Wednesday and we started reading

Earlier in the week Lietta and I watched a bio-video of historian Howard Zinn on link TV.

If you want to learn something rather than sit in front of the boob tube like a zombie in an opium den, go find LINK TV on your cable channel. Scary, but you might actually learn stuff.

Howard Zinn wrote, "The People's History of the United States," a few years back. Colleagues - historians who have traditionally defined history as all stars in all-star events like war, scientific breakthrough and capitalist success stories, pooh-poohed the book because it was unorthodox.

NY Times book review praised the hell out of it because it was readable, informative and truthful - with viewpoints rarely observed from the ivory towers of professional educators and their sponsors.

So last Sunday while in Portland, I went into Powell's and bought the two-volume edition. Last night, we curled up in bed, set a lamp behind the bed post and I commence reading to Lietta. Now this usually lasts about five minutes and she's out.

Not this time. She lasted for most of the chapter and when she finally gave up the ghost, I was ready to stop and go to sleep as well. It's fun reading a college text this way and for the first time in my life, when I come to chapter's end, the discussion questions will be useful cause she and I will want to talk before moving on.

Recommended: A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.