Category Archives: Books

Ada Palmer

Posted on by
Reply
Japanese Garden Fountain

Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear. — Henry VI, Part 2, Shakespeare

This morning, I was busily losing my soul in YouTube, when I happened upon a series of shorts, where podcaster Dwarkesh Patel was interviewing Ada Palmer, a University of Chicago professor in Renaissance and Intellectual History and an accomplished Sci-Fi writer. I had previously encountered Mr. Patel with his interviews of Sarah Paine, an American historian who teaches at the Naval War College. I found those interviews on Chinese, Japanese, and Russian modern strategy, as well as WWII history fascinating. Just today, Patel is featured in a NY Times article about his interviews of Silicon Valley tech bros. While these interviews hold little interest for me, but they go far to credit Patel’s gravitas.

Gravitas aside, it is Ms. Palmer who captivated me in this interview. In her 2+ hour interview she ranged so widely that the only comparable conversation in my experience would be the one captured in Louis Malle’s movie, My Diner with Andre. This podcast is subtitled, “Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird.” To summarize this podcast, Palmer explores the Renaissance’s information technology revolution and its parallels with our current computer-based revolution. But to summarize it so is only to do the thoughts expressed within a disservice. Bite the bullet and watch the show.

Mark of the Octopus

Posted on by
Reply


You could call it a love affair with all thing’s octopi, but at this point it is more like a one-night stand. The night before last, we watched the documentary, My Octopus Teacher. This movie tells the story of the year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a common octopus in a South African kelp forest. It won Best Documentary at the 93rd Academy’s. Its cinematography is mesmerizing, combined with its hypnotic narration, no wonder I was smitten.

Yesterday, I stayed home and Flora, the housekeeper who came to clean the house. Anne, Jay and Carl went to Point Lobos and walked along the coast. Come the afternoon, Flora finished and the four of us went to Monterey. After lunch, we hit the aquarium. Typically, we go there first thing in the morning, trying to beat the rush. This time it was the reverse. We closed the place. By the end of the day, the aquarium really clears out. Our last two hours there were the best that I ever experienced. The field trips had all left, and the place was actually quite empty. The docents outnumbered the remaining visitors. At closing time, I swung by the octopus to see it one more time. Previously, it had been curled up on itself in a corner, barely visible. This time it was out and about. There were three of us there to watch him, a man, a docent and myself. We were all checking him (a male Pacific octopus) out as he did the same to us.

That night, I continued my octopus-adventure. I watched a Sea Hunt episode entitled “Mark of the Octopus”. This sixties TV show featured Lloyd Bridges as frogman Mike Nelson, a sort of skin-diving detective. In this episode an evil doer was murdering fellow divers and covering up his acts by leaving his victim’s bodies covered with red hickeys that were supposed to be caused by some killer octopus’s suckers. Nelson wasn’t buying it and in twenty-six minutes had solved the case, brought the perps to justice and exonerated the octopus.

In her book, The Soul of an Octopus, author Sy Montgomery describes these creatures as such: “A giant Pacific octopus—the largest of the world’s 250 or so octopus species—can easily overpower a person. Just one of a big male’s three-inch-diameter suckers can lift 30 pounds, and a giant Pacific octopus has 1,600 of them. An octopus bite can inject a neurotoxic venom as well as saliva that has the ability to dissolve flesh.” This sounds pretty scary. They are certainly other worldly and the fact that they are intelligent makes them fascinating to me. An extraterrestrial from our own world. Behind glass they don’t act frightening. More curious, as I was of him. Not that I was ready to plunge into his 47 °F tank, but I think that the water temperature had more to do with that.

CWE Window Walk

Posted on by
Reply


Today, we headed to the Central West End for some holiday shopping at Left Bank Books. I got one book and ordered another, while Anne got a whole basket load of books. Talking with the salesclerk at checkout, Anne mentioned that her sister works for BINC. To which the clerk responded that BINC had helped him to replace his car, after last summer’s tornado had destroyed his existing vehicle. Driving on Lindell, along the north edge of the park there is still plenty of storm damage left to be seen. Dozens of century-old, stately mansions still sport “shower caps”, what we call the white plastic wrappings installed after the storm to protect these houses when their slate and tile roofs were ripped off by the tornado. Trump has instructed FEMA not to offer any Federal aid to Saint Louis for this storm, so homeowners are left to their own devices. The mansion owners surely have insurance, and will likely be alright, but after the storm ravaged the park’s environs, it headed into north Saint Louis, which is black and poor and where many will not recover. Charity is all that they have to rely on now.

Dark Winds

Posted on by
Reply
Roadrunner

In the AMC TV series Dark Winds, Tony Hillerman’s tribal-police mysteries have been vividly brought to life on the small screen. Set in the Navajo Nation and filmed on location in New Mexico this mystery series is written, directed and performed largely by Native Americans. Dark Winds features Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee, two tribal policemen and two of Hillerman’s favorite police detectives. We meet these two characters in the early seventies when they first meet. Zahn McClarnon plays Leaphorn and leads this series. He seems to be Hollywood’s go to actor for tribal policemen, having previously played one for Longmire and again in Reservation Dogs. This series opens with a violent armored-car robbery in downtown Gallup, New Mexico, complete with a helicopter as the getaway vehicle. This small sleepy town was a lot quieter when we stopped there for breakfast last Sunday. We are halfway through the first of two seasons on Netflix. A third season is available on AMC, and I already have plans to exercise my free trial offer to watch that season there.

This show is full of mysticism and magic. There is an evil witch that you do not want to mess with. There are also dreams that have real life consequences. Its 1973 setting means Vietnam is a thing, along with the radical Native American movement of that era. The FBI or the Federal Bureau of Incompetence according to Leaphorn is nosing about. Basically, getting in Leaphorn’s face and ruining his day. One of the few white actors in the show, Rainn Wilson, plays the sleeziest of used car salesmen. We are enjoying this show a lot. Watching this Hillerman story, instead of reading or listening to it has added an extra dimension that has made sharing this experience a treasure.

Open Road

Posted on by
Reply
Open Skies, Open Road

Ladies do you suffer from truck clots? You know, clumps of semis that impede your forward progress as you go sailing down the open road? When you go to pass them, they start trying to pass each other, but they do it so slowly that they seem more like giant tortoises trying to hump each other. Then try Warfarin brand road thinner. A heaping table spoon or two in every coffee cup at your local truck stop ought to do the trick. Works well on rats too.

Rest stop with ferrets, a white one and a brown one. In the ladies room one woman spies a coin on the floor and asks her friend if she should pick it up. Oh no the other woman answers its dirty. What if it was a hundred dollar bill? Then definitely not. They lace those bills with fentanyl. If you touch one then you pass out. When you wake up again you find that you have been trafficked.

We have been augmenting satellite radio with audio books. While we were in Monterey, Anne went on a Tony Hillerman tear. My dad had quite the collection, but we found one that she had not read, The Blessing Way. It was one of his earlier novels dating back to the seventies. I appreciated the Navajo lore. This story featured witches, what we would call werewolves. Four mountains sacred to the Navajo were also mentioned in the book. We saw two of them, Mount Taylor and the San Francisco Peaks. Local tie ins like this is why we like to choose books set where we are traveling.  

It rained all day in the desert. There are flash flood warnings out tonight. One is quite nearby. Anne’s comment was good thing that we are on the second floor. We are in Needles tonight. Tomorrow we will be in Monterey.