Waiting for the season to start

Were we trespassing?

I don’t know the laws regarding public versus private beaches in New Hampshire, nor if there’s some covenant dating back to 1627 that deals with this sort of thing — don’t laugh, this is New England — but given that we had moved to the part of the beach that was in front of some very expensive houses … probably, yeah.

But one thing I did know if that the chances of anyone doing anything about it were almost zero.

Going all the way back

Nope … nope … nope … nope … .

Unless I’m listening to an album or something I sought out, I have a very strong skipping finger when my phone is shuffling through the songs on my iTunes playlist.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Theoretically, I shouldn’t ever want to skip a song, since — minus a certain U2 album I haven’t figured out how to excise yet — I chose them all.

But most of the time I scroll until something strikes my (usually undefined at that moment) fancy.

Perspective in pages?

I’m not a huge fan of “So you think you have it bad …?” as a way of trying to convince me I shouldn’t be upset about something.

Yes, I am aware that I have it better than somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of people in the world, but if you want to go down that path, should we have a daily session to determine what person in the world has it the very worst, and only that person can complain?

I think not.

So forgive me if a rage-inducing day is not mitigated by knowing that there are probably billions of people who would trade places … or having learned that something truly dreadful happened 92 ears before.

(By that same token, I am now aware that the good people of Nigeria probably won’t be as celebratory on my birthday as I am.)

But for all my distaste for anger-shaming, a display of books about various disasters — including the one referencing the Lindbergh baby and the Nigerian Civil War — with a sign about “really bad days in history” is cheeky and sort of clever.

It also got my attention, and better that way than by trying to promote your business with a spokesman who can’t pronounce the name of the company or its mascot.

I find that so annoying.

Even though there’s certainly someone with better reason to be annoyed.

“In the summer of 1870, the colonial government of British Columbia in Victoria dispatched three representatives far to the east, to a chaotic frontier town that had recently been named the capital of a new nation: the city of Ottawa, located at the swampy confluence of the Rideau and Ottawa Rivers.”

— “Dominion,” by Stephen Bown

I’ve been to Vancouver, but not Victoria, and spent a few glorious days in Ottawa after taking a train from Montreal.

“Dominion” is about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which connected the entirety of Canada. “Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad” by Stephen F. Ambrose is in my bookshelf, so maybe I just have a particular interest in that sort of thing.

Or maybe because what first got us hooked on Michael Portillo’s rail journeys were his trips in Canada.

Whatever the reason, I picked it for the same reason I pick most of the books I read — it looked interesting when I saw it.

The difference is that I saw it — along with a book about the rivalry between John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson — at a bookstore in Edmonton when we were there last year.

Seeing books I don’t normally see is something I like about going to bookstores when we’re out of the country. If you can even find them in an American bookstore, they’re buried under enough titles about the British Royal Family, World War II and Nazi Germany to fill a house.

Throw in the Civil War and the Kennedys while you’re at it.

Seriously, if you’re planning on writing a book on any of those subjects, ask yourself, “Will I be contributing anything new?” and then find another topic.

Now all I have to do is read this book and the four or five left in my Christmas queue. Once upon a time, it would have been easy, and it probably still would be if other things to read (::cough::socialmedia::cough) weren’t such a distraction.

Now the pattern is basically — muddle through start of book, get a decent amount of reading in when I ride the bike at the gym, muddle some more, get to about halfway, decide it’s time to finish and power through the rest of it in an afternoon.

I really need to do better.