civic notes, mmxxiii-viii-xxix

Round Rock opened a new public

library building a few months ago. Bren and I were in the area so we paid our first visit and got library cards. It's a nice three-story building, pretty busy for a Tuesday morning.

snippets, 8-25-2016

On reading: in words and pictures, Reading and resting and Children, reading and tough magic (Myth & Moor). Indeed:

book notes, mmxvi-vi-x

Lassie Come-Home.

:)

snippets, 10-2-2014

I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread or anything made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind they had plenty in the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed over the less.

- John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Yeah, those were the days . . . but even in these modern times, most Texas BBQ joints list chicken as a side dish, right below the beans and potato salad.

(Oh, and this may be heresy, apostasy, whatever, but if you go to one of those places and order a quarter pound of smoked turkey and some coleslaw, it's almost like you're eating healthy!)

ondine, x-ii-xiii

Ulysses had a two-year-old dog, Argos, that he had to leave behind when he sailed off to Troy. When he finally returned, 20 years later and disguised by Minerva as a decrepit beggar, an old hound at his threshold lifted his head and wagged his tail upon hearing his long-lost master's voice. Ulysses turned his face and wiped a tear away as the old dog died, happy at having fulfilled his final duty of welcoming his master's return.

That's from one of the earliest works of Western literature.

well it worked for telemachus

I was feeling a bit blue this weekend until I ran across this passage in the Odyssey:

...he went to the place of assembly spear in hand - not alone, for his two hounds went with him...

Smooch-fest! Belly rubs! (O&P were discomfited by being called "hounds" at first but were mollified when I explained that I was using the term generically.)

Also, this: Dogs: an uncomplicated relationship (from The Guardian).

they should have listened to that guy

From the Iliad, Panthous:

The darkness of night will for a time stay the son of Peleus, but if he find us here in the morning when he sallies forth in full armour, we shall have knowledge of him in good earnest.

Heh. Yeah you will.

snippets, 8-27-2013

Great links to great books in this post at dangerousmeta (see especially the list of links in Emmett's comment). I've read many of these (some, like the Apology, a least a half-dozen times), but I tend to wander and not stick to any of the better-formulated plans. Friday might be a good day to re-start the GBOTWW ten-year plan (since I start a new decade that day), or I might just tag along with St. John's undergraduate reading schedule - their fall semester begins on Thursday...and, you know, you gotta admire a school that has a bona fido library mascot, right?

Update, lunchtime: I just downloaded all the e-texts for St. John's first semester from MIT's Classics Archive and sent them to my Kindle. Took about 15 minutes. Brave new world.

snippets, 7-21-2013

So this was Sorrow. Sorrow smelt of carnations and cellar rats and potato salad...Sorrow separated you from everyone else and Sorrow was a puzzle with no answer. Sorrow wasn't bad or good; it was just there making each person strange and lonely.

-Dawn Powell, My Home is Far Away

Highly recommended.

snippets, 12-5-12

Here is one of my all-time favorite pictures. (I'm logging it here so I can find it again.) Humans are interesting.

In other news, I've been re-reading The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. I don't often revisit books (life's too short), but I could read this one over and over.

epi-logue

Sorting through a small stack of novels my mom brought me last week, I stumbled across In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish. I took it to the now sun-filled bowl of heat overflowing what yesterday, and for the thirty-odd summers preceding it, was a deep, cool pool of shade. I opened the book randomly to the first sentence of the second chapter, "We were born together on the open road of the chinaberry tree...one in two and two in one," and on the page just before it, this:

...ascend with your people, higher and farther than what the myths have prepared for you and me. Write, yourself, the history of your heart, from the moment Adam was struck with love, until the resurrection of your people. And write, yourself, the history of your kind, from the time you borrowed the sea's rhythm and manner of breathing, until your return to me alive."

whatcha reading xxvi

"These dishes have magical properties, little mouse. They were once served on the longest night of the year," Baba said, while peeling potatoes for the varenyky. "Each one has a story, and when you make them, you should remember the story like a prayer for your family."

"A prayer, Baba?" Like the 'Our Father'?" I asked, while playing with the hay we were going to spread under the table for dinner.

"A little bit. But these prayers are older than that. They are like the prayers of a pine tree when a bird makes a nest in her branches, or the prayers of a river when she is full of fish. These are prayers of the spirit, blessings that the mistress of the house prepares for her entire family. You must make each dish with intention. It is a special job, to be taken seriously--" Baba stooped down to tickle me "--but also with much joy. That's why it's good to cook in a house filled with laughter. Some of that joy will get passed into the food and will help the meal be happy."

- The Silence of Trees, Valya Dudycz Lupescu

whatcha reading xxv

Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval.

"If you don't mind my expressin' my feelin's, Mr. Scott, I'll make free to say you're seventeen kinds of damn fool an' all of 'em different, an' then some."

- White Fang, Jack London

Sister Wendy once said of Guernica that it was more poster than great work of art. That's kind of how I feel about this book.

whatcha reading xxiv

I took Inyo running in the desert, the two of us like a couple of white dwarf stars drawing too much mass from each other and about to explode from the pressure. Gazing upward into that unpeopled sky-country, Inyo orbiting me in the dark, I saw us as specks in all that celestial acreage where she and I could never run. Along the rutted dirt track we picked up the pace...faster now, we sprinted uphill until my lungs ached and I fell on my knees. Pressing my palms into the dirt, I realized how close I'd come to having our lives figured out. But close wasn't good enough...

- Part Wild, Ceiridwen Terrill

Great book. Heartbreaking, honest, enlightening, real. Here's another favorite quote: "I don't know if there's a heaven for people, but there's definitely a heaven for dogs...No, dogs aren't perfect. They're a miracle."

whatcha reading xxiii

"...The diamond which glittered in the window...shines with more splendor when it is our own; but if we are compelled to acknowledge the superiority of another, and still must retain the one that is inferior, do you not know what we have to endure?"

"Worldling," murmured the count.

- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

I don't know how I missed this book until now. I guess the title is so familiar that I assumed I must have read it at some time or other. I'm so glad I picked it up - free download - hooray for the classics! This one definitely belongs in the desert-island bag. Great, great, great book.

whatcha reading xxii

The problem of getting horses and mules ashore was solved in typical [General] Shafter fashion: they were simply shoved into the sea and left to find the beach for themselves. Some hysterical animals chose to swim instead for Haiti, until a bugler on the beach thoughtfully blew a cavalry call. The horses, according to one witness, "came round to the right and made for the beach like ships answering their helms."

- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris

Great biography. I have mixed feelings about the man - on one hand I admire his forthrightness and courage, but on the other I wish he would have had a little more humility. Same with his legacy. Interesting fellow.

whatcha reading xxi

Today most Americans have their tissue on file somewhere. When you go to the doctor for a routine blood test or to have a mole removed, when you have an appendectomy, tonsillectomy, or any other kind of ectomy, the stuff you leave behind doesn't always get thrown out. Doctors, hospitals, and laboratories keep it. Often indefinitely.

In 1999 the RAND Corporation published a report (the first, and, so far, last of its kind) with a "conservative estimate" that more than 307 million tissue samples from more than 178 million people were stored in the United States alone. This number, the report said, was increasing by more than 20 million samples each year. The samples come from routine medical procedures, tests, operations, clinical trials, and research donations. They sit in lab freezers, on shelves, or in industrial vats of liquid nitrogen. They're stored at military facilities, the FBI, and the National Institutes of Health. They're in biotech company labs and most hospitals. Biobanks store appendixes, ovaries, skin, sphincters, testicles, fat, even foreskins from most circumcisions. They also house blood samples taken from most infants born in the United States since the late sixties, when states started mandating the screening of all newborns for genetic diseases.

And the scale of tissue research is only getting bigger...

- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

(Shudder.)

This is a great book. It should be required reading for all first-year college students and, uh, anybody who ever plans to visit a doctor.

whatcha reading xx

"...Who walks by my side in life? Who's weak enough to want to go to bed with me? Who loves me? You understand: animal love? Listen."

He laid his hand on Antonio's knee. He raised his wretched face with its heavy eyes towards him.

"There are truths you can sense," he said, "and there are truths which I know. And what I know is greater. In summer, I go and hunt the Lady of the Moons in sand-pits. The sand is motionless, but the air above is restless. Then the sand begins to move, and the females come out. Thus, while you saw nothing, the sand was all bored through inside under the push of the females ascending from the bottom of the earth to meet the males. You see, that brown earth whose surface is smooth and still, but which writhes in the dark like molten iron in the fire. So much for them. And it's the same for others, green like chestnut shoots; for others again, blue like knife-blades, with a black spot on their heads; for brown ones like bricks; for those which are red all over; for black ones with green dots; for green ones with black dots; for round golden ones like small, dry onions; for long ones like pipe-stems; for hard and soft ones; for the sightless ones which make love while sleeping like sacks being filled; and for the ones that shiver all over, more restless than the wind, which can look all around with their large crystal eyes. So much for love."

He tapped his hand on Antonio's knee.

"Seeing all that stir, you're led to think it's got some meaning: an air of joy, a blessing of the earth and of the sun which makes you rejoice. It's a chain, Antonio, the first link. All the rest begins from there. And I haven't yet made you touch the bitter core of those joys.

"You look at them: they make love. The earth has already crammed their heads with smells, and now it strikes with big hammers of joy on the shell of their skulls. You look at them: they are on with a frenzied, solemn toil, not much unlike pain. You feel quite clearly that they're not aware of it all. Obedience is obedience.

"That's the beginning, all the rest must follow. Bellies are in a ferment. A steam like the breath of vats reeks on the world, flush with bushes and trees. Well, now, I'm sorry, but I can hardly tell you everything, and you already feel that if the flails of your arms strike for things like that, it's because somebody else holds the handles. Fights, sting for sting, eggs laid on the breasts of paralytics, meat carried about, beetles' skulls whitening deep in some hole by the side of a surfeited grub, butterflies' bodies sucked up like fruit, and carried away by the wind along with chaff. That's all.

"You said: 'Only a woman.' Good. Your bones are not yet crammed with powder like the barrels of a gun. Go on still making the best of fire and night."

- Song of the World, Jean Giono

whatcha reading xix

The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne's fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions for growth. He put most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he said, in forty years' time, when some great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not fall.

"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are lying down they don't sigh at all," said Marty.

"Do they?" said Giles. "I've never noticed it."

She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--probably long after the two planters should be felled themselves.

"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because they are very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be."

"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her. "You ought not to feel like that, Marty."

Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted on through a great part of the day, almost without another word.

- The Woodlanders, Thomas Hardy

whatcha reading xviii

...I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.

- Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry

This is a magnificent novel, one of the best I've ever read.