{"id":5499,"date":"2017-02-03T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-04T04:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=5499"},"modified":"2017-02-03T22:04:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-04T04:04:35","slug":"2017-the-world-we-live-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2017\/02\/2017-the-world-we-live-in\/","title":{"rendered":"2017: The World We Live In"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this, the 58th anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, I finished reading The World We Live In<\/em>.<\/p>\n

My great-grandmother, who had owned the book for over thirty years, gifted me the large, heavy, rust-colored book on this day in 1991. She was visiting from her home on Long Island, and she had gifts for her great-grandchildren, all twelve of them.<\/p>\n

I still remember the rush of all the kids – of which I was oldest – and adults. Her visits to Minnesota always brought my mom’s entire family together at my grandparents. And I can still remember her curly white hair and her scent when we hugged – a slight mothball aroma infused with a strong tea. “Here you go, dear,” she said, handing me the big book. She always called me dear<\/em>, though, come to think of it, she called everyone dear. She had an eastern accent – the kind my mom, and even I – had when I was little. So the dear <\/em>was more like deaaa<\/em>. Like most of my New Yorker family, she tended to erase Rs that were supposed to be spoken, and then insert them into words that didn’t otherwise have them.<\/p>\n

Her mannerisms and accent actually reminded my sister and me of someone we saw regularly on TV. Diane and I often compared our family members to famous people, usually on account of looks, but sometimes we ascribed a doppelg\u00e4nger based on mannerisms, too. One uncle reminded us of Brian Wilson. Steven Tyler inexplicably looked like one of our aunts. But our great-grandma, whom we called Grandma Kopp (since that was her last name, after all), embodied Jean Stapleton.<\/p>\n

“I wrote your name in it,” she added, as I kissed and thanked her. I opened the front cover and, true to her word, she had written “To James D. Zimmerman \u2022 Love Grand Ma \u2022 2\/3\/91.”<\/p>\n

For years, the odd-sized book languished on my shelf. Once the computer age was in full swing, I recruited it as a laptop desk. At the approaching of the twentieth anniversary since I was granted possession of it, I contemplated finally reading it cover to cover. Its very size posed a challenge; I couldn’t lug it work to read during break, and I couldn’t leave it sitting on the toilet tank for that other time I devote to reading. As the date approached and I realized I was too busy with a six-month old child and a new college course beginning that very day, I satisfied myself with simply reading the introduction.<\/p>\n

Over the next five years, I read about five percent of the book. Then I hit upon the idea of finishing it on the 25th anniversary<\/a>, but that eclipsed, too.<\/p>\n

During my holiday break in December, I pulled it off its shelf – a narrow shelf on which it sits horizontally with two other unwieldy tomes – and committed myself to at last reaching the back cover by the marginally remarkable 26th anniversary since Grandma Kopp put pen to front free endpaper.<\/p>\n

Done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this, the 58th anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, I finished reading The World We Live In. My great-grandmother, who had owned the book for over thirty years, gifted me the large, heavy, rust-colored book on this day in 1991. She was visiting from her home on Long Island, and she had gifts for her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5501,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499\/revisions\/5501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}