Fun Reads by Rich Schram

If you have found occasional enjoyment in reading some of my work, I would like to suggest a blog by a writing friend. She possesses a contemplative mind, and writes both essays and fiction pieces. Her blog is entitled When I Come To Be Old: Thinking About Aging, Literature, and Life . Her writing is more philosophical thank mine. She writes with file and scissors, where I rely on a sledge hammer and chisel. Her blog also appears on a secure site and contains no advertising. It may be accessed at https://whenicometobeold.com/ .

We say they work in the trades . It’s the catchall label we assign offhandedly to those who build, maintain, and repair our homes. The label is inadequate. Such people are more than utilitarian functionaries with gravity challenging tool belts; they are unrecognized poets and performers, with each specialty possessing its own artistry and unique language and rhythm. Consider the drywall hangers who helped convert our cement-walled basement into living area. Only a two-person team, the lead was a slender, average-height man whose tool pouch spilled over with a shop’s worth of gear: electric drill, oscillating saw, metal tape measure, utility knife, pliers, handsaw, and other drywall-appropriate pieces of apparatus. From his drill and saw, serpentine fifty-foot electric cords twisted and writhed beneath his feet. But his feet were not flesh and blood feet. He was a man-machine atop three-foot aluminum stilts, maneuvering in fluid, untroubled steps from measurement ...

Allow me to tell you about a book by science writer Brooke Borel: Infested: How The Bedbug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms And Took Over The World . I’ll share what I learned, still hoping you are able to sleep tonight. Of about 14,000 sanguinivorous 1 species that feed on blood, bed bugs are the species most dreaded of some 300–400 insect species routinely feeding on human blood. We fear bedbugs because they attack in the night while we sleep, leave us itching with telltale blood spots on pillowcases and bed sheets, and retreat unseen, sometimes becoming uninvited companions that attach themselves to our bedding, clothing, or suitcases. Their clandestine behavior makes us suspicious of strangers, visits by friends carrying luggage, as well as possible travel via ship, plane, or taxi. Borel discussed scientists’ research into bedbugs’ role in transmission of numerous serious diseases. Some of the more exotic or hot button health crises included leprosy, typhus, TB, t...

You need only browse Lowes’ or Home Depot’s paint samples to confirm gray is a poetic color: autumn fog, twilight mauve, hazy stratus, mountain smoke. Each outlet lists about 200 variations of gray. Yet, gray is despised. Ask a random group of acquaintances to associate the gray with the five senses, and they’ll offer acerbic, pain-filled responses: “Dismal dark day,” “Groan,” “Smells like dead mice,” “Tastes like stale oatmeal,” “Feels like somebody’s grave.” Some unfortunates claim the grayness of dreary winter days causes seasonal affective disorder and indebtedness. Easy enough to prove: do an internet search on SAD images . You’ll immediately hunger for sunshine and mental-health trips to Fiji, Aruba, and Curacao. Hope you have deep pockets. Yet, for all its drab monotony, gray has other powers. Peer into impenetrable fog. Don’t you begin to imagine camouflaged soldiers lying in wait a hundred feet distant, their only concern being whether their exhalations betray their pre...