THINGS I THINK ABOUT

1.  WORDLE

Yesterday I wrote about solving a difficult puzzle. according to a lecturer in a Great Courses writing course that I am following, I should have "beefed it up."  Thus - here is my story supposedly improved:

I jumped out of my bed this morning, eager to try a new opening word in WORDLE.  The word did not give me any help and I felt it was worthless.  I was anxious because I didn't want to end my winning streak.

By guessing at several entries, I finally came to the last moment when the word I needed suddenly popped out of my brain, and my winning streak was preserved!

Did I satisfy the basic points of any story?

WHO?     Me (I)

WHAT?    A short story about WORDLE

WHERE?  Outside of my bed.

WHEN?    This morning.   

WHY?       To tell you about one of my experiences with a fun time solving WORDLE.

Well, I tried.

2.  TV SERIES

When Elaine came home from the hospital, we began to watch the Showtime series The Affair. It has several convoluted plots including the sexual exploits of the main protagonists, teacher/author Noah and waitress Allison, and the shenanigans of their relatives, some rich and some dealing in drugs.

There seems to be almost constant explicit sexual activity going on and if the F-word was removed from their vocabularies they would have nothing at all to say.

After a while I was hoping that they would slow down the sexual stuff and get to some other plot device.  We watched 50 Shades of Gray recently and that movie's sexual activity seems like Kindergarten stuff in comparison to that in this series.

That reminds me:

A long time ago I purchased My Life and Loves by Frank Harris at a left-bank book stall in Paris.  The book was banned in America.

Frank Harris (1856 - 1931) was an Irish-American who had an interesting life. Born in Ireland, he bought his way to America, where he "punched cattle" (like in the series 1883), worked underwater building the Brooklyn Bridge, wrote short and long stories, was considered a "bulls------", was a notorious name-dropper and eventually became a famous editor of The Saturday Review in London.

Down on his luck and blaming others for his misfortunes, and hoping to renew his fame he wrote an autobiography which caused quite a "stir."  He outlined his many sexual encounters through four volumes and peppered the pages with depictions of nude women.

But in between the sexy parts, Frank told entertaining anecdotes about world figures.  I got quickly tired of the titillating excerpts and thumbed past them to get to the more interesting parts. 

Why I mention this is to say that the antics in The Affair would certainly shock and disgust Frank the libertine with its lewdness and lack of interesting sidelights. (IMHO)

The Affair was developed in 2014 and lasted for five seasons.  I watched Season One, but I don't think I want to suffer through any more.

3. Prisoners

The Washington Post had an article today about German prisoners of war who were held in Maryland during WWII.  Some were held in Fort Holabird at Baltimore and thousands (the U.S. held 450,000 German prisoners) were sent to work on Maryland farms.

Carroll County, Maryland historian Kevin Dayhoff has written about these prisoners who were happy to get out of the war and do farm work in a welcoming environment.  Many prisoners stayed in the U.S. after the war and became good American citizens.

Fort Holabird was an important place during WWII.  Counterspies were trained there, mainly just-commissioned Second Lieutenants.

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