Quotes to ponder

Quote #1

Oliver Sacks wrote that he had "the hope that some of my books may still 'speak' to people after my death" (p. 8 of his book Gratitude, 2015).  You and I are still speaking, Oliver.  He was almost 80 when he wrote that in 2013, and I'll be 84 in April.  I can relate, wondering if my blog will still speak for me when I'm gone.

Quote #2

"There's a difference between determination and stubbornness, Dora.  Determination keeps you focused.  Stubbornness, in contrast, blinds you" (from pp. 65-66 of Ellie Midwood's The Undercover Secretary, 2023).

Word of the Day #1

de·ter·mi·na·tion / dəˌtərməˈnāSH(ə)n / noun = firmness of purpose; resoluteness.  Example:  "The woman set to work on the problem with total determination."

Word of the Day #2

stub·born·ness /ˈstəbər(n)nəs / noun = dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something.  Example:  "His error was sheer stubbornness in refusing to admit a mistake." 

Similar words

I was reading the last essay in Oliver Sacks' 2015 memoir Gratitude when I encountered a word I've never used, though it was obvious to me what the word meant in context:

"We lived in a fairly Orthodox Jewish community in Cricklewood, in Northwest London — the butcher, the baker, the grocer, the greengrocer, the fishmonger, all closed their shops in good time for the Sabbath, and did not open their shutters till Sunday morning" (p. 34).

At first glance, the grocer and the greengrocer are the same in my mind, but then I thought, "Green, as in growing stuff."  Yes, that's pretty much what the dictionary says.

Word of the Day #1

green·gro·cer /ˈɡrēnˌɡrōsər / noun (British) = a retailer of fruits and vegetables.

Word of the Day #2

gro·cer /ˈɡrōsər / noun = a shopkeeper who sells foods such as meat, flour, sugar, canned goods, as well as fruits and vegetables.

There's the key to why the term "greengrocer" is not one I use — it's British.  My dad was a grocer.  He owned a small grocery store in the early 1940s, before he was drafted into the Army during the Second World War.  He was also a meat cutter (not a butcher, he insisted, who butchers the animals), so that means he had meats in his store as well as fruits and vegetables and other things.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

Gratitude ~ by Oliver Sacks, 2015, memoir essays, 64 pages, 8/10

"My predominant feeling is one of gratitude.  I have loved and been loved.  I have been given much and I have given something in return.  Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure." — Oliver Sacks

No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks.  During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.  "It is the fate of every human being," Sacks writes, "to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death."  Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.

"Oliver Sacks was like no other clinician, or writer.  He was drawn to the homes of the sick, the institutions of the most frail and disabled, the company of the unusual and the 'abnormal.'  He wanted to see humanity in its many variants and to do so in his own, almost anachronistic way — face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms.  And, through his writing, he showed us what he saw." — Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal, one of my favorite books ever.

Added Monday afternoon:  Here's a quote from the book:

"I have been increasingly conscious, for the last ten years to so, of deaths among my contemporaries.  My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself.  There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever.  When people die, they cannot be replaced" (p. 19).

This is a weekly meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, who says, "Post the books completed, the books you are currently reading, and the books you hope to finish at some point."  Nah, it's Monday, and this is what I'm reading.  Since I post nearly every day, I don't need to repeat myself, so this one book is enough for today.  Tomorrow is another day, and I'm sure I'll discuss another book or two then.