I had a decent daily run going in July until yesterday, although most of the posts have been book quotes, and it helped that I had started to build up a backlog of them. Felt sick yesterday; spent most of the day in bed. Doesn't look like anything serious -- may have been something I ate. Does give me more time to read. I'm half way through Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree, which seemed like the logical successor to Tom Segev's 1967. The latter provided a lot of useful detail about how Israelis viewed the war, but failed to provide much context, either in terms of what others -- notably Arabs and Russians -- were actually thinking and doing or in terms of what the war's legacy actually turned out to be. It's as if the idea is that since Israelis are so schizophrenic, not to mention voluble, that one can cover all sides of issues by only examining the numerous Israeli variants. Tolan covers the same ground in 20 pages or so, including a Palestinian viewpoint that Segev omits. Still, I have a lot of remarkable quotes marked in Segev's book. Despite my critique, I came out wanting to read his 1949, but held back figuring I have the big picture anyway. I'm trying to gear my reading toward writing, and there are few subjects I feel I've researched more adequately than Israel. (My books section currently lists 29 books on Israel, plus there are a few others listed under Middle East, etc. An idea for a future post would be a short annotation of each book on the list.)

As it is, I'm mostly muddling through. The default activity is to listen to music and write notes about it. As I write this, I have 20 jazz prospecting notes ready to post, and the database rated count for the week is +21. Both numbers are close to long term norms, but certainly aren't banner weeks. Recycled Goods for August is pretty much written. Jazz Consumer Guide is up in the air, with no clear plan to close -- although there's something to be said for trying to knock it off quickly. I'm reading about as much as usual -- the Segev book that took me all week is 585 pages, but I've always been a slow reader. But I've fallen far short of keeping up with my usual web sources -- I have several TomDispatch articles open in tabs, but can't recall looking at Juan Cole or Helena Cobban in the last 2-3 weeks. I'm not making any progress on my book. I have been making fairly steady progress on many house projects. Also way behind on some website work; e.g., for Robert Christgau, who's 4-5 Consumer Guides ahead of me, plus I barely know what else. The big recent advance is that the Vista computer is finally running. Once I plug speakers into it I will be able to download music and play DVDs, which I haven't been able to do since February. The next big push is to get to where the piles of stuff all around me are shelved somewhat sensibly. I have both short- and long-term plans for that, which is good because short-term solutions never work.

The weather has finally gotten hot around here. Don't think we've officially had a 100-degree day yet, which may be some kind of record, but it's been well in the 90s for a couple of weeks now, and more humid than usual. All the rain pretty much ruined the wheat crop -- I've seen figures 30-40% down from norms. Most of the global warming models predict drought, but a pretty sure rule of thumb is that more heat means more rain somewhere. Even if the models are fallible, that doesn't mean the outcome is going to be favorable.

I'm rambling here, but wanted to get a post in. Jazz Prospecting tomorrow, then more book posts.