Back to the Future

This past Sunday Em and I saw the Cleveland Orchestra, which is generally regarded as one of the best, if not the best, orchestra in the country, perform Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It was part of my Christmas gift, and it was wonderful – I love seeing classical music performed lived, and as a Sunday afternoon show it was amusingly accentuated by the falling head of old men falling asleep. Afterward, we grabbed dinner and spent an hour exploring a used book store connected to the restaurant. Scrounging around in a basement with a painfully low ceiling, we made some amazing finds.

Out of a stack of 40-year-old National Geographics, I found issues highlighting, among other articles, global cooling, population problems, energy worries and the Apollo program. I also managed to pick up first editions of The Population Bomb by Ehrlich and Gaia by Lovelock, which along with Silent Spring are probably two of the more influential environmental books of the past century. I’m exciting to read them – my bookshelves are dominated by very recent non-fiction and pre-depression fiction, with very little crossover.

While renting a DVD, we also found a big collection of VHS movies for a buck…a melee of grabbing titles ensued. Now if only I had some free time…