Month: December 2022

BG: Mni Sota Macoce: Land of the Dakota, Gwen Westerman & Bruce White

Wednesday, 14 December 2022

Chapter 1

  • Question of what it means to ‘possess’ or ‘own’ land; and, corrrespondingly, incursion or settlement. 
  • Land ownership described in terms of water — e.g., along rivers to lakes 
  • misunderstanding of nomadic
  • References and allusions to war, enemies, defense, captives, and human sacrifice
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Writing Exercises, 1 (From OBE)

I am trying to focus more on applying what I notice in reading essays to my own writing. Here are a set of prospective exercises I’ve generated after re-reading selections from the Oxford Book of Essays with KC :

  • Superposition. Providing differing points of view on the same thing/event/space to convey uncertainty/ambiguity. [cf. The Haunted Mind, Note 3, offers alternate PoVs: Is the sound of the bell from the dream or the world? Is the author is in the space of the dream or are the dream figments in the bedroom?]
  • Minor Key Interlude. A description of a train of thought, or conversation, that in response to some happenstance moves into a minor – dark, distressing, depressing – mode, and then, through more happenstance or perhaps intentional effort, moves back out of it. Attend to the inflection points. [cf. The Haunted Mind, Note s 6 & 7, where hypnagogic turn dark when being swaddled in bedclothes evokes a corpse in a shroud, and then attention to everyday objects serves to vitiate that line of thought].
  • Animated Trajectory through Three-space. Convey the sensation of a 3D environment by allusions to its structure; by agents moving through it; by objects falling and bouncing; by sound. [cf. The Acorn-Gatherer, Note 2, on the rooks moving about in the tree].
  • Persuasion via vivid description and inserting oneself into the scene. Vividness, particularity and layering of detail makes a description more convincing, and then with the describer injects themselves into the scene as describes themselves in the act of seeing and feeling. [cf. The Clergyman (Beerbohm)]
  • Zoom in from Safe Distant Anonymity to Too-Close Intimate Proximity. Zoom in on people interacting. Begin with a comfortable distant overview (e.g. momentary distant glimpses), and then zoom in to show the fine-structure of intimate and not-entirely-easy interaction, whether wanted or not (e.g. continuous up-close eye-contact). (cf. Insouciance.)

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Notes on the Geology of Baja

Wednesday, 7 December 2022

Summary

  • 200 Ma, on: Subduction of the Farallon plate resulted in arc volcanism that produced a range of mountains along the west coast of North America. (These will eventually erode, and their batholiths will be exhumed and form today’s mountains and the eroded sediment will accumulate in basins forming soil and lithifying into sedimentary rock.)
  • 20 Ma. As the Farallon plate completed its subduction, it broke into microplates, and
    (1) SAFS. the East Pacific Rise subducted initating the transformation of a convergent margin into a transform margin and the San Andreas Fault system, and
    (2) Cabo volcanoes. continued subduction of the microplates produced volcanism that can be seen around Cabl
  • ~17 Ma. Complex tectonics, due to the SAF system, that I don’t really understand, generated the basin and range system farther north, and this in turn is thought to have channelized the stress that eventually opened the gulf of California.
  • ~15 – 6 Ma. Tectonics lead to capture of Baja by Pacific plate, transitional shearing in the proto-Gulf of California, and at 6 Ma the beginning of the ‘unzipping’ of Baja.
  • ~3.5 Ma. Development of spreading centers in the Gulf of California, and extrusion of mostly basaltic oceanic crust.
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