It the kind of week where it’s hard to get anything going. We do not suffer weather well in SoCal, and a strange conspiracy between an overheated sun and June gloom has lead to what is, for us, oppressive humidity. We, denizens of the region, do not object in principle to humidity. It is simply that we adhere to a strict schedule, and humidity is not allowed into the region until August or so. Everyone is moving slowly, even the Internet. It takes us twice as long to type a sentence as it should (it takes even longer to backspace

Jill, thinking she’d get us worked up this morning, sent along a lovely story about a county that has cut the budget for Spanish-language fiction for adults. They will continue to fund children’s books and non-fiction, but not “pleasure reading” for the adults. Because you know, when adults read for pleasure, there’s no telling what will happen. We have heard rumors that some adults who read fiction go on to become thinking, producing members of society. While we cannot get our hands on the study right now, we vaguely recall learning that fiction readers are often taxpayers just like non-fiction