The weather seems to have broken, at least for now. I was in Nashville last week on holiday and it got to 24 degrees on Thursday. It was nice to feel a soft warm breeze in the early evening, I can tell you. It was a great trip actually. Traffic did not get too bad coming or going, our hotel was right beside Martin’s BBQ and three blocks from Broadway, the main strip. Lots of good food, live music (Roberts WesternWorld a favourite) and friendly people. The BBQ and chicken and waffles from the Sun Diner topped the list. The latter was surprisingly tasty. And I have never seen so many ‘help wanted’ signs in my life. $3000 tuition bonuses, pension and health care plans and more promised on restaurants, retail and manufacturing from Dayton to Nashville. Interesting.
Re watching GOT to get ready for the April 14 premiere. Only doing an episode or two at a time. I think I’ll be done a few days before, just to ramp up the anticipation. Ridiculous for a man my age to feel like this, I know, but I can’t wait.
I am finishing up a book I was given by a student a few years ago, ‘How Hitler Could Have Won World War II’. History books that detail ‘what ifs’ aren’t usually my thing but there are some very persuasive arguments in this book. I have studied and read a great deal about the war and the overall correlation of forces made the outcome inevitable, at a certain point. But Hitler was getting some very good advice on how to stretch it out indefinitely well into 1943 and Stalin sent out peace feelers a few times, both of which were foolishly ignored. We shouldn’t forget the Bolsheviks did sign the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in 1917, giving up more than a third of Russia without knowing the Allies would eventually rout the Germans on the Western Front, and they would get most of it back. We are fortunate that Hitler despite his megalomania and psychopathology, was such an amateur strategist.
Saw ‘Aquaman’. What a horrible mess of a movie, although Jason Momoa could be a movie star and there is about 30 excellent minutes somewhere in the middle. Still, overall a truly bad film, I thought. But what do I know, it made almost a billion dollars.
Writing on the third book continues but a reduced pace. It’s a struggle to get more than a couple of hundred words a day. It’s a first draft though, and what has been written isn’t too awful, so just going to keep grinding away.
Have a great week!