At work, one of my rather mindless tasks is to test books for pH levels. This requires the demanding duty of placing a small amount of water on the page of a book, and placing a sensor tube in the drop of water. Then I wait a few minutes until the pH level registers, and record that level on a piece of paper. However, despite this riveting work, I am able to read while I do it.
One of the books I’ve been reading lately is Victor Davis Hanson’s Fields Without Dreams, in which Hanson, a classicist specializing in early Greek warfare and agriculture, describes the decline of his family’s fruit tree farm and vineyard, and those of the surrounding area, near Alma, California. Reading that book really brought to mind my late grandfather, Clifton F. Healy.
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