What I’m Watching & Reading 8/20/22

After attempting to watch several streaming TV series on Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu, I finally found something interesting to watch.

It is on Hulu and it’s called “A Million Little Things.” Some of you may have watched it on ABC.

I read that the show has been renewed for a fifth season. I’m watching 1-4 on Hulu. I have watched about 5 episodes.

But I find myself interested in the various subplots that spin around the tragic beginning.

After completing negotiations for a deal on the phone, Jon goes out onto the balcony of his office, leaves his phone and an envelope on the table, and calmly steps over the edge to his death.

He was successful and charming. A family man; he had a wife and 2 children, and friends that depended on his wisdom.

He was the port in the storm for his closest friends. So why would he suddenly do such a thing?

Well, that’s the background of this story. The elusive reason why John would jump from the building as his assistant ran to the balcony in horror.

Then there are stories within the story. His three best friends are guys who found themselves stuck in an elevator a decade ago. During those hours, they bonded. And John was the center who they bonded around.

Why he would choose to leave them all is puzzling. They search for answers and try to live their lives without him. But everywhere they look, it reminds them of John and his kindness. The way he helped them gain insight and plow forward in life.

Except, for unknown reasons that only he was privy to, he chose not to.

What I’m Currently Reading:

I’m reading an excellent book by a new to me author. The book is “Ordinary Grace” and was written by William Kent Krueger in 2013. I can’t recall how I stumbled upon it on Amazon.

It begins on a chilling note with the death of a young boy in New Bremen, Minnesota in 1961. It was a time when ice-cold rootbeers were sold at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore.

And also when Hot Stuff comic books were on every barbershop magazine rack.

It is told from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy; one leaving childhood and on the cusp of manhood, forty years later.

Yes, it’s a sad beginning. But many stark memories that stick with us are the result of trauma. We often don’t recall ordinary moments in our lives. And perhaps that is why the book is titled “Ordinary Grace.”

On The First Page:

All the dying that summer began with the death of a child, a boy with golden hair and thick glasses, killed on the railroad tracks outside New Bremen, Minnesota, sliced into pieces by a thousand tons of steel speeding across the prairie toward South Dakota.

He was a sweet-looking kid and by that I mean he had eyes that seemed full of dreaming and he wore a half smile as if he was just about to understand something you’d spent an hour trying to explain.

I should have known him better, been a better friend. He lived not far from my house and we were the same age. But he was two years behind me in school and might have been held back even more except for the kindness of teachers.

He was a small kid, a simple child, no match at all for the diesel-fed drive of a Union Pacific locomotive.

It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder. You might think I remember that summer as tragic and I do but not completely so.

My father used to quote the Greek playwright Aeschylus. “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the grace of God.”

In the end maybe that’s what the summer was about…

This book reminds me of a book I read last year titled “The Lincoln Highway.” So if you read and enjoyed that book, you might want to read this one.

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