A new SF novel by John Scalzi. The premise is that all of a sudden, with no warning or explanation, the moon turns into cheese. This has various ramifications, and the novel — which hasn’t much of a plot — is how various people react to this event, and its consequences.
I did not care for it. In fact, it is by far my least favorite Scalzi. I will be surprised if many people do, though of course Red Shirts won a Hugo even though I didn’t like it.
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” The Left Hand of Darkness*, Ursula Le Guin. 50th Anniversary Edition.
wECclub: I am trying out this online book club run by the delightful musician-science-literary nerd Elle Cordova. You can find out about the club here, as well as back her many creative activities. This is the first book that I will have read, but the second in the club series. The first is “I Robot,” by Isaac Asimov. I suspect I will go back and read that.
I am happy to have re-read this, after, I would guess, about five decades. I did not remember a lot about it, and the heart of what I remembered was wrong: I had remembered Genly Ai and Estraven having become lovers, if somewhat unwillingly driven to it by the pressures of Keemer and isolation. But they did not, though they did achieve a certain degree of understanding through forced intimacy. I did recall, of course, the hermaphroditism and short period of sexual dimorphism for a few days every month, and I recalled, but with few specifics, that it was clear that it changed how the culture worked.
I did not remember noticing, the first time, Genly Ai’s misogyny. Perhaps I did, but if so it did not stick with me. Nor do I recall many of the events of the book, though I have some memory that there was a journey over ice in which they were isolated and forced to be together in a tent. Nor do I remember how unrelentingly horrid the weather was.
I am struck that, although I recall liking the book, it is missing something whose lack I complain about in many current books: I did not experience much in the way of sympathy or empathy for any of the characters. Towards the end I did want them to make it, and I was sorry that Estraven was killed, but that was about it.
In re-experiencing the book, I think I have two aha’s: First, this time, I am much more aware of the craft of the writing, and in particular the beautiful descriptions to the journey across the ice. That’s no surprise, given that I have been focusing on writing for several years now. The second thing that strikes me is a different feeling about Genly Ai: the fact that he was willing to forever leave his parents, family, and everyone he knew, to journey to distant planets, today, to me, marks him as a damaged person. It’s no surprise, really, that he was a misogynist — it’s a bit of a surprise that he was not worse. I am reminded of one of the Niven and Pournell Known Space books in which it is revealed (very minor spoiler) that no human or other sentient has ever encountered a sane Puppeteer, because no sane Puppeteer would ever risk contact with an alien species.
A very nice opening note by Le Guinn, worth seeking out if you do not have a 1976 or later edition. She argues that SF is not about primarily about extrapolating from the present (though she admits extrapolation can play a role), but rather it is primarily a description of a thought experiment.
About extrapolation, she says memorably “Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing…” ibid. xvi
About the androgynity in the book, she says she is not predicting, but rather:
I’m merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at it us at odd times of day in certain weathers, we already are.”
—ibid., xvii (1976)
Genly Ai, the narrator participates in a royal parade, during which he has ample opportunity to describe himself, his role (an ambassador of sorts from the Ekumen), the people and society he is visiting, and the extremely wretched weather of this world.
We also see awkward conversation with Estraven, his primary supporter and informant, that show, in spite of months (or more?) of that communication, though fluent, is hampered by very basic understandings that are not shared — the mutual only partially-understood incomprehension reminds me of CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series, though of course Le Guinn is preceding this by a couple of decades. In any case, it gradually becomes clear that Estraven is warning Genly Ai that he has fallen out of favor (and/or is perhaps abandoning him). The last line of the chapter: “I was cold, unconfident, obsessed by perfidy, solitude and fear.
This is a story or legend (the book is a collection of accounts, one a memoir, and others seeming anthropological documents assembled by investigators). This story describes a relationship (kemmering) between two brothers, the goes wrong. One brother commits suicide, the other curses their region; at the end, the brother relents, and lifts his curse.
Genly Ai has an audience with the mad King, just before which he learns that Estraven has been exiled and condemned to death. During the audience, he learns that he has not been condemned and is granted freedom of the realm, but at the same time he is not believed, or, if he is believed, is feared and shunned. Genly Ai decides that he is going to leave the capital city, and visit some of the remote fastnesses to exhibit the odd non-religion that practices foretelling.
C4: The Nineteenth Day. This story is about a person who purchases a fortelling of the day of his death, but is dissatisfied with the answer, which is analogous to “On a Wednesday.” He falls into a depression, and so his lover purchases a foretelling of how long his lover will live, but again the answer is unsatisfactory: “Longer than you.” Disappointed, the first kills the second, and then goes mad and hangs himself a week later (on a Wednesday). Again we are exposed to the concept/state of kemmering.
It is becoming clear that Genly Ai is, if not an outright misogynist, attributes a lot of negative characteristics to women. Well — what else is a misogynist — he’s clearly one… it will be interesting to see the intensity and nature of it. We see more of the world, its larger structure and modes of transportation, and get an introduction to Fastnesses and the Handdarata religion. Nusuth — the ubiquitous ambiguous negative of the Handdarata. Genly Ai has a foretelling and the ritual occurs and he is told that Winter will join the Ekumen within five years. At the end, we learn from Faxe. the Weaver. that the purpose of foretelling is “To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.” And the chapter ends with this statement, again from the weaver: “The only thing that makes life possible permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next. “
This chapter begins with Lord Estraven learning of his exile, and needing to leave quickly without money or supplies, and eschewing aid so as not to endanger his friends. His (former) kemmering, Ashe, tries to aid him, but he rejects him and the aid and hurries on on his own. He reaches a port city, where he had hoped to catch a foreign vessel, but as none are in port he steals a rowboat and heads across a gulf towards Orgoreyn. Injured by a sonic gun as he escapes, he is picked up by a ship that takes him to Orgoreyn, headless of the price on his head. He is cared for in a hospital, and then released to do manual labor as an indigent; at some point, he comes to the notice of government officials who know him, and he is ‘adopted’ into the household of Commensal Yegevy and his partner Obese. They know him from past diplomatic contacts, appear to trust him, and discuss his fears about what is going on between Charade and Orgoreyn and how it may lead to conflict — in the course of this discussion we get some glimpses of shifgrethor (primarily by it being waived).
A report by a member of the first landing team on the nature of the Gethen hermaphrodites (it is theorized that the planet was an abandoned experiment) and the way sex and gender works in their society. This both provides a lot of basic information that will be useful as the novel unfolds, but also provides a way to provide some commentary on sex and gender roles relative to the rest of the Ekumen which embodies what we view as ‘normal’ gender roles. Speculations about the absence of gender roles include:
“Our entire pattern of sociosexual interaction is non existent here. They can’t play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. … One is respected and judged only as a human. It is an appalling experience. ” (p 94 … 95)
Interestingly this report is identified as being written by a woman.
Genly Ai spends the summer in rural Karhide talking to people. Towards the end of the summer he learns the King is pregnant, and that his regent will be Tibe, Estraven’s enemy. Fearing that this will lead to bad things, and knowing he has to cross the passes before winter, Genly Ai sets out for Orgoreyn. He crosses into that country, but is caught in a raid by Ehrenrang people just after he enters Orgoreyn. After a brief period of imprisonment (he has lost his papers), he is recognized*, and brought to the capital and put up in Commensal Shusgis’ luxurious home. There he begins to talk to various members of the ruling class, and also encounters Estraven.
* Genly Ai is recognized, and everything changes at that moment. He leaves those he spent the night with, without a backward glance or further thought:
The door squealed open and it was broad day, the sun like a knife in the eyes, bright and frightening. […] …and I was no longer a refugee. I was set apart from those nameless ones with whom I fled down a dark road and whose lack of identity I had shared all night in a dark room. I was named, known, recognized; I existed. It was an intense relief. I followed my leader gladly.
ibid., p 110-111
This chapter contrasts Orgoreyn with Karthig, presenting the former as a a dull but well-ordered bureaucracy, where having an identity is everything, as we just saw above. “I was glad to be driving sedately at twenty-five miles an hour through vast, straight-furrowed grainlands, under an even gray sky, towards a capital whose goven-ment believed in Order.“
The chapter ends with this reflection regarding Estragen:
And it crossed my mind, though I dismissed the idea as baseless, that I had not come to Mishnory to eat roast blackfish with the Commensals of my own free will; nor had they brought me here. He had.
— ibid., 121
Clearly Le Guinn often ends her chapters with a bit of a punch.
An old story about a love affair between the descendents of two rival lords. One was murdered, but not before he had slept with the other, who bore a child. The child was returned to his grandfather (the father of the murdered one), and eventually became the heir. Later, he made peace with the other Lord (his other grandfather). for this he was called a traitor.
Genly Ai, ensounced in comfort in Mishnory, has various conversations with the political movers and shakers of Mishnory, especially the Open Trade faction, explaining his presence and goals. Some appear to believe him, and wish to use him for their own ends; others are skeptical, and/or believe he is a danger. He also meets with Estraven, of whom he has formed a bad opinion; but he is unsettled by Estraven’s warning that others will seek to use him for their own ends. He also learns of the Sarf, the internal police force…
A soliloquy by Estraven, in which he mulls over the situation, and comes to suspect that he and Genly Ai understood one another far less than he’d anticipated — this was triggered by the apparent failure of Genly to realize that the offering of advice Estraven was an insult to his shifgrethor. Now he imagines that Genly Ai’s shifgrethor must be “founded, and composed, and sustained altogether differently that ours.” Estraven is now able to live indendently due to the money Ai brought, and is working and re-learning and practicing various ‘skills’ — fasting, meditation, etc. — that he used to be good at. He reflects on the factions and purposes of the varoius players, at one point noting “To oppose something is to maintain it.” After a time Estraven grows increasingly worried that no news is being broadcast about Genly Ai or his mission. All communication channels are under control of the Sarf, and so no one wants to have Ai call his ship. Estraven believes that Genly Ai’s life is in danger.
A myth about Meshe, sort of a a god of the universe, one who is at the center of time and know all things. A footnote suggests that this is a mythological version of the expanding universe theory.
Estraven is arrested after failing to heed Estraven’s warnings and instead confiding in Shusgis. He is taken to prison, and injected with drugs and questioned. The he is put in a truck with other prisoners, and over a period of several days is conveyed to a prison farm. There he works without adequate food, and is drugged and questioned every few days; the drugs are bad for him, and he is slower to recover after each session. It seems clear he is headed towards death.
Estraven blackmails Shusgis and finds out where Genly Ai has been taken, and then goes to the embassy and has the information sent back to Argaven in Karhide. Then he forges papers and sets off to where Genly is being held, knowing that Genly will not survive the winter. He joins a party of trappers, gets to the vicinity of the prison and rescues Genly Ai. The chapter ends with Estraven telling Genly Ai that the wants to learn mind-speech so that they can trust one another.
Genly Ai recovers somewhat; Estraven steals food and supplies; the set off across the ice. They will have to make a certain distance each day, on the average, to make it to Karhide before they run out food. In this chapter, they are doing pretty well.
It takes them a long time to find a path up on to the top of the ice cap. It’s not clear if they’ll have enough food. Estraven is about to enter Kemmer.
A creation myth in which beings appear from melted ice and create the earth, the seas and life. Humans are created, but the first kills all the others except the last, and then when the first enters Kemmer the last returns and they mate and produce the human race. Humans now have shadows because of the killing….
They journey across the ice. Their routine is described. Estragon goes through Kemmer, but he and Genly Ai do not have sex. At the end of the chapter they finally reach something other than ice, and have a general idea of where they are at.
They make it back. The final stages of the journey across the ice are harrowing. But there are beautiful descriptions:
…we could look down to left or right into blue shafts and abysses, in which bits of ice dislodged by the runners fell with a vast, faint, delicate music, as if silver wires touched thin crystal planes, falling.
—ibid. p. 264
For hours one of us hauled while the other guided, mincing along like a cat on eggshells, sounding every step in advance with the stick. In the white weather one could not see a crevasse until one could look down into it—a little late, for the edges overhung, and were not always solid. Every footfall was a surprise, a drop or a jolt. No shadows. An even, white, soundless sphere: we moved along inside a huge frosted-glass ball. There was nothing inside the ball, and nothing was outside it. But there were cracks in the glass. Probe and step, probe and step. Probe for the invisible cracks through which one might fall out of the white glass ball, and fall, and fall, and fall….
—ibid. p. 265
They make it back to civilization, where they are given food and aid by local people, who do not know there names. Then Estraven contacts someone he has helped in the past, who knows him, and is betrayed. He flees and is killed trying to get over the border; he dies in Genly Ai’s arms.
Genly Ai voyages to Estragen’s home, and meets Estragen’s father, and Estragen’s son.
A well-done afterward by CJA, but nothing that had not already occurred to me.
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When I was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson, 2012. This is book #17 in the Essay Project, a series of reading I am doing with CT. It marks a return to literary essays after an epistolary detour into the letters of Olive Sacks, and only a temporary return as we have plans to finish the rest of Sacks’ work…
I must say, having just read the Preface and the first essay, I am beginning with a rather unfavorable impression. However, I will hope that her initial writing, which seems to me to quite polemical, will give way to more measured and approachable topics.
Later: After the discussing the first three essays, my reading partner and I decided that we would try to cherry-pick the essays, to see if we could find material we liked better. I proposed we read the title essay, and CT, after skimming the rest of the book, proposed we also read the final two. These are discussed below, but the bottom line is that while I can say that I enjoyed the title essay, the other two did not really grab me. I think, unless CT had a far different experience, we will stop after our next discussion, having read six of the ten essays.
In the preface, Robinson reflects on America and democracy, and offers a rather dispirited mediation on how things are going. She wrote this in 2012, and I can only imagine that she is far more disconsolate.
Robinson begins with a long quote from Whitman (circa 1870) about the greatness of America and Democracy, and about his worry that “savage, wolfish parties” acting from within will degrade the spirit and ideals of democracy. Robinson, writing in 2012, seems to find these concerns truer than ever, and comments on the decrease in tolerance for multiple viewpoints. “We have seen bad times and we will see more of them,” she laments. Well, that certainly seems apposite today.
Clearly, Whitman’s concerns were not realized, or are only being realized very, very slowly. Robinson admits the US has experienced a healthy and stable dynamicism, and attributes it to the long period of prosperity and advancement that is possible through domestic piece. She returns to Whitman, quoting his paen to Democracy, and suggests that his words highlight how far our vocabulary has drifted over the generations. She laments a shift to seeing capitalism as the dominant driver of our social history, and the loss of religious and spiritual language as a way of reflecting on our history and culture. She also sees capitalism, and its emphasis on economics and optimization as corroding everything it touches — this is a rare moment when I am in accord with her thinking.
If she had such a dismal view of the future in 2012, I can hardly imagine her views now. That is not to say that she is wrong, of course.
Overall, I’m not quite sure of the point of this essay. She takes a lot of shots at science, does battle with what seem to me straw men with regard to scientific thought. I end up unimpressed by her arguments, and feel she casts herself in, to me, a rather bad light. All that said, I’m not sure where we end up. She doesn’t seem too pleased with current religious discourse either. She ends with “Science can give us knowledge, but not wisdom. Neither can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.
Focusing a bit on her comments about ‘science,’ and the sort of thought it fosters:
She begins this essay remarking that she has spent her years of writing and teaching trying to free herself of constraints. By this she appears to mean that she has tried to move beyond the ‘narrow’ ‘scientific’ conception of human beings and human life. She draws examples from her undergraduate education, but her examples — “moldy theories … memorized for the test and never thought of again;” and (faux) research with rats in the behaviorist paradigm – seem to me to cast aspersions on the institution where she was educated, and on her own commitment to learning, rather than establishing the case that college somehow imposes constraints on thinking. Similarly, her claim that the curriculum held up Freud’s thought (and others) for admiration simply because it was thought by Freud, seems jaw-droppingly simplistic: Freud is important because he had a vast influence on the thought of his time, contributed many concepts to an emerging discipline, and influenced (and antagonized) a vast network of intellectuals during his lifetime and later. One might argue that other thinkers had less impact for reasons that had nothing to do with quality of their thought, and that it is a disservice to breadth and diversity to ignore them, but that is not the argument she makes. Anyway, this left me with a poor impression of her character, and her qualities as an intellectual.
She is also rather careless with facts. The nth hand account (‘I have read that…’) she gives of the use of infant rats as reinforcements in an operant conditioning experiment seems dubious, and, indeed, although there is plenty of research on rat ‘infants’ (or “rat pups”) as they are called in the literature, I can find nothing remotely similar to what she describes. I think this is a story that someone invented, and I have the sense that the truth of it is not of importance to her — it is simply a usefully shocking image that plays into her rhetoric. Another very trivial example is that at one point she says she has read that the number of neurons in the human brain is greater than the number of stars in the milky way. That’s not correct — what she probably read is that the number of interconnections in the human brain is greater, etc.. This does not impact her argument, but does illustrate a certain carelessness and the absence of an external fact-checker.
There is more, but I’m sufficiently unenthralled by the essay that I don’t feel like pursuing it.
I liked this essay much more than her previous one, and it largely eliminated the poor impression I had formed based on her “Freedom of Thought” essay — although I still do not like that essay.
She begins by writing about what she likes about books, and libraries of books. Here she strikes a chord with me. Then she goes on and introduces the apophatic — knowledge or reality than can not be expressed in words. She is very attracted to this notion, taking, I think, as sort of a holy mystery and reveling in it: “the unnamed is overwhelmingly present and real for me.” I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Certainly words, narrative, stories, are not the same as the reality of nature, but… so what? Why should they be? Language, like any representational system, is good at representing some things, and not at others. The representational mechanism of the calculus does a fine job of allowing us to deal with the infinite and the infinitesimal, where words — for example, in Xeno’s paradoxes — founder in a seemingly paradoxical fashion.
What I like most in this essay are her reflections on community, and the imaginative aspects the underlie it. She does not appear to be familiar with, or at least does not cite, Benedict Anderson’s seminal work on “Imagined Community.” While there is resonance with that, she also reflects on her relationship — as an author of fiction — with wholly the thoughts, feelings and actions of wholly imaginary characters.
I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of who knows it better than I?— people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.
—ibid., p 21
While I can’t say I enjoyed reading this essay, it exhibits her strengths as a writer and thinker. As I read, the thought that kept recurring was ‘If she was this disturbed in 2012, how must she feel now?’ It seems to me that every concern she has articulated seems to have intensified tenfold. Yikes.
She is good a diagnosing and describing, but I see little in the way of prescription or hope. Austerity and fear have fused into a single driving ethos, and are the motive force behind the destruction of various public institutions that were designed to benefit a broad range of people. While she notes an alternative approach at the end of her essay, it seems more wistful than hopeful. Of course, there is no requirement that she solve problems or offer hope.
Much of what she said was familiar to me, but I found a couple of her explorations thought-provoking. One had to do with the cold war period, and how threatening the US and UK must have seemed to the Russians. And, following on from that, the ‘competition’ between the US and the Soviets in arts, culture and science. The cultural competition, she thinks, helped us; the military competition was disastrous for both.
… reading break ….
My favorite essay so far. It has to do with growing up in the west — Idaho — and some of the perspectives that that gave her. In particular she has some interesting remarks about being unattached to particular traditions, and about loneliness being, if not a good thing, at least something with positive connotations. She suggests that loneliness and unattachment, while they have become associated with dysfunction in the general culture, still have positive associations that can be seen in the aloof heros of westerns, and the protagonists of country-western songs.
She segues into a discussion of Housekeeping, her novel (seemingly assuming that of course her readers will be familiar with it). I found that a little irritating, but not without interest.
We have colonized a hostile planet, and we must stanch every opening where cold and dark might pour through and destroy the false climates we make, the tiny simulations of forgotten seasons beside the Euphrates, or in Eden. At a certain level housekeeping is a regime of small kindnesses, which, taken together, make the world salubrious, savory, and warm.
ibid. 93
and
I remember kneeling by a creek that spilled and pooled among rocks and fallen trees with the unspeakably tender growth of small trees already sprouting from their backs, and thinking, there is only one thing wrong here, which is my own presence, and that is the slightest imaginable intrusion feeling that my solitude, my loneliness, made me almost acceptable in so sacred a place.
– ibid. 88
Begins with the idea that laments about the decline of civilization are a motif that have been present in discourse in the US (and elsewhere) for centuries. Emmerson, who is lamenting the state of preaching, urges young ministers to go it alone, to avoid trying to emulate even “sacred in the imagination men,” and gives Johahn Frederich Oberlin as an example. This raises the question of who Oberlin was, and we are informed that he was a reformer, who attended to both the material and spiritual well-being of those he served, being especially notable in spearheading the construction of roads, bridges, dwellings, schools and other institutions that advanced material well-being. The essay then moves on to a contemporary book (The Family, by Jeff Sharlet) which investigates the origin of American fundamentalism.
There is more, but frankly I am bored with the essay and am not interested in marching through it. What I found most interesting was the argument that reformers — like Oberlin — founded colleges and other institutions that played important roles in combating slavery and advancing the rights of women. That is, that at one point, religion — or at least some religion — was a force for progressiveness, rather than conservatism.
This essay did not engage me at all. It appears to be a critique of ‘new atheism,’ as featured in a book by Strenger. On the one hand, I didn’t find myself in sympathy with what was said to be the atheistic position that science somehow disproves or supplants religion (I think they have little to do with one another)), and on the other hand, I found Robinson’s critiques to be in part founded on a very shallow understanding of science, and drawing on concepts (e.g., “the character of being”) that make no sense to me. There were a couple of points where he polemic seemed to me to border on raving — I simply couldn’t make sense of what she was trying to say. While perhaps more study would enable more analytic objections, I simply find myself uninterested in trying.
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The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell us about Ourselves, Eric R. Kandel, 2018.
Kandel is an eminent neuroscientist, known for his work on the low-level mechanisms of learning and memory as demonstrated in Aplysia. He’s won a host of prizes, including the Nobel for this work. Interestingly, as an undergraduate he majored in humanities, and afterwards became a psychiatrist, before migrating into neuroscience. Now in his 90’s, he is writing about larger themes, and addressing himself to more general audiences.
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March 2025
I only discovered G. K. Chesterton a few years ago, through his essays which are generally excellent, and some which I would call brilliant. More recently I’ve dipped into his fiction. The Man Who was Thursday was superb, both surreal and funny, and laden with the striking descriptions — of landscapes, settings, people — of which Chesterton is a master. After that, just last month, I tried a second piece of fiction, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. I wrote a brief review of that, and, as I said, I did not care for that at all — it was clearly produced by the same author, but there the surreal became simply absurd, and the humor farce. Suspension of disbelief failed.
Still, having liked so much of his writing, and having found so little recent fiction satisfying, I wanted to try again, and so turned to his Father Brown stories about a Priest-Detective. The friend who had initially brought GKC to my attention recommended the story, The Blue Cross, as his favorite, and sent me a link to this volume on Project Guttenberg. The Blue Cross was indeed excellent, and so I proceeded through the rest of the volume.
Continue reading The Innocence of Father Brown, G. K. ChestertonViews: 2
A couple of years ago I read Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday. I love it. The writing was beautiful in parts, and the story a blend of the absurd and surreal — it was funny, although I did catch on to what was happening pretty quickly. But still, it was quite delightful, and that was not dampened by the Chestertonian moral/religious overlay.
All that is to say that I picked up The Napoleon of Notting Hill with anticipation. Written circa 1903, the story was set in a future London — 1984 — where almost nothing had changed in terms of class, society or technology, with the exception that instead of having a hereditary monarchy, a monarch was selected at random. The story is about the selection of a new monarch who is deeply unserious, and for his own amusement decrees that the various neighborhoods of London should function as independent nations, with their own heraldry and uniformed guards (which the new King designed), and their own traditions and customs. All this is intended to restore some of the ‘romance’ of medieval times, and, to the King’s delight, soon results in armed battles between the neighborhoods — Notting Hill, in a surprise, becoming ascendant.
Anyway, that’s the starting point of the book, but I have to say it didn’t engage me much. Whereas ‘Thursday’ was funny and surreal, this was absurd and unbelievable. It took about 3/4 of the book (it’s short) for me to become at all engaged, and then it was more a matter of curiosity about how Chesterton would wrap it up, rather than caring about the characters or story. Towards the end Chesterton does make a case for his preference for romance and semi-feudal systems vis a vis modernity, but it was mainly interesting as reinforcing my understanding of Chesterton’s view of the world.
Too bad. …But I do intend to give a couple of his ‘Father Brown’ books — about his priest-detective, a try.
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January 2025
I am told this is a classic papper. Here are some notes / excerpts:
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January 2025
I picked up this book, probably about a year ago at the recommendation of Dan Russell. In terms of single-author collections, I’ve liked this more than anything I’ve read in years, perhaps with the exception of Loren Eisley’s essays. Regardless, Macdonald is a superb writer, and in particular her descriptions of the natural world are remarkable. I intend to seek out her other books.
I like, as well, her view of what literature ought to do:
What science does is what I would like more literature to do too: show us that we are living in an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us. — Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights. p. ix
This essay describes nests. She begins with her feelings about nests develop when she was a child, and encountered them in her yard. She then goes into the present, and reflects more on this than their meanings.
This essay describes an encounter with a boar. She reflects both on the boar, and more in general on animals in particular, and how the conception of an animal differs from the reality of the animal
Then it happens: a short, collapsing moment as sixty or seventy yards away something walks fast between the trees, and then the boar. The boar. The boar.
– Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald, p 11.
A great bit of writing. The “short, collapsing moment.” The uncertainty about distance — “sixty or seventy yards” — and what she is seeing — “something.” The revelation: “and then the boar.” And the repetition: “The boar. The boar.“
A very nice short piece about an encounter with autistic boy, who is visiting her flat with his parents. In particular he connects with her bird and the bird with him.
“Field guides made possible the joy of encountering a thing I already knew but had never seen.”
An essay on the place where she grew up. A bit nostalgic, but it was unusual, and had interesting reflections, so I found it worth reading. Some very nice writing:
I could lie awake in the small hours and hear a single motorbike speeding west or east: a long, yawning burr that dopplered into memory and replayed itself in dreams.
— ibid. p 12
My eyes catch on the place where the zoetrope flicker of pines behind the fence gives way to a patch of sky with the black peak of a redwood tree against it and the cradled mathematical branches of a monkey puzzle, and my head blooms with an apprehension of lost space,
— Ibid. p 13
About watching migrating birds at night from the top of the Empire State Building. An interesting discussion of how birds migrate — the height and speeds at which they fly, and the way they navigate — and the problems that the lights and tall buildings of the city give them.
“Overhead a long wavering chevron of beating wings is inked across the darkening sky.“
Recounting the observation of large flocks of migrating cranes, and continuing to a discussion of the dynamics of swarms and murmurations. “Turns can propagate through a cloud of birds at speeds approaching 90 miles an hour…” This segues into a concluding comment on refugees, and a plea to regard them as individuals rather than masses.
An account of meeting a student who is a refugee and spending time in camps…
A great opening sentence:
There’s a window and the rattle of a taxi and grapes on the table, black ones, sweet ones, and the taxi is also black and there’s a woman inside it, a charity worker who befriended you when you were in detention, and she’s leaning to pay the driver and through the dust and bloom of the glass I see you standing on the pavement next to the open taxi door and your back is turned towards me so all I can see are your shoulders hunched in a blue denim jacket.
— The Student’s Tale, Vesper Flight, Kate Macdonald, p. 53
I think this is a marvelous stream-of-consciousness sentence, with the writers attention shifting from taxi to grapes to taxi to the woman and then to the student whose shoulders are hunched. The second person is also very effective.
About the mating flights of ants, and the birds that prey upon them. Also reflects on the power of scientific understanding to enhance the beauty of things, rather than detract: “…it’s things I’ve learned from scientific books and papers that are making what I’m watching almost unbearably moving.”
A red kite joins the flock, drifting and tilting through it on paper-cut wings stamped black against the sky.
[…]
The hitching curves of the gulls in a vault of sky crossed with thousands of different flightlines, warm airspace tense with predatory intent and the tiny hopes of each rising ant.
— Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 63
Discusses her experiences with migraines. The writing is beautiful and ranges from describing the onset and symptoms of her migraine, to the way in which she has come to live with them. Ends with a partial analogy to earth undergoing climate change…
I was busily signing books when a spray of sparks, an array of livid and prickling phosphenes like shorting fairy lights, spread downwards from the upper right-hand corner of my vision until I could barely see through them.
—Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 66
On mushroom hunting: “It is raining hard, and the forest air is sweet and winey with decay.“
The air is damp and dark in here. Taut lines of spider silk are slung between their flaking trunks; I can feel them snapping across my chest. Fat garden spiders drop from my coat on to the thick carpet of pine needles below.
—Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 80
I like feeling the snapping, and the spiders dropping from her coat to the forest floor. It animates the scene, and tells us she is moving through it.
Beginning with her custom of walking in the woods every New Year’s day, she reflects on the things that are distinctive about forests in winter. From the revelation of the landscape, to the bark textures and angled branches of leafless trees, to the sometimes transitory life that becomes evident. Winter woods, she suggests, are full of potential:
So often we think of mindfulness, of existing purely in the present moment, as a spiritual goal. But winter woods teach me something else: the importance of thinking about history. They are able to show you the last five hours, the last five days, the last five centuries, all at once. They’re wood and soil and rotting leaves, the crystal fur of hoarfrost and the melting of overnight snow, but they are also places of different interpolated timeframes. In them, potentiality crackles in the winter air.
—ibid., p. 85
On viewing a solar eclipse. The phenomenology of the event, but also the deep, irrational, fundamental, emotional impact. The essay is reminiscent of Joan Didion’s essay, and in particular the way in which the fading daylight alters the colors in ways that cast the landscape in an alien light. It ends, beautifully, with a description of the light returning, and the emotions that brings.
A description of a trip with an astrobiologist to study extremophiles at very high altitudes in the Andes. Some beautiful descriptions of desolate and unworldly environments.
A description of the phenomenon of boxing hares, their place in English thought and mythology, and their decline due to environmental change.
A very short essay description her glimpse of a hound that was trying to catch up to the pack during a fox hunt.
About the English tradition of “Swan Upping,” and her experience observing the activity; all interladen with reflections on the role of tradition and its uneasy releationship to Brexit, which had recently occurred.
Discusses her changing feelings about deer, from initially wishing to known nothing about them and valuing them as a source of surprise and delight, to a desire to understand them. She says it better, though:
Deer occupy a unique place in my personal pantheon of animals. There are many creatures I know very little about, but the difference with deer is that I’ve never had any desire to find out more. They’re like a distant country I’ve never wanted to visit. I know the names of different deer species, and can identify the commonest ones by sight, but I’ve always resisted the almost negligible effort it would take to discover when they give birth, how they grow and shed their antlers, what they eat, where and how they live. Standing on the bridge I’m wondering why that is.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 141
As the title suggests, much of the essay is about deer-vehicle collisions; and also about how people react to them, in the moment, and, sometimes in cruel ways, on the internet. It is a complex essay. It doesn’t really speak to me, but there are a lot of great turns of phrase and passages.
Here is how the essay begins:
The deer drift in and out of the trees like breathing. They appear unexpectedly delicate and cold, as if chill air is pouring from them to the ground to pool into the mist that half obscures their legs and turning flanks. They aren’t tame: I can’t get closer than a hundred yards before they slip into the gloom.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 140
And here is a passage I admire for the way it highlights the incongruity of the two worlds: nature and the highway. It moves from the forest, to the road, to the forest, to the road, to her standing, embodied, on the bridge.
For a while the road doesn’t seem real. Then it does, almost violently so, and at that moment the bridge and the woods behind me do not. I can’t hold both in the same world at once. Deer and forest, mist, speed, a drift of wet leaves, white noise, scrap-metal trucks, a convoy of eighteen-wheelers, beads of water on the toes of my boots and the scald of my hands on the cold metal rail.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 141
She is watching birds — falcons — in an abandoned industrial plant in Dublin. The essay discusses falcons, and how they have adapted to living in cities and their infrastructures. Moves from their behavior and natural history, to the ways in which people have viewed them, to their change in habitat given the ‘advance’ of civilization. Ends with a reflection on the brevity of life, and a note of hope.
The essay that gives the collection a title. Begins with her finding a dead Swift and not knowing what to do with it. Segues into a description of Swifts and how they are somewhat “magical” — “the closest things to aliens on earth.” After describing their natural history, describes the phenonmenon of “vesper flights,” where they gather in the evening and fly up to 8,000 feet. She describes how this behavior was discovered, and goes through the history of this behavior being observed and understood. Interleaved with this is her accounts of how, as a small child, she sought comfort in the evening (her own private vespers) by imagining herself as embedded in layers of the earth below her and the atmosphere above her. This comes together as we learn that vesper flights, for Swifts, help them take account of where they are and the oncoming weather conditions, and as Macdonald reflects on ways in which she (we) can adopt practices that enable us to locate ourselves and think about what comes next.
A very nice, short essay about her annual practice of going to see glowworms in a quarry.
About her efforts to observe Oriels at the single place in Britain where they can still be found. Over time, their habitat is degraded, and at last there is only one… but, at the last moment, she is able to get a glimpse of it. She has a lovely sentence where she describes the song (or a song) or the oriel: “Wo-de-wal-e, wo-de-wal-e, a phrase like the curl of the cut ends of a gilded banner furling over the page of an illuminated manuscript.“
In this essay, she excels at capturing the fragmentary, mosaical nature of perception.
…what I saw became something like looking into a Magic Eye picture. Here was a circle, and in it a thousand angles of stalk and leaf and scraps of shade at various distances, and every straight stalk or branch was alternately obscured and revealed as the wind blew. I began to feel a little seasick watching this chaos, but then, as magically as a stereogram suddenly reveals a not-very-accurate 3D dinosaur, the muddy patch just off centre resolved itself into the nest.
[…]
Finally, I saw my oriole. A bright, golden male. It was a complex joy, because I saw him only in stamped-out sections, small jigsaw pieces of a bird, but moving ones, animated mutoscope views. A flick of wings, a scrap of tail, then another glimpse – this time, just his head alone – through a screen of leaves. I was transfixed. I had not expected the joyous, extravagant way this oriole leapt into the air between feeds, the enormously decisive movements, always, and the little dots like stars that flared along the edge of his spread-wide tail.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 177 & 179
About swans, beginning with an odd experience she had with one approaching her, and sitting beside her, in a moment of grief.
About a visit to a nature preserve with her young niece, and her niece’s puzzlement about why there were so many animals here — ‘did they bring them from a zoo?’ Reflections on the shift from a time when nature and animals were all around us, to the present, when they are mostly found in special preserves.
A short essay describing a thunderstorm, and also reflecting on storms as metaphors, in particular, in this essay, for the onset of Brexit.
Begins with getting a passport replaced at the last minute, and then moves to how birds were seen during war time, and the rise and evolution of the notion of birdwatching.
On cuckoos, how people perceive them, and in particular a rather eccentric British intelligence agent — Maxwell Knight — who raised a cuckoo. Didn’t grab me, but others might well find it a fascinating tale.
About tracking migrating birds. Makes this interesting point:
Projects like this give us imaginative access to the lives of wild creatures, but they cannot capture the real animals’ complex, halting paths. Instead they let us watch virtual animals moving across a world of eternal daylight built of a patchwork of layered satellite and aerial imagery, a flattened, static landscape free of happenstance. There are no icy winds over high mountain passes here, no heavy rains, soaring hawks, ripening crops or recent droughts.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 217
About destroying diseased trees, beginning with elms with Dutch Elm disease in her childhood, and ending with ash trees and the emerald ash borer.
About feeding animals. Starts with a nice anecdote about an elderly woman who put out corn to attract badgers at night. Continues into the practice of feeding animals, and makes the interesting point that there are some animals it is socially acceptable to feed, and others — foxes, rats, pigeons — that it is not.
This short essay begins with her decorating a Christmas tree, and sprucing up its decorations with berries from outside, but feeling slightly guilty because berries exist as food for birds. Segues into natural history of both birds and berries.
A great bit of description: “…like a gravity stricken whirlwind, a pack of fat birds swirled down from the blank sky…“
About the return of hawfinches to Britain, the excitement it engenders, and the ways in which their behavior seems to be changing vis a vis what habitat they prefer. Also touches on the blurring of natural history and national identity.
About the practice of capturing and keeping birds, which in England is mostly done by the working classes, and which is, it seems, looked down upon by others. She discusses the practice, how bird keepers feel about it and their birds, and the class differences and that this highlights. Interesting.
An interesting piece about hides (what we in the U.S. call “blinds”). It touches both on the aims and experience of watching animals from blinds, as well as the human experience within blinds.
A eulogy for a friend: a description of the her friend is interleaved with a night outing to see nightjars. A beautiful piece of writing.
The essay begins with a description of the outing, setting out while it is still light, but with the darkness coming:
As night falls, our senses stretch to meet it. A roebuck barks in the distance, small mammals rustle in the grass. The faintest tick of insects. The scratchy, resinous fragrance of heathland grows stronger, more insistent. As we pass clumps of viper’s bugloss we watch the oncoming night turn their leaves blacker, their purple petals bluer and more intense until they seem to glow. The paths become luminous trails through darkness. White moths spiral up from the ground, and a cockchafer zips past us, elytra raised, wings buzzing.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 255
After this, she makes the connection to her friend: “Soon all color will be gone. The thought is a hard one.” And then, after writing about him: “Now, watching the slow diminishment of sense and detail around me, I’m thinking of Stu and what is happening to him, thinking of his family, of what we face at the end of our lives’ long summers when the world parts from us, of how we all, one day, will walk into darkness.“
A somber essay, but ending with a note of, not hope, but acceptance. Stu says, “It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s not hard.”
It’s OK, he said. It’s not hard. Those are the words I am remembering as we walk onward, as the minutes pass, until night thickens completely and there is starlight and dust and the feel of sand underfoot. It’s so dark now I cannot see myself. But the song continues, and the air around us is full of invisible wings.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 259
An account of a visit to the house of a friend who rescues and rehabilitates swifts. It begins with her friend feeding nestlings, and ends with the release of a swift, and a haunting description of the swift’s transformation as it is about to take to the sky.
A brief, funny story about her, her dad, and pushing goats. Wouldn’t call it an essay though.
A curious essay centered around her experiences in her first job out of college, working on a falcon conservation-breeding farm. She describes what it was like — it sounded unpleasant to me, but she clearly got to do many things she loved and valued. She describes what led her to leave the farm, and does a good job of creating tension by naming two incidents, first “the dreadful incident with the ostrich,” and then “the cattle on the hill,” and describing each played out.
The ostrich incident — euthanasia of a horribly injured bird — was straightforward, if unpleasant. The “cattle on the hill” incident is quite strange: it involves her spending hours sneaking up on them, and then jumping up and scaring them into stampeding, though she does not know why.
At the end of the essay, though, she recounts an epiphany, and, for me, it resolves not just the ‘cattle on the hill’ incident, but the whole essay:
And then I thought of the day I stalked the steers on the hill and it resolved into perfect clarity. For I had seen myself as one of those steers, one of a feral and uncared-for herd enjoying life in the middle of nowhere, not thinking about what would happen in the future, and not much worried about it, but knowing deep down that one day I was headed for the abattoir. There would be no escaping the deep sea for the shore. And my stalking and shouting was not mindless. It had been an inchoate attempt to knock them out of their contented composure. It had been a warning to make them run the hell out of there, because the valley we were all in was dark and deep and could have no good end.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 282
An interesting essay with some nice passages in it, but it didn’t really resonate with me.
Discusses the author’s changing conceptions of and relationships to animals. She liked caring for them, as a child, but came to recognize that was about her feeling good about herself, rather than about the animals. As she grew older, she found that an intense focus on animals was a way to make herself disappear, to allow herself into a separate world that did not contain the difficulties she was faced with. Later, with respect to falconry, she speaks about how she learned that the other party in a relationship might see it very differently — a lesson she was slow to apply to humans. The “deepest lesson animals have taught me is how easily and unconsciously we see other lives as mirrors of our own.” And “None of us sees animals clearly. They are too full of the stories we have given them.“
Towards the end of the essay, speaking of a rook, she comments that now what she enjoys is not imagining that she can feel what the rook feels, know what it knows, but that it’s slow delight in knowing that she cannot.
As it passes overhead, the rook tilts its head to regard me briefly before flying on. And with that glance I feel a prickling in my skin that runs down my spine, my sense of place shifts, and the world is enlarged. The rook and I have shared no purpose. We noticed each other, is all. When I looked at the rook and the rook looked at me, I became a feature of its world as much as it became a feature of mine. Our separate lives coincided, and all my self-absorbed anxiety vanished in that one fugitive moment, when a bird in the sky on its way somewhere else sent a glance across the divide and stitched me back into a world where both of us have equal billing.
– Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights, p. 299
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B (Basalt)—Use normative mineralogy to subdivide.
O1 (Basaltic andesite)
O2 (Andesite)
O3 (Dacite)
R (Rhyolite)
T (Trachyte or Trachydacite)—Use normative mineralogy to decide.
Ph (Phonolite)
S1 (Trachybasalt)—*Sodic and potassic variants are Hawaiite and Potassic Trachybasalt.
S2 (Basaltic trachyandesite)—*Sodic and potassic variants are Mugearite and Shoshonite.
S3 (Trachyandesite—*Sodic and potassic variants are Benmoreite and Latite.
Pc (Picrobasalt)
U1 (Basanite or Tephrite)—Use normative mineralogy to decide.
U2 (Phonotephrite)
U3 (Tephriphonolite)
F (Foidite)—When possible, classify/name according to the dominant feldspathoid. Melilitites also plot in this area and can be distinguished by additional chemical criteria.
(*)Sodic as used above means that Na2O – 2 is greater than K2O, and potassic that Na2O – 2 is less than K2O. Yet other names have been applied to rocks particularly rich in either sodium or potassium—as are ultrapotassic igneous rocks.
Palagonite is an alteration product formed from basaltic glass (tachylite); concentric bands of it often surround kernels of unaltered tachylite, and are so soft that they are easily cut with a knife. In the palagonite the minerals are also decomposed and are represented only by pseudomorphs.
Palagonite soil is a light yellow-orange dust, comprising a mixture of particles ranging down to sub-micrometer sizes, usually found mixed with larger fragments of lava. The color is indicative of the presence of iron in the +3 oxidation state, embedded in an amorphous matrix.
Palagonite tuff is a tuff composed of sideromelane fragments and coarser pieces of basaltic rock, embedded in a palagonite matrix. A composite of sideromelane aggregate in palagonite matrix is called hyaloclastite.
Phreatomagmatic. Palagonite can be formed from the interaction between water and basalt melt. The water flashes to steam on contact with the hot lava and the small fragments of lava react with the steam to form the light-colored palagonite tuff cones common in areas of basaltic eruptions in contact with water.
Weathering. Palagonite can also be formed by a slower weathering of lava into palagonite, resulting in a thin, yellow-orange rind on the surface of the rock. The process of conversion of lava to palagonite is called palagonitization.
Tachylite (from ταχύς, meaning “swift”) is a form of basaltic volcanic glass formed by the rapid cooling of molten basalt. It is a type of mafic igneous rock that is decomposable by acids and readily fusible. The color is a black or dark-brown, and it has a greasy-looking, resinous luster. It is often vesicular and sometime spherulitic. Small pheoncrysts of feldspar or olivine are sometimes visible. Fresh tachylite glass often contains lozenge-shaped crystals of plagioclase feldspar and small prisms of augite and olivine, but all these minerals occur mainly as microlites or as skeletal growths with sharply-pointed corners or ramifying processes.
All tachylites weather easily and become red to brown as their iron oxidizes.
Three modes of occurrence characterize this rock. In all cases they are found under conditions which imply rapid cooling, but they are much less common than acid obsidians. (Alkaline rocks have a stronger tendency to crystallize (i.e. not form glass), in part because they are more liquid and the molecules have more freedom to arrange themselves in crystalline order.)
The fine scoria (aka cinders) thrown out by basaltic volcanoes are often spongy masses of tachylite with only a few larger crystals or phenocrysts imbedded in black glass. Basic pumices of this kind are exceedingly widespread on the bottom of the sea, either dispersed in the pelagic red clay and other deposits or forming layers coated with oxides of manganese precipitated on them from the sea water. These tachylite fragments, which are usually much decomposed by the oxidation and hydration of their ferrous compounds, have taken on a dark red color (scoria is from σκωρία, skōria, Greek for rust.); this altered basic glass is known as “palagonite.” [see above]
In the Hawaiian Islands volcanoes have poured out vast floods of black basalt, containing feldspar, augite, olivine, and iron ores in a black glassy base. They are highly liquid when discharged, and the rapid cooling that ensues on their emergence to the air prevents crystallization taking place completely. Many of them are spongy or vesicular, and their upper surfaces are often exceedingly rough and jagged, while at other times they assume rounded wave-like forms on solidification. Great caves are found where the crust has solidified and the liquid interior has subsequently flowed away, and stalactites and stalagmites of black tachylite adorn the roofs and floors. On section these growths show usually a central cavity enclosed by walls of dark brown glass in which skeletons and microliths of augite, olivine and feldspar lie embedded
A third mode of occurrence of tachylite is as margins and thin offshoots of dikes or sills of basalt and diabase. They are often only a fraction of an inch in thickness, resembling a thin layer of pitch or tar on the edge of a crystalline diabase dike, but veins several inches thick are sometimes found. In these situations tachylite is rarely vesicular, but often shows pronounced fluxion banding* accentuated by the presence of rows of spherulites that are visible as dark brown rounded spots. The spherulites have a distinct radiate structure and sometimes exhibit zones of varying color. The non-spherulitic glassy portion is sometimes perlitic, and these rocks are always brittle. Common crystals are olivine, augite and feldspar, with swarms of minute dusty black grains of magnetite. At the extreme edges the glass is often perfectly free from crystalline products, but it merges rapidly into the ordinary crystalline diabase, which in a very short distance may contain no vitreous base whatever. The spherulites may form the greater part of the mass, they may be a quarter of an inch in diameter and are occasionally much larger than this.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_banding
Flow banding is caused by friction of the viscous magma that is in contact with a solid rock interface, usually the wall rock to an intrusive chamber or the earth’s surface.
The friction and viscosity of the magma causes phenocrysts and xenoliths within the magma or lava to slow down near the interface and become trapped in a viscous layer. This forms laminar flow, which manifests as a banded, streaky appearance.
Flow banding also results from the process of fractional crystallization that occurs by convection if the crystals that are caught in the flow-banded margins are removed from the melt. This can change the composition of the melt in large intrusions, leading to differentiation.
From GPT:
Fluxion banding results from shear forces within a moving magma body. This can happen in several ways:
1. Differential Flow in Lava. As lava moves, its viscosity varies due to cooling and crystallization. The outer layers, which cool faster, may develop a plastic or solid crust, while the inner material remains fluid. This difference in viscosity causes layers of magma to stretch and deform, forming elongated bands.
2. Crystal Sorting and Alignment. “ As magma flows, mineral crystals within it may become aligned due to shear stress. This is common in silicic lavas like rhyolite and dacite, where feldspar and quartz can form parallel bands.
3. Magma Mixing and Compositional Banding. If two magmas of different compositions mix, they may not completely homogenize, leading to streaks of contrasting compositions that appear as bands.
4. Intrusive Settings. In some plutonic rocks, fluxion banding may form as a result of late-stage magmatic flow, where crystals and melts segregate due to convection or deformation.
“The first two were the chemically evolved basalt of the initial fissures and the highly viscous andesite. Both are volumetrically minor sources that represent distinct pockets of old residual magma from Kīlauea’s east rift zone that evolved for more than 55 years, cooling and crystallizing at depth. The third and volumetrically more substantial source was less-evolved and hotter basalt of fissure 8. This source was similar in composition to the magma erupted at Kīlauea in the years before 2018 and was ultimately derived from the summit region. Draining and collapse of the summit by this voluminous eruption may have stirred up deeper, hotter parts of the summit magma system and sent mixed magma down the rift..”
Common minerals that crystallize from basaltic magma, ordered by the temperatures at which they typically form:
These minerals crystallize according to Bowen’s reaction series, where early-formed minerals (like olivine and pyroxene) are typically more magnesium- and iron-rich, while later-formed minerals (like plagioclase and spinel) are more silica-rich due to depletion of Mg and Fe.
TBD
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December 2024 – April 2025
This is book # 16 in the no-longer-very-aptly named Essays Project. Though perhaps, having detoured into the wilds of Shakespeare, a tour of the letters of Sacks, who is a formidable essayist, is steering us back towards the main track. Of course, letters are not essays, but their relative brevity and personal cast, as well as the wide-ranging nature of Sack’s epistles, give them a familial resemblance.
The book is edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks’ assistant and editor of several decades; she also contributes a brief preface which offers her perspective on Sacks’ compulsive writing process. Alas for her brevity; I believe she could offer a lot of insight on Sacks. But perhaps his letters will serve. Onward!
Sacks loved correspondence. He felt one ought to reply to letters, immediately if possible. He corresponded with, literally, thousands of people, from school children to Nobel laureates. Sacks took pains to preserve his letters with carbon sets, drafts, or later, photocopies, though by no means does all his correspondence survive. But that part which does runs to about 200,000 pages, or about 70 bankers’ boxes.
Continue reading EP #16: Letters, Oliver SacksViews: 5
Cymbeline, angry that Imogen has wed Posthumos, banishes Posthumos and imprisons Imogen. Posthumos, in Rome, encounters Iachimo who sets out to to prove Imogen unfaithful. Queen requests a poison from her doctor, who gives her a fake one.
Continue reading CymbelineViews: 0
An interesting one. The first part is a tragedy; the second transforms it into a comedy. There are a lot of loose ends that are, mostly, tied up in the penultimate scene, in a series of disclosures to Autolycus, offered for unclear reasons.
I find Autolycus are curious character — a villain who morphs into a trickster. Paulina is, in my view, the hero of the story, though it is disappointing that she is married off at the end after she declares she is going to morn for her dead husband. Apparently marrying everyone off is de rigueur for a comedy.
Continue reading The Winter’s TaleViews: 0
Snow Crystals: A Case Study of Spontaneous Structure Formation, Kenneth Libbrecht, 2022
This is Libbrecht’s magnum opus, at least on snow; this goes deep into the science. …and I love that he has ordered the references by date, so you can see the history of the science leading up to Libbrecht’s work.
Notes still in progress…
Continue reading Snow Crystals, Kenneth LibbrechtViews: 10
See course notes for general material about Macbeth.
I continue (post Othello) not to be terribly keen on the tragedies, but liked this more than Othello.
Macbeth encounters three witches who prophesy that he will become Thain of Cawdor and King of Scotland, and that Banquo’s descendants will be kings as well. Shortly thereafter Duncan appoints Macbeth as Thain of Cawdor, but announces that he will appoint his own son as crown prince. Macbeth is ambitious, and toys with the idea of murdering King Duncan. However, he has reservations – Duncan is his lord, a kinsman, and a guest in his household. However, Lady Macbeth – who appears to have summoned evil spirits to give her resolve – shames Macbeth into going forward with the plot. So Macbeth murders Duncan, and pins the murders on drunken watchmen (whom Lady Macbeth has used a potion to put to sleep), and then has them killed, and blames Duncan’s sons for the murder.
Macbeth is crowned, but becomes increasingly unstable (as does Lady Macbeth( and paranoid). He seeks out the witches, who warn him to be wary of MacDuff, but assure him that no man borne of woman can kill him, and the he will not be defeated until Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane Hill. After this, Macbeth goes on a bit of a killing spree, arranging the murder of his friend Banquo (to eliminate his descendants the witches said would inherit the throne – except Banquo’s son escapes) and the family of the nobleman Macduff. Plagued by ominous visions—such as Banquo’s ghost appearing at a royal banquet—Macbeth’s grip on power loosens.
Meanwhile, Macduff and Duncan’s heir, Malcolm, raise an army in England and return to overthrow the usurper. Macbeth tries to avoid fighting Malcolm, but upon Malcolm’s pronouncement that he will take Macbeth captive and parade him about, Macbeth fights, and is slain and beheaded. Order and justice is restored.
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Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, Anil Ananthaswamy, 2024
November/December…, 2024
I am reading this book as part of a small book club: The 26-minute Book Club. This sort of book is really not my cup of tea — it is about the math with which various learning algorithms are implemented. I am, at my deepest, interested in the algorithms. Math is neither a strong point nor a deep interest — it seems more like magic to me: You generate a bunch of tautologies, define some terms and rules, and then elaborate it, and all of a sudden it enables you to do things.
I had imagined I would give this a one-meeting trial, and then bow out. However, I found the group (4 other people) quite pleasant, and composed of — barring the one person I know who invited me — interesting strangers that I would not otherwise get to know. And that, especially in retirement, is of great value.
Another advantage is that working through this book forces me to think about topics I would otherwise ignore: basic math including linear algebra, vectors, a little calculus, probability, gaussian distributions, Bayes’ Theorm. Perhaps it will prove tractable enough that I will feel emboldened to take on fluid dynamics, something that I suspect would help me better understand a whole range of natural patterns, from meteorological to geological…. Or perhaps I will figure out how to distill the ‘qualitative’ aspects that I am interested from the mangle of symbols. We shall see.
“If there’s one thing to take away from this discussion, it’s this: For a multi-dimensional or high-dimensional function (meaning, a function of many variables), the gradient is given by a vector. The components of the vector are partial derivatives of that function with respect to each of the variables.
…
What we have just seen is extraordinarily powerful. If we know how to take the partial derivative of a function with respect to each of its variables, no matter how many variables or how complex the function, we can always express the gradient as a row vector or column vector.Our analysis has also connected the dots between two important concepts: functions on the one hand and vectors on the other. Keep this in mind. These seemingly disparate fields of mathematics-vectors, matrices, linear algebra, calculus, probability and statistics, and optimization theory (we have yet to touch upon the latter two) – will all come together as we make sense of why machines learn.”
…Reading Break…
weightNew = weightOld + 2 • <step-size> • <error-for-a-single-point>
P (X-is-true | given Evidence-for-X is positive)
IS EQUAL TO
P-X-in-the-world • How-strong-the-evidence-is (e.g. the accuracy of the test)
————————————- (DIVIDED BY) —————————————————-
(P-X-in-the-world • probability of a true positive)
• (1 – P-X-in-the-world) • (1 – probability of a true positive)
OR
The empirical probability in the world * the predictive accuracy given evidence
————————————————————————————————————————–
the likelihood of the world producing that evidence
(=sum of probabilities of all ways of producing that evidence)
…Reading Break…
… reading break…
… reading break…
… reading break…
Actually, a break of about six weeks
during which I was traveling and missed the group meetings.
I may go back and summarize the missed material… or I may not not.
The first part of the chapter talks about developing an algorithm for finding the optimal hyperplane that separates two groups. The improves on what a perceptron does — it finds a hyperplane, but not necessarily (and probably not) the optimal one. The algorithm here works by maximizing the margin or border between the closest points.
The kernel trick refers to computing the dot products of vectors in higher dimensional spaces by computing the dot products of lower-dimension vectors that are mappings from the original vectors. This is significant because one way of classifying sets of data that overlap is by projecting them into higher dimensional spaces where they don’t overlap, and figuring out the optimal hyperplane there — except the kernel trick allows you to calculate the hyperplane without doing in the high-dimensional space. The term used for this technique is Support Vector Machines.
Hopfield Networks. Networks that have local energy minima that represent ‘memories.’ When a new input comes that produces something close to a particular memory, that pattern is likely to ‘decay’ into the stable pattern that represents the memory.
Hopfield’s work showed that the brain could be modeled as a dynamic system.
Epilogue
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Four Billion Years and Counting: Canada’s Geological Heritage. Produced by the Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, by seven editors and dozens of authors. 2014.
November-December, 2024.
I am reading this with CJS. It is a nice overview of regional geology, and it is nice that all the examples come from Canada, and at least some of the discussion is relevant to Minnesota Geology. The book is notable for its beautifully done pictures and diagrams.
Continue reading Four Billion Years and Counting…Views: 14
November 2024
Reading as part of the Fall 2024 Shakespeare course — see general notes for more.
Although its a famous play, and does indeed contain some striking things — particularly Iago’s manipulation of Othello, and also the use of the hankerchief as symbol of fidelity and betrayal – I was not that keen on this play. Give me some comedy, or at least a little more magic!
Othello, a famous general fighting for Venice, has just married Desdemona, to the dismay of her father. Othello is black, and an outsider, and knows little of the customs or society of Venice – but he is valued due to his military prowess, especially as the Turks seem about to attack. He has chosen the polished and bookish Cassio as his lieutenant, much to the distress and anger of Iago, who has spent his life in the field and believes he has earned the postion. Iago decides to get revenge, and aims to destroy Cassio and Desdemona and, through her, Othello.
After this, the play unfolds in a straightforward way. Iago subtly raises questions about Desdemona’s faithfulness – all the while pretending that he is reluctant to speak and is unsure of the truth of what he is saying – and in a famous scene transforms Othello’s trust of Desdemona into suspicion, suggesting that she is having an affair with Cassio. Iago is one of Shakespeare’s most famous villians – Coleridge referred to him as having “motiveless malignity.”
Othello wants visible proof, and here Desdemona’s hankerchief comes into play. It was her first gift from Othello, and it was woven by a fortune teller with magical properties. Iago secrets Desdemona’s hankerchief (which she had lost and Emilia found and given to Iago) in Cassio’s quarters. Cassio finds the hankerchief and gives it to the courtesian Bianca to copy – Othello watches this from a distance, and believes it proof of Desdemona’s infidelity. Othello orders Iago to kill Cassio, and Othello strangles Desdemona. When it is revealed that Desdemona was innocent, Othello kills himself.
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by Guy Deutscher
October 2024
This is an excellent book; interesting well-documented science, and some beautiful and erudite writing as well. The basic argument — that grammar determines what must be specified, rather than what can be specified, and in that manner instills certain habits of mind that effect how people see the world — seems correct, if not quite living up to the subtitle of the book: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages.
Perhaps the most interesting and fun part of the book was to be introduced to languages that work very differently from English: The Mates language (in Peru) that requires speakers to specify whether the fact they report is based on personal observation, indirect evidence, or hearsay; and the Australian language that has no egocentric prepositions, but requires all positional information to be reported in terms of the cardinal directions, thus requiring their speakers to always be oriented.
This book was a pleasure to read. I plan to seek out other work by this writer.
On whether languages reflect the characteristics of their speakers, he writes:
Many a dinner table conversation is embellished by such vignettes, for few subjects lend themselves more readily to disquisition than the character of different languages and their speakers. And yet should these lofty observations be carried away from the conviviality of the dining room to the chill of the study, they would quickly collapse like a soufflé of airy anecdote-at best amusing and meaningless, at worst bigoted and absurd.
— p. 2
The basic argument of the book is this:
The effects that have emerged from recent research, however, are far more down to earth. They are to do with the habits of mind that language can instill on the ground level of thought: on memory, attention, perception, and associations. And while these effects may be less wild than those flaunted in the past, we shall see that some of them are no less striking for all that.
I think it is correct, but that the subtitle of the book – Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages – is a bit of an exaggeration.
C1: Naming the Rainbow
This chapter reprises now-unknown work by William Gladstone (now remembered as an English prime minister) on Homer and his writings, and focuses in on particular on one chapter in Gladstone’s monumental 3,000 page work: a chapter on Homer’s use of color terms.
Gladstone’s scrutiny of the Iliad and the Odyssey revealed that there is something awry about Homer’s descriptions of color, and the conclusions Gladstone draws from his discovery are so radical and so bewildering that his contemporaries are entirely unable to digest them and largely dismiss them out of hand. But before long, Gladstone’s conundrum will launch a thousand ships of learning, have a profound effect on the development of at least three academic disciplines, and trigger a war over the control of language between nature and culture that after 150 years shows no sign of abating.
Gladstone notes that Homer uses color terms in odd ways — the famous “wine dark sea” (really “wine-looking” sea) being just one example.
Mostly Homer, as well as other Greek authors of the period, use color very little in their descriptions: mostly they use black or white; terms for colors are used infrequently and inconsistently. For example, the only other use of “wine-looking” is to describe the color of oxen.
Gladstone’s fourth point is the vast predominance of the “most crude and elemental forms of color”-black and white-over every other. He counts that Homer uses the adjective melas (black) about 170 times in the poems, and this does not even include instances of the corresponding verb “to grow black,” as when the sea is described as “black-ening beneath the ripple of the West Wind that is newly risen.” Words meaning “white” appear around 100 times. In contrast to this abun-dance, the word eruthros (red) appears thirteen times, xanthos (yellow) is hardly found ten times, ioeis (violet) six times, and other colors even less often.
This chapter describes the origin, rise and fall of linguistic relativity. Sapir is depicted as respectable but making over-stated claims; Whorf comes across as a charlatan, for example, making claims to have deeply studied Hopi, when he only had access to a single informant in New York – and making broad claims that are entirely wrong (e.g. that the Hopi language does not have a future tense).
Deutscher traces the origin of linguistic relativity to Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1799, whose “linguistic road to Damascus led through the Pyrennes.” Deutscher encountered the Basque language, and found that it was radically different from the languages linguists tended to study. He then sought out other ‘more exotic’ languages, which he found by going to the Vatican library and studying the notes of Jesuit missionaries to South and Central America: “…Humboldt was barely scratching the surface. But the dim ray of light that shown from his materials felt dazzling nonetheless because of the utter darkness in which he and his contemporaries had languished.” p. 135 Although Humboldt’s ideas led to linguistic relativity, it should be noted that he had a much more nuanced and correct view: In principle, any language may express any idea; the real differences among languages are not what they are able to express but in “what it encourages and stimulates its speakers to do from its own inner force.” But this view was not carried forward, and instead: “The Humboldtian ideas now underwent a process of rapid fermentation, and as the spirit of the new theory grew more powerful, the rhetoric became less sober. ”
All that said, Deutscher argues it is a mistake to dismiss the idea that language has no influence over thought. But rather than taking the strong case the language constrains thought, he instead argues the habits of language may lead to habits of mind. In the case of the influence of language, and refers to the idea that Boas introduces and that Jakobson crystalized into a maxim: “Languages differ in what they must convey, and not in what they may convey.”
“…has still the power to disturb our hearts.” [Sapir, referring to Homer, Ovid, etc.] p. 129
“[His] linguistic road to Damascus led through the Pyrennes.” p. 134
“…Humboldt was barely scratching the surface. But the dim ray of light that shown from his materials felt dazzling nonetheless because of the utter darkness in which he and his contemporaries had languished.” p. 135
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October 2024
Reading as part of the Fall 2024 Shakespeare course — see general notes for more.
Background: Henry V is son of Henry IV, who obtained the throne by usurping it from Richard II – this means that there is some feeling that neither Henry is a legitimate ruler. Before becoming King, Henry V was a wild youth, dissipated and engaged in lascivious acts. But on his father’s death, Henry becomes a serious and mature ruler.
The play opens with a chorus praising Henry as an unmatched warrior King. But then, the next act depicts the Archbishop of Canterbery revealing his plan to avert a harsh tax on the Church by legitimizing and encouraging Henry’s plans to invade France and take its throne.
Act 2 begins with the chorus describing the desire of the young men of England to pursue honor by participating in this war. The first scene following this shows conversation – and almost a fight, between three old soldiers who are erstwhile companions of Henry – the depicts honor as the least of their concerns. The second scene of Act shows the unmasking of traitors among the Lords who support Henry.
Act III. The war has begun. The English army, led by Henry, lays siege to the French town of Harfleur. Before the gates, Henry delivers a rousing speech (“Once more unto the breach…”) to rally his soldiers; the siege takes a heavy toll, and the town eventually surrenders.
In Act IV, Henry has arrived at Agincourt; his army is weary and outnumbered. Henry, in disguise, walks among his soldiers at night, listening to their fears and doubts. In the morning, Henry delivers his famous St. Crispin’s Day speech, which lifts the English spirits.
In Act V, the battle of Agincourt is won by the English. Henry returns to England, where the victory is celebrated, and then to France, to negotiate the final terms of the peace. There he woos a reluctant Princess Katherine, which marriage will solidify his claim to the thrown. The play ends with a reminder that Henry will die, and things will unravel.
Elimination of traitors; introduction of common solidiers; preparation by France
Initial success: Harlefor surrenders; commoners show cowardance; 5:1 odds
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart
In liberty of bloody hand, shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infant
What is it then to me if impious war,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats
Unlinked to waste and desolation?
Eve of battle; Henry & Williams & Fluellen; Pistol demands ransom; triumph at Agincourt
Treaty signed and Princess Kate agrees to marry Henry; Fluellen gets revenge
Throughout the play we see that Henry has separated himself from his old base companions: Falstaff dies (and was previously exiled); Henry allows Barloph to be hanged for stealing; the Bishops remark on how Henry has changed.
Deception: Not much. Henry goes in disguise among his troops. Henry incident with William. Henry does not tell Fluellen what is up when he sends him after William. Henry uses lots of flowery words which it is unlikely Princess Kate will understand.
??? Is Henrys order to kill the prisoners proper?
??? Does Henry really think the war is just?
??? Henry says that if they do not surrender, governor will be responsible for soldiers’ depredations.
Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umbered face;
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart
In liberty of bloody hand, shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass:
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infant
What is it then to me if impious war,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats
Enlinked to waste and desolation?
Play with your fancies and in them behold,
Upon the hempen tackle, shipboys climbing.
Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give
To sounds confused. Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th’ invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowes
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing…
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October 2024
Reading as part of the Fall 2024 Shakespeare course — see general notes for more.
The Duke of Vienna (aka Friar Lodowick) plans to travel abroad, leaving young Angelo as regent, empowered to enforce laws that the Duke has allowed to go fallow. However, the Duke really plans to remain in Vienna, disguised as a Friar, to see how Angelo carries out his duties. Angelo immediately shuts down many of the houses of prostitution, and condemns Claudio, a man who has only erred in having sex after handfasting but before the banns were read, to be executed. This seems extreme and disturbs many: Escalus, a judge; the Provost, who runs the jail; and Lucio, a friend of Claudio and ne’r do well Viennese noble. Lucio seeks out Isabella, Claudio’s sister, who is in the process of joining a convent, to persuade Angelo to be merciful, after protests by Escalus and the Provost fail. Angelo speaks with Isabella, steadfastly refusing, until she asks him to look into his heart and see if has not had similar feelings that led Claudio to his current straits. Angelo wavers, and tells her to return tomorrow. In a soliloquy he reveals that is attracted to her virtue, and wishes to have sex with her. In a second interview he tells her he’ll free Claudio if she’ll sleep with him. She refuses, and he tells her if she does not relent he’ll torture Claudio to death.
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