
Today I hardly know where to begin. Which page of War and Peace do I read?
The best evidence of this is my Flickr Page. I have spent hours in recent days deleting accidental double pics. There were about 30,000 images from my 15 year old uploads when I started trimming them. Its time consuming work but its also time consuming to find pics for blog posts out of 30,000. I’ve erased perhaps 4,000 pics lately but today another 30 new ones are there. Many were uploaded automatically in a process I would prefer to control but haven’t taken the time to bother with…….except through deletion.
So, above is a screen shot about a book I want to read about Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg who has among many of his careless actions to make himself richer started an unintended massacre in Bangladesh with slipshod Facebook rules. Like Elon Musk’s disinterest in truth in favor of the right to get richer through through spreading lies Zuck gets rich despite the deaths of minority people Facebook allows to be called terrible things by ignorant people like Donald Trump. Don’t get me started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR3f95BGIiA
Since hearing about this book Zukerberg has desperately tried to stop its publication and exposing his vile work I’ve wanted to read it. But I’ve just started reading another book about something else that billionaires in America are about to accomplish…..the Destruction of a century old public health system that is beyond price. And that’s only one of several big books I want to read. I am a little phobic about starting a book of more than 500 pages because its such a huge investment of time.
So, I quickly gathered some books in excess of 500 pages on my shelves that I have read and a few I want to read. Each of them read or unread has a story I’d love to at least sketch. If you go to my BOOKS category on the right side of this blog you will find previous attempts to share info about books I consider important. I rarely read for recreation. I read big books carefully with a yellow flair pen to note things I might want to find quickly at some later date. BTW I put the page numbers on the biggies I’ve read up through the epilogues. The Old Testament contains 750 pages.
Here’s a Pic (once again on my office carpet) of 14 books most of which are well past 500 pages in length. Below them are six books of that size I would like to read.

Taking this picture got me to thinking again about Faust the literary character Goethe wrote about who sold his soul to Satan to become omnipotent like God…..all knowing.
And that led me to thinking about the paths I’ve taken even to reach omnipotence before I’d ever heard of Faust’s quest to know everything.
It started by sitting with my Dad as he watched documentaries. It continued with a stamp collection I poured over more to understand the places that made stamps, the subjects they chose for their stamps than to have a valuable collection. So for yet another photo I went to my basement and pulled out three big plastic tubs that contain my old collection. I took more pictures to show how they played a part in my learning. These three boxes contain extra US stamps (beyond those in my stamp albums) that I planned to trade with collectors from other nations. BTW. Each transparent envelope contains stamps from before the three cent era up to the era before where you licked them to put them on envelopes. I stopped collecting them after that. I couldn’t soak them off envelopes any more. Notice how quickly the price was raised as costs increased in the modern era…..

Readers Digests come into play in my junior high years and I probably read half of each monthly issue from 1964 through 1970. Here’s the back of a 1953 issue a friend gave me full of stories abridged from dozens of other US magazines:

I’ve spent at least two hours most mornings reading newspapers for the last fifty years.
And looking at my collection of stamps reminded me that yesterday my daughter protested at the Federal Building to support the oldest working part of our government. In fact the Post Office was organized by Ben Franklin during the Revolution. Donald Trump began breaking it up in his first term hoping to sell off to more god damned billionaires……..THE WAY THE GOD DAMNED RUSSIANS SOLD OFF ALL THE SOVIET UNION’S ASSETS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT COLLAPSED TO FRIENDS OF THE OLD KJB. RENAMED THE FSB UNDER VLADIMIR PUTIN TRUMP IS COPYING RUSSIA. NEVERMIND THAT PUTIN HAS BILLIONAIRES WHO OPPOSE HIM THROWN OUT OF WINDOWS. THAT WAS A FAVORITE TACTIC OF THE BOLSHEVIKS.
And coincidentally when I opened up my boxes to take a picture of the stamp collection my Dad’s uncle Ben left to me, I found an example of how Franklin Roosevelt Administration honored the nations attacked by the god damned predecessor of Putin, Adolph Hitler. It was Uncle Ben’s collection of “overrun” nations. Like Hitler and Stalin Trump wants to divvy up the Ukraine the way the commies and fascists divvied up Poland. Trump wants the Ukraine’s minerals. He want’s Greenland’s minerals. He wants Gaza’s beaches for condos and he doesn’t give a shit about starving children our our farmers who were paid to keep them from starving.

By the way here is the demonstration at the Post Office yesterday:

And here’s me with my hastily created five minute poster…..Its on the back of a Jen Schultz lawnsign.

BTW “Faustian ecliectic”…..should be eclectic.
