TMDR

Hard to believe it’s been a month since my last entry. Life, you know? But here’s hoping for a better year ahead.

Because people have shorter attention spans these days, there has become a designation for articles that readers just can handle. The shorthand is TLDR: “too long, didn’t read.” That’s a shame. I liken it to old movies. Many of them wouldn’t do well with contemporary audiences who have been brought up on instant gratification, fantastic CGI effects, and lots and lots of explosions. They don’t have the patience to sit through a thoughtful story with relatively little “action.”

These days, I find myself facing a different but somewhat similar situation.

Following my car accident last May and compounded by the death last month of my 96-year-old mother-in-law, Jeanne Krausman, I was thrown into something of an existentialist situation.

Followers of this blog know of my love for baseball literature. My house is virtually straining at the seams from the thousands of books in the basement, attic, and all other parts of the house (even the kitchen, which hosts a few baseball cookbooks). Recently, more and more, I find myself wanting — needing — to cull the herd, rather than burden my family with it when the time comes. But no one really wants them. Not the local library, not the used book stores. I have, on occasion, snuck over to the library before it opened and either left a box in front of the entrance (not a valid option in these unfortunate times of potential anarchy) or tossed them in the overnight return slot. I had some luck a few years ago with a Facebook contact who drove up with his pickup truck and hauled away over 1,000 volumes. The Yogi Berra Museum will take a box from time to time. But with new titles being delivered to my door every year, the problem remains. And to start looking to eBay them away, well, who has time for that?

Used to be the thought of just throwing books away was totally repugnant to me. How could anyone do that, I thought? But reality has set and I’m revising my philosophy on the matter for the sake of expediency.

As I start to go through the inventory, I realize there are a lot of things I’ve never gotten to for one reason or another. I feel especially badly for the writers who have taken the time and expense of sending their work hoping for whatever modest publicity I could give them through a review or a menton. To all of you folks I’ve disappointed, my profound apologies.

But the truth is, rather than TLDR, for me it’s TMDR, “too much, didn’t read.”