I once had the pleasure (or punishment) of reading from Jacques Derrida’s “A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ” a collection of essays and lectures translated from the original French  while doing volunteer work with Vocal Eyes, a group at the University of Florida in. Gainesville Florida, which read various textbooks which were not available through Books on Tape, Recordings for the Blind, or other sources, in order to provide assistance to others who may have had impairments or disabilities, such as partial or full blindness, years of promotion through a coach’s pressure on academics instead of insisting they be taught to read at their grade level (for the sake of the young person and not for the sake of the coach’s desire to have a winning team – and if you think this is a run on sentence, you should definitely try reading this book, which can be found on the internet archive (but only available for vision impaired people), or can be found at various used bookstores for under $12.00. 

The purpose of mentioning this somewhat dense and difficult to read book (although I must admit, by the time I had reached his discussion of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of a pair of shoes, I had gotten into the rhythm of the lecture and had started reading with feeling, emotion, and meaning, which hopefully helped whoever was having to listen to this book as an assignment).

Nope, the reason for this lengthy prologue was to introduce a couple of photos, one from the book Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, and the other, a photo of my own hiking boots, which had reminded me of the essay about. the boots, so I manipulated my photo to imitate (sort of) Van Gogh’s pair of shoes. Whose shoes Vincent had painted, I do not know. I actually had some shoelaces showing in the original picture of my shoes, but they were cut off during the cropping.

Vincent Van Gogh: Pair of Shoes / Bob Kamper: Hiking Boots

Kinda anti-climactic, no?

Oh well, I can always end the post with a song and a question:

Who wrote “Blue Suede Shoes?”

and a reprise:

Carl Perkins with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Dave Edmunds, and many more…