is a young Navajo cop and Jim Chee hasn't been created yet. Leaphorn aged with Hillerman.

The back cover, young Hillerman

Reading this and seeing his inscription and photo on the back cover brings back memories, especially of my beloved New Mexico, and of the passing of time.

***

The second book I reread was Art and Fear, Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, a musician and a writer
I needed to go back through this heavily marked-up book, mark even more, to get me off my duff and back into watercolor painting.  Books like this are food.
I won't give you many excerpts without almost reprinting the entire book. 
But one stands out to me as a journalist:

"To the artist, art is a verb."

Here are pages I've obviously read well. It's not so much advice as philosophy and common ground on the emotions and mind set of what happens when you decide to make art.

'That's my boy. I'm proud'--Clark version, Matt. 3:17, 17:5

 I remember holding him in my arms on the first day of his life, full of pride and wonder.
This week, I've hugged him, bigger than I am, and I'm still full of pride and wonder.
To quote the Bible, my version: "That's my boy. I'm proud!"
It was my privilege and honor to attend the emotional Air Force retirement of my first born, M/Sgt. Vance Conrad Clark this past week, at Beale AFB, north of Sacramento, Cal. He's spent 23 years of his life passionately serving our country, traveling the world, meeting and serving people, and more.
I wish you could have been there, and witnessed the honors bestowed on him, officially and unofficially. I wish you could have heard his Colonel's remarks. Lt. Col Michael P. Healy, Commander of the 13th Intelligence Squadron, 548th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group,  did his homework in his speech, mentioning Vance's grandfather and my Dad for his art work and draftsman work on WWII aircraft, and spoke of Vance's several career assignments and deployments, and his leadership. Younger airmen really look up to him. (Oh, by the way, Beale AFB is where the famous "spy plane," the U2, is based.)

I wish you could have heard Vance's remarks about me, about his mother, about his wife and children and many others in the room. I wish you could have heard his oldest daughter Katherine surprise him and sing the national anthem, a capella. I wish you could have seen his daughters boo-hoo as he gave them flowers. I wish you have tasted his wonderful wife Kerin's cake, knowing that both of them had only had about three hours of sleep the night before. I wish you could have heard his eloquent extemporaneous speech about serving our country, about his Christian faith in God, about responding to a higher calling, about our freedoms in America. I wish you could have heard his conclusion, "God Bless the United States of America." I wish you could have heard him and his Colonel leading the rousing Air Force Song at the end. 
Here's a summary of his accomplishments, his biography, and many photos I took. I know I'm no different than any parent, and I've been blessed  and am so proud of my four terrific children, all of whom make you "bust your buttons," as they used to say.
 

That's my boy. I'm proud.

From Vance's biography, and his record

M/Sgt  Vance Conrad Clark is a fusion analyst assigned to the 13th intelligence squadron at Beale AFB. Born in Lemars, Iowa, as the oldest of four, in 1985 he graduated from Waurika High School, and enlisted in the USAF in April 1993 and entered basic training. He has served in career fields to include F-15E crew chief, weather observer and his current field. He took part in major exercises such as VALIANT SHIELD and B-52 operations on Guam. 
He was deployed four times, two tours in the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo), Iraq and Turkey. Some of his favorite accomplishments were planning demonstration resultant fury, overhauling the USAF influence Ops curriculum authoring the Air Force's first ever cyper-OPSEC course and establishing the USAFE/AF AFRICA A2  training program. Most of all he loved mentoring, teaching and recognizing people for their efforts. He thoroughly enjoyed two mission trips to western Samoa and Romania where he helped prepare children for a better life. He married Kerin on Aug 5, 2003 and they have been blessed with three daughters, Katherine 10, Sarah 7 and Neysa 5. After retirement he plans on spending more time teaching his daughters to fish, finishing a masters degree, staying proficient in Russian and traveling more places to help people out. Above all, he thanks Jesus Chist,the creator and redeemer of the universe, for the blessing,s opportunities and great people with whom he was privileged to serve.

  
 

Col. Healy and M/Sgt. Clark

Honors from his peers

A special citation for Kerin Clark

Citations for Neysa, Sarah and Katherine

Vance's remarks  on his retirement

Leading the Air Force Song

The proud father

To read about his "birthday," here's the link: Birthday thoughts.

Breakfast and memories of the Order of the Yellow Tablet

The OYT..from left, Dave Ford, Steve Law, Greg Scott, me, Rudi Nollert.
Kenny Brown seated.

The Order of the Yellow Tablet.
Defunct now, but once there was a spot, if not Camelot, still a gathering of wits and some wisdom, a refuge from ridiculous demands from higher up...the chairs of the Liberal Arts College at UCO.
That came  to mind and discussion this morning as Dave Ford, the chair of the Sociology department, and I, former chair of Journalism and Mass Communication, had breakfast and traded memories.
The occasion? Dave is retiring, and Friday is his last day. He and I came to UCO the same year, 1990, and we became friends, each serving many years as departmental chairs.
We credit former Dean Tim Baughman with creating a strong chair's council, and after he left, we began gathering informally on the porch of then Political Science Chair Greg Scott, taking notes on yellow legal pads. Thus was formed the noble-named and august body of the Order of  the Yellow Tablet. While many faculty disapproved of Tim, we found him an inclusive leader who brought needed structure to the college, real influence and power to a cohesive group of chairs, and other benefits we still see.
We also gathered socially at our house one evening about 10 (hence this photo) years ago, when History Chair Kenny Brown was stepping down, to honor him. It include memories, jokes, Humanities chair Steve Law's homemade mead, and more.
Dave is the last of that group to serve as chair. Three are now retired. Modern Languages Chair Rudi Nollert is now an assistant dean, Steve Law is still professing medieval life, making mead, chain mail and more, and I am still here as a professor of journalism. Greg and his wife Jill have retired to Santa Fe, and Kenny and his wife Diane are retired here.
Here's a toast to the members, my friends, of the Order of the Yellow Tablet. It kept us sane, gave us an outlet for frustrations, and helped bond good friends and colleagues. Salud!

Booked to go!

Books to go--Hillerman novels in front

How do you get rid of books? Actually you don't, because once read they're a part of you. But they do tend to accumulate.

Cleaning out shelves

I've tried a book sale, and that didn't work, other than just getting exercise carrying them out of the garage and back in at the end of the day. And yo can't just throw them away.
But I saw my opportunity as daughter Dallas and son-in-law Todd Bell want to open a bookstore in Canyon, Texas, and they're visiting garage sales and more, buying what they can. 
With her visit here this weekend, we started going through our shelves, and the ones under the bed, and in stacks on tables, and those in containers out in the garage, plus some from work. Some I'd collected and couldn't remember, or had never read, and they certainly went. 

So we started pulling them out, opening boxes, piling them up in various places in the house and garage to transfer  to her car. We filled her trunk and part of the back seat.
I think we parted with about 150 of them. Some you can't part with, yet--Heart of Darkness, Whitman, Blue Highways, A Moveable Feast, The Art Spirit, books given by my kids for Christmas, and so on. I still have my John McPhee and Ed Abbey and Ernie Pyle and Grizzly collections, my New Mexico and Larry McMurtry and poetry shelves, along with  my signed first editions. And of course my Dad's and my art books. Susan kept cookbooks and more.

From work

You go though the books, looking at the signed inscriptions on many, and the dates when I bought them. Lots of memories.  You start going through those, and you remember each one, and put a few aside to read again.
But I did give away my Tony Hillerman novels (except the first one, signed by him). I had many antique newspaper books, some writing books,  some 1920s novels, and gobs more, including National Geographic books.

Many of the recently bought and read books were easy to let go of. And I figured if many had been out in the garage for a while, they needed to go too--except for those special ones I don't have shelves for here.
What is amazing is I'm not sure you can tell we parted with any at all.

Reflections on the honors of friendships and Oklahoma journalism

The overwhelmed old professor's dazed look.

It's been a week since the Oklahoma Press Association honored me with the H. Milt Phillips award and I've found myself reflecting on what made that possible. I'd written about it earlier, Walking with Giants.
I used some of those comments in my brief speech last Saturday night, somewhat stunned by the respect of a standing ovation, the comments of OPA President Robby Trammell, and the well-wishes of many friends. 

Wth OPA Prez Robby Trammell.

And since then, I've sort of been overwhelmed by the comments on social media from other press people, and from generations of current and former students at both UCO and OSU, and from emails from academic colleagues at UCO.
I wanted to write about it, without sounding too narcissistic,  and if it does, just excuse me for thanking so many people. I also wanted a digital record of this event on my blog, which is sort of a diary, a history. 
There's a humbling sense of satisfaction in having touched, and been touched, by so many wonderful people.

With friend Ray Lokey

What really sunk in  this week is that friendships, professional and personal, are treasured honors. I've been fortunate to work in both journalism and as a professor, combining two great careers. My wife Susan summed it up, I think, on Facebook: "...TC has dedicated his career to newspapers, journalism students, and the advancement of his field in the state of Oklahoma." Among those friends was Ray Lokey, publisher of the Johnston County Capital Democrat at Tishomingo.
Following is what my long time friend and fellow journalist Steve Booher wrote, which was adapted for Trammell's introduction.  Steve is kind, and embellishes the facts a little like every great storyteller,  so he actually makes me sound good.  I'm thankful.

  

Two older newspaper friends

"Terry and I go way back… before cell phones, before the Internet, and we both experienced the not-so-good old days when hot and cold referred to water faucets, not the method used to print newspapers. But it would be a mistake to equate Terry's decades of experience with his physical age. He's always been young at heart; that's why he relates so well with those of us in the AARP age bracket as well as those we label today's millennials.
    "My first encounter with the younger Mr. Clark came when I took a job with the Duncan Banner in the summer of 1974. I'd spent about five years honing my craft at a Kansas daily and an Oklahoma weekly, and was grateful for an opportunity to work for Harrington Wimberly, his son-in-law Al Hruby, and legendary editor Callaway Buckley at the Banner. What I didn't know was that I was replacing a young man who couldn't be replaced. Terry spent his time at the Banner developing contacts throughout southern Oklahoma; contacts that eventually led to his partnership with Donald Morrison in owning and operating the little country weekly a few miles south of Duncan, the Waurika News-Democrat.
   "It didn't take me long to realize that I couldn't clone myself into a thinner and more personable Terry Clark. But luckily, I was smart enough to stop by Waurika and get to know the guy who had endeared himself to Banner readers north-south from Rush Springs to the Red River, and east-west from tiny Loco, Okla. to Lawton. He welcomed me, not only giving me advice on who I needed to know in order to service readers in an unfamiliar territory, but also much-needed information on how to keep his former bosses at the Banner – now my employers – placated. He didn't have to do that, but those of you who have met Terry, either personally or through his column in The Publisher, know that practically nothing is off limits when it comes to his sharing of insight into the newspaper industry. Although the Banner's circulation dwarfed that at Waurika, Terry was secure in knowing that the new kid on the block stood no chance of stealing away readers from the News-Democrat.
  

Steve is a consummate storyteller

  "We found ourselves coming together on Friday nights in the Fall of '74. We both knew that coverage of Oklahoma high school football was essential to developing and keeping small-town newspaper subscribers. After a couple of games, I began asking Terry which game he planned to cover. Had I been a little more experienced, I would have made sure to pick an area team where Terry wouldn't be on the sidelines. But it was too much fun meeting each other 30 minutes or so before game time, so we could share our weekly newspaper gossip.
   "Today, when greeting each other at OPA functions, we still bring up the days we spent covering high school football. At some point, we'll have to discuss and correct each other about which southern Oklahoma teams – Marlow, Comanche, Rush Springs or Waurika – were playing each other the night that the temperature was near zero, the wind was howling at 30 miles per hour, 55-gallon drums of burning wood were placed along the sidelines to warm players, and one school chose to drive its bus onto the center of the frozen field and unload players just in time for the kickoff… hoping to gain an advantage.

  "Terry was one of the first to arrive at my retirement reception a couple of years ago and one of the last to leave. Always on the lookout for a story, he jumped at the chance to mention the reception cake, designed as the front page of the Cherokee newspaper, in his next Publisher column. Like you, I always turn to Terry's column when the Publisher arrives each month. We all treasure a mention from Terry about one of our headlines, a particularly well written lead, or a new design improvement. We want his acceptance, knowing that it comes without prejudice, with only the goal of striving to make us better journalists.
     "Newspapers – particularly rural Oklahoma newspapers – have a friend watching over them as they struggle from day-to-day and week-to-week to produce a quality product. Thank goodness his advice is always free. He would tell you that's about what it's worth. Not true, Terry, and by the way, I think it was Comanche vs. Marlow that cold November night in 1974."

Susan and I celebrating with H. Milt Phillips

And for the record, here's a version of what I said that night. It was briefer and not as eloquent as Steve's, Robby's or Beachy Musselman award- winner Andy Rieger's.  I'm blessed to walk with these people.
   "An ancient journalist got the greatest scoop--the one on one interview of all time.
    "The old journalist was Moses, who interviewed God. He wrote a beautiful 10-word lead, and he turned it into a little book you've probably all heard  of-- 'Genesis'.
    "In that little book he writes, 'There were giants in the earth in those days.' King James Version translation is 'people of renown, power, influence.'
    "When I look at all the people who have been honored with the Milt Phillips awards, I know there are still giants in the earth.
    I never dreamed. I'm humbled and dumbfounded to be included with this giants--I'm proud to have known and to know about 25 of them, and you, and count you as friends.
    I'm especially aware that only two other non-active newspaper people have been selected. Ben Blackstock, and the only other professor, Dr. Harry Heath, my friend and last mentor. They forgot more about journalism than I know. Wow. Giants.
    "Mark Thomas told me yesterday that I still didn't have the award. I guess I was the "presumptive" award winner. Who thought up that word? "Assumptive" would better fit our anatomy.
    "It's a long way from the Waurika News-Democrat grad school of journalism, interning by walking the sidelines in rain with huge battery back and plastic over the flash along with Steve Booher. Then I'd go back in the darkroom pushing Tri-x film for a grainy image.
    "My wife Susan jokes that I refer to you as "my people. " It occurs to me that I first attended an OPA  convention 40 years ago, when we won our first Sweepstakes award. I'm still proud to be a newspaper man, most at home here and with students. I have a great job, working with newspapers, but not having to make deadline, and working with students.
    "No honor is awarded to a single individual. There are too many to thank, but I have to mention Waurika partner Don Morrison. I thank OPA, each of you, about 3000 students, my families, my children and wife for putting up with me.
    "You made me what I am…it's your fault, as another doctor once wrote, by the name of Seuss:
    'Look what we found in the park in the dark. We will take him, home. We will call him Clark.'
    "A father in law once quipped, 'Don't park in the dark with Clark.' Too late.
    "Thank you so much. This is a treasure."
 

He was not the best father, a father's lament

Dad, Jerry and I,  Manzano Mountains, 1950s

But he was the only one I had.
 Neither am I, but I have tried.

Terrence Miller Clark, 1914-1973.

I've written about him a lot, the talented artist with a wooden leg, coming up out of the dirt poor Oklahoma Depression and red clay town of Comanche, Oklahoma, the oldest of five boys, all of whom fled that town to become successes. 
He could draw before he could walk, I think, and I have so many questions I'd like answered. You never asked as a child, and if it weren't for stories from my now late Uncle Mike, I'd know a lot less.
I want to know more about hopping the freight train that cost him his leg in Tucumcari in 1933. I want to know more about his playing football. I want to know more about his art. I want to study art with him. I want to know what his favorite drink was. I want stories of his teen years and 20s. Alas.
He was incredibly talented as an artist, but he had many flaws...an awful temper, an overbearing selfishness, a wandering eye...and more.

Easter Sunday, Albuquerque

I spent a good portion of my life trying not to follow in those steps, but I too have many flaws and failures, but I've really tried to be a good father, providing for my children, being respectable, being loving. I think he had more excuses, or reasons, for his shortcomings than I do mine, but as I get older the genes and art have kicked in and I know I treasure his influence, his life. He had hard-won guts, even speaking out loudly in church in one Sunday sermon, telling a preacher, "You're wrong."
I see so many posts this weekend from wonderful people saluting their fathers, as the best fathers ever. I am touched, and envious, and guilty, I guess. 
Keep posting those photos, keep mentioning those memories. Keep telling your fathers how great they are, regardless of flaws. You are so fortunate. My wife, with parents in their '80's, says it's hard to believe my parents have been so long gone.
I am not the best father...but I am so thankful my children and grandchildren still love me. All these years later, I'm in his debt, even with his many flaws.
My brother Jerry has commented that I should attempt a family history. That stumps me in many ways, but as I looked back at the previous posts on our father on this blog, maybe I've started.
Consider these articles:

My dad had a wooden leg 
Fathers' Day in black and white 
Fathers' day musings 
Pages from beyond death 
Pages from the past 
Ghosts from the past 
A spooky view of the past 
When iris bloom 
Forbidden art from long ago 
Of time and mortality 
Sitting still, portraits in time 
100 years ago and more 

Blog readers in 148 countries

I'm always astounded that my blog attracts readers--or they stumble across it--from so many countries in the world. 
In May, readers from five new countries clicked on these pages, bringing my blog visitation register to 149 countries total. Countries and dates someone visited the blog:

5-3--Benin

5-9--Senegal

5-10--Anguilla

5-11-South Sudan

 

5-18--Paraguay. 

That brings to a total of 25 countries in Africa, 12 in South America, and 11 in the Caribbean.
I love seeing these facts show up and delving into the maps, histories and flags of these countries. It's a continuing education in geography for me. And it always sparks my imagination about the readers and their lives, as well as my wanderlust to travel, especially to places like Anguilla and white sandy beaches.
Also note that the flags reflect the different histories and in these cases the colonization if these countries, French, Spanish and English.
Where I've had other readers on these continents and regions:
Africa--Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Togo, Ghana, Ethiopia,  Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Gabon, South Africa, Mali, Mauritus, Mauritania, Cameroon, Angola, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Benin, Senegal, South Sudan,
South America--Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay.
Caribbean--Caymans,  Sint Maartin, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, The Bahamas, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, Bermuda, Anguilla

Excerpts, and philosophy, from an Alaskan's journals

The comments below, from Richard Proenneke back in the late 1960s are astounding to me.
Building his own cabin in the Alaskan wilds with only hand tools, he kept a daily journal.
The fete alone is mind- bending, but then his writing is also magnificent, and his reflections on time and technology and work are more true than ever.

Philosophy from the wilderness. 

Enjoy.

• A man is on his own frequency out here. (about time of day)
• The lake was moon still.
• This country makes a man younger than his birthdays.
• Its ears worked like a pair of scissors and its nose twitched  as if with an itch it couldn't reach. (A snow hare)
• Strange to wake up at 3 in the morning and feel like daylight is being wasted.
• …but risk now and then is good for a man. Makes him come alive and tunes his body to a greater efficiency.
• There's no water in the world like that born in the high country.
• The gates of heaven are near. (In the mountains)
• ...took several sips  from the trickles that made music over the stones.
• I just season simple food with hunger.
• We have become accustomed to work on pieces of things rather than wholes. It is a  way of life with us now. The emphasis is on teamwork. I believe this trend bears much of the blame for the loss of pride in one's work, the kind of pride the old craftsman felt when he started a job and finished it and stood back and admired it. How does a man on an assembly line feel any pride in the final product that rolls out at the other end.
• At my pace, I can notice things... . Nature provides so many things if one has the eye to notice them.   A bubble on the water, an arctic tern's breast tinged with the blue reflections of the lake.
• News never changes much. It's just the same things happening to different people. I would rather experience things happening to me than read about them happening to others. I am my own newspaper and my own radio. I honestly don't believe that man was meant to know everything going on in the world, all at the same time…and the poor guy with all the immediate problems of his own life is burdened with those of the whole world.
• I don't know what the answer is. In time man gets use to almost anything but the problem seems to be that technology is advancing faster than he can adjust to.
• I don't like the look of progress, if that's what it's called.

Two month flurry of pages read--II

The flood of reading started earlier when Vargas recommended the book on beekeeping I read in spring.
I found the author Hanah Nordhaus, had also written a book about Santa Fe, American Ghost, about a haunted house owned by the author's great great grandmother.
I learned much about New Mexico history in this book, and have walked by that house several times, never knowing it. I also found that the story is fictionalized in Paul Horgan's Centuries of Santa Fe. I own that book, pulled it off my New Mexico shelf and read that portion. Ahem. I found an error in this book too. She writes that the Santa Fe Trail originated in Saint Louis. Nope. First trip began in Franklin, Missouri in 1821, and I've been there, when visiting son Derrick and family when they lived in Columbia. 
But still, a valuable read. She also quotes Oklahoman and friend David Dary, from his book Frontier Medicine. And he agrees with me the trail started at Franklin.
Others:
Deep South, Four seasons on the back roads. Paul Theroux. One of my favorite travel writers, especially about trains (The Great Railway Bazaar). This book is an eye opener at the abject poverty in several southern states. He gets off the interstates, meets all kinds of rural people, and notes since the advent of NAFTA, most of the jobs are gone. He's no fan of Clinton.  The poverty he sees ranks with what he sees in Africa. Yet the US gives millions to help those countries, and almost nothing to our own citizens. As a Southerner I had to read this, and its storytelling and facts in the four seasons he travels there from his home in Cape Cod, are deeply disturbing. Some of it is not too far away, because the last state he visits in Arkansas. The only thing I found missing was a mention of the Confederate soldier statues on every  courthouse square. I just thought that was a given.
Across the Cimarron. Jerry Wilson. From my friend and small press owner Jeanetta Calhoun Mish of Mongrel Empire Press. I got halfway  through this novel before being distracted by another book. So now I'll finish it. It's a novel of the Oklahoma land run, and gives you a great idea of what those early settlers' lives were like. And it's a good history book too. 

Me with authors Corbett and Marmon

Laguna Pueblo, a Photographic History. Lee Marmon, Tom Corbett. I bought this at the Western Heritage Awards at the Cowboy Hall in April, as it is the Wrangler Award for photography. Marmon is a 90 something year old Laguna elder who has been photographing that beautiful New Mexico place for decades, and Corbett worked with him. It's full of black and white photography from years back, with up to date description and narrative. Of course I met the authors and had them sign it, though Marmon uses a stamp of his signature due to his age. 
Broken Open. How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. Elizabeth Lesser. Another book I have not finished, but I've skipped around in it, reading the chapters that most interested me. Much self help and understanding here. 

Reclaiming Conversation. The Power of Talk  in a Digital Age. Sherry Turkle. This book is part of a UCO book club, so I got it free. It's very scholarly and I won't finish it, but it discusses how digital phones are robbing high school students--an others--of empathy. I've read several pages. A recurring theme I just had a chat with our Uber driver this weekend.

The Krasingers

The Western Cattle Trail. Gary and Margaret Kraisinger. Ok, I haven't read much of this handsome book, but I and two other judges picked it as the best non-fiction work for the Wrangler Awards. Benefit of being a judge gets us into the back tie dinner and ceremonies. And we ended up sitting with the authors, two former Kansas school teachers who have devoted their lives to tracking, photographing and mapping, segment by segment of the historic cattle trails. Wow. So I also got their signatures.

The Wrangler winners

Not read, but pictured, Cimarron Crucible, Barbara James Fretwell. I bought this novel becuase it is set in Cimarron county at the far end of the Oklahoma panhandle. It is about a crime and murder of a little girl, and I'm not quite ready to tackle that subject yet.
Except for the gifts, the cattle trail book and the UCO conversation book, I buy all my books at either Full Circle Bookstore, or Best of Books in Edmond.

Two month flurry of pages read-I

I won't ever eat octopus again. 
Actually I've only recently tasted it, but after reading the Soul of an Octopus, sent by my friend and former student  Lauren Vargas of Boston, I discovered a new world of intelligence. Editor that I am, I discovered one small error in it. The author refers to a boat going so many "knots per hour." Ahem. knots are nautical miles per hour. But this is a book of discovery about life on this planet. Some things should not be human food.
That book was one of ten I've completed, two sampled and one half finished in the last two months, bringing my total read so far this year to 13 plus-surpassing my goal of one a month.
I usually read and write reviews of these, but blogging has been blocked, but books have not since early April.
I'm not inclined to comment much on each of these, but you'll note all but three are non fiction, and one of the others is poetry.
Notes:
Coyote America, Dan Flores, "a natural and supernatural history." If you're a Westerner, you know coyotes, but there's more information here than you ever imagined. They're the oldest deity figure in the Americas. they originated in America. They now inhabit all major cities east to west. In spite of man's best efforts, you can't wipe them out. In fact, we're responsible for them spreading everywhere. Lots of science and history here, plus a naturalist's viewpoint.
One Man's Wilderness-An Alaskan Odyssey. Sam Keith/Richard Proenneke. From the journals of a man who built his own cabin with handtools, telling how he built it a step at a time. He  lived alone in the Alaskan wilderness beginning in the late 60s. With his color photographs. He died in his 80s in 2003.
The Highwayman, Craig Johnson. A Longmire novel, set in the Wind River canyon in Wyoming, a ghost story involving highway tunnels. Shorter than most, also. A two-day read. You can look the setting up on Google maps.
The Great Spring. Natalie Goldberg of Writing Down the Bones fame (I have a signed first edition). Lives in New Mexico, a follower of Zen, teaches writing. This is one of those books I like because I can skip around and read the chapters I want first.  About writing, living, and more.
Woe to the Land Shadowing. Red Shuttleworth of Washington State. Won the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Wrangler Award for poetry this year. I got to meet him and he signed it. It's my annual tradition to buy these books of Western poetry. He and his wife are real westerners, but this book stretches the mind with his sparse views of life in the modern west.