1. A breeze continues off the Sound, and with it the increasing chance of rain continuing into the night. High temperatures in the upper ‘70s.
2. Word of the day - Free indirect discourse. Okay, you English majors can stop here. For the rest of us, this is what they talk about when we’re not with them. It can deepen appreciation of a read, if you can recognize it. It occurs in third person narration, combining the narrator’s presentation (indirect discourse) with a character’s speech (direct discourse). The narrator comments on the thoughts of a character with no quotation marks or any other direction such as “he thought” or “she asked herself.” The narrator just jumps into a character’s mind and expects the reader to follow. Modernist authors James Joyce and Virginia Woolfe made f.i.d. famous.
Here’s an example from Joyce’s, The Dead - "Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece, full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing room. He liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they had begged Mary Jane to play something."
3. As the Republicans hit the post-convention trail and the Democrats convene in North Carolina, two presidential elections most Americans may have forgotten. The Continental Congress convened this day in 1774. Fifty-six delegates from every colony but Georgia elected Peyton Randolph of Virginia as president and agreed on a declaration of rights. Texans elected Sam Houston as president of their Republic this day in 1836. He had led Texans in their fight for independence from Mexico.
4. Wet weather, not much happening. So, here’s what I’m doing for dinner - smoked cod. I follow Harwich’s Capt. Dave’s method. Soak some applewood for a few days - well, if you haven’t don’t worry. Prepare for next time. Get some fish named for the place, cod. If you have a smoker, put the fish at the far end of the wood and wait not long - this isn’t brisket. If you don’t have a smoker, buy one. Okay, that’s a tomorrow thing. Start a fire, move it to one side of the grill and put some wood on it, put the fish on the other side and wait for less than an hour. You have a gas grill? I can’t help you. Go visit Dave.
5. Traditional summer’s over on the roads. Please, drive so - safely and with courtesy for pedestrians and fellow drivers. Time for cooling.
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English majors, Unkown Presidents, Smoke and Wet
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