Refractions and Reflections

A few years ago I left a bookstore with Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City . An entrancing read, it made me want to read more of his works, and I soon ordered Thunderstruck on paperbackswap.com . I never got around to reading it, though, and so I finally started it yesterday. It segues nicely into the next story post I wanted to write - more from my friend Millie - about work ethic and innovation in entrepreneurship. Larson's habit is to weave two dissimilar lives together in a sort of double biography that no one would ever think to thrust together. For example, in Devil in the White City he tells the story of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the phenomenal structures of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, as intertwined with the tale of another inhabitant of Chicago at the same time, serial killer H. H. Holmes. Thunderstruck mingles the paths of Guglielmo Marconi, discoverer of wireless telegraphy (the precursor to radio and telephone technology)...

 "Don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes." "If the shoe fits, wear it." ...Or how about this brief scene from Forrest Gump: These were the "shoes" he was talking about: "Mama said they'd take me anywhere!" I've been really into shoes lately. I'm blaming it on the fact that it is summer, and I don't have many pairs of summer shoes, so I "need" the three pairs I ordered online this week. And you have to have different kinds of shoes for different events, right? Like...running shoes...work boots...sandals...pumps. They all serve varying purposes. I would say pumps are probably the least efficient of the shoes in that list, but I have known more than one lady who wore heels for everything . (I am not one of them. But maybe there will come a day when some young blogger will say, "I once knew a lady who never wore heels for anything ." When that day comes, you'll kno...