Gould’s Book of Fish<\/em>, even though the other two books fell by the wayside.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAnd seven years ago today, I started this blog.<\/p>\n
The world and I have gone through plenty of changes since that day. I’m happy that I’ve had Virtual Memories to help me try to chronicle it. To paraphrase Tony Kornheiser, I’ll try to do better next time.<\/p>\n
Bonus: And we’re celebrating by having some glass guys remove the big smoked-mirror wall in our living room (installed by my dad, c.1989). Good thing they didn’t break any of those panels, or it’d be seven years of bad blogging ahead!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this day seven years ago, I was single, living in an apartment that was getting overrun by books, in the midst of losing 30-odd lbs. on an Atkins regime, a week or so from receiving the typescript of a 9\/11 novel by Paul West, working on the 30th issue of my magazine, planning a … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Lucky Seven”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,7,5],"tags":[965,823,963],"class_list":["post-4899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-new-zealand","category-travel","tag-arthur-phillips","tag-eddie-campbell","tag-paul-west"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1h1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15214,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-484-julie-phillips","url_meta":{"origin":4899,"position":0},"title":"Episode 484 – Julie Phillips","author":"Gil","date":"May 3, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 484: Julie Phillips \"When you have kids, you can find yourself really interested in writers and artists who leave their children. It's not usually about wanting to leave your own children, but about wanting to have your old self back. Author & biographer Julie Phillips joins the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/juliephillipscomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C766&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/juliephillipscomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C766&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/juliephillipscomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C766&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/juliephillipscomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C766&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/juliephillipscomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C766&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":48,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ow","url_meta":{"origin":4899,"position":1},"title":"Ow","author":"Gil","date":"August 12, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm sick as a dog, with an ear infection that took advantage of a 5-day stretch of REALLY pushing myself (magazine, book publicity work, and a friend's bachelor party in NYC Saturday night; the latter was the final straw). On the plus side, the Bergen Record's short piece on Voyant\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11491,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-272-irvin-ungar","url_meta":{"origin":4899,"position":2},"title":"Episode 272 – Irvin Ungar","author":"Gil","date":"June 3, 2018","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 272: Irvin Ungar \"My rabbinic training taught me: care about who you are and who your people are, and use the best of that tradition to make the world a better place. Szyk was an artist who articulated all those values.\" Arthur Szyk was once one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/iLrg-szyk-book-soldier-in-art.jpg?fit=685%2C791&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/iLrg-szyk-book-soldier-in-art.jpg?fit=685%2C791&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/iLrg-szyk-book-soldier-in-art.jpg?fit=685%2C791&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3378,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/6th-bloggiversary","url_meta":{"origin":4899,"position":3},"title":"6th Bloggiversary!","author":"Gil","date":"February 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's the 6th anniversary of Virtual Memories! Congratulate me! I've had a lot of fun doing this, and I hope you readers have gotten something good out of it. I'm always glad to find that there are people reading my stuff. At my day job, I was kinda shocked the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5324,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-may-21-2010","url_meta":{"origin":4899,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: May 21, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"May 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the greatest installment of Unrequired Reading since the previous one! Frankly, the story of Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott's meltdown during the making of Robin Hood sounds much more interesting than the movie they ended up making. * * * Steve Phillips tells us how tough it is to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5838,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/man-out-of-time-the-books","url_meta":{"origin":4899,"position":5},"title":"Man Out of Time: The Books","author":"Gil","date":"January 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Introduction | Music | Movies | Comics | Sports | Books On the evening of January 4th, 2009, I was settling in to write about a post about my favorite books of the past decade (2000-2009), the final part of my Man Out of Time series. I was in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0036S49GE","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4899"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4903,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions\/4903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0966599853\")
,<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375759778\")
, and<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0802139590\")
, Rembrandt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Eyes<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375709819\")
, and Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archeology of the Minoan Myth<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0809030357\")
.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n, and<\/li>\n