Boldino summer

Leave it to The Economist to remind me about something like Pushkin's "Boldino autumn," when he was trapped on an isolated and newly-inherited estate near Nizhnyi Novgorod during a lockdown for a cholera epidemic in 1830. He didn't even have many books with him, but he made the few months' stay one of the most productive periods of his lifetime. He finished Eugene Onegin and wrote the "Little Tragedy" plays as well as a bunch of short stories and other verse.

I need to do something similar over here. I haven't been doing badly, mind you. I've been reading books, taking care of clients, getting fit, managing lake projects and dealing with the crazy shifting landscape of park regulation, eating well, doing puzzles, I've even been blogging some. But I haven't made a concerted effort to do much in particular, beyond reading.

For example, the guitar. Recently late in the evening, when I was watching a YouTube video from guitar dude Phil of Wings of Pegasus, when he was talking about Molly Tuttle and how she honed her amazing flatpicking ability, he made the comment that to make progress on a specific guitar technique, one needed to do it very slowly over and over again until you were comfortable, then you could speed it up. To which I mentally responded "Doooohhhh!"

And so I have been working on picking with multiple fingers, as opposed to just thumb and pointer, and it is coming along. I will focus on this more. One day, I may actually play for you.