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Thursday, November 6th, 2003
I am zipping right through The English Passengers, nearly halfway now, and enjoying it. A geographical issue is bothering me -- if the voyage begins at London and has as its ultimate destination Van Diemen's Land, why would they be going to Jamaica and then to Africa? It seems to me that the logical route would be to head directly south around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean; a side trip to Jamaica means you have to cross and recross the Atlantic. The narrative style of the book -- each chapter is told from the point-of-view of a different character -- encourages me to go back to my reading of The Corrections, where I kept noticing how many different characters I felt sympathy for; I would expect something similar to happen here. But it does not, or not exactly -- I do sympathize with several of the characters; but the book is very broadly comic and much of it is caricature.
posted evening of November 6th, 2003: Respond
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2003
I got home last night to find a package had come for me in the mail -- how exciting! It is from Gary; I opened it up and found he had sent me a new book, with a note to the effect that he thinks I will enjoy it. (And a wonderfully cool bookmark, a snapshot of the Xyris crew from '94, the first year I was working there.) The book is The English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. I started reading it this morning on the train and got hooked into it right away -- it has all the characteristics of a book I would like. The language is playful and erudite. The setting is 19th-Century Man, England, Wales, Australia, and Tasmania and it looks like I will get an introduction to some new history that I did not know, plus a little Manx dialect. I want to write a bit about comparisons to other books that are coming up as I read -- but I think I will wait a bit and see how these comparisons develop, before I commit them to "paper".
posted morning of November 4th, 2003: Respond
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Monday, November third, 2003
This post on Crooked Timber, and the response to it which I came up with in the comments, lead me to wonder which is preferable: false hope, or no hope? My gut reaction is to prefer false hope. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, just might find, you get what you need... -- not sure how this ties in but it does come to mind, yes.
posted afternoon of November third, 2003: Respond
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Sunday, November second, 2003
I took Sylvia and Natalie to the playground today, so as to give Ellen and Lorrain (Natailie's mother) both some time off. The first interaction at the park forebode some trouble; a little boy named (as it turned out) Mikhail was tagging along fairly close behind them when Natalie said, "You can't play with us." Sylvia picked up on that and started getting in Mikhail's face, yelling "You can't play with us!" over and over until he started crying, which he did just as the two girls ran off to the next thing. Well after a bit of chasing around I got them both in hand and walked them back over to apologize and say he could play with them -- I couldn't tell whether Natalie actually did apologize but Sylvia did, in a rather breezy way -- Mikhail cheered right up and the three of them had a pretty good time playing together for about half an hour. Later on, on the way back home, they were reading stories to each other. Sylvia was reading from "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear?" -- this is a book where the question is asked of lots of zoo animals and each of them responds with the next animal and its characteristic noise -- then they all turn out to be kids imitating zoo animals -- it is by Eric Carle, Mr. Very-Hungry-Caterpillar. When Sylvia got to the hippo, she read "Hippopotamus, hippopotamus, what do you hear? I hear a... T. Rex!" Natalie: "No!... That's not a T. Rex!... That's a zebra!" Back and forth for a minute as to whether it is or is not a T. Rex; at last Sylvia says, "I call it a T. Rex." -- for which she adopts a particular, very cute, dramatic tone of voice.
posted evening of November second, 2003: Respond
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Friday, October 31st, 2003
Must be the season of the witch!
posted morning of October 31st, 2003: Respond
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Saturday, October 25th, 2003
And another family picture album entry:
posted evening of October 25th, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, October 23rd, 2003
Developed pictures of the two projects I have finished recently:
posted evening of October 23rd, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, October 16th, 2003
Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep, home of the IMO best comics on the web, celebrated its 5th birthday yesterday. Patrick marked the occasion by unveiling a new front page, the first step in his planned redesign of the site. Go check it out -- there is a poll where you can ask for the new comic you would most like to see. (Hint: vote for Apocamon 4!)
posted afternoon of October 16th, 2003: Respond
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I have linked several times over the past little while to Arthur Silber's blog and just wanted to mention that you should really be reading it. He is a fine writer and really good at finding interesting stuff in the chaos of the world. He is on my blogroll to the left under "Libertarians" of which he is one -- my blogroll is beseeching me for some reorganization but that is not going to happen just yet.
posted afternoon of October 16th, 2003: Respond
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Wednesday, October 15th, 2003
I want to write about the beauty which I hope one day to create. Beauty I believe is in one sense a quality infused into objects by an artisan by the application of his skill. (The obvious truth that there are many other valid meanings of beauty, many involving neither artisan nor object, should not detract from my examination of this particular one.) An artisan -- the master of a craft -- this is what I hope to be. In particular I want to understand furniture-making fully enough to create pieces which possess the grandeur and solidity of 17th- and 18th-Century American furniture pieces; which can stand in a room and lend it firmness. To get to that point I will need to work enough with wood to get a real familiarity with the material; and to work enough with my tools that they become extensions of my body. Update: Here, Mike Recchione says some of what I am trying to get at. I don't care what kind of tools were used to make the things I have, or even whether they were made in a factory or somebody's basement. The thing that counts is how much of their divine spark the makers put into what they were doing.
posted evening of October 15th, 2003: Respond
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