There be many shapes of mystery,
and many things God makes to be,
past hope or fear,
and the end men looked for cometh not,
and a path is there where no one sought.
so hath it fallen here.
--Euripides
I took the Amtrak home to my folks for Christmas, for several reasons--caution and curiosity (an increasingly unreliable car and a simple desire to 'see what it's like').
The total amount of traveling that I did was almost double the amount it would have taken to just drive the eight hours home: 2 hours driving from Stanford, KY to Union Terminal in Cincinnati, OH; 10 hours on the Amtrak; 2 hours on the Union Pacific Northwest commuter train to Harvard, IL; almost 1 hour driving along Rte 173 to Rockford, IL. This does not include the number of hours spent waiting here and there. Suffice to say I left Stanford around 5 PM Friday night and got to Rockford around 3:30 PM on Saturday.
Would I have rather spent 8 hours driving in a car with nothing but my thoughts and vast cornfields to keep me company, or reading?
The virgin brings forth today the Word Eternal and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable Angels give glory with shepherds and the magi journey with the star when for our sakes was born as a new babe He who is from eternity, God.
I am currently in a house with 6 cats, 2 dogs, and five other humans besides me.
The power struggles between the cats are interesting largely because they are so subtle. A stranger would think all the cats are getting along just fine, but they aren't looking close enough. True, each cat's doing his/her own thing--Pope's on the rug in the living room, Bea's on the table in the dining room, Callie's under the guest bed, Toby's dozing on the in-law's bed, Burt's on the chair in the basement, and Delta is sleeping in the closet downstairs--but they are missing those rare encounters where these seemingly laid-back animals display their ferocious, mostly hidden, natures.
When they move through the house, it's mostly uneventful, or so it seems. Except for the alert ears, the penetrating eyes, the deliberate cold shoulders, the twitching tails, one would think the cats are fine in each other's presence. But then an encounter happens, explosive, shocking, over as quick as it began: a yowl, a BAM-BAM-BAM of a paw against another cat's head, fur on end, fangs bared. Then something is decided (we humans don't know what the outcome was) and the cats return to their docile selves, ignoring each other, going their own way.
Who was the victor? Who gave way? We'll never know.
I came across this intriguing title from the June 1872 issue of Popular Science: "On the artificial production of stupidity in schools." And I thought this was a recent problem.
One of the cool things about google digitizing magazines is that it captures the entire magazine, not just the articles (something many expensive databases do not do). This might not seem so awesome today, but think about how curious it is to see ads from fifty, even one hundred years ago. Such primary source material gives you a unique perspective on history.
Sometimes you can do everything you can possibly do, and it still isn't enough.
A student had a problem locating an online article at the library. It was in the 2004 issue of some random journal. A search of our online journal list pulls up this random journal...so it looks like we have it. But, there is a indication of the years we have access to, clearly delineated when the user clicks on random journal title. 2004 is not included in those years. Yet said student does not register this.
This is something that I have noticed while helping people, both at the public library and at the university. People do not seem to read what is on the screen in front of them. At first, I assumed this was just laziness on their part (students today tend to give up at the first obstacle they encounter in their searches). Then I started wondering whether there is something wrong with the design of the websites they are looking at: is the layout confusing, the text too weird, the colors off-putting? Does our online journal list fall into any of those categories?
Something to think about next year. I'm supposed to be on break.
I spent the day without my hearing aid, due to an infection that refused to be subdued. I think the last time I went without my hearing aid for a day was 8 or 10 years ago when my ear swelled shut, like a clam jealously guarding its treasure.
It was (and is) a curious experience. You would think that being nearly deaf like me, I would be accustomed to it. And I am, to the extent that I look forward to being swaddled in silence every night. But to be up and about, doing things, with a vociferous cat underfoot, and not hearing any of it, is strange. My brain begins to reach for the sounds that it feels should be there. The rustle of a shirt, the tapping of fingers against the keyboard, the hiss of water shooting out of the faucet, the cat chirping at the birds outside. I find myself rehearsing those sounds in my mind, and, like the person trying too hard to remember the face of a person she treasured, losing my grip on them the harder I try.
This list was compiled in the U.K. by the BBC. The average adult has read only 6 of the books on the list.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog. (This list in no way represents the top 100 books. It’s missing the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. For shame.)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession - AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
One of the nice things about looking for houses is getting to indulge my curiosity about nooks and crannies--hidden spots of a house. Every older home I pass, I wonder what its attic or basement is like, where the secret places are--a window-seat, a spot beneath a stairwell, a door that leads to another door.
So when we stepped inside the house I told you about below, it was like walking into a candy store. Never mind that my practical self was already decided (is it unfortunate that my practicality and imagination can co-exist so easily?), I was entranced from the moment we stepped into the cavernous, light-flooded foyer. A grand staircase spiraled up on the left, a broad hallway stretched ahead, populated with numerous doors that opened into other rooms that opened into more rooms with more doors.
A huge chimney anchored the house--almost every room touched it, and the fireplaces dominated those rooms, decked out in gleaming wood finery. Quite breathtaking.
It was a home I would have loved growing up in (I can see my parents rolling their eyes).
Then Jon and I walked out the back door, the realtor locked up, and we turned our backs on it.
Jon and I have tentatively started looking for houses.
One thing we have learned : pictures can be deceiving.
The house itself was quite all right, an older home built around a massive central chimney. Its neighbor, however, made Jon and me look at each other as we shared the same thought: No longer interested. The neighboring house was a dumpy building, overgrown with weeds, festooned with junk, and guarded by a fitful junkyard dog who barked whenever a leaf fell from a tree (which is another way of saying "nonstop"). The crowning glory of said house was a large confederate flag emblazoned with the words: "Heritage not hate."
I worked from home today. It was rather boring, though I was able to watch TLC's What Not to Wear while eating lunch, and pick up around the house when I needed a break. Pope slept at my feet most of the time (now I can see why he goes on wild romps about the house when we're ready for bed).
I hate my car with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. It is becoming unpredictable at the worst possible time.
If anyone at work doubts how much I love the Harry Potter books, they doubt no more starting today. The head of our department came by, holding The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and I gasped, clasping my hands in front of my chest.
The Twilight craze has hit J.'s school. He overheard two girls discussing the Twilight movie.
One girl, not too keen on the books, asked "Why is the dialogue so corny? Why does Edward talk that way?"
And the other girl, a fanatic, replied,"Well, he just doesn't know any better. He's a vampire--he's not normal, so he doesn't know that's not the way people talk."
The excuse for vampires prone to corny language: they just don't know any better!
I think Jon learned something new about what it's like to live with a hard-of-hearing person.
Earlier this week, he accidentally locked himself out of the house one morning while going outside to warm his car up. As this was a workday, he needed to get inside pretty quick to get the rest of his stuff.
I was in the bathroom at this time, enjoying the warmth of our space heater while getting ready for work.
He started out by knocking on the door (which I didn't hear). Then ringing the doorbell (which I didn't notice). Then pounding on the door (which I didn't notice). Then furiously assaulting the door and doorbell (which I still didn't register). By this time, he realized that I was not coming to the door and that he would need to figure out another way to get in. So he climbed on top of the first floor back-porch, crawled up and over the roof of the house, and squeezed through a window into our front room.
When I say I didn't "notice" or "register" these frantic noises he was making, I mean that I did hear them, but that my brain (bless its heart, trying to process mumbo-jumbo) translated these various noises as: Pope galloping through the apartment (which he does often enough) and Jon gargling salt water (he had a cold at this time). How the doorbell could sound like gargles is beyond me, but that's just the closest match my brain could come up with.
This is one of the nicely refurbished shelters on the trail. They used to be more cramped, with chain link fences stretched across the open side, the idea being that this would keep bears out. As hikers were expected to cook their food behind the chain link fence, hang their food bags from the roof behind the fence, and keep all their intoxicatingly smelly gear behind the fence, where do you think the bears wanted to be?
A hiker we met at this shelter told a bear story about this very shelter. He and his wife were eating behind the fence when a bear came up. "Oh, how cute!" They said, taking its picture as it paced back and forth in front of the fence. They stopped saying that when it hooked a claw under the gate and opened it as if it were a welcoming door. It came in, grabbed a backpack and dragged it out, where it proceeded to maul it in search of food. When it found nothing, it returned and took the food they were eating.
Maybe you're asking why we stay in shelters, knowing that 400 pound+ creatures are roaming nearby. Our reasons are this: bears are interested in food. They have no interest in altercations with humans. We hang our food a good ways from the shelter, and cook all our food outside the shelter so that there is no inviting scent associated with the shelter, calling out to bears: "Free dinner! Here!"
We are 1 million more times likely to be assaulted by mice than bears.
The simple things in life really stand out when you go hiking. Nothing warms the heart and lightens the load like seeing shelter just ahead after a long day's hike.
I have a little adventure to relate, from our time in the Smokies in October. On our last morning there, at Icewater Springs Shelter, I had to use the privy (shortly after Jon took the picture above).
Obviously, the privy is a little ways from the shelter: through the grass, down a couple rock steps and over a log. And it was dark. So I'm inside the privy, steeling myself up to bare my skin to the bitter cold (we woke up to frost), when I hear a deep "Hwoof!"
As this is not the typical sound of wind or birds (which weren't even out), I paused, a little perplexed. Again, "hwoof!"
And again (imagine the sound a large dog makes).
When that connection was made, the next logical step sent the adrenaline pumping through my limbs: what if this is a bear?...And why am I still out here, vulnerably situated in a giant box?
I hightailed it out of there, every step agonizingly slow, acutely aware of the wind nipping the back of my neck.
Later that day, I mentioned this to Jon. He slowly turned his head to look at me, eyes solemn,"That's the sound a bear makes when he is making his presence known."
What is Your Blog Worth determines the profitability level of your blog based on Technorati ratings and advertising potential.
According to Typeanalyzer, I am an ISTP (Mechanic). This means that I "enjoy adventure and risk such as driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters." Let us pause a moment and ponder how true this is.
Genderanalyzer tells me that I write like a man.
The Blog Readability Test has decided that I write at the college/postgrad level.
In light of some people's despair (which I do not share) over Obama becoming president, thinking this will usher in a godless age (isn't this what some group of people or other think about every new president or ruler?), they would do well to consider Cal Thomas's article Religious Right R.I.P. He suggests that instead of trying to wield "political power for influence" (which hasn't really amounted to much in the past 30 years), evangelicals should instead focus their energy on following the example of Jesus (It always astonishes me how this is an old idea that is always new): living the life they would like to see everyone else live.
A quote: "Too many conservative Evangelicals have put too much faith in the power of government to transform culture. The futility inherent in such misplaced faith can be demonstrated by asking these activists a simple question: Does the secular left, when it holds power, persuade conservatives to live by their standards? Of course they do not. Why, then, would conservative Evangelicals expect people who do not share their worldview and view of God to accept their beliefs when they control government?"
This was about four days worth of food, pots, sleeping bags, clothes to sleep in, sleeping pads, and other what-nots: a house on your back, so to speak. Jon's pack weighed almost 30 pounds.
Jon and I ended up at the Obama rally in Cincinnati, OH on Sunday through random chance. We were in town visiting the animals at the zoo. After oohing over the big cats, we decided to scope out the McMillian Street neighborhood for food and we saw a flyer for the rally while walking past a coffeehouse. We figured it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity, especially if he was going to be president.
This was my first rally, and I think it will be my last. 95% waiting, and 5% trying to see and hear the man over and around the noise and frantically waving signs.
Obama could say "The" and everyone would start screaming. But it was worth it.
Instead of voting based on whether Obama is black, or Palin sounds dumb, or McCain looks old, we need to really think about what we expect from the next administration, and vote accordingly.
To learn more about Barack Obama, go to his website.
To learn more about John McCain, go to his website.
Those wanting to know the truth behind all the ads and claims that the candidates make should go to FactCheck which is a site that works to be a "nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics...[and] monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases."
Head over to google's 2008 US Voter Info website if you're not sure exactly where you need to go to vote.
We have access to a journal published in 1665. Philosophical Transactions is a lot of fun to browse, as the article titles are elaborately wordy and the articles themselves an intriguing read, not to mention the fact that you're looking at a digital replica of typeface from the late 17th century.
To give you an idea of what's in there, you can look at the article published by Edmund Halley in 1705 describing the comet that was named after him: "Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis." You can't read it unless you know Latin, but, hey!, it's pretty darn cool.
Some other titles in there:
"The Description of a Monstrous Child, Born Friday the 29th. of February 1684. at a Village Called Heisagger, Distant about 4 English Miles from Hattersleben, a Town in South- Jutland, under the King of Denmark's Dominion, Communicated by Mr. Christopher Krahe, a Member of the Ecclesiastical Consistory and Provost of all the Churches Belonging to the Said Diocess"
"Two Letters Formerly Written to Mr. H. O, by Dr. M.L. Ist. concerning Some Very Aged Persons in the North of England. 2d. about the Projection of the Threads of Spiders, of Bees Breeding in Cases Made of Leaves, of a Viviparous Fly, and of Great Numbers of Maggots Observed at the Time of the Plague, A. D. 1666"
"Of a Place in England, Where, without Petrifying Water, Wood is Turned into Stone"
The older movies had a sense of weight, tangible in the sense of the journey that Indy undertook in each of them, and we went along for the ride. The series was full of action/adventure drama and mystical overtones owing to the various searches for long lost artifacts, but I think it endures because it speaks to the curiosity in all of us, the need to know about something Other (whatever your religion, or lack thereof). Another reason for the popularity of the movies is the sense that we could do what Indy does, that the adventures he embarks on could possibly happen in real life.
This movie is just another action/adventure flick full of ridiculous fight scenes that could not logically happen in real life, and the search for the crystal skull is full of mumbo-jumbo that makes no sense to anyone who hasn't looked into the eyes of the crystal skull and communed with the extraterrestrial being within. Sure, we're all curious to know how ancient people could have achieved what they did without modern technology, but the movie's vague answer, that "Knowledge," granted from the aliens, is the reason (with no further elaboration, other than a character saying "They have gone into the space between spaces."), coupled with the focus on flashy special effects rather than a journey that Indy embarks on, makes for an overall silly movie that should never have stooped so low.
This reminded me of how sometimes I would think about what it would be like to live "back then," such as in Jane Austen's time. Then I would wonder what it would really be like if I was transported warts, hearing impairment and all, into the Regency era. I suppose, considering the fact that I've been hard of hearing (to the point that I am more likely to feel thunder, not hear it) since I was little, I would be considered dumb, especially if I did not have someone like Anne Sullivan to work with me. It's a sobering realization, especially just for daydreaming--I shouldn't be so literal in my imagination.
Deep autumn is here. The air is snappy and biting, no longer lazy with heat. This means sweaters and blankets, thick socks and soft scarves.
It also means that "cold as death" is around the corner. I use this term for that cold that gets into your bones, that you can't seem to shake unless you are standing in front of a bonfire. It's not necessarily limited to the dark winter months of the far north, where the wind howls for miles over the plains.
I freely admit that it's entirely subjective (to me). Jon finds this hilarious, he who can go outside in 50 degree weather with nothing on but a shirt and pants and be "on the cool side of comfortable".
I write this we're entering an uncertain period at the office--the span of time between when it first gets cold outside and when they turn the heat on inside--and it's "cold as death" in here.
We got a new camera, and have been playing around with it: me by taking way too many pictures of Pope, and Jon by actually tinkering with the bazillion buttons and controls that come with it.
Having a laptop and free wi-fi is awesome. Case in point:
Last week, I hung out in Jon's truck in the parking lot at Asbury College while he went to class for a couple hours. There was wi-fi in the area, so I was able to knock out an hour of work for my job while keeping the cat company in the truck. (Yes, the cat was in there with me, curled up on the driver's seat). When work was done, I watched youtube videos and trailers for various movies while night descended.
Stay tuned for stories and pictures from the Smokies (I have an adventure to relate)
We will be hiking along the Appalachian Trail in the Smoky Mountains. We'll start off hiking south from Clingmans Dome, then we'll double back and hike north to Charlies Bunion.
We're getting ready to hike the Smokies later this week. There is a bear sized pile of camping gear in the living room, which Pope investigates cautiously. Sometimes he sets off tiny avalanches of gear and flees wide-eyed, as if the hounds of hell are on his heels.
We have copious amounts of trail mix, which I know I will probably get sick of after the first day--which is strange, as I love nuts, chocolate, and dried fruit.
You can search Google's news archive for some interesting topics (the timeline can be a little misleading, as it uses dates from within the articles--which may not always be an accurate reflection of the publication date of a particular article):
Our cat has learned about the outdoors. He slipped out the door this morning and was investigating the neighbor's porch while we frantically searched. Being me, I was already thinking of squealing tires and a limp form on the road.
He couldn't resist the lure of kitty treats, however.
I went to the Kentucky Library Association annual conference last week in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was for professional development, so just about everything was paid for--a perk that I am still getting used to.
The funny thing was--I didn't get as much out of it as I thought I would. Apparently, I'm not alone in thinking this. My colleagues told me and a fellow newbie to get used to that feeling.
The two sessions I enjoyed (out of a two day event) were "Next generation catalog landscape" and "Copyright in the library: painless solutions for the moderately squeamish." Absolutely fascinating for those of you outside the library world, I know; nonetheless, very enlightening for those of us that need to know.
I felt very much a "Generation-Y" person there, a youngish person in a sea of mostly grey-haired professional folk (I was wearing jeans alongside other folks smartly dressed in blazers and shiny loafers). My library is remarkably forward-thinking, especially as regards technology and the evolving paradigm embodied in "Web 2.0," so it was interesting to encounter folks who were reluctant to acknowledge the place that technology has in libraries, especially as our patron group is shifting as younger generations grow up. I understand this reluctance, even as I am impatient with it.
This morning, while walking to Magee's, I came across a chipmunk. It was stretched out, tiny and slim, on the sidewalk, as if in sweet repose, were it not for the rosy blush staining the sidewalk beneath its head.
I looked up and saw a large, brilliant white cat with golden eyes staring at me, almost as if in challenge, "What?! What do you expect?"
For those of you dying to know, my official title is "Electronic Resources Access Librarian." I have business cards, too, if you want one. My supply will probably last until I die.
So what exactly do I do at work?
I tell people who ask that I deal with all the "online stuff," such as
databases
online journals
I also deal with access issues (as my job title suggests), which involves anything from checking links to communicating with publishers and/or our middleman at Ebsco (which handles most of our subscriptions) to updating SFX, our linking system and all other sorts of things.
Are you even more confused? See why I just said "online stuff"?
I also spend some time on the reference desk, am working my way into serving on some committees, and am a liaison to some departments on campus.
This kind of stuff fascinates me. It appeals to the pack-rat within, the curiosity-shoppe minded person living in the back, the little kid still enthralled by oddities of nature.
There are few things I keep tally of. One of those is how many years it has been since I've had to throw up.
I had a bout of food poisoning this weekend. We think it was the spoonbread at the Spoonbread Festival in Berea, Kentucky. One hour after eating, I was vomiting in the parking lot, and vomiting on the hour until late that night, with the Discovery Channel to keep me company, long after there was any food left to come out. I lost four pounds.
It's rather amazing how vigorously the body works to defend itself.
I'm a big fan of Bill Bryson. His writing style is very laid-back, intelligent without being stuffy, not to mention laugh-out-loud hilarious at times. His writing is witty in a subtle, conversational way, and he has a knack for using words in unexpected ways.
"It shows a balding but not unhandsome man of about forty who sports a trim beard. In his left ear he wears a gold earring. His expression is confident, serenely rakish. This is not a man, you sense, to whom you would lightly entrust a wife or grown daughter."--p. 2 of "Shakespeare: the world as stage"
His book "A Walk in the Woods" is a classic. Some quotes from there:
"I turned to my own bunk and examined it with a kind of appalled fascination. If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it."
About a waitress in whom Katz (Bryson’s hiking partner) feels a romantic interest:
"She went off to deal with a distant customer, and Katz watched her go with something like paternal pride. 'She's pretty ugly, isn’t she?' he said with a big, incongruous beam. I sought for tact. 'Well, only compared with other women.'"
Jon is trying to convince me to accompany him on more winter hiking trips.
It's quite easy to want to agree, while one is wrapped tight in humidity, wearing short sleeved shirts and sandals in response to glaring heat--when cold weather is easily relegated to distant memories and vague associations.
Then I remember one of my very first nights out on a cold winter's night--how it seemed the stars must shatter on such brittle air, how a breeze felt like razors scraping my pink, raw cheeks, how strange it was that I felt warmer outside the sleeping bag than in it.
But that was back when I was inexperienced, before I realized that bodily discomfort and the nearness of death don't necessarily come hand in hand. Each time we go out, the more accustomed I get to the things nature throws our way, to the point that I treasure a blurry picture Jon took of the two of us laughing in a spate of icy rain that blew parallel to the ground.
Such moments make the simple pleasures of being dry, cocooned in warmth, with a mug of piping hot chicken noodle soup all the more treasured--you no longer take them for granted.
There's a new cool feature over at Google Maps. They now have a "Street View" option that lets you actually see the location you are pinpointing on the map. It's a strange feature that lets you "walk" along a street, looking at the houses along the way.
I looked at my parents' house in Rockford, and, lo and behold, there was my dad's truck parked out front. You can also look "up" at the sky and treetops while in the "Street View" option (you have to play around with the buttons a little to get a handle on it).
I went for a long time without seeing No Country for Old Men--it just didn't seem my cup of tea, in spite of the rave reviews it garnered everywhere. Then a good friend of mine from the old library told me to see it, so I did, and was blown away. I have no intention of watching it again--it's not Pride & Prejudice--but it sticks with me still. In the midst of its bleak imagery (the amoral hitman appears to get away, leaving a rampage of blood behind), the good characters shine brightly all the more.
Two things stick with me from that movie: the wife of the dumb and careless ranch-hand. When the hitman shows up in her home near the end of the movie, she refuses to submit to his power, thereby breaking the cycle of violence that he thrives on. The other thing is the sheriff's story of a dream he had, of his father riding ahead of him into the darkness, and how he knew that there would be a fire waiting for him, a lone point of warmth and light in the middle of a dark wilderness.
Eastern Promises is strange. A rather bleak tale of a midwife who comes against the powerful Russian mafia in London, the movie manages to make her small victory quite feasible, in the face of such mindless eye-for-an-eye violence.
I went home for a spell--what better way to spend the break between my old and new jobs? Not much happened while I was North, which is the way I intended. I spent lots of time at the house, scrapbooking and reading and pestering the new cat and watching cable (I got addicted to these shows: "It's me or the dog," "Jon and Kate plus eight," and "What not to wear"--I know, I'm pathetic).
In addition to spending time with the folks I love--my parents, Grandma, my dear cousin Rosie with whom I grew up (I treasure a photograph of all us baby cousins piled on the floor, where Rosie is staring, open-mouthed, at something off camera, and I am transfixed by her open mouth, reaching my pudgy fingers out, determined to have a look-see), I ran into some old friends from the high school years: Keelan McMorrow and Salem Barker.
I am blown away by how they turned out, maturing into full-fledged artists with art shows in the Chicago area. When we were all younger, I would never have seen them turning out this way; yet, looking back with hindsight, I can see clues scattered along the years that point to their unfolding as artists.
