I hate infomercials.
I want to say that right up front. An infomercial comes on the tube, the channel gets switched. I think the things should probably be illegal.
Except...
Except if they are selling CD compilations, especially of music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, I'll sit there and watch the stupid things all the way through. And not in the casual, watching while I"m doing something else way I usually watch TV. No, I sit there and watch the things like they are a real TV show.
I probably should be ashamed of myself.
I think I know why I do it, though. It certainly isn't because I'm planning on buying the CDs...I can't afford 5 equal payments of $29.99 or whatever they usually are. That's a lot of money.
No. I do it because I like the old clips they show of the bands back in the day. Before all the artists got fat or bald...or dead. It's like watching videos from before MTV was even a glint in some TV executive's eye. Not that most of them are even vaguely video-like in the way someone born after the advent of MTV would recognize them. Mostly they're performance clips from the various network shows that featured bands and singers.
But, you know, I'm getting old, and that nostalgia thing is very powerful.
And I've been thinking...if they would package and sell a set of DVD's of the performance clips, I just might buy those.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Do those winds really originate in Santa Ana? I think not.
It's October, and Southern California is on fire again.
It doesn't happen every year, but when the east wind blows, often the fires are not far behind.
Sometimes, the fires start when the winds get strong enough to knock down power lines. And sometimes the wind brings out all the idiots with a fire fixation. But whatever the cause, for those of us who grew up in Southern California, fall is fire season. That is just a fact of life in SoCal, just like earthquakes and film shoots. And, honestly, the fires are a natural and healthy part of the region's ecology.
Of course, the fires are regarded with fear and loathing. Through the years they have caused untold damage and not a little loss of life. And often the wind gets the blame, even when it doesn't cause the fires but only spreads them once they've begun.
This makes me sad, because I have always loved wind in general, and the Santa Ana Wind, as it is officially called in SoCal specifically. Wikipedia has a little bit to say about this regional phenomenon here. I've never really liked that name for the wind, though. When I was growing up in Simi Valley, we just called it the east wind.
Yes, in one way I associate the east wind with fires, just like everyone else. I can remember my father spending the night on the roof of my grandmother's house (the house I lived in the first six years of my life) fighting the wind from knocking him off and wetting the roof down with the garden hose so that flying embers wouldn't set the wood building aflame. I can remember our small valley being completely cut off from the outside world, the sky above completely clouded over with smoke. Those were frightening times.
And the fires were not the only trouble the winds would cause. Legend has it that teachers in SoCal don't even try to get their classes to do anything when the east wind is blowing, because it makes their students hyper to the point of mania. Well, it wasn't quite that bad in reality, but I know the wind had an effect on me.
It was sort of a natural high for me, when the east wind was blowing. It made me feel energized, like I could do anything. Being out in it, hair whipping in the 50, 60, 70, 80 mile per hour winds, where sometimes it was almost impossible to walk against the wind, was exhilarating.
One bit of the Wikipedia article linked above that struck me was this:
We made it to the church, maybe three or four miles away, without incident, but as we started to go inside the fog was still thick. My father looked up, laughed, and remarked that it would be funny if it was clear by the end of the show. Everyone laughed and sort of said the early-1960s version of "Yeah, right," and we went inside. The show went well, I suppose. I don't remember too much about it. I was five years old, after all. But I clearly remember emerging from the church building an hour or hour and half later to the east wind blowing and a crystal clear sky strewn with stars that looked so close that you could touch them. We just all looked at my father like he must have had a crystal ball concealed somewhere on his person.
Where I live now, the wind almost never blows, and when it does it rarely blows very hard. Yesterday we did have wind, not from the east but from the north, not warm but cold, and only up to gusts of about 40 miles per hour (as reported; it didn't seem nearly that much to me). Still, it felt so good to have it. And it made me miss SoCal and the east wind, despite all the trouble it sometimes exacerbates.
So, as I watched the CNN coverage of the fires this morning, I felt bad for those people whose homes were burning or in danger of burning. But there was also a part of me that was very homesick for my east wind.
It doesn't happen every year, but when the east wind blows, often the fires are not far behind.
Sometimes, the fires start when the winds get strong enough to knock down power lines. And sometimes the wind brings out all the idiots with a fire fixation. But whatever the cause, for those of us who grew up in Southern California, fall is fire season. That is just a fact of life in SoCal, just like earthquakes and film shoots. And, honestly, the fires are a natural and healthy part of the region's ecology.
Of course, the fires are regarded with fear and loathing. Through the years they have caused untold damage and not a little loss of life. And often the wind gets the blame, even when it doesn't cause the fires but only spreads them once they've begun.
This makes me sad, because I have always loved wind in general, and the Santa Ana Wind, as it is officially called in SoCal specifically. Wikipedia has a little bit to say about this regional phenomenon here. I've never really liked that name for the wind, though. When I was growing up in Simi Valley, we just called it the east wind.
Yes, in one way I associate the east wind with fires, just like everyone else. I can remember my father spending the night on the roof of my grandmother's house (the house I lived in the first six years of my life) fighting the wind from knocking him off and wetting the roof down with the garden hose so that flying embers wouldn't set the wood building aflame. I can remember our small valley being completely cut off from the outside world, the sky above completely clouded over with smoke. Those were frightening times.
And the fires were not the only trouble the winds would cause. Legend has it that teachers in SoCal don't even try to get their classes to do anything when the east wind is blowing, because it makes their students hyper to the point of mania. Well, it wasn't quite that bad in reality, but I know the wind had an effect on me.
It was sort of a natural high for me, when the east wind was blowing. It made me feel energized, like I could do anything. Being out in it, hair whipping in the 50, 60, 70, 80 mile per hour winds, where sometimes it was almost impossible to walk against the wind, was exhilarating.
One bit of the Wikipedia article linked above that struck me was this:
A Santa Ana fog is derivative phenomenon in which a ground fog settles in Southern California during the end of a Santa Ana wind episode. When Santa Ana conditions prevail, with winds in the lower two to three kilometers (1.25-1.8 m) of the atmosphere from the north through east, the lower atmosphere continues to be dry. But as soon as the Santa Ana winds cease, the cool and moist marine layer forms rapidly. The air in the marine layer becomes very moist and fog occurs.It can work the other way, as well. I remember when I was about five years old, not long before Christmas, I was scheduled to be in a holiday pageant at church. But when it came time to go to the church for the pageant, it was so foggy out that you could barely see your hand in front of your face. But, in the best show-must-go-on tradition, my mother and father and I set out for the church anyway. We found the driveway to my grandmother's house when we stopped by to pick her up but my father left the car on the side of the road and walked down her long driveway to get her rather than pulling into the driveway because he was afraid he would drive off into the walnut orchard trying to back out again.
We made it to the church, maybe three or four miles away, without incident, but as we started to go inside the fog was still thick. My father looked up, laughed, and remarked that it would be funny if it was clear by the end of the show. Everyone laughed and sort of said the early-1960s version of "Yeah, right," and we went inside. The show went well, I suppose. I don't remember too much about it. I was five years old, after all. But I clearly remember emerging from the church building an hour or hour and half later to the east wind blowing and a crystal clear sky strewn with stars that looked so close that you could touch them. We just all looked at my father like he must have had a crystal ball concealed somewhere on his person.
Where I live now, the wind almost never blows, and when it does it rarely blows very hard. Yesterday we did have wind, not from the east but from the north, not warm but cold, and only up to gusts of about 40 miles per hour (as reported; it didn't seem nearly that much to me). Still, it felt so good to have it. And it made me miss SoCal and the east wind, despite all the trouble it sometimes exacerbates.
So, as I watched the CNN coverage of the fires this morning, I felt bad for those people whose homes were burning or in danger of burning. But there was also a part of me that was very homesick for my east wind.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...and no, I'm not talking Beatles' songs
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It's been nearly two months since I've posted here.
No excuses, except as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, via Gilda Radner on the real Saturday Night Live, "It's always something."
First of all, late August to about this time of year is always my worst time of year for allergies, and by the time I've been finished with my work writing (yes, I do get paid for some of my writing...Believe it or Not!) my brain has been hurting too much from trying to look around my poor aching sinuses to write much else.
In addition, I take care of my mother (a full-time job, that, even if "taking care" mostly just means being here for her on a continuing basis), which takes up a certain amount of time. This has been taking more time since she was in the hospital a few weeks ago. She was only there for two days, but there have been extra things for me to do since she's been home...making sure she takes her meds, that she doesn't overdo, that sort of thing...which take up time.
And then there's just keeping a household running. I never realized, until I started taking care of my mother and handling her affairs just exactly how much time it takes to keep a household running.
Well, I've been thinking about it, and I think I want to make this a more active sort of blog...not just for whenever I feel moved to write about something, but as a regular witness to the world around me.
No excuses, except as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, via Gilda Radner on the real Saturday Night Live, "It's always something."
First of all, late August to about this time of year is always my worst time of year for allergies, and by the time I've been finished with my work writing (yes, I do get paid for some of my writing...Believe it or Not!) my brain has been hurting too much from trying to look around my poor aching sinuses to write much else.
In addition, I take care of my mother (a full-time job, that, even if "taking care" mostly just means being here for her on a continuing basis), which takes up a certain amount of time. This has been taking more time since she was in the hospital a few weeks ago. She was only there for two days, but there have been extra things for me to do since she's been home...making sure she takes her meds, that she doesn't overdo, that sort of thing...which take up time.
And then there's just keeping a household running. I never realized, until I started taking care of my mother and handling her affairs just exactly how much time it takes to keep a household running.
Well, I've been thinking about it, and I think I want to make this a more active sort of blog...not just for whenever I feel moved to write about something, but as a regular witness to the world around me.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Quiz time...
| There's Not a Violent Bone in Your Body |
 You're cool and collected, even when someone really gets under your skin. And while you don't blow up when you're angry, you know how to express your anger calmly. You don't bottle emotions up or let them get out of control. For you, violence would never be an option. |
I sure hope this is accurate.
I can honestly say that I have never hit anyone in anger. The only physical fight I've ever been involved in was in between tap and ballet classes at dance school when I was in about fifth grade, and that consisted of Evelyn Gruen clocking me on the side of the head with her Ballet Box (the carrier for her dance shoes) and then running away. I still don't know what made her so mad at me. And I can't say that I wouldn't have fought back if she had stayed put, but I was so stunned that all I could do was stand there and watch her run. The weird thing about it all was that we never got along in dance school, but we went to the same school in junior high and while we weren't really friends, we were friendly.
Just one of life's little mysteries, I guess.
Another thought that this quiz brings up is the fact that I've never really understood the resort to violence. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Especially in this day and age when it seems like more and more people, almost as a first response to getting angry or frustrated, go out and kill a few (or a lot of) people. I'm talking about terrorism (of all stripes and from all points on the political and religious spectrum, because it isn't just adherents of Islam, folks), but I'm also talking about "going postal" in the workplace, going on shooting sprees at school or in random public places, and the people who decided that it is just a wonderful idea to get back at an estranged or ex-spouse by killing the kids, or the spouse and the kids, or the spouse and the kids and then him or herself.
Really. What is up with that? Maybe I'm just old fashioned. Or old. Or really, really naive. Or maybe it's my upbringing. There was no "domestic violence" in my house growing up. Heck, there wasn't even any yelling or name-calling. Yeah, I got a swat on the butt a couple of times, but it wasn't meant to hurt, just to get my attention when I was off in "I'm-the-center-of-the-universe-land". But my parents didn't fight. They didn't yell at me or at each other. A friend once told me, when I explained all this to her, that she felt sorry for me because I had never developed any defenses against what she called the "real world". But violence and verbal abuse wasn't used and wasn't approved of in my family. We had a neighbor who was abusive to his family when he was drunk - and he was drunk a lot - and he was used (quite without his knowledge) as an object lesson in how one doesn't conduct themselves in their relations with others. I could never understand why that neighbor did that, and I still don't understand it, and I guess maybe I'm glad that I don't. Because I think that if I understood it, I might be more likely to be susceptible to it.
Which, apparently, according to the quiz, I'm not.
Thanks, by the way, to Sister Susan Rose over at Musings of a Discerning Woman for pointing out this quiz. She got the same result as I did, by the way.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tag, you're it...Jobs I would never want
Natalie Collins, over at Trapped by the Mormons, posted a general tag for a list of the top ten jobs you would never want to have to do. And so, my list:
10. Construction worker - I can saw a board and drive a nail - I am the daughter of a father than never let the fact that he didn't have a son stop him, so he taught me well - but my friends also know me well enough to realize that I'd make a wonderful vampire. I don't do sun, in other words. Which is probably a good thing since I have exclusively Northern European pale-skin genes and have never been close to tan. I burn, I peel, and then I return to pale. Well, except for the freckles. So I'd never make it in construction.
9. Waitress - I've seen the crap waitresses often have to put up with. I'd probably get canned inside a week for slapping men with wandering hands.
8. Telemarketer - Been there, done that, got the headache from being hung up on so much...and I wasn't even exactly selling anything, but just informing people of a sale at a local jewelry store in the small town where I used to livev.
7. Fruit grader - This is something else I've done and would prefer not to do again. It involves standing for long hours, watching fruit go by on a conveyor belt and throwing out the rotten peaches or plums or whatever fruit you happen to be grading. I used to get dizzy watching the conveyor belt to by. That, or I'd realize I was leaning in the direction the belt was traveling, sometimes to the point of nearly toppling over. Which can be really humiliating.
6. Gift Wrapper - No talent at this one. There's always something wrong with the presents I wrap. They look like...well, there is no adequate description. One Christmas season when I was still a good little church-going girl, my church had the gift-wrap and Santa Claus-photo concession in the local Sears store in order to make money for the church. I volunteered to help out. After about half an hour in gift-wrap, they sent me to take pictures of the kids (and others) with Santa. Which was fine with me...that was a fun job.
5. Sales - Especially door-to-door sales. This is something I have no talent for at all. I did the candy-sale thing as a school fund-raiser in junior high. This was back in the day when you didn't set up in front of the local grocery store or Wal-Mart; you schlepped the candy door-to-door. I think the only candy I sold was to my parents. I did the Girl Scout cookie sale thing when I was a Junior Girl Scout. Same result. When I was 10 or 11 or so I tried selling Christmas cards door-to-door. I couldn't even sell those to my mother. I was even an Avon lady for awhile not long after I got out of high school. That job finally got it into my thick skull that I'm just not cut out for sales.
4. Food-samples presented in grocery stores - Sort of in the sales vein. I hate having people try to force food on me in stores, so I wouldn't want to do that to anyone else, either.
3. Press secretary to any politician - I'm a lousy liar. Enough said.
2. Retail customer service - This is something else I've done - during the Christmas season. Yikes. Everyone I talked to was already pissed off before they ever go to me. I don't do well with people yelling at me. When the holidays were over I begged to be returned to cashier work. I liked being a cashier. Sure, you get someone stupid through your line once in awhile, but most people are nice and you can get into some really interesting conversations when there aren't many customers and have time to chat.
1. Anything in the medical professions - I have this horrible phobia of anything even remotely medical. I can't even watch hospital shows on television through an entire episode without my anxiety levels rising out of control. So, no, I wouldn't do well in a hospital or doctor's office setting.
So there you have it, ten jobs I would not want to have...plus a couple of comments on jobs I've actually enjoyed. Instead of tagging anyone specific, I'll just tag anyone who happens to read this and feels moved to share. If you decide to do so, drop a link in the comments section so I can see what jobs you can do without.
10. Construction worker - I can saw a board and drive a nail - I am the daughter of a father than never let the fact that he didn't have a son stop him, so he taught me well - but my friends also know me well enough to realize that I'd make a wonderful vampire. I don't do sun, in other words. Which is probably a good thing since I have exclusively Northern European pale-skin genes and have never been close to tan. I burn, I peel, and then I return to pale. Well, except for the freckles. So I'd never make it in construction.
9. Waitress - I've seen the crap waitresses often have to put up with. I'd probably get canned inside a week for slapping men with wandering hands.
8. Telemarketer - Been there, done that, got the headache from being hung up on so much...and I wasn't even exactly selling anything, but just informing people of a sale at a local jewelry store in the small town where I used to livev.
7. Fruit grader - This is something else I've done and would prefer not to do again. It involves standing for long hours, watching fruit go by on a conveyor belt and throwing out the rotten peaches or plums or whatever fruit you happen to be grading. I used to get dizzy watching the conveyor belt to by. That, or I'd realize I was leaning in the direction the belt was traveling, sometimes to the point of nearly toppling over. Which can be really humiliating.
6. Gift Wrapper - No talent at this one. There's always something wrong with the presents I wrap. They look like...well, there is no adequate description. One Christmas season when I was still a good little church-going girl, my church had the gift-wrap and Santa Claus-photo concession in the local Sears store in order to make money for the church. I volunteered to help out. After about half an hour in gift-wrap, they sent me to take pictures of the kids (and others) with Santa. Which was fine with me...that was a fun job.
5. Sales - Especially door-to-door sales. This is something I have no talent for at all. I did the candy-sale thing as a school fund-raiser in junior high. This was back in the day when you didn't set up in front of the local grocery store or Wal-Mart; you schlepped the candy door-to-door. I think the only candy I sold was to my parents. I did the Girl Scout cookie sale thing when I was a Junior Girl Scout. Same result. When I was 10 or 11 or so I tried selling Christmas cards door-to-door. I couldn't even sell those to my mother. I was even an Avon lady for awhile not long after I got out of high school. That job finally got it into my thick skull that I'm just not cut out for sales.
4. Food-samples presented in grocery stores - Sort of in the sales vein. I hate having people try to force food on me in stores, so I wouldn't want to do that to anyone else, either.
3. Press secretary to any politician - I'm a lousy liar. Enough said.
2. Retail customer service - This is something else I've done - during the Christmas season. Yikes. Everyone I talked to was already pissed off before they ever go to me. I don't do well with people yelling at me. When the holidays were over I begged to be returned to cashier work. I liked being a cashier. Sure, you get someone stupid through your line once in awhile, but most people are nice and you can get into some really interesting conversations when there aren't many customers and have time to chat.
1. Anything in the medical professions - I have this horrible phobia of anything even remotely medical. I can't even watch hospital shows on television through an entire episode without my anxiety levels rising out of control. So, no, I wouldn't do well in a hospital or doctor's office setting.
So there you have it, ten jobs I would not want to have...plus a couple of comments on jobs I've actually enjoyed. Instead of tagging anyone specific, I'll just tag anyone who happens to read this and feels moved to share. If you decide to do so, drop a link in the comments section so I can see what jobs you can do without.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
We're all in our places with sunshiny faces...yeah, right
So, its just after 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and here I am cruising the Internet and looking out my window.
Why am I up so early? Well, for the second time in three days there were people out in the alley outside my bedroom window having a loud conversation. At least they waited until almost six this time. Thursday morning they were out there at 4:45...wonderful thing to be startled awake by conversation even before the butt-crack of dawn on one's birthday.
Not that early is always a bad thing. I'm up and at my desk by 6:30 or 7 on weekday mornings to start my day's work while it's quiet and cool. And since I do work at home, my commute is sixteen steps from my bed to my desk (yes, I counted) and I can work in my nightgown if I want to, getting up that early isn't really that bad. It would be better if I could work straight through...I'd be finished by noon or earlier...but the nature of my work is that I have to wait for specific information to become available before I can finish each component of the day's tasks, so it usually takes a couple of hours beyond that. That, and the fact that the downside of working at home is the inevitability of getting interrupted by people who think that because I work at home I'm not really working, or that I can take as much time off in the middle as I want. I'm not sure what part of the word "deadline" they don't understand.
Still, this is very early to be up on a Saturday, when I don't have to work, especially for someone like myself who doesn't do mornings and doesn't do caffeine. I mean, the birds aren't even up yet, or if they are they are being very, very quiet. There are beginning to be more cars out and about now, and I just heard someone sneeze across the courtyard. And some fool still has their air conditioner on rather than throwing the windows open while it's still cool. Granted, it is supposed to hit about 101 degrees F today, but it will still be window weather until at least the middle of the morning. Maybe they have more money budgeted for the PG&E bill than I do. Oh, and someone just flew their puddle-jumper over (ah, the joys of living near the airport)...and now another one that I can hear but not see. Must be flying lesson day. Or they just woke up over at the airport...now I hear a larger plane. There it goes...by the flight path, I'd guess it's on its way to Vegas.
Well, I think I'm going to make some breakfast now. I didn't have much for dinner last night, and I'm absurdly hungry. And then I might go back to bed. Or else finish that scarf I'm knitting...or that book I'm reading...or work on one of my writing projects...or do the grocery shopping.
Isn't that what the weekend is for? To rush around doing all the things you don't have time to do during the week?
Why am I up so early? Well, for the second time in three days there were people out in the alley outside my bedroom window having a loud conversation. At least they waited until almost six this time. Thursday morning they were out there at 4:45...wonderful thing to be startled awake by conversation even before the butt-crack of dawn on one's birthday.
Not that early is always a bad thing. I'm up and at my desk by 6:30 or 7 on weekday mornings to start my day's work while it's quiet and cool. And since I do work at home, my commute is sixteen steps from my bed to my desk (yes, I counted) and I can work in my nightgown if I want to, getting up that early isn't really that bad. It would be better if I could work straight through...I'd be finished by noon or earlier...but the nature of my work is that I have to wait for specific information to become available before I can finish each component of the day's tasks, so it usually takes a couple of hours beyond that. That, and the fact that the downside of working at home is the inevitability of getting interrupted by people who think that because I work at home I'm not really working, or that I can take as much time off in the middle as I want. I'm not sure what part of the word "deadline" they don't understand.
Still, this is very early to be up on a Saturday, when I don't have to work, especially for someone like myself who doesn't do mornings and doesn't do caffeine. I mean, the birds aren't even up yet, or if they are they are being very, very quiet. There are beginning to be more cars out and about now, and I just heard someone sneeze across the courtyard. And some fool still has their air conditioner on rather than throwing the windows open while it's still cool. Granted, it is supposed to hit about 101 degrees F today, but it will still be window weather until at least the middle of the morning. Maybe they have more money budgeted for the PG&E bill than I do. Oh, and someone just flew their puddle-jumper over (ah, the joys of living near the airport)...and now another one that I can hear but not see. Must be flying lesson day. Or they just woke up over at the airport...now I hear a larger plane. There it goes...by the flight path, I'd guess it's on its way to Vegas.
Well, I think I'm going to make some breakfast now. I didn't have much for dinner last night, and I'm absurdly hungry. And then I might go back to bed. Or else finish that scarf I'm knitting...or that book I'm reading...or work on one of my writing projects...or do the grocery shopping.
Isn't that what the weekend is for? To rush around doing all the things you don't have time to do during the week?
Monday, July 30, 2007
Marking the passing of a true original...
Sad news to report today. Tom Snyder, journalist and interviewer, has died at age 71.
Snyder hosted Tomorrow, a late night interview show from 1973 until 1982. The antithesis of Johnny Carson's Tonight show, which his show followed, Snyder interviewed a wide and deep variety of the famous and not-so famous, presenting real conversation that sometimes could not have been shown on broadcast television any earlier in the evening during that era.
I was a fan from the beginning Tomorrow's run, often dragging myself to school in the morning with my eyelids at half-mast because I'd been up until 2 a.m. watching the show (at that time, Tonight ran for an hour and a half, from 11:30 p.m. until 1 am, with Tomorrow following from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m.). The interviews were often serious, sometimes hilarious, and almost never run-of-the-mill.
Snyder hasn't been on television for awhile, but his presence has been sorely missed, at least by me. In a time when "talk show" has become synonymous with tabloid trash like that presented by Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, or with politically correct interviewers like Oprah Winfrey, I wish someone like Tom Snyder would come along again and inject some reality into the genre. He wasn't always politically correct. Some of the individuals Snyder interviewed could likely find a place on some of the tabloid shows. And some of those he interviewed (such as Charlie Manson) were likely presented at least partially for their value in gaining ratings. Still, Snyder's show was never sordid like so many of those shows are today.
Sadly, I doubt we'll see his like again.
Snyder hosted Tomorrow, a late night interview show from 1973 until 1982. The antithesis of Johnny Carson's Tonight show, which his show followed, Snyder interviewed a wide and deep variety of the famous and not-so famous, presenting real conversation that sometimes could not have been shown on broadcast television any earlier in the evening during that era.
I was a fan from the beginning Tomorrow's run, often dragging myself to school in the morning with my eyelids at half-mast because I'd been up until 2 a.m. watching the show (at that time, Tonight ran for an hour and a half, from 11:30 p.m. until 1 am, with Tomorrow following from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m.). The interviews were often serious, sometimes hilarious, and almost never run-of-the-mill.
Snyder hasn't been on television for awhile, but his presence has been sorely missed, at least by me. In a time when "talk show" has become synonymous with tabloid trash like that presented by Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, or with politically correct interviewers like Oprah Winfrey, I wish someone like Tom Snyder would come along again and inject some reality into the genre. He wasn't always politically correct. Some of the individuals Snyder interviewed could likely find a place on some of the tabloid shows. And some of those he interviewed (such as Charlie Manson) were likely presented at least partially for their value in gaining ratings. Still, Snyder's show was never sordid like so many of those shows are today.
Sadly, I doubt we'll see his like again.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
The first half-year (plus a month) or, What I've Been Reading...
I meant to do this at the beginning of the month, as an inventory of the books I read during the first half of the year but never really got around to it. So, almost a month late and a couple of books longer, here is the list of books I've read so far this year:
1. Rage, Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine Books, 2005) 391 pages (paperback edition).
2. Behind Closed Doors, Natalie R. Collins (St Martin Paperbacks, 2007) 322 pages. 8
3. The Lucifer Gospel, Paul Christopher (Onyx Books, New American Library, 2006) 357 pages.
4. Last on the Menu, Sister Eleanor Quin, C. S. J. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969) 182 pages.
5. The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock (Three Rivers Press, 2004; Afterward copyright 2005) 432 pages.
6. The Templar Legacy, Steve Berry (Ballantine Books, 2006) 487 pages.
7. The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney (Basic Books) 357 pages.
8. An Alphabetical Life, Wendy Werris (Carroll & Graf Publishers) 292 pages.
9. Hotel California: The true-life adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their many friends, Barney Hoskins (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2006) 324 pages.
10. The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry (Ballantine Books, 2007) 462 pages.
11. Michelangelo’s Notebook, Paul Christopher (Onyx Books, 2005) 358 pages.
12. The Collar, Jonathan Englert (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 301 pages.
13. Tutu Deadly, Natalie M. Roberts (Berkley Prime Crime, 2007) 248 pages.
14. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann (Vintage, 2005, 2006) 541 pages.
15. All Saints, Liam Callahan (Delacorte, 2007).
16. The Last Cato, Matilde Asensi (Rayo, 2006; originally published in Spanish, 2001) 458 pages.
17. The Machine’s Child, Kage Baker (Tor, 2006) 351 pages.
18. Evolving God, Barbara J. King (Doubleday, 2007) 262 pages.
19. Gods and Pawns, Kage Baker (Tor, 2007) 335 pages.
20. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, Edward Humes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007) 380 pages.
21. By Their Father’s Hand: The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre, Monte Francis (Harper, 2007) 285 pages.
22. Rembrandt’s Ghost, Paul Christopher (Signet, 2007) 347 pages.
23. Dr. Mary’s Monkey: How the unsolved murder of a doctor, a secret laboratory in New Orleans and cancer-causing monkey viruses are linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination and emerging global epidemics, Edward T. Haslam (TrineDay, 2007) 374 pages.
Non-fiction titles are in bold. I kind of hesitated before bolding the last title on the list. It is non-fiction, but it is also one of those conspiracy-theory books that make interesting if fairly questionable claims about how history really happened. But, since it is presented as non-fiction, I decided that it qualified as such.
Actually, Dr. Mary's Monkey was in interesting book. I love conspiracy theories even if I can't ultimately buy most of them as presented. The best ones present their claims in terms that make logical leaps that you at least have to think about before dismissing them, and this book managed to do that. Yes, the idea that several people whose names are linked with the JFK assassination (primarily Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister and David Ferrie...the New Orleans contingent, in other words) were also caught up in clandestine research that might have grown our of an adulterated early polio vaccine that is now causing soft-tissue cancers in many of those innoculated with it as well as being the ulimate genesis of HIV takes a fairly big gulp to swallow. But Haslam manages to weave the story in such a way (and with plenty of references to follow up if one is so inclined) that it doesn't seem completely out of the question on first read.
This statement, of course, doesn't mean I believe a word of it. But as a conspiracy theory it certainly does better than the story, for example, that Elvis is alive and well and living in Cleveland or wherever.
1. Rage, Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine Books, 2005) 391 pages (paperback edition).
2. Behind Closed Doors, Natalie R. Collins (St Martin Paperbacks, 2007) 322 pages. 8
3. The Lucifer Gospel, Paul Christopher (Onyx Books, New American Library, 2006) 357 pages.
4. Last on the Menu, Sister Eleanor Quin, C. S. J. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969) 182 pages.
5. The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock (Three Rivers Press, 2004; Afterward copyright 2005) 432 pages.
6. The Templar Legacy, Steve Berry (Ballantine Books, 2006) 487 pages.
7. The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney (Basic Books) 357 pages.
8. An Alphabetical Life, Wendy Werris (Carroll & Graf Publishers) 292 pages.
9. Hotel California: The true-life adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their many friends, Barney Hoskins (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2006) 324 pages.
10. The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry (Ballantine Books, 2007) 462 pages.
11. Michelangelo’s Notebook, Paul Christopher (Onyx Books, 2005) 358 pages.
12. The Collar, Jonathan Englert (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 301 pages.
13. Tutu Deadly, Natalie M. Roberts (Berkley Prime Crime, 2007) 248 pages.
14. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann (Vintage, 2005, 2006) 541 pages.
15. All Saints, Liam Callahan (Delacorte, 2007).
16. The Last Cato, Matilde Asensi (Rayo, 2006; originally published in Spanish, 2001) 458 pages.
17. The Machine’s Child, Kage Baker (Tor, 2006) 351 pages.
18. Evolving God, Barbara J. King (Doubleday, 2007) 262 pages.
19. Gods and Pawns, Kage Baker (Tor, 2007) 335 pages.
20. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, Edward Humes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007) 380 pages.
21. By Their Father’s Hand: The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre, Monte Francis (Harper, 2007) 285 pages.
22. Rembrandt’s Ghost, Paul Christopher (Signet, 2007) 347 pages.
23. Dr. Mary’s Monkey: How the unsolved murder of a doctor, a secret laboratory in New Orleans and cancer-causing monkey viruses are linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination and emerging global epidemics, Edward T. Haslam (TrineDay, 2007) 374 pages.
Non-fiction titles are in bold. I kind of hesitated before bolding the last title on the list. It is non-fiction, but it is also one of those conspiracy-theory books that make interesting if fairly questionable claims about how history really happened. But, since it is presented as non-fiction, I decided that it qualified as such.
Actually, Dr. Mary's Monkey was in interesting book. I love conspiracy theories even if I can't ultimately buy most of them as presented. The best ones present their claims in terms that make logical leaps that you at least have to think about before dismissing them, and this book managed to do that. Yes, the idea that several people whose names are linked with the JFK assassination (primarily Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister and David Ferrie...the New Orleans contingent, in other words) were also caught up in clandestine research that might have grown our of an adulterated early polio vaccine that is now causing soft-tissue cancers in many of those innoculated with it as well as being the ulimate genesis of HIV takes a fairly big gulp to swallow. But Haslam manages to weave the story in such a way (and with plenty of references to follow up if one is so inclined) that it doesn't seem completely out of the question on first read.
This statement, of course, doesn't mean I believe a word of it. But as a conspiracy theory it certainly does better than the story, for example, that Elvis is alive and well and living in Cleveland or wherever.
I get a new desk...
It's new to me, anyway. And I'm quite excited about it.
What? You think I'm just too easily enthused?
Well, you might be correct, but this has been a two-and-a-half-year odyssey (more than that really, but that long in this location), and I can't quite believe yet that I have a proper desk.
I haven't actually had a proper desk in years. In fact, my current computer has never had a desk before. But, when I moved into my current apartment I was determined to get a desk, all the more so when I began working from home, about a month after the move.
For all that determination, my computer was ensconced firmly on the floor for about the first six months in the new place. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, honestly. Surfing the net while lying on the floor can be quite comfortable. On the other hand, having to work on the floor for several hours per day gets old quickly. Finally, I got frustrated with it.
Because I didn't have any way to get a proper desk home (not being willing to pay for delivery), I went down to my local Wal-Mart and bought a round, green plastic patio table to use as a desk. And it served well enough, although I've had a permanently sore shoulder on my mouse arm for the past two years because the mouse cord wasn't quite long enough to be in a position to reach easily due to the shape of the table.
Awhile back, my best friend acquired a new desk and offered to give me her old one. Which was fine, except that she didn't have any way to get it across town to my place until yesterday, when friends of hers were in town from southern California with their pick-up (they were bringing her a love seat that they no longer needed). They offered to deliver the desk, and so now it is here right next to my favorite window so that I can still look out and contemplate the trees when I'm waiting for updated information for work. I now have room for my printer on my desk, so that it isn't living on the hearth in front of my fireplace anymore.
So, thanks to Pamela for finding her dream desk so that she didn't need this one anymore. And thanks to Karen and Scott for venturing up into the unbearably hot (but not as bad as last year's) Central California weather and offering to bring me my new desk. The old green plastic table I've been using will be living with them now.
Now, all I need is to get a good desk chair, because this metal folding chair that I'm sitting on now is ruining my back.
What? You think I'm just too easily enthused?
Well, you might be correct, but this has been a two-and-a-half-year odyssey (more than that really, but that long in this location), and I can't quite believe yet that I have a proper desk.
I haven't actually had a proper desk in years. In fact, my current computer has never had a desk before. But, when I moved into my current apartment I was determined to get a desk, all the more so when I began working from home, about a month after the move.
For all that determination, my computer was ensconced firmly on the floor for about the first six months in the new place. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, honestly. Surfing the net while lying on the floor can be quite comfortable. On the other hand, having to work on the floor for several hours per day gets old quickly. Finally, I got frustrated with it.
Because I didn't have any way to get a proper desk home (not being willing to pay for delivery), I went down to my local Wal-Mart and bought a round, green plastic patio table to use as a desk. And it served well enough, although I've had a permanently sore shoulder on my mouse arm for the past two years because the mouse cord wasn't quite long enough to be in a position to reach easily due to the shape of the table.
Awhile back, my best friend acquired a new desk and offered to give me her old one. Which was fine, except that she didn't have any way to get it across town to my place until yesterday, when friends of hers were in town from southern California with their pick-up (they were bringing her a love seat that they no longer needed). They offered to deliver the desk, and so now it is here right next to my favorite window so that I can still look out and contemplate the trees when I'm waiting for updated information for work. I now have room for my printer on my desk, so that it isn't living on the hearth in front of my fireplace anymore.
So, thanks to Pamela for finding her dream desk so that she didn't need this one anymore. And thanks to Karen and Scott for venturing up into the unbearably hot (but not as bad as last year's) Central California weather and offering to bring me my new desk. The old green plastic table I've been using will be living with them now.
Now, all I need is to get a good desk chair, because this metal folding chair that I'm sitting on now is ruining my back.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
It's all about me or, the 8 Things About Me meme...
I was tagged by Miko at Mind on Fire for this “Eight things about me” meme. So here are eight things about me that may or may not be interesting and that you might or might not know about me. But first…
The Rules: “Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people and then visits those peoples’ sites and comments letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.”
1) I have specific memories from before I turned 1 year old. Yeah, I know…the psychologists say that isn’t possible. They’re wrong.
2) I am terrified of anything medical. I get anxiety attacks if I have to go into a hospital or even a doctor’s office. In fact, it is so bad that I can’t even sit through a one-hour medical drama on TV. Which is kind of too bad, because I always thought Dr. Luka (on ER) was awfully attractive.
3) My Very Brady Moment: When I was in the ninth grade, I briefly shared a stage with Robert Reed, Maureen McCormick and Barry Williams, who of course played Mike, Marsha, and Greg Brady on “The Brady Bunch”. This was right at the height of that iconic television show and the occasion was Shakespeare Festival. I was dressed in Elizabethan costume and taking part in the pageant at the awards ceremony at the end of the day, and the three of them were the guest celebrity award presenters. Me? I wasn’t impressed, as I never like the show very much (although I adore “The Brady Bunch Movie” because it is so evilly funny).
4) I’m a professional props handler…or, in my preferred job title, props mistress. I’ve worked with the Central California Ballet for several years on a number of productions. It has been an occasional opportunity for my inner theater geek to come out and play, and I’m still amazed that they have paid me to do any of this.
5) Mortifying confession: I got a giggling fit in the middle of my grandfather’s funeral. The minister (Southern Baptist) had this really bad southern accent, obviously fake as it occasionally faded away (think Kevin Costner’s accent in “Robin Hood”). After awhile, it just got to me and I started to giggle. Fortunately, I was able to disguise it until it finally passed.
6) When I was young, I lived near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory where they tested many rocket engines, including the Saturn rockets that took the Apollo missions to the Moon. For a long time, it seemed like they did a test almost every night. Sometimes, when the tested the largest engines, it would sound like the whole mountain was going to take off. There was also a nuclear meltdown there just before I turned three (and when I lived within a couple of miles of the place, as the crow flies), which could be the reason that I have a screwy thyroid gland.
7) I once attended a school for just five days. When I was in elementary school, my father’s job required him to work away from home for a month or six weeks at a time. At first, he would stay out of town during the week, leaving my mother and I at home, and he would come visit on weekends. But after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 he decided that when he had to be out of town, we would travel with him, just in case…(cue ominous music). Well, when I was in fourth grade he had to work down in Coachella Valley, and so we found a motel room with a kitchenette in El Centro and I was put in school there. However, a few days later, my dad happened to find a very nice apartment for a good weekly rent ($44 per week, as I recall) and we moved to Brawley, where I spent a bit longer in school…almost a month and a half, I think.
8) My favorite place in the world is Disneyland. Yeah, I know. Not politically correct in some circles, and considered immature in others. But I love Disneyland. I still clearly remember parts of my first visit there, when I was almost 2 years old, and I’ve pretty much lost track of the number of times I’ve been there. I think the reason I love the place so much is that it is the only place guaranteed to allow me to lose every bit of my anxiety and stress…a wonderful thing for someone like myself, who is prone to anxiety attacks. The lines don’t bother me; people cutting in line don’t even bother me. I can just chill and enjoy myself and forget the rest of the world. And that is a rare and wonderful thing.
Well, I don't know 8 bloggers to tag for this, and almost all the people I do know who blog have already been tagged for this, so if you read this and wish to join the fun, consider yourself tagged and drop a link in the comments when you get your list up on your blog.
The Rules: “Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people and then visits those peoples’ sites and comments letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.”
1) I have specific memories from before I turned 1 year old. Yeah, I know…the psychologists say that isn’t possible. They’re wrong.
2) I am terrified of anything medical. I get anxiety attacks if I have to go into a hospital or even a doctor’s office. In fact, it is so bad that I can’t even sit through a one-hour medical drama on TV. Which is kind of too bad, because I always thought Dr. Luka (on ER) was awfully attractive.
3) My Very Brady Moment: When I was in the ninth grade, I briefly shared a stage with Robert Reed, Maureen McCormick and Barry Williams, who of course played Mike, Marsha, and Greg Brady on “The Brady Bunch”. This was right at the height of that iconic television show and the occasion was Shakespeare Festival. I was dressed in Elizabethan costume and taking part in the pageant at the awards ceremony at the end of the day, and the three of them were the guest celebrity award presenters. Me? I wasn’t impressed, as I never like the show very much (although I adore “The Brady Bunch Movie” because it is so evilly funny).
4) I’m a professional props handler…or, in my preferred job title, props mistress. I’ve worked with the Central California Ballet for several years on a number of productions. It has been an occasional opportunity for my inner theater geek to come out and play, and I’m still amazed that they have paid me to do any of this.
5) Mortifying confession: I got a giggling fit in the middle of my grandfather’s funeral. The minister (Southern Baptist) had this really bad southern accent, obviously fake as it occasionally faded away (think Kevin Costner’s accent in “Robin Hood”). After awhile, it just got to me and I started to giggle. Fortunately, I was able to disguise it until it finally passed.
6) When I was young, I lived near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory where they tested many rocket engines, including the Saturn rockets that took the Apollo missions to the Moon. For a long time, it seemed like they did a test almost every night. Sometimes, when the tested the largest engines, it would sound like the whole mountain was going to take off. There was also a nuclear meltdown there just before I turned three (and when I lived within a couple of miles of the place, as the crow flies), which could be the reason that I have a screwy thyroid gland.
7) I once attended a school for just five days. When I was in elementary school, my father’s job required him to work away from home for a month or six weeks at a time. At first, he would stay out of town during the week, leaving my mother and I at home, and he would come visit on weekends. But after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 he decided that when he had to be out of town, we would travel with him, just in case…(cue ominous music). Well, when I was in fourth grade he had to work down in Coachella Valley, and so we found a motel room with a kitchenette in El Centro and I was put in school there. However, a few days later, my dad happened to find a very nice apartment for a good weekly rent ($44 per week, as I recall) and we moved to Brawley, where I spent a bit longer in school…almost a month and a half, I think.
8) My favorite place in the world is Disneyland. Yeah, I know. Not politically correct in some circles, and considered immature in others. But I love Disneyland. I still clearly remember parts of my first visit there, when I was almost 2 years old, and I’ve pretty much lost track of the number of times I’ve been there. I think the reason I love the place so much is that it is the only place guaranteed to allow me to lose every bit of my anxiety and stress…a wonderful thing for someone like myself, who is prone to anxiety attacks. The lines don’t bother me; people cutting in line don’t even bother me. I can just chill and enjoy myself and forget the rest of the world. And that is a rare and wonderful thing.
Well, I don't know 8 bloggers to tag for this, and almost all the people I do know who blog have already been tagged for this, so if you read this and wish to join the fun, consider yourself tagged and drop a link in the comments when you get your list up on your blog.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Hello. My name is lma, and I am a nerd...
I am such a nerd.
I sat watching tv coverage of the landing of the space shuttle today down at Edwards with tears just streaming down my face. Part of it was because it was so beautiful. The sky was so clear and blue. The desert was lovely - I love the desert anyway, but it seemed particularly beautiful today. And despite the well-publicized shortcomings of the shuttle and its program, and the way that some people describe the vehicle as a flying brick, it seemed so graceful to me as it glided in there, the landing gear slipping out at the perfect moment and then the vehicle touching down almost delicately.
Another part of it was just the idea that just a little while before it had been in space, orbiting the earth, free of gravity. That thought just always floors me. Almost no one, it seems, even thinks about the fact that there are people living up there on the space station on an ongoing basis and have been for years. I look up there every once in awhile, especially into a starry night sky, and think about how cool that is. And this will really up my nerd quotient - I don’t ever look at the moon that I don’t sigh and think, “People have been there.” I was raised following the space program and I still think the idea of traveling and living in space is cool and romantic. I am such an admirer of the folks involved with the Space Ship One project and its follow-ons. They are actively engaged in seeing that more people get to go up there, even if only for a little while. Yeah, it’ll be pricey, but not anywhere near the millions that the so-called “space tourists” are paying now to go.
Part of the reason for my tears was that I was a little upset that the shuttle had approached Edwards from the south, so that Southern California got to hear the sonic boom. If it had approached from the north, we would have gotten to hear it.
Yeah, I know. Weird. But I love sonic booms. We used to get to hear them all the time. Probably had to do with the fact that I grew up in Southern California, close to places like Edwards where they tested supersonic aircraft. That was back in the days before sonic booms were deemed to be “environmentally unfriendly” and planes were banned from flying about the speed of sound over land. Okay. I’ll concede that there probably is some harm from the booms if there are too many of them. Still, I found it really sad, some years ago, when I had to explain to some college students what a sonic boom is.
That was one of the times that one of the shuttles did approach Edwards from the north and we did get to hear the boom. I knew - since I actually pay attention to what is going on in the world from time to time - that the shuttle was going to land at Edwards that day, that it was going to come over the Valley, and about what time it was scheduled to land. I was listening for the boom. I happened to be standing outside a classroom, waiting for another class to get out so that I could go in for my next class. There were quite a few others waiting as well. The boom came - the double boom that is the signature of a vehicle traveling faster than the speed of sound - just about when I figured it would. It made me smile, likely a goofy smile, but that’s okay.
I noticed, however, that some of the people around me looked alarmed, and I think someone said something like, “What the hell was that?”
I volunteered that it was a sonic boom.
“A what?”
They didn’t know? I sighed, then I explained that it was a sonic boom, that the shuttle was landing down at Edwards right about then, and that the sound was the shuttle passing over us on its way down there. I’m pretty sure that some of them didn’t believe me. I was just disappointed that there are whole generations out there in what is purported to be the most technologically advanced culture in history, who don’t even know what a sonic boom is, much less what it sounds like.
Ah, well. I’m not just a nerd. I’m an old nerd.
I sat watching tv coverage of the landing of the space shuttle today down at Edwards with tears just streaming down my face. Part of it was because it was so beautiful. The sky was so clear and blue. The desert was lovely - I love the desert anyway, but it seemed particularly beautiful today. And despite the well-publicized shortcomings of the shuttle and its program, and the way that some people describe the vehicle as a flying brick, it seemed so graceful to me as it glided in there, the landing gear slipping out at the perfect moment and then the vehicle touching down almost delicately.
Another part of it was just the idea that just a little while before it had been in space, orbiting the earth, free of gravity. That thought just always floors me. Almost no one, it seems, even thinks about the fact that there are people living up there on the space station on an ongoing basis and have been for years. I look up there every once in awhile, especially into a starry night sky, and think about how cool that is. And this will really up my nerd quotient - I don’t ever look at the moon that I don’t sigh and think, “People have been there.” I was raised following the space program and I still think the idea of traveling and living in space is cool and romantic. I am such an admirer of the folks involved with the Space Ship One project and its follow-ons. They are actively engaged in seeing that more people get to go up there, even if only for a little while. Yeah, it’ll be pricey, but not anywhere near the millions that the so-called “space tourists” are paying now to go.
Part of the reason for my tears was that I was a little upset that the shuttle had approached Edwards from the south, so that Southern California got to hear the sonic boom. If it had approached from the north, we would have gotten to hear it.
Yeah, I know. Weird. But I love sonic booms. We used to get to hear them all the time. Probably had to do with the fact that I grew up in Southern California, close to places like Edwards where they tested supersonic aircraft. That was back in the days before sonic booms were deemed to be “environmentally unfriendly” and planes were banned from flying about the speed of sound over land. Okay. I’ll concede that there probably is some harm from the booms if there are too many of them. Still, I found it really sad, some years ago, when I had to explain to some college students what a sonic boom is.
That was one of the times that one of the shuttles did approach Edwards from the north and we did get to hear the boom. I knew - since I actually pay attention to what is going on in the world from time to time - that the shuttle was going to land at Edwards that day, that it was going to come over the Valley, and about what time it was scheduled to land. I was listening for the boom. I happened to be standing outside a classroom, waiting for another class to get out so that I could go in for my next class. There were quite a few others waiting as well. The boom came - the double boom that is the signature of a vehicle traveling faster than the speed of sound - just about when I figured it would. It made me smile, likely a goofy smile, but that’s okay.
I noticed, however, that some of the people around me looked alarmed, and I think someone said something like, “What the hell was that?”
I volunteered that it was a sonic boom.
“A what?”
They didn’t know? I sighed, then I explained that it was a sonic boom, that the shuttle was landing down at Edwards right about then, and that the sound was the shuttle passing over us on its way down there. I’m pretty sure that some of them didn’t believe me. I was just disappointed that there are whole generations out there in what is purported to be the most technologically advanced culture in history, who don’t even know what a sonic boom is, much less what it sounds like.
Ah, well. I’m not just a nerd. I’m an old nerd.
Monday, June 04, 2007
A good book, a comfortable chair, and a cool beverage...goodness, I'm easy to please
I've been reading.
Well, that isn't anything new, I guess. I've had a book in my hand pretty much constantly since I was three years old. But recently I haven't been really taking the time to read as much as I customarily do, and I've missed it. So, I finally decided that I'm going to take the time to read, try to catch up to my self-imposed schedule of one book a week, and read some fun stuff as well as things that are "good for me". I don't know if I'll manage to catch up to the schedule...I'm something like four books behind at the moment. But I'm going to give it a good try.
I've especially made good, the past couple of weeks, on the promise to read something fun. Of the three books I've finished in the past two weeks, two of them have been from one of my favorite writers, Kage Baker. The first, The Machine's Child, is the latest in her series of science fiction novels about The Company - for my money the best science fiction series in years. It tackles two of my favorite sf subgenres, time travel and immortality. I recommend the whole series highly.
The other "fun" book - which I just finished reading this evening - is also by Ms. Baker, a collection of shorter fiction. All the stories in Gods and Pawns also take place in the "Company" universe but don't necessarily require a knowledge of the series of novels, and might not be the worst way to be introduced to the series and to Ms. Baker's writing.
The third book was more serious, an exploration of the evolution of religion from a biological anthropologist. Barbara J. King's Evolving God, is an interesting look at how religion might have become a virtual universal among human cultures. Of course, Ms. King doesn't necessarily define religion in terms that Western monotheists would immediately recognize, but gives it a much wider application that includes various forms of spirituality that don't even necessarily involve belief in a God or gods. And, since her speciality is primate behavior, she begins by looking at what sorts of clues the behavior of chimpanzees might give us about how religious behavior took hold. There are four precursors of religious behavior, according to Ms. King: empathy, meaning-making, rule-following, and imagination. She insists that she sees all of these components in chimpanzee behavior. Ms. King concludes that religion evolved as a response to the primate need to feel they belong to a group of some sort. This sort of belongingness, she says, is a universal need. It is not, however, innate or genetic. It has more to do with intimacy, and begins with the first moments after birth when a child bonds with its mother.
After beginning with chimpanzees and other apes, Ms. King examines the evidence left behind by various primates in and near modern humans' ancestry and finds some interesting indications that symbolic behavior of the type that indicates some sort of religious or spiritual practices go back at least 200,000 years...interestingly enough, about the same time that anatomically modern humans are believed to have first appeared in Africa. There are hints of some sort of symbolic thinking going back much farther than that...she mentions the 3 million year old Makapansgat cobble, for example...but the nature of the evidence is such that there can only be speculation as to what particular very ancient artifacts such as this manuport might really mean.
Evolving God is an interesting book. I'm not sure that I see the logic of everything that Ms. King proposes, but she makes some very good points and supports them admirably with evidence rather than mere speculation. As an interesting sort of final word, she takes on those who see religion as hardwired into the genes as well as both the current crop of militant atheists...Dawkins, Dennett, et al...and and militant anti-Darwinsts. None of them withstand her scrutiny very well.
Well, that isn't anything new, I guess. I've had a book in my hand pretty much constantly since I was three years old. But recently I haven't been really taking the time to read as much as I customarily do, and I've missed it. So, I finally decided that I'm going to take the time to read, try to catch up to my self-imposed schedule of one book a week, and read some fun stuff as well as things that are "good for me". I don't know if I'll manage to catch up to the schedule...I'm something like four books behind at the moment. But I'm going to give it a good try.
I've especially made good, the past couple of weeks, on the promise to read something fun. Of the three books I've finished in the past two weeks, two of them have been from one of my favorite writers, Kage Baker. The first, The Machine's Child, is the latest in her series of science fiction novels about The Company - for my money the best science fiction series in years. It tackles two of my favorite sf subgenres, time travel and immortality. I recommend the whole series highly.
The other "fun" book - which I just finished reading this evening - is also by Ms. Baker, a collection of shorter fiction. All the stories in Gods and Pawns also take place in the "Company" universe but don't necessarily require a knowledge of the series of novels, and might not be the worst way to be introduced to the series and to Ms. Baker's writing.
The third book was more serious, an exploration of the evolution of religion from a biological anthropologist. Barbara J. King's Evolving God, is an interesting look at how religion might have become a virtual universal among human cultures. Of course, Ms. King doesn't necessarily define religion in terms that Western monotheists would immediately recognize, but gives it a much wider application that includes various forms of spirituality that don't even necessarily involve belief in a God or gods. And, since her speciality is primate behavior, she begins by looking at what sorts of clues the behavior of chimpanzees might give us about how religious behavior took hold. There are four precursors of religious behavior, according to Ms. King: empathy, meaning-making, rule-following, and imagination. She insists that she sees all of these components in chimpanzee behavior. Ms. King concludes that religion evolved as a response to the primate need to feel they belong to a group of some sort. This sort of belongingness, she says, is a universal need. It is not, however, innate or genetic. It has more to do with intimacy, and begins with the first moments after birth when a child bonds with its mother.
After beginning with chimpanzees and other apes, Ms. King examines the evidence left behind by various primates in and near modern humans' ancestry and finds some interesting indications that symbolic behavior of the type that indicates some sort of religious or spiritual practices go back at least 200,000 years...interestingly enough, about the same time that anatomically modern humans are believed to have first appeared in Africa. There are hints of some sort of symbolic thinking going back much farther than that...she mentions the 3 million year old Makapansgat cobble, for example...but the nature of the evidence is such that there can only be speculation as to what particular very ancient artifacts such as this manuport might really mean.
Evolving God is an interesting book. I'm not sure that I see the logic of everything that Ms. King proposes, but she makes some very good points and supports them admirably with evidence rather than mere speculation. As an interesting sort of final word, she takes on those who see religion as hardwired into the genes as well as both the current crop of militant atheists...Dawkins, Dennett, et al...and and militant anti-Darwinsts. None of them withstand her scrutiny very well.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Just checking in...
No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth.
I haven't given up thinking.
Instead, I just fell vicitm to whatever creeping crud is going around at the moment. A head cold, basically, that then tried to make an end-run into a chest cold. It started with a headche a week ago today, and at first I thought my allergies were just playing their usual games. Pretty soon, though, I knew it was something more.
Actually, I'm feeling a lot better now. I can read again without getting a headache...there for a couple of days it actually hurt to read. I slept almost all night without waking up last night. I haven't used nearly as many tissues the past couple of days...and I can breathe through my nose again most of the time. I no longer sound like I'm going to cough up a lung...although part of the time my voice still sounds like somebody took a file to my vocal cords. But I'm still going to go to bed early tonight, take my Tylenol, and try to sleep late in the morning.
Maybe my dreams won't be so bizarre tonight as they have been the past few nights...when I've been able to sleep, I've been having some dreams with special effects that would put Lucas and Spielberg to shame.
I haven't given up thinking.
Instead, I just fell vicitm to whatever creeping crud is going around at the moment. A head cold, basically, that then tried to make an end-run into a chest cold. It started with a headche a week ago today, and at first I thought my allergies were just playing their usual games. Pretty soon, though, I knew it was something more.
Actually, I'm feeling a lot better now. I can read again without getting a headache...there for a couple of days it actually hurt to read. I slept almost all night without waking up last night. I haven't used nearly as many tissues the past couple of days...and I can breathe through my nose again most of the time. I no longer sound like I'm going to cough up a lung...although part of the time my voice still sounds like somebody took a file to my vocal cords. But I'm still going to go to bed early tonight, take my Tylenol, and try to sleep late in the morning.
Maybe my dreams won't be so bizarre tonight as they have been the past few nights...when I've been able to sleep, I've been having some dreams with special effects that would put Lucas and Spielberg to shame.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
In which I attempt to avoid speaking ill of the dead...
Jerry Falwell died on Tuesday.
I was not a fan of the man, or of his religious or political rhetoric. On the other hand I was a bit dismayed at some of the expressions of glee I saw different places on the internet after his passing. I don’t particularly like the way that, when someone dies, they automatically become a saint in the eyes of many people no matter what they did in life. But I also was raised to believe that if you’re going to speak ill of the dead, you should probably wait until their body is cold and they are in the ground to do it. That’s just common courtesy.
Still, Rev. Falwell was a polarizing person. You pretty much either loved him or hated him, or at least you felt one way or the other about the positions he espoused. He really didn’t leave much room for a middle ground. So I suppose it was inevitable that some of the reactions to his death were going to be of a less than sympathetic nature. I think my favorite comment, because it got the point across that he was not necessarily a tolerant man without being really rude about it, came in the form of a cartoon in the op-ed section of the San Francisco Chronicle (I don‘t recall whether it was on Wednesday or Thursday). It had Rev. Falwell arriving at the pearly gates to find that it wasn’t St. Peter in charge, but TinkyWinky. Rev. Falwell’s thought bubble said simply, “Uh-oh.” Indeed.
The Chronicle, on Friday, also ran a column by Mark Morford which might be seen as a little more mean-spirited if you were a follower of the good Reverend, but which I thought made a pretty good point. After a short introduction Morford simply ran a series of quotes from Falwell’s career, without further comment. The point, I think, was that it wasn’t “the liberal press” or “secular humanists” or anyone but Rev. Falwell himself that created the impression that perhaps he wasn’t going to be that nice to you if you didn’t agree with him. Morford included some of the famous sayings of Rev. Falwell: his placing of blame for the 9/11 attacks; his insistence that the Bible is the inerrant word of God in all matters - not just of faith but of science and politics as well; his belief that AIDS was God’s way of punishing not only gays but any culture that allows them to exist in peace.
But we all knew he said those things and believed them, and we either agreed or disagreed. The quote that perhaps disturbed me the most, though, was this one: “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.” Which, I think, demonstrates that he was one of those folks who think that anyone who does not agree with them completely on all issues is trash and deserves whatever ill they get. That’s pretty extremist thinking, in my opinion. It opens the way for things like holy wars. My own feeling is that exactly that sort of tribal thinking, “us v. them” thinking, is exactly what is wrong with the world today.
So. Perhaps I’ve violated my own rule about not speaking ill of the dead before they’re buried (I don’t think the funeral is until sometime next week). I won’t write much more here about Rev. Falwell, in any case. But I would like to use the occasion of his passing to urge everyone who reads this blog to seek out and read a book that I discovered last year: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, by Michelle Goldberg. The Reverend Falwell figures in the book, but so do a whole lot of other people who are, if anything, more radical in their thinking than he ever considered being. Which is sort of a frightening thought. These are the people who believe that secular law - the United States Constitution and the United States Code, and the various legal codes of the states - should be replaced by the Bible and the laws contained therein. Which would be great if they were talking about things like “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. But they aren’t. They’re talking Old Testament law - things like the death penalty for apostasy or for sassing your parents. I guess that, to be fair, I must report that one of the advocates of these laws claims that not all back-talking children would be stoned to death, but that the punishment would just remain as “an option”. Amazing.
They’re also talking dominionism, which is the principle that Christians have a God-given right to rule over everyone else. Dominionism emerged from Christian Reconstruction, a strictly fundamentalist view taught by Rousas John Rushdoony that says that Jesus won’t return until after the millennium and that Christians have to build the kingdom here on earth on their own until he gets here. By any means necessary, apparently. There might not be many who hold to the extreme positions of the Christian Reconstructionists but, as Goldberg’s book points out, some individuals in high positions in US government have consorted with them and those who carry their message. Very high positions. You’d know their names. And while not all fundamentalists carry their beliefs as far as the Reconstructionists would like, Reconstructionist thinking has influenced the Christian right through the writings of such prominent evangelists as Pat Robertson. This pushes the conversation even further to the right, and makes positions that weren’t previously acceptable to reasonable people look ever more reasonable in contrast. They do this in the political as well as the religious arena.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any interest in living in anything that looks like a theocracy, which is what some of the folks in Goldberg’s book have in mind. And while I don’t see such an extreme thing happening anytime soon, and neither does Goldberg (p. 181), I think we ignore these people at our own peril. And so, I use the occasion of Jerry Falwell’s death to invite you to read Kingdom Coming as a way of not ignoring the fact that there are people out there who would like to make you live according to their beliefs, which are not necessarily as benign as you might assume and which make the things Jerry Falwell said seem positively reasonable.
I was not a fan of the man, or of his religious or political rhetoric. On the other hand I was a bit dismayed at some of the expressions of glee I saw different places on the internet after his passing. I don’t particularly like the way that, when someone dies, they automatically become a saint in the eyes of many people no matter what they did in life. But I also was raised to believe that if you’re going to speak ill of the dead, you should probably wait until their body is cold and they are in the ground to do it. That’s just common courtesy.
Still, Rev. Falwell was a polarizing person. You pretty much either loved him or hated him, or at least you felt one way or the other about the positions he espoused. He really didn’t leave much room for a middle ground. So I suppose it was inevitable that some of the reactions to his death were going to be of a less than sympathetic nature. I think my favorite comment, because it got the point across that he was not necessarily a tolerant man without being really rude about it, came in the form of a cartoon in the op-ed section of the San Francisco Chronicle (I don‘t recall whether it was on Wednesday or Thursday). It had Rev. Falwell arriving at the pearly gates to find that it wasn’t St. Peter in charge, but TinkyWinky. Rev. Falwell’s thought bubble said simply, “Uh-oh.” Indeed.
The Chronicle, on Friday, also ran a column by Mark Morford which might be seen as a little more mean-spirited if you were a follower of the good Reverend, but which I thought made a pretty good point. After a short introduction Morford simply ran a series of quotes from Falwell’s career, without further comment. The point, I think, was that it wasn’t “the liberal press” or “secular humanists” or anyone but Rev. Falwell himself that created the impression that perhaps he wasn’t going to be that nice to you if you didn’t agree with him. Morford included some of the famous sayings of Rev. Falwell: his placing of blame for the 9/11 attacks; his insistence that the Bible is the inerrant word of God in all matters - not just of faith but of science and politics as well; his belief that AIDS was God’s way of punishing not only gays but any culture that allows them to exist in peace.
But we all knew he said those things and believed them, and we either agreed or disagreed. The quote that perhaps disturbed me the most, though, was this one: “If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.” Which, I think, demonstrates that he was one of those folks who think that anyone who does not agree with them completely on all issues is trash and deserves whatever ill they get. That’s pretty extremist thinking, in my opinion. It opens the way for things like holy wars. My own feeling is that exactly that sort of tribal thinking, “us v. them” thinking, is exactly what is wrong with the world today.
So. Perhaps I’ve violated my own rule about not speaking ill of the dead before they’re buried (I don’t think the funeral is until sometime next week). I won’t write much more here about Rev. Falwell, in any case. But I would like to use the occasion of his passing to urge everyone who reads this blog to seek out and read a book that I discovered last year: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, by Michelle Goldberg. The Reverend Falwell figures in the book, but so do a whole lot of other people who are, if anything, more radical in their thinking than he ever considered being. Which is sort of a frightening thought. These are the people who believe that secular law - the United States Constitution and the United States Code, and the various legal codes of the states - should be replaced by the Bible and the laws contained therein. Which would be great if they were talking about things like “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. But they aren’t. They’re talking Old Testament law - things like the death penalty for apostasy or for sassing your parents. I guess that, to be fair, I must report that one of the advocates of these laws claims that not all back-talking children would be stoned to death, but that the punishment would just remain as “an option”. Amazing.
They’re also talking dominionism, which is the principle that Christians have a God-given right to rule over everyone else. Dominionism emerged from Christian Reconstruction, a strictly fundamentalist view taught by Rousas John Rushdoony that says that Jesus won’t return until after the millennium and that Christians have to build the kingdom here on earth on their own until he gets here. By any means necessary, apparently. There might not be many who hold to the extreme positions of the Christian Reconstructionists but, as Goldberg’s book points out, some individuals in high positions in US government have consorted with them and those who carry their message. Very high positions. You’d know their names. And while not all fundamentalists carry their beliefs as far as the Reconstructionists would like, Reconstructionist thinking has influenced the Christian right through the writings of such prominent evangelists as Pat Robertson. This pushes the conversation even further to the right, and makes positions that weren’t previously acceptable to reasonable people look ever more reasonable in contrast. They do this in the political as well as the religious arena.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any interest in living in anything that looks like a theocracy, which is what some of the folks in Goldberg’s book have in mind. And while I don’t see such an extreme thing happening anytime soon, and neither does Goldberg (p. 181), I think we ignore these people at our own peril. And so, I use the occasion of Jerry Falwell’s death to invite you to read Kingdom Coming as a way of not ignoring the fact that there are people out there who would like to make you live according to their beliefs, which are not necessarily as benign as you might assume and which make the things Jerry Falwell said seem positively reasonable.
Friday, May 18, 2007
And the good news is...
This is the best news I've heard in ages.
No, seriously. You can read it for yourself in the L.A. Times: Southern California is getting a new drive-in theater. It is called the Star-Vu (a worthy name for a drive-in), and it opens tonight on one of the parking lots of the Orange County Fairgrounds, thanks to what the Times article calls "four baby-boomers" with a newfangled French inflatable movie screen. It is slated to operate all year round, except for during the run of the OC Fair, which will need the parking spaces.
Now, you've got to understand...I've had a long relationship with drive-ins. Starting when I was just a baby, my family had a long-standing tradition of going to the drive-in every Friday night. Later on, when I was in high school, my first job was working in the snack bar of a drive-in at the Sunday Swap-Meet. I love drive-ins, and I miss them dreadfully. Locally the last one closed a few years ago so that the money-men could build a Costco. Personally, I think they robbed the community of a cultural treasure. The drive-in I worked at closed even before that, and now up-scale houses stand where I once enjoyed all the James Bond movies before anyone worried about whether they were suitable for younger viewers and where I once shopped for books among the swap-meet stalls during my breaks from work.
Forty years ago, there were 107 drive-ins in Southern California (and I'll wager that I attended a good number of them at one time or another). Now, with the opening of the Star-Vu tonight, there are ten. I sure hope this marks the beginning of a new trend.
No, seriously. You can read it for yourself in the L.A. Times: Southern California is getting a new drive-in theater. It is called the Star-Vu (a worthy name for a drive-in), and it opens tonight on one of the parking lots of the Orange County Fairgrounds, thanks to what the Times article calls "four baby-boomers" with a newfangled French inflatable movie screen. It is slated to operate all year round, except for during the run of the OC Fair, which will need the parking spaces.
Now, you've got to understand...I've had a long relationship with drive-ins. Starting when I was just a baby, my family had a long-standing tradition of going to the drive-in every Friday night. Later on, when I was in high school, my first job was working in the snack bar of a drive-in at the Sunday Swap-Meet. I love drive-ins, and I miss them dreadfully. Locally the last one closed a few years ago so that the money-men could build a Costco. Personally, I think they robbed the community of a cultural treasure. The drive-in I worked at closed even before that, and now up-scale houses stand where I once enjoyed all the James Bond movies before anyone worried about whether they were suitable for younger viewers and where I once shopped for books among the swap-meet stalls during my breaks from work.
Forty years ago, there were 107 drive-ins in Southern California (and I'll wager that I attended a good number of them at one time or another). Now, with the opening of the Star-Vu tonight, there are ten. I sure hope this marks the beginning of a new trend.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Review: "The Last Cato", by Matilde Asensi
It seems like I just can’t stay away from those everything-you-know-is-wrong, Da Vinci Code-style, religious-conspiracy historical thrillers these days. It’s probably a character flaw or something on my part, but if that’s the worst flaw I have I’m not going to sweat it. Anyway, I’ve read several of these recently, the most recent being The Last Cato, by Matilde Asensi. At least it has the virtue of not being a Da Vinci clone - Ms. Asensi’s book was published in Spanish in 2001, while The Da Vinci Code didn’t hit the stores until 2003.
The Last Cato begins with Roman Catholic sister and world-renowned paleographer (paleography is the study of ancient handwriting) Dr. Ottavia Salina being pulled from her normal duties at the Vatican to help figure out who is stealing pieces of the True Cross from churches around the world. The only clue, at least initially, is the body of an Ethiopian killed in the crash of a small plane. His body is covered with mysterious scars in the form of crosses and letters. After figuring out, with the help of Captain Kaspar Glauser-Roist of the Swiss Guard, what the scars mean, or at least the source of their designs, Ottavia is abruptly dismissed from the investigation and told to go back to her usual work. She objects to this vociferously and reveals that she has accessed information about the investigation that she was not authorized to have. This earns her dismissal from her Vatican position and exile by her order to an obscure post in Ireland.
No sooner, however, than her plane lands in Dublin Ottavia is bundled right back onto a plane back to Rome. She never even gets to leave the airport in Ireland. Only when she arrives back at the Vatican dose she discover that all is forgiven and that her job - and her place on the investigation - have been restored to her. She also learns that a third investigator has been added to the team, a part-Egyptian /part-Italian Coptic Catholic non-believing archaeologist, Professor Farag Boswell. In the week between Ottavia’s dismissal and her reinstatement, Kaspar and Farag have been to the Sinai and returned with a purloined manuscript that gives them more clues about the group that has been taking the pieces of the cross. Before long, they figure out that Dante’s Purgatory provides the guidebook they need to find the paradise on earth of this ancient order. And that is where the quest really begins.
There is probably a little too much Dante here for some readers. Still, I enjoyed how Ms. Asensi integrated information from his writings into the process of the protagonists’ analysis and following of the clues provided there. I’m definitely interested now in reading the middle installment of The Divine Comedy (I’ve only read the Inferno before). My own biggest problem with the story is a side plot concerning Ottavia’s Sicilian family and its “coincidental” role in altering the nun’s outlook on a number of issues. That seemed a bit too coincidental to me. It was just too obvious a plot device, and I saw it coming long before its implications came home to roost, so to speak. That isn’t enough of a quibble, though, to have substantially harmed my enjoyment of the story. In fact, the last half of the book was really difficult for me to put down.
Another small problem I had with the book was the translation, and it is a problem that many translations seem to have. At times, the dialogue didn’t quite ring true. This wasn’t anything glaring, but more little things that just didn’t scan quite correctly as the characters spoke to one another. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the way the characters developed, how their relationships came together, and how each was changed (or not) by the experiences they had together.
I hadn’t heard of The Last Cato or its author before I happened on it in a bookstore earlier in the week. I bought it primarily because the back-cover blurb made the book sound like a good read. Quibbles aside, that is exactly what it was. I wouldn’t call it great literature by any means, but it was fun even as it had some substance to it and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys this sort of novel.
The Last Cato begins with Roman Catholic sister and world-renowned paleographer (paleography is the study of ancient handwriting) Dr. Ottavia Salina being pulled from her normal duties at the Vatican to help figure out who is stealing pieces of the True Cross from churches around the world. The only clue, at least initially, is the body of an Ethiopian killed in the crash of a small plane. His body is covered with mysterious scars in the form of crosses and letters. After figuring out, with the help of Captain Kaspar Glauser-Roist of the Swiss Guard, what the scars mean, or at least the source of their designs, Ottavia is abruptly dismissed from the investigation and told to go back to her usual work. She objects to this vociferously and reveals that she has accessed information about the investigation that she was not authorized to have. This earns her dismissal from her Vatican position and exile by her order to an obscure post in Ireland.
No sooner, however, than her plane lands in Dublin Ottavia is bundled right back onto a plane back to Rome. She never even gets to leave the airport in Ireland. Only when she arrives back at the Vatican dose she discover that all is forgiven and that her job - and her place on the investigation - have been restored to her. She also learns that a third investigator has been added to the team, a part-Egyptian /part-Italian Coptic Catholic non-believing archaeologist, Professor Farag Boswell. In the week between Ottavia’s dismissal and her reinstatement, Kaspar and Farag have been to the Sinai and returned with a purloined manuscript that gives them more clues about the group that has been taking the pieces of the cross. Before long, they figure out that Dante’s Purgatory provides the guidebook they need to find the paradise on earth of this ancient order. And that is where the quest really begins.
There is probably a little too much Dante here for some readers. Still, I enjoyed how Ms. Asensi integrated information from his writings into the process of the protagonists’ analysis and following of the clues provided there. I’m definitely interested now in reading the middle installment of The Divine Comedy (I’ve only read the Inferno before). My own biggest problem with the story is a side plot concerning Ottavia’s Sicilian family and its “coincidental” role in altering the nun’s outlook on a number of issues. That seemed a bit too coincidental to me. It was just too obvious a plot device, and I saw it coming long before its implications came home to roost, so to speak. That isn’t enough of a quibble, though, to have substantially harmed my enjoyment of the story. In fact, the last half of the book was really difficult for me to put down.
Another small problem I had with the book was the translation, and it is a problem that many translations seem to have. At times, the dialogue didn’t quite ring true. This wasn’t anything glaring, but more little things that just didn’t scan quite correctly as the characters spoke to one another. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the way the characters developed, how their relationships came together, and how each was changed (or not) by the experiences they had together.
I hadn’t heard of The Last Cato or its author before I happened on it in a bookstore earlier in the week. I bought it primarily because the back-cover blurb made the book sound like a good read. Quibbles aside, that is exactly what it was. I wouldn’t call it great literature by any means, but it was fun even as it had some substance to it and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys this sort of novel.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Another interview: This time John asks the questions...
Okay, here's one more round of the "five questions" interview meme. This time John, from Mind on Fire has posed the questions. I think he missed his calling; he asks great questions and gets his interviewee to talk (write, in this case) entirely too much.
If you could be a character from any SF series which would you choose and why?
I’d be Mendoza, from Kage Baker’s “Company” novels. It sort of frightens me what that says about my psychological makeup, but nonetheless…. Mendoza, if you haven’t met her, is a cyborg, an immortal rescued from the not-so-loving arms of the Spanish Inquisition by Facilitator Joseph. Joseph is employed by The Company which, in the 24th century has discovered not only how to make infants and young children immortal, but how to travel in time. As a cyborg, Mendoza also works, as a Preserver. Her specialty is botany. Mendoza, however, is not a good cyborg. She doesn’t much like the Company, the Company wishes that she had never been made a cyborg, and she just doesn’t behave. Which is why she gets banished to around 150,000 years ago - that way, she’s out of the way and can’t cause the Company any more trouble - or so it hopes.
So, as to the why…Maybe it’s because Mendoza seems to embody one of my favorite sayings: she’s old enough to know better - way old enough - but is still young enough not to care. She knows she’s going to get in trouble, but she goes ahead and follows her heart anyway. Other than that, I don’t know. All I know is that I connected faster with Mendoza than I have with just about any fictional character I can think of.
Fill in the following: I am a [blank] junkie. Explain.
I am a music junkie. I need my music, and it doesn’t much matter what kind it is. I don’t really love hip-hop (in fact I’ve been known to express the opinion that while hip-hop is art, it isn’t really music as far as I’m concerned), and country music isn’t my favorite (but I listen to a lot more of it than I used to, since I’ve been learning more about all the cross-pollination between country and rock), but I’ll even listen to those if there’s nothing else.
I trace this addiction back to February 9, 1964. I was seven years old and spent part of the evening hiding behind the piano (it was a Sunday and I had school the next day, so I was supposed to be in bed by 7:30) watching the Beatles in their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Changed my life. After that, while all of my little fellow and sister second-graders were running home after school to watch cartoons, I was running home to watch the daily local L. A. imitations of American Bandstand. Ever since then, if I go too long without hearing some music I get just about as cranky as I do if I go too long without reading, which would have been the alternate answer for this question.
Quick! What were the last seven books you read?
Now, this one is easy, but only because I’ve been keeping a list this year. You’ve caught me in a cycle of reading more of what my best friend calls “popcorn books” than I usually do, but that’s fine. Reading is for fun, too. So, here is the list, slightly annotated, of the last seven books I’ve read, beginning with the most recently finished:
All Saints, Liam Callanan (2007) - fiction, and a very loopy book - that‘s the best word I can think of to describe it. Most of the characters, teachers and students at a Roman Catholic high school, are pretty dysfunctional. But Callanan manages to portray them as fully human even when they are doing things that are not admirable. Oh, and John…this book takes place in your neck of the woods; the fictional school is in Newport Beach and UC Irvine even makes a couple of quick appearances.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann (2005; trade paperback edition, 2006) - Anthropology/archaeology/history. Mann discusses new ideas of the life the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere led before and at contact with Europeans. Excellent book. I highly recommend it. (See my review, below)
Tutu Deadly, Natalie M. Roberts (2007) - fiction; of all things, a comical murder mystery. This one is supposed to be the first of a continuing series featuring a dance teacher in Utah who “doesn’t always play well with the other adults”.
The Collar, Jonathan Englert (2006) - Anthropology/sociology/religion. Follows a year in the lives of several Roman Catholic seminarians, very frank without being dismissive of the religious journeys of the men portrayed. If I were teaching a class in the anthropology or sociology of religion, this is one of the books I’d teach.
Michelangelo’s Notebook, Paul Christopher (2005) - Da Vinci Code territory; very much popcorn reading. So much so that I don’t remember much of the plot even though it hasn’t been long since I read it.
The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry (2007) - Also in the mold of Dan Brown, except with better writing and plotting. The protagonist is an ex-government lawyer on the trail of what really happened to the great library at Alexandria. Of course, the bad guys want to get their first. Again, popcorn reading, but of a better quality.
Hotel California: The true-life adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their many friends, Barney Hoskins (2006) - Music; Hoskins is a music writer and critic, and he’s really done his homework here, having at one time or another interviewed most of the people he writes about. Frankly, there’s a lot of gossip here, but especially if you love the music of this era and genre as I do there is also a good deal of deep background on who influenced who musically, who worked with who on what music. I liked this book a lot.
Why did you become Mormon? Why did you leave?
I became Mormon mostly, I have to admit, because I knew a lot of Mormons at the time - I was baptized when I was 16. But, I had also gone to seminary for about a year with a friend and I figured that what the Mormons were teaching made just as much sense as what I’d heard in any other church I’d ever gone to. I was especially impressed by the second-chance thing, aka baptism for the dead. I’d had a bad experience previously visiting a church and getting into an argument with the Sunday school teacher when she said that people who died without hearing about Christ were just out of luck and were destined to spend eternity burning in hell. Oddly, when I went to participate in baptisms for the dead in the L.A. temple I was so creeped out by it that I didn’t want to ever go to the temple again under any circumstances.
When I left for good (I was in and out, active and inactive, for an extended period of time), it was after a revelation I had one Sunday afternoon as I was teaching a Relief Society lesson. As I was talking, I realized that I didn’t believe most of what I was saying, that I was being a hypocrite, and that I just couldn’t do that anymore and have any respect for myself. I don’t know why it happened just then. I’d been having arguments with myself about doctrine, about custom in the church, about everything about the church, for years. I’d literally be alone in the car and arguing with myself about stuff like blacks and the priesthood, about the place and role of women in the church, about various points of doctrine and history. But that afternoon was it. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And I never went back.
What world event would you like to see in your lifetime?
My first instinct, when I read this question, was to flutter my hand in my best beauty queen/Miss Congeniality imitation (I adore that movie) and say something like “world peace”. And that would be wonderful. And politically correct. But if I were really to be completely honest, as much as I’d like to see everybody just get along, what I would really like to see is proof…convincing, irrefutable proof that there is other intelligent life in the universe. Heck, maybe then it would turn out that Ronald Reagan was right about something and that knowing there was someone else out there would help bring us together, make us realize that the lifeboat comparison is really true - we are all in this together and if we keep fighting, we’re all going to drown. Is that what they call having one’s cake and eating it too?
********
Again, as before...it's your turn. If you would like to be interviewed by me (littlemissattitude) and pass this meme along, here's what you need to do:
1) Leave me a comment telling me you want to be interviewed. Either leave your e-mail address in the comment or e-mail me at ElnFrei at aol dot com with your addy.
2) I will respond by e-mailing you five questions of my choice.
3) You answer the questions in your blog.
4) When you post your answers, include this explanation in the post and offer to interview someone else.
5) You send five questions of your choice to those who ask to be interviewed.
If you could be a character from any SF series which would you choose and why?
I’d be Mendoza, from Kage Baker’s “Company” novels. It sort of frightens me what that says about my psychological makeup, but nonetheless…. Mendoza, if you haven’t met her, is a cyborg, an immortal rescued from the not-so-loving arms of the Spanish Inquisition by Facilitator Joseph. Joseph is employed by The Company which, in the 24th century has discovered not only how to make infants and young children immortal, but how to travel in time. As a cyborg, Mendoza also works, as a Preserver. Her specialty is botany. Mendoza, however, is not a good cyborg. She doesn’t much like the Company, the Company wishes that she had never been made a cyborg, and she just doesn’t behave. Which is why she gets banished to around 150,000 years ago - that way, she’s out of the way and can’t cause the Company any more trouble - or so it hopes.
So, as to the why…Maybe it’s because Mendoza seems to embody one of my favorite sayings: she’s old enough to know better - way old enough - but is still young enough not to care. She knows she’s going to get in trouble, but she goes ahead and follows her heart anyway. Other than that, I don’t know. All I know is that I connected faster with Mendoza than I have with just about any fictional character I can think of.
Fill in the following: I am a [blank] junkie. Explain.
I am a music junkie. I need my music, and it doesn’t much matter what kind it is. I don’t really love hip-hop (in fact I’ve been known to express the opinion that while hip-hop is art, it isn’t really music as far as I’m concerned), and country music isn’t my favorite (but I listen to a lot more of it than I used to, since I’ve been learning more about all the cross-pollination between country and rock), but I’ll even listen to those if there’s nothing else.
I trace this addiction back to February 9, 1964. I was seven years old and spent part of the evening hiding behind the piano (it was a Sunday and I had school the next day, so I was supposed to be in bed by 7:30) watching the Beatles in their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Changed my life. After that, while all of my little fellow and sister second-graders were running home after school to watch cartoons, I was running home to watch the daily local L. A. imitations of American Bandstand. Ever since then, if I go too long without hearing some music I get just about as cranky as I do if I go too long without reading, which would have been the alternate answer for this question.
Quick! What were the last seven books you read?
Now, this one is easy, but only because I’ve been keeping a list this year. You’ve caught me in a cycle of reading more of what my best friend calls “popcorn books” than I usually do, but that’s fine. Reading is for fun, too. So, here is the list, slightly annotated, of the last seven books I’ve read, beginning with the most recently finished:
All Saints, Liam Callanan (2007) - fiction, and a very loopy book - that‘s the best word I can think of to describe it. Most of the characters, teachers and students at a Roman Catholic high school, are pretty dysfunctional. But Callanan manages to portray them as fully human even when they are doing things that are not admirable. Oh, and John…this book takes place in your neck of the woods; the fictional school is in Newport Beach and UC Irvine even makes a couple of quick appearances.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann (2005; trade paperback edition, 2006) - Anthropology/archaeology/history. Mann discusses new ideas of the life the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere led before and at contact with Europeans. Excellent book. I highly recommend it. (See my review, below)
Tutu Deadly, Natalie M. Roberts (2007) - fiction; of all things, a comical murder mystery. This one is supposed to be the first of a continuing series featuring a dance teacher in Utah who “doesn’t always play well with the other adults”.
The Collar, Jonathan Englert (2006) - Anthropology/sociology/religion. Follows a year in the lives of several Roman Catholic seminarians, very frank without being dismissive of the religious journeys of the men portrayed. If I were teaching a class in the anthropology or sociology of religion, this is one of the books I’d teach.
Michelangelo’s Notebook, Paul Christopher (2005) - Da Vinci Code territory; very much popcorn reading. So much so that I don’t remember much of the plot even though it hasn’t been long since I read it.
The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry (2007) - Also in the mold of Dan Brown, except with better writing and plotting. The protagonist is an ex-government lawyer on the trail of what really happened to the great library at Alexandria. Of course, the bad guys want to get their first. Again, popcorn reading, but of a better quality.
Hotel California: The true-life adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their many friends, Barney Hoskins (2006) - Music; Hoskins is a music writer and critic, and he’s really done his homework here, having at one time or another interviewed most of the people he writes about. Frankly, there’s a lot of gossip here, but especially if you love the music of this era and genre as I do there is also a good deal of deep background on who influenced who musically, who worked with who on what music. I liked this book a lot.
Why did you become Mormon? Why did you leave?
I became Mormon mostly, I have to admit, because I knew a lot of Mormons at the time - I was baptized when I was 16. But, I had also gone to seminary for about a year with a friend and I figured that what the Mormons were teaching made just as much sense as what I’d heard in any other church I’d ever gone to. I was especially impressed by the second-chance thing, aka baptism for the dead. I’d had a bad experience previously visiting a church and getting into an argument with the Sunday school teacher when she said that people who died without hearing about Christ were just out of luck and were destined to spend eternity burning in hell. Oddly, when I went to participate in baptisms for the dead in the L.A. temple I was so creeped out by it that I didn’t want to ever go to the temple again under any circumstances.
When I left for good (I was in and out, active and inactive, for an extended period of time), it was after a revelation I had one Sunday afternoon as I was teaching a Relief Society lesson. As I was talking, I realized that I didn’t believe most of what I was saying, that I was being a hypocrite, and that I just couldn’t do that anymore and have any respect for myself. I don’t know why it happened just then. I’d been having arguments with myself about doctrine, about custom in the church, about everything about the church, for years. I’d literally be alone in the car and arguing with myself about stuff like blacks and the priesthood, about the place and role of women in the church, about various points of doctrine and history. But that afternoon was it. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And I never went back.
What world event would you like to see in your lifetime?
My first instinct, when I read this question, was to flutter my hand in my best beauty queen/Miss Congeniality imitation (I adore that movie) and say something like “world peace”. And that would be wonderful. And politically correct. But if I were really to be completely honest, as much as I’d like to see everybody just get along, what I would really like to see is proof…convincing, irrefutable proof that there is other intelligent life in the universe. Heck, maybe then it would turn out that Ronald Reagan was right about something and that knowing there was someone else out there would help bring us together, make us realize that the lifeboat comparison is really true - we are all in this together and if we keep fighting, we’re all going to drown. Is that what they call having one’s cake and eating it too?
********
Again, as before...it's your turn. If you would like to be interviewed by me (littlemissattitude) and pass this meme along, here's what you need to do:
1) Leave me a comment telling me you want to be interviewed. Either leave your e-mail address in the comment or e-mail me at ElnFrei at aol dot com with your addy.
2) I will respond by e-mailing you five questions of my choice.
3) You answer the questions in your blog.
4) When you post your answers, include this explanation in the post and offer to interview someone else.
5) You send five questions of your choice to those who ask to be interviewed.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Happy Birthday, Debbie Sparks...
It's May 9. That means that it's Debbie Sparks's birthday. I almost feel guilty remembering that, because I don't remember most of my friends' birthdays, even those I've been friends with virtually all my life. I only knew Debbie Sparks for two school years. Yet I always remember her birthday.
There's a reason for that, though. The second year I knew her, 1970, when we were in the 8th grade, her birthday fell on a Saturday. She had a huge party in the afternoon, and then all of us were off to a concert at the local high school that evening. It was a big deal, too, because it was a big name group - The Grass Roots. You might not know the name, but if you listen to Classic Rock stations you've probably heard some of their music: "Midnight Confessions", "Let's Live For Today", "Sooner or Later". Anyway, it was around the time of their biggest popularity, yet they were playing a show in the gym of the high school, a benefit for the district's PTA's. I know how it came about...the drummer had grown up in town, and someone had used their connections. It was a big thing for me, as they were my favorite band that year. And how often does your favorite band play a show in what will be your high school gym? I still listen to their music on a fairly regular basis.
All that is an aside, though, important now simply because it is the reason I remember Debbie Sparks's birthday. Not long after that, Debbie and her family moved to Oklahoma. We wrote letters back and forth for awhile, and I talked to her on the phone a couple of times after she moved, but it wasn't that long before we lost touch. But still, on May 9 every year I wonder what has happened to her. The last time I heard from her, I think, she was in college, seeing some guy - fairly seriously, it seemed - and simply living her life. I don't know if they ever married, but I assume she got married at some point. Had kids. Most people do. There's a fairly good chance that she's a grandmother by now.
So...there's next to no chance Debbie will read this. But still, Happy Birthday Debbie Sparks. Hope it was a good one. Hope you're having a good life.
There's a reason for that, though. The second year I knew her, 1970, when we were in the 8th grade, her birthday fell on a Saturday. She had a huge party in the afternoon, and then all of us were off to a concert at the local high school that evening. It was a big deal, too, because it was a big name group - The Grass Roots. You might not know the name, but if you listen to Classic Rock stations you've probably heard some of their music: "Midnight Confessions", "Let's Live For Today", "Sooner or Later". Anyway, it was around the time of their biggest popularity, yet they were playing a show in the gym of the high school, a benefit for the district's PTA's. I know how it came about...the drummer had grown up in town, and someone had used their connections. It was a big thing for me, as they were my favorite band that year. And how often does your favorite band play a show in what will be your high school gym? I still listen to their music on a fairly regular basis.
All that is an aside, though, important now simply because it is the reason I remember Debbie Sparks's birthday. Not long after that, Debbie and her family moved to Oklahoma. We wrote letters back and forth for awhile, and I talked to her on the phone a couple of times after she moved, but it wasn't that long before we lost touch. But still, on May 9 every year I wonder what has happened to her. The last time I heard from her, I think, she was in college, seeing some guy - fairly seriously, it seemed - and simply living her life. I don't know if they ever married, but I assume she got married at some point. Had kids. Most people do. There's a fairly good chance that she's a grandmother by now.
So...there's next to no chance Debbie will read this. But still, Happy Birthday Debbie Sparks. Hope it was a good one. Hope you're having a good life.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Boys behaving badly...
I don’t want to be in the position of promoting or perpetuating stereotypes…of males or anyone else. I certainly don’t like it when other folks do that with stereotypes of females. So I’ll say this right up front: Most men mature right on schedule, while some women never grow up. On the other hand, sometimes I just have to wonder…
Is it testosterone? Is it something on the Y-chromosome?
Yesterday evening, on the way to the bank and the library, I got stuck at a traffic light next to a car full of boys. I use that word - “boys” - deliberately, even though I never looked over at the car and so I have no way of knowing how old they were. You’ll understand why I didn’t look in just a minute. However, from their voices, I would imagine that they were all - it sounded like three or four of them - somewhere in their mid to late teens.
As soon as they realized that there were women in the next car (mine) and that our windows were down (at around six p.m. it was still around 90 degrees F, and gas is much too expensive to use the car’s air conditioning), they started in, very loud. At least every other word was an F-bomb. There were disgustingly graphic descriptions of sex acts and cannibalism. It was a very long light, and they went on and on and on.
I refused to even acknowledge that I heard them, since that was what they so obviously wanted. To shock and to provoke a reaction. Sorry boys; I wasn’t shocked, and you had just proved how infantile you can act. I did wonder if their parents have any idea exactly how rude and vile their sons can be (not likely, and I doubt they would believe it if someone told them). I had a fantasy of washing their mouths out with soap - I’m not a prude, and I’d be lying if I tried to claim that I never use the word “fuck” - but what was coming out of their mouths was particularly vile. The light changed, finally. I suppose they went on to annoy someone else at the next light.
Fast forward five minutes, as I turned into the parking lot at the bank. The bank was, of course, closed by that time, and the parking lot was empty. Just as I was approaching the parking spaces closest to the ATMs, a car turned into another driveway into the lot, sped up to beat me, and made a tire-screeching u-turn into the spot I was about to take. It was an obviously expensive car…I want to say a Jag, but I’m not very good at identifying makes and models…and the man who emerged was in his mid-forties and dressed as if he belongs to the country club set, or aspires to it. I guess he felt it would be an affront to his manhood or something if he let another driver take the closest parking space or something. Surely it couldn’t have been the whole step or two more he would have had to walk had he parked in the space I ended up taking. The parking space isn’t even the issue here. As I said, the difference was a matter of a couple of steps. Not a big deal as far as I was concerned. The issue, rather, is how willing he was to take the chance of a collision - if I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have hit him - just to get his way.
It isn’t merely a question of chronological age, as these two examples show. I don’t know what it is a question of, to be honest. A need to be acknowledged as dominant? Sheer selfishness? Just a bid for attention? The anthropologist in me wonders if anyone has studied this, has established if men in our culture here in the US really do have an ingrained need to act in these sorts of ways at a greater rate than women. Or was I just in a position twice within five minutes to witness these various little male tantrums? Because that’s what they were in both cases, I think, when it comes right down to it.
Is it testosterone? Is it something on the Y-chromosome?
Yesterday evening, on the way to the bank and the library, I got stuck at a traffic light next to a car full of boys. I use that word - “boys” - deliberately, even though I never looked over at the car and so I have no way of knowing how old they were. You’ll understand why I didn’t look in just a minute. However, from their voices, I would imagine that they were all - it sounded like three or four of them - somewhere in their mid to late teens.
As soon as they realized that there were women in the next car (mine) and that our windows were down (at around six p.m. it was still around 90 degrees F, and gas is much too expensive to use the car’s air conditioning), they started in, very loud. At least every other word was an F-bomb. There were disgustingly graphic descriptions of sex acts and cannibalism. It was a very long light, and they went on and on and on.
I refused to even acknowledge that I heard them, since that was what they so obviously wanted. To shock and to provoke a reaction. Sorry boys; I wasn’t shocked, and you had just proved how infantile you can act. I did wonder if their parents have any idea exactly how rude and vile their sons can be (not likely, and I doubt they would believe it if someone told them). I had a fantasy of washing their mouths out with soap - I’m not a prude, and I’d be lying if I tried to claim that I never use the word “fuck” - but what was coming out of their mouths was particularly vile. The light changed, finally. I suppose they went on to annoy someone else at the next light.
Fast forward five minutes, as I turned into the parking lot at the bank. The bank was, of course, closed by that time, and the parking lot was empty. Just as I was approaching the parking spaces closest to the ATMs, a car turned into another driveway into the lot, sped up to beat me, and made a tire-screeching u-turn into the spot I was about to take. It was an obviously expensive car…I want to say a Jag, but I’m not very good at identifying makes and models…and the man who emerged was in his mid-forties and dressed as if he belongs to the country club set, or aspires to it. I guess he felt it would be an affront to his manhood or something if he let another driver take the closest parking space or something. Surely it couldn’t have been the whole step or two more he would have had to walk had he parked in the space I ended up taking. The parking space isn’t even the issue here. As I said, the difference was a matter of a couple of steps. Not a big deal as far as I was concerned. The issue, rather, is how willing he was to take the chance of a collision - if I hadn’t been paying attention, I would have hit him - just to get his way.
It isn’t merely a question of chronological age, as these two examples show. I don’t know what it is a question of, to be honest. A need to be acknowledged as dominant? Sheer selfishness? Just a bid for attention? The anthropologist in me wonders if anyone has studied this, has established if men in our culture here in the US really do have an ingrained need to act in these sorts of ways at a greater rate than women. Or was I just in a position twice within five minutes to witness these various little male tantrums? Because that’s what they were in both cases, I think, when it comes right down to it.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Review: "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus", Charles C. Mann
I just finished reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann (Vintage Books, 2006; Knopf hardback edition, 2005). If you have any interest at all in anthropology or archaeology, or in the history of the Western Hemisphere, especially that period before the Europeans arrived, you will probably find this book fascinating.
Mann addresses several topics here. One is the idea that the Western Hemisphere was much more populous at European contact than was previously believed. It is possible, he writes, that there were more people in the Western Hemisphere in 1491 than there were in Europe, and that at the city of Tenochtitlan - the Aztec capital - had more inhabitants at contact than did any European city of the time. Mann also looks at the ongoing arguments over when the first inhabitants of the hemisphere arrived and how and when - and how fast - they spread out over the land. In addition, he presents new evidence that, far from being an untouched land on which the native inhabitants made no mark, the Western Hemisphere had been extensively transformed by those who lived here. The reason the land appeared so pristine when settlers arrived after the initial 100 to 200 year period of conquest was that so many of the inhabitants had been killed off, mostly by the spread of diseases carried by the first Europeans to arrive, perhaps as much as 90 to 95 percent of the population in some areas.
Previous to European contact, Mann writes, the high population of the hemisphere had turned the land into a “managed” environment. However, by the time settlers arrived so much of the population had died that there were not enough people left to keep the environment under control. Farmed land was overgrown by forest, for example on the east coast of what is now the United States. Populations of species such as bison and passenger pigeons, which had been kept to manageable numbers by the Indians, exploded when hunting declined along with the human population. He even presents new evidence that the Amazon region, long thought to have been sparsely settled by small and unsophisticated groups, never extensively farmed due to the unsuitability of the soil, was actually was one of those highly managed areas that for thousands of years supported large, fairly advanced cultures that subsisted mostly by farming rather than by hunting and gathering. Some of this information has not been welcomed, especially by environmentalists, including the idea that part of the management of the Amazon was done through what he calls a “slash and char” process that allowed the inhabitants to add charcoal to the soil and enhanced its suitability for farming. But, Mann writes, this wasn’t the wholesale burning that modern developers have practiced to their own economic gain and showing evidence that the process was used is not the same thing as supporting what has gone on in the region more recently.
While Mann writes that more and more anthropologists and archaeologists are coming to accept the new evidence he reports and the new picture of conditions in the Western Hemisphere before European contact that this evidence supports, there is still significant dissent to these new views. He presents both sides of the debate even though it is fairly clear that he favors the new paradigm. He also proposes that there are political reasons why some individuals, both in and out of the anthropological community, cling to the old view that there were few people here when the Europeans arrived, and that most of them were unsophisticated both culturally and technologically. This old view, he argues, makes the European occupation of the hemisphere more palatable than having to face the possibility that they came and took over land that was already possessed by large and sophisticated civilizations that were in some cases different only in detail and not in substance from those in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Mann, a science writer for such publications as Science and The Atlantic Monthly is a good writer who presents the stories he tells with wit and humanity. The arguments he presents for his premises are quite convincing, for the most part. He has documented his research extensively - the book contains 52 pages of endnotes and the bibliography runs to 58 pages. Obviously, he does not expect the reader to take his word for the evidence he presents, and in fact in the Afterword to the paperback edition of the book he explicitly states that he “wanted to have a fuller bibliography than is usual in popular works - I wanted to point people to the original sources, so that readers who were interested could find out more.” There is clearly more to be said on these subjects, and newer and even more extensive evidence could modify or overturn some of the ideas Mann presents and advocates for. Such is the nature of science, and of history. Still, this overview of the subject as it stands is interesting, valuable, and a very good read.
Mann addresses several topics here. One is the idea that the Western Hemisphere was much more populous at European contact than was previously believed. It is possible, he writes, that there were more people in the Western Hemisphere in 1491 than there were in Europe, and that at the city of Tenochtitlan - the Aztec capital - had more inhabitants at contact than did any European city of the time. Mann also looks at the ongoing arguments over when the first inhabitants of the hemisphere arrived and how and when - and how fast - they spread out over the land. In addition, he presents new evidence that, far from being an untouched land on which the native inhabitants made no mark, the Western Hemisphere had been extensively transformed by those who lived here. The reason the land appeared so pristine when settlers arrived after the initial 100 to 200 year period of conquest was that so many of the inhabitants had been killed off, mostly by the spread of diseases carried by the first Europeans to arrive, perhaps as much as 90 to 95 percent of the population in some areas.
Previous to European contact, Mann writes, the high population of the hemisphere had turned the land into a “managed” environment. However, by the time settlers arrived so much of the population had died that there were not enough people left to keep the environment under control. Farmed land was overgrown by forest, for example on the east coast of what is now the United States. Populations of species such as bison and passenger pigeons, which had been kept to manageable numbers by the Indians, exploded when hunting declined along with the human population. He even presents new evidence that the Amazon region, long thought to have been sparsely settled by small and unsophisticated groups, never extensively farmed due to the unsuitability of the soil, was actually was one of those highly managed areas that for thousands of years supported large, fairly advanced cultures that subsisted mostly by farming rather than by hunting and gathering. Some of this information has not been welcomed, especially by environmentalists, including the idea that part of the management of the Amazon was done through what he calls a “slash and char” process that allowed the inhabitants to add charcoal to the soil and enhanced its suitability for farming. But, Mann writes, this wasn’t the wholesale burning that modern developers have practiced to their own economic gain and showing evidence that the process was used is not the same thing as supporting what has gone on in the region more recently.
While Mann writes that more and more anthropologists and archaeologists are coming to accept the new evidence he reports and the new picture of conditions in the Western Hemisphere before European contact that this evidence supports, there is still significant dissent to these new views. He presents both sides of the debate even though it is fairly clear that he favors the new paradigm. He also proposes that there are political reasons why some individuals, both in and out of the anthropological community, cling to the old view that there were few people here when the Europeans arrived, and that most of them were unsophisticated both culturally and technologically. This old view, he argues, makes the European occupation of the hemisphere more palatable than having to face the possibility that they came and took over land that was already possessed by large and sophisticated civilizations that were in some cases different only in detail and not in substance from those in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Mann, a science writer for such publications as Science and The Atlantic Monthly is a good writer who presents the stories he tells with wit and humanity. The arguments he presents for his premises are quite convincing, for the most part. He has documented his research extensively - the book contains 52 pages of endnotes and the bibliography runs to 58 pages. Obviously, he does not expect the reader to take his word for the evidence he presents, and in fact in the Afterword to the paperback edition of the book he explicitly states that he “wanted to have a fuller bibliography than is usual in popular works - I wanted to point people to the original sources, so that readers who were interested could find out more.” There is clearly more to be said on these subjects, and newer and even more extensive evidence could modify or overturn some of the ideas Mann presents and advocates for. Such is the nature of science, and of history. Still, this overview of the subject as it stands is interesting, valuable, and a very good read.
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