{"id":431,"date":"2003-08-05T21:34:49","date_gmt":"2003-08-06T01:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2003\/08\/05\/luxuries-reading-freshness\/"},"modified":"2003-08-05T21:34:49","modified_gmt":"2003-08-06T01:34:49","slug":"luxuries-reading-freshness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2003\/08\/05\/luxuries-reading-freshness\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxuries &#8212; Reading, Freshness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a185'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P>So I&#8217;m just sitting down to read my mail <STRONG>at leisure<\/STRONG> for the first time in a few days, and am getting back to 100 messages a day, despite getting rid of most of my mailing lists and spam (mostly excited discussion about&nbsp;our <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/\">new machine<\/A>, but the social and professional melodrama count is also on a steady rise).&nbsp; And it is <EM>so<\/EM> nice to have that luxury.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>I have <STRONG>juicy hate<\/STRONG> mail from a loved one, a <STRONG>short love<\/STRONG> letter from a stranger, two fascinating technical discussions which pertain directly to my current life, and serious <STRONG>philosophical<\/STRONG>&nbsp;exchanges with my mother, an old friend, and&nbsp;a sparring partner.&nbsp; There is&nbsp;an ongoing conversation about how to lighten the atmosphere of my beautiful house, and planning for various houseparties to meet new housemates, neighbors, and old friends <STRONG>returning<\/STRONG> to Boston.&nbsp; Then there is new feedback on two projects that excite me greatly, and&nbsp;which&nbsp;provide total contentment while I am working on them&#8230; so there are ten or twelve hours of <STRONG>wonderful work<\/STRONG> I can put in without coming up for air.&nbsp; And there are a few charming letters from people I don&#8217;t know well but would love to know better, which is always a recipe for <STRONG>delightful<\/STRONG> correspondence.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>But there&#8217;s something&nbsp;special about waiting a moment to note all of this, and to <STRONG>smile<\/STRONG> at the luxury&nbsp;of having enough time to digest, respond to, interact with it all &#8212; and of having this language and <STRONG>channel<\/STRONG> for connecting with the outer world.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m just sitting down to read my mail at leisure for the first time in a few days, and am getting back to 100 messages a day, despite getting rid of most of my mailing lists and spam (mostly excited discussion about&nbsp;our new machine, but the social and professional melodrama count is also on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chain-gang"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}