Rainey Blogs on Some Days

Created using my Android tablet and tiny keyboard, hunched over looking out indirectly at the sun rising over the golf course in Leesurg , FL. My tablet now has a keyboard that I got for Christmas. Much smaller, not so easy to type or even press the space key because the space bar is so much smaller. I will inevitably end up fat-fingering the keys. But I can also use voice to overcome some of these typing faux paus . It really is a great time to be alive, except that I am spending so much to time with devices rather than people I love. Or spending time with people through devices I love rather than spending time with them directly. So I guess we are victims of our own devices. It is the end of another year. I should be setting goals to 2017 but I probably won't. I am by nature a laissez-faire kind of guy. Everything I learned about planning and organization I learned in the corporate world, an alternate universe where people work and do things that they do not do in their home

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” Annie Dillard, The Writing Life I have to admit something: I am obsessed by the passage of time. It is a constant presence in my life, as if I have some allergy that results in irritation or an itchiness that I must constantly attend to. I am constantly paying attention to the passage of time. I have no idea how this happened. Here's an example: I do not really want to be celebrated on my birthday like so many do. I prefer to take the day off from work and contemplate, not be rushed, sip the coffee slowly in the morning, sit by a stream for a little while, anything but be glad that I am another year older. The changing of seasons, say from summer to autumn, is also an emotional experience for me because I see it as a kind of dying, an ending to something that is now being lost. I wish I could see the new season as a new beginning, but I do not. I focus on

Like most people, I have a morning routine. If any of this routine is interrupted, my day is ruined. Here’s the routine: I get up when I get up. I do not use an alarm. If I go to bed early, I get up early. If I go to bed late, I get up a little later. This is very simple. If I’m driving to the Midwest and have to leave at 3 a.m., I use an alarm. Otherwise, I get up when I get up. The next thing I do in the morning is go downstairs and start the coffee. When I make the coffee, I hate when I find the grinds from the day before in the metal filter . This is very disturbing to me and makes me angry, but my anger lasts only a moment. After I dump the grinds in the garbage and rinse out the filter, I am back on track. I can put the new coffee grinds in the filter, fill up the water to the 9-cup line for the three of us drinking coffee, turn on the coffee pot and away we go. By the way, I have never had a coffee pot with a timer that I can set to start up at a certain time so the coffee is

Something I miss by living in New Jersey is the opportunity to watch a storm blow through. Right now as I write this on Labor Day weekend, I am in Leesburg, Florida (near Orlando), sitting beside a screened in patio and pool at my father-in-law’s house. I am protected from the rain by an overhang. The rear of the house overlooks a cow pasture. Hues of dark and light gray clouds bulging with water are moving across the sky just above the pasture. The crackle of lightning and the subsequent thunder in the distance remind me once again about nature’s power as the wind hisses through the trees and drops of rain, at times heavy and at times light, make disappearing circles in the pool. There is a raw beauty I love in a storm. I am mostly unaware that I do not often get to watch storms. When I am in Florida, a rain or storm blows through nearly every afternoon, sometimes just taunting us with a threatening sky that does not deliver any rain, and at other times a downpour descends from the

Chris Rainey (MVTHS Class of 1982) has been nominated by himself to become a member of the MVTHS Sports Hall of Fame for outstanding lifetime achievement in athletics. Chris was a three-sport athlete in football, basketball, and baseball, despite having a writer’s body, contemplative outlook on life, running the 40-yard dash in 5.7 seconds, and only being able to throw a football 45-yards with a modest wind at his back. Despite all of these limitations, he burst onto the football scene in the fall of 1979 during his sophomore year, being promoted to varsity after starting quarterback Chris Berner retired following the opening game of the year to pursue other interests. Rainey led the Rams to a 4-1 record during his five starts that season and completed over 50% of his passes, despite not enough being old enough to have a driver’s license or even shave yet. He was also starting third baseman for the legendary 1982 Rams baseball team, which won the South Seven Conference that year but l

Tomorrow, I am honored to be the guest at a special family-friendly event, sponsored by the LMS Home & School Scholastic Book Fair. I will read and discuss some of my work, and LMS teacher Eric Gugick will interview me about my writing life. Before or after the author chat, take a minute to check out the book fair, too. There will be merchandise for all and a raffle for the kids with 10 winners! Refreshments will be served. Wednesday, March 9, 7:00pm Leonia Middle School Book Fair doors open at 6:30; event begins at 7:00. I promise not to wear the shirt I'm wearing at this reading.

Somewhere in the past year I lost the will to write, the discipline to sit alone and let words roll down onto a lined, white steno pad page. This is not entirely true and I have had a few exceptions to this trend, but in general this thing—writing—that has brought me such joy and therapeutic pleasure has diminished. Maybe my “dark night of the soul” that lead me to write so profusely has concluded and I no longer need it. Maybe the aging process is creeping over into writing, and just as so many things diminish as the sun starts to set on our lives, maybe my writing is diminishing as well. During the past year I got an electronic tablet and the truth is that I now fritter so much more time away checking Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and the Internet that used to be devoted to other things like writing. So yes, I'd say Nicholas Carr was right: Google is making me stupid , another creative analog native neutered by the digital age. Despite the self-hatred and loathing that comes after