Curated Pairings

This is probably of interest only to me, but while I know nothing about and don't intend to learn about wine and food pairings (I like food but don't care much for wine and figure a good hard cider goes with everything), I really enjoy appropriate book and video game pairings. 

For instance, Life Between the Tides, which broadened its scope from the tidepool to the hardships of historical Scottish life inspired another visit to the game Clanfolk, in which you help a fledgling Scottish clan get itself established and on good terms with the neighbors. (I've seen it criticized as basically being a simplified Rimworld. This I concur is true but not a criticism from me. I tend to enjoy simpler games with fewer options and a more focused scope. I do enjoy Rimworld as well, though.) Life is hard in survival games, but not nearly as hard as real life surviving has been for most people in most times.  

Then polar exploration in general such as In the Kingdom of Ice of course pairs well with Frostpunk and the recently released Frostpunk 2, in which you are trying to manage a Victorian-era city coping with a new Ice Age. They're gritty (though not as gritty as the over-18 rating would lead you to believe) and require careful planning and hard choices but it's very satisfying to stay alive in the cold. 

This is less of a book pairing but Stardew Valley, which the descendants have not entirely outgrown and we sometimes still co-op, always inspires me to get out gardening. Rocketboy set us up with potatoes in individual pots with individual sprinklers this year which was both highly manageable with my limited time and energy for gardening and felt exactly like Stardew Valley.  Brother Cadfael mysteries also always make me want to garden and that reminds me that I should hunt up A Morbid Taste for Bones for Dame who is (semi-permanently) on a medieval kick. 

The ultimate game for book lovers in general, though, has got to be Book of Hours in which you are a librarian of esoteric knowledge refurbishing the ancient halls, reading arcane books, learning new languages and cultivating strange acquaintances. It's particularly inspiring for language study, as the librarian is, of course, already fluent in several real (mostly dead) languages and learns several imaginary ones as the game progresses. 

Narnia and the North

I reread all but one of the Narnia series on our weekend getaway we did for our anniversary in early September. In publication order, of course. It was and remains a delightful journey. Some of Lewis's adult women in his other books are a bit dubious, but his children, boys and girls, are uniformly real. (One of my favorite lines, ever since I *was* a child, was the exclamation "We can pretend we are Arctic explorers!" upon entering an entirely alternate world unphased. To be a child is to live in a world where everything is both wonderful and possible.) 

There seems to be some controversy these days about ethnic diversity in fantastical fiction, though whether there is any real controversy or just a few trolls and bots is always impossible to say. (We will soon reach the point where social media is entirely taken over by AI talking to itself and then we can all go play outside again.) This seems wrong-headed to me on either end of the spectrum. 

On the one hand, there is nothing at all wrong with people telling their own stories, even if they happen to be white people, and any fantasy rooted in folktales is going to reflect its place of origin and also humanity's intrinsic ethnocentricity. There is nothing offensive about all the characters in *Monkey King* being Asian and let's remember that Westerners tend to cast Aladdin as Middle Eastern but the Middle Eastern tale sets it in China, and how they tell it in China I don't know but I bet it's somewhere far away from there. If we want more diversity the thing to do is encourage and read stories by all different kinds of people. 

 On the other hand, anyone who really loves a story should think it a great compliment if it can work in different times and places or with people of different origins. That's a testament to its power and universality as a story. A prime example of this is Shakespeare. While quasi-Elizabethan performances are common, so is every possible kind of racial swapping, gender swapping, setting swapping, and while not every production is great there is no doubt that Shakespeare works in so many settings that Shakespeare himself could never have visualized, and very few people get huffy about it. 

 Anyway, supposedly Calormen is one of those areas that is problematic in Narnia and why *The Horse and His Boy* has never been cinematized even though it is a perfectly cinematic story. But on re-read I don't see *The Horse and His Boy* version of Calormen to be offensive. Lewis did not put much effort into worldbuilding, it's true, but then nobody at all did that I can think of before Tolkien. He simply mashes together a bunch of fairy-tale settings and Calormen is simply an Arabian Nights setting. Sure, it's a dictatorial society but then let's not forget the worst tyrant of all in Narnia is the *White* Witch so there is hardly a racial monopoly on such behavior. It's also a far more civilized place than Narnia and nobody looks askance at intermarriage. (It's actually *The Last Battle* that has far more offensive references to Calormen, but at that point Narnia is an occupied country and that does tend to make even the best people testy.) 

 But in contrast to that, I would like to point out something that nobody, not even Lewis particularly, seems to remember, which is that canonically, the Telmarines are at least 50% Pacific Islander in origin, and the rest of their heritage could and should be a pretty fair racial mix because it was a crew of pirates, who were not fussy about such things. And as far as I can tell all of the human population of Narnia is Telmarine from Caspian forward. I suggest someone cast The Rock as Lord Berne, the reclaiming of the Lone Islands could be a great little action episode. 

I think my favorite of the series is *The Silver Chair*, partly because it's simply a great straightforward quest story about holding on to hope in the dark and the cold, partly because of all the children I identify most with Jill's mix of down-to-earth grit and occasionally being a show off or breaking down, and partly because Puddleglum is just the absolute best. 

 Other books I read or didn't as the case may be: 

*I Cheerfully Refuse!* by Leif Enger: Enger is one of the very few current authors I make an effort to read new books more or less as they come out (I'm still slow). This is set in a not-so-distant dystopia and built on a tragic loss, and yet it's full of light and joy and laughter and the joyful defiance of friendship. love, and literature in the teeth of cruelty and ignorance. 

 *Elder Race* by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I enjoyed *Children of Time* so much I decided to check out some more, and this one was also great. It's a very quick read but it still manages to delve into the "science as magic" theme with great depth and also a thought-provoking exploration of the power and limits of dissociation as a coping method. 

 *In the Kingdom of Ice* by Hampton Sides. I have not finished this yet, but I intend to even though it is quite overdue. I still seem to be on a high seas adventure kick, and this one, about an unsuccessful attempt to find the "Open Polar Sea" has got perils, hubris, scientific advancement and follies, and the danger of taking a crewmember who is addicted to puns. After this I will probably need a Shackleton book. 

 And some I did not finish: 

*In the Kingdom of the Sick*. Despite the promising title, this was not nearly as interesting, being about how being chronically ill sucks and nobody gets it, especially doctors and insurance (public or private). While that is a valid point, I already could write several books on the topic so I don't see a point in finishing. 

 *The Dutch Wife* This was the current book club selection which I usually try to finish even if it's not my cup of tea (which realistic historical fiction seldom is) but I just couldn't do back to back chapters of rape, torture, and then more rape. For me anyway the graphic physical descriptions diminished rather than increased empathy so I called it quits.

A Wedding

 This does feel like a full circle moment, as this blog was started shortly after our own wedding and also very shortly before we found out Duchess was on the way, and now here we are. 

Professional shot

Coming out for pictures

Dinner

 

I did manage to make it on time and all siblings were present and suitably, if somewhat eccentrically, attired. (Though I realized two-thirds of the way through the day that I was wearing a mismatched set of boots. I did bring a more wedding-ish pair of heels for the ceremony but I changed back out as soon as it was over because we were getting pretty deep in mud and also I hate heels.)
 

Between Duchess and DOB they managed to orchestrate a beautiful and well-organized wedding on four weeks' notice based on Mr. Duchess's ever-shifting departure date for the Air Force. (We have been racking our brains to come up with a good blog name, but Mr. Duchess will have to do for now.) 

Our family has a long-standing joke about our surprisingly good luck with outdoor wedding weather in our very uncertain climate as over the past twenty-some years we, Their Majesties, Toolboy and his wife and a couple of years ago the oldest girl cousin all have had outdoor weddings in either September or May and the weather has uniformly been delightful. While September weather around here is a transition from the desert dry of July and August to the rainforest rest of the year, heavy rain is quite unusual and there are many beautiful days or at least beautiful hours. So we were hopeful when the weather forecast a few scattered showers with clearing.  

That is not what happened. What happened was it rained buckets, starting during the rehearsal the night before, when we scrambled to cover the tables before the decor got soaked (though Duchess had already prepared for that contingency with plastic tarps). Continuing through the rehearsal dinner, which we were supposed to have on the deck of a local restaurant but by great luck their indoor group canceled and we got the event room. And then the following day it drizzled throughout getting ready and set up, poured during the pictures, let up to a light drizzle for the ceremony in the woods, poured again for the reception, and only finally ended in time for dancing and send-off after dark. We had a few canopies to cover the meal tables but mostly everyone just got soaked. And had a marvelous time doing it. 

An Accomplishment

I have at last, for the first time ever, completed my coloring in page and obtained the library's 100-hour reader t-shirt for the summer reading program. While keeping track of time, or even the tracker, has been a barrier, I have to admit that even for me 100 hours in three months is quite a lot of reading. (DOB opines that reading for work should count but I never do count it, it's too fragmentary.) I don't listen to books in the car or while doing chores usually--I need a lot of auditory silence to function the rest of the time--so it essentially means I must eschew nearly all other leisure activities in favor of reading. It was fun to do but I'm also quite relieved to be done. I don't really need a lot of extra challenge in my life. 

My latest childhood re-read was Huckleberry Finn, which I picked up when James by Percival Everett came in at the library. It was a compelling pairing. The tone is understandably vastly different--Huck is a boy having the adventure of a lifetime, James is an adult in constant mortal peril. I didn't try to do a point-by-point comparison of the plot or timeline--most of major characters and events carry over and James has his own encounters during the portions where they are separated. The ending is completely different, but Tom's "rescue" is so absurd I don't see any way it could have fit in the more serious book. On the whole it gave a compelling perspective of what it is to live a life of oppression in a world superficially pleasant. There were a few places where James felt more like an idealized 21st century character than a genuine person in the past. For instance, while I can accept James as a skeptic, especially after sneaking Enlightenment authors out of Judge Thatcher's library, he comes across as a 21st century skeptic for whom the lack of the spiritual is a simple given not as a 19th century one always looking over his shoulder. More than that, the portrayal that all the enslaved people were feigning any religious fervor solely to pacify the white folks seemed disrespectful to the history and contribution of the African-American church. 

The Frugal Wizard's Guide to Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson was just plain fun. 

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope. I needed one more long public domain audiobook to get me through and this was just the ticket. Except there are some events that did not happen in this one so clearly I'm going to need to finish the Barchester Chronicles. Trollope is particular vicious in his satire of the Victorian gentry posing over birth and money in this one. Also I had to laugh at the lawyer who complained of needing to work until 9 every night and then wasting hours of time just chit-chatting. I've seen those billable records. I'm still working on getting myself to stop at 5, though. 

1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline. OK, I really have been spoiled by my recent ancient history readings. This one was, despite the inspiring title, quite dull and academic and full of hedged answers and cited quotations from specialists in Mycenean pottery, which caused me to lose interest and start speculating on how one becomes a specialist in Mycenean pottery and what their lives looked like. I guess it was interesting enough for me to finish, though. 

I almost forgot because I finished it awhile ago but wanted to wait to add it to my list until after book club discussion: A Warrior of the People by Joe Starita. I read this first about a year ago and thought my book club would enjoy it, which they did. Susan LaFlesche (the first Native American to become a doctor with Western medicine) was an amazing person and the way she and her siblings threaded the balance as advocates for their people and simultaneously helping their people adapt to the changing world was thought-provoking. It definitely held up to a re-read. 

And now Duchess is getting married in two weeks so who knows what reading will occur, although I'm not really trying to contribute anything more than showing up and making sure siblings are decently attired.  

Robin Hood and his merry . . . everything

Robin Hood has always been a favorite of mine because it is, for Anglo-derivative cultures, the fairy tale of which the Magna Carta is the founding document--the ideal of the rule of law, of the king and the sheriff being subjects of the law, not the origin of it. And, of course, it's just a lot of fun. Though I have to admit, it's a bit repetitive, something even the small ducklings twigged onto back when they would listen to the Howard Pyle audiobook every night. First Robin Hood meets a stranger--they get in a fight--Robin Hood loses--everybody laughs and they join Robin Hood's band. Though even that formula has a subtle truth about leadership. 

But what struck me more this time was the sheer joy at the root of protest. Robbing the rich to give to the poor is of course not quite on point; Robin Hood is part an Anglo-Saxon partisan sticking it back to the Normans and part his own arbiter of a rough justice. But though Robin Hood is happy to help out the poor when the occasion comes, it sounds to me like of the money lifted from the overfed abbots most of it goes to keep the merry men in ale and Lincoln green. Nonetheless, he certainly does have a revolutionary edge but I think the strength of it is that it comes from joy more than anger. If there is one adjective that gets painfully overused in the stories, it's merry. But that is also the key. Vengeance nearly always turns sour; the men get replaced with pigs but the same oppression goes on. But joy . . . joy can be shared. Joy can let us remember what we are fighting for. Even the Sheriff of Nottingham can join the fun if he only submits to lightening his purse and laughing at himself. 

Anyway, children have been reenacting Robin Hood and Little John for almost a thousand years and I hope they continue for a thousand years more. 

Moby Dick I finished it and it was well worth re-visiting; it won't be the last time. The more I read it the more the long digressions on natural history felt like the book itself was deliberately taking us on the similitude of a whaling voyage; long periods of boredom interspersed with heart-stopping action. And the compelling triad of the cheerful skepticism of Stubbs, the steadfast piety of Starbuck, both ultimately doomed by Ahab's obsession.  

And the Ocean was Our Sky by Patrick Ness. It seemed like a good time to do a Moby Dick riff; in this one, it's the whales who are the heroes. It was fun to read but I didn't feel the whale world quite held together and the book and its moral seemed at odds with each other. 

Life Between the Tides by Adam Nicholson. This one was a spontaneous grab from a library display and I was blown away by it. It's about a man building his own tide pool on the Scottish coast but it's also about philosophy, ecosystems, natural history, and nearly everything else, beautifully written. 

On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz. This was recommended on a local book list and was fun read; the author walks around her own block, then takes a similar walk with a variety of experts, from a geologist to a sound engineer, to learn to notice more. My favorite of all was the walk with her toddler son, though. That was still one of my favorite things ever that the kids and I did when they were tiny; we could walk the same route every day for a year and there was always something to notice, something to talk about. Although my block is very different from Horowitz's and many of her experts would not have much to work with (there's almost no lettering and hardly any rocks except gravel) the idea of there always being more to see applies to everything.

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. I have been meaning to read this for a long time but finally remembered to actually do it. It was utterly delightful; there are deadly spores and a brave and resourceful heroine and an adorable talking rat in a pirate hat and everything wrapped up just as it should, but in quite surprising ways. However, I am not satisfied with the water cycle explanation, even if it means I have no personality. 

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells. This was easy to get on audio once Moby Dick was over, inspired by some passing reading of a post complaining of the "mad scientist" trope because such individuals (as first typified by Dr. Moreau and Dr. Frankenstein) were clearly not mentally ill. This seemed not only to miss the rather obvious point that words have many shades of meaning, but that "mad" in particular is not about cause but effect: behavior that outrageously passes the bounds of human expectation--whether motivated by anger, mental illness, whimsy, or scientific hubris. 

The Princess and the Goblin

 The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald is one of the most perfect fairytale stories that exist. From the brisk mountain air to the absurd and terrifying goblins to the transcendent and mysterious Grandmother, with Irene's courage matched with faith and Curdie's courage matched with intelligence and humor, it has everything a fairy tale should have and I will never get tired of it. 

I have to read The Princess and Curdie to go with it, and I could hardly say I dislike it, but it's a very, very different book. Our hero and heroine have only advanced from primary to secondary school, but the tone of the book has advanced from childhood wonder to midlife crisis. The villains are not comical goblins, but ordinary people being selfish and cold in ordinary ways. And for that, there is no permanent cure. The last story's happily ever after dissolves and never comes back. The tone is so very different that I do want to sit Mr. MacDonald down and ask him what *was* going on when he wrote the second book. 

Other Books:

The Brothers Karamazov: I finally finished this. I loved the trial scenes, although I did probably spend an inordinate amount of time wondering whether the rules of evidence really allowed that or whether it was just the novelist's oversimplification. It ends satisfactorily but untidily, but I am left imagining my own ending in which Dmitri and Gruschenka *do* successfully escape to America where, despite Dmitri's current opinion, they settle permanently and Ivan and Katarina follow, along with Ilyosha, and thirty-five years later everyone is trying to have a nice normal American Thanksgiving for the sake of the grandchildren with all this dramatic backstory which keeps coming up awkwardly. 

How to Read Nature  by Tristan Gooley. Yes, I will just be working through all of this author's books I can get from the library. This is a small one and highly accessible, packed with very simple exercises that can be done without fancy equipment right where you are. The theme is the opposite of snooty, as Gooley focuses on the conflict, sex and death that always arrest human attention and that are going on all around us all the time. 

Monkey King: Journey to the West, by WuCheng'En, translated by Julia Lovell. I actually started this when Dame chose it for school last year but I've taken it slowly and just now finished up. This is a classic Chinese fantasy tale, and it is a wild ride. It reminds me of nothing so much as Looney Tunes with the wisdom of fools and so much slapstick. I presume it's been serialized many times. Monkey King is a subversive, obnoxious, and hilarious trickster hero and I remain a little in doubt that he's actually achieved enlightenment by the end. The translation is pretty accessible but as with most old stories modern parents might want to edit a few parts for the younger readers. 

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I *was* listening to this on Spotify and then they put in a 10-hours max per month audiobook rule so now I'm listening on Librivox. Anyway, the dry Yankee wit is a welcome change from all the Russian drama. (My favorite scene is when Ishmael tells the captain that he wants to sign onto a whaling ship to "see the world." The captain gestures to the water over the starboard side as a fair sample of what he will actually be seeing.)  

It's certainly long-winded but I find myself enjoying the diversions and rambles and there's a lot of interesting insight into early natural history and classifications. Think of it as a podcast. It goes well with farming or grinding in video games. Every era has its way of wasting colossal amounts of time and everyone wrings their hands over the current ones and praises the prior ones as superior or abuses them as tedious but the reality is, we're large mammals. While movement is essential, we aren't meant to spend all day every day tearing around like insects or hummingbirds. We're meant to "waste" a good bit of our time, it's how we operate. 

Also, I'm making great progress towards my 100-hour reader t-shirt for the first time ever. 

Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer. There are a lot of retellings of East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon, or as I think of it, the Heroine's Journey (aka Cupid and Psyche or Beauty and the Beast), but that doesn't mean there's no need for more. This one felt a bit cliche to me at first but it drew me in. 

Stories in the Stars by Susanna Hislop. Dame has been on an astronomy kick lately wanting to learn to identify some more constellations, so I reserved a bunch of books. (This time of the year is the only time we really have a shot at observing the stars on any regular basis; unfortunately it takes a very long time to get dark.) This one was not particularly helpful for identifying but is more a highly varied sampler of the stories behind them. I did enjoy learning about some of the more modern creations or the myths from different cultures. 

A Walk through the Heavens by Milton D. Heifetz and Wil Tirion. This one, on the other hand, is perfect for actually finding new constellations, it starts you off at the Big Dipper and gives step by step instructions to each one. We also discovered that some old red tissue paper over a flashlight works fine for preserving night vision. And I have discovered that my eyes are starting to decline, and I cannot see all the stars that Dame can. I should have spent more time learning constellations when I was younger, I suppose.  But I can spot Cygnus now, and Vega of the Lyre. 

Trial by Jury

Progressing through *The Brothers Karamazov* I was startled to hear a jury being selected. Tsarist Russia has trial by jury? Turns out it did, for some crimes, for a little while, as part of Tsar Alexander II's reforms in the 1860s, shortly after freeing the serfs and ending with the 1917 revolution. This law review article answered a lot of my questions, though being over twenty years old it still leaves me wondering how the revival of trial by jury is going these days. 

Anyway, you can hear the skepticism of the upper classes as the jury is seated--what can these muzhiks know about the passions and motives of a (sort of) aristocratic Karamazov? Well, everything, of course, because crimes are committed by humans for human reasons, and what we need of the jury is to simply be human beings. Which brings in Chesterton's great defense of exactly why the right to jury is so important: 

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round.

Interestingly, while jury nullification (i.e. the unavoidable ability of the jury to refuse to convict a person even though the case against them is proven, because they disapprove of the law) is a hush-hush or lunatic fringe concept in American law, it was explicitly authorized and stated in Russian trials. Yet despite that, and despite a presumably higher historic degree of antagonism between the government and the people, acquittal rates in Russia were always similar to those in the US, which suggests that perhaps we will not unloose anarchy if we talk about it.  

My practice does not involve many jury trials, none criminal, but I have conducted or assisted with a few. From what I have seen, it is quite true that it is impossible to impress the nuances of legal concepts upon a jury. No matter how carefully explained, they will have no comprehension of burden of proof or causation. But they will very seriously try to understand who is in the wrong and to be fair, and in the end that comes out as close as we could ask for. 

On a lighter note, the miniseries Jury Duty provided a goofy but surprisingly heartwarming look at our judicial system. The premise is that a single person gets what they believe to be a legitimate jury duty summons and is seated on what appears to be a real jury. Only everyone--judge, attorneys, litigants, and all the other jurors--are actors. (The judge is also a retiring judge, so the legal process itself is fairly accurate.) The actors then provide increasingly absurd hijinks yet, through it all, our random juror remains committed to trying to give the litigants a fair trial and make a just ruling. 

The Phantom Tollbooth

 Last winter someone was asking in a Facebook group on reading for more books like *The Phantom Tollbooth* and neither Bookworm nor I could come up with any. There's really nothing like *The Phantom Tollbooth*. However, on further reflection, although it would completely skew anyone's expectations of either book, what *The Phantom Tollbooth* is most like is *Pilgrim's Progress.* It is a *Pilgrim's Progress* of the mind. The zany characters and situations are not merely a series of puns, they are the embodiment of ideas, turns of phrase, paradoxes. And it is, of course, a moral journey: from ignorance and indifference to wisdom and curiosity. 

I am afraid that will convince no one to read it, or the people who do read it will find it not at all what they were expecting. It is also a hilarious, delightful, relatively easy read. It has been one of my favorite books since I first read it at an age so young I no longer remember. It was definitely the most formative book of my first decade of life. As a child for whom abstract knowledge came more readily than the often overwhelming world of the senses, it convinced me that the real world was full of wonder as well. 

Other Books:

*Atlas of a Lost World* by Craig Childs. G. K. Chesterton writes in several places with great humor of the folly of archaeologists and anthropologists imagining "primitive man" (as the term used at the time) as some utterly alien being full of incomprehensible behaviors instead of (whether separated by time or geography) people very much like us with customs no stranger, when you stop to think about it, than our own. Fortunately I think this is one area where the prevailing mindset has improved, and this book was a terrific example. The author writes of various archaeological discoveries related to the arrival of humans to the Americas in the Ice Age, and intersperses those with his personal camping and travel experiences (on foot or by boat) among landscapes that might resemble those of the Ice Age. It's a wonderful exercise of the imagination, vividly portraying the courage, curiosity, and skill must have taken to survive in a world of megafauna.  

*The Summer Book* by Tove Jansson. This is a deceptively simple book, about a little girl and grandmother experiencing summer on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland. That sounds rather saccharine, but it is not. Grandmother is not growing old gracefully and the little girl is as contrary and unpredictable as any real child and the simple life close to nature is undertaken with the casual indifference of an earlier era when it was perfectly normal to throw your trash into the sea. There is Father, too, but he is a middle-aged person who spends all his time working or fishing. It's up to the very old and very young to experience being human.

*The Brothers Karamazov* I've almost made it to Dmitri's trial. I really don't think much of Dmitri but I also don't think he did it. Dostoevsky is certainly deft about exploring the labyrinths of the human mind: though everyone is a bit over the top, especially the women, they are over the top in recognizable ways. 

*Songs of Willow Frost* by Jamie Ford. This is the current book club selection, so I am finishing it even though it's not the kind of thing I like (but it is definitely the kind of thing that winds up picked for book clubs so apparently a lot of people do like that kind of thing.) It's a notable local author who provides well-developed stories illuminating local history. I just don't really read to deal with realistic family problems and personal calamities, that's what I deal with all day. But I take it like medicine and then I go read something like:

*Oath of Swords* *The War God's Own* *Wind Rider's Oath* *War Maid's Choice* by David Weber. These are the books you read when you want some big damn heroes with great big swords to stabbity stab some even bigger nasty demons. While the main character, Bahzell, a verrry reluctant paladin, is a joy in any circumstance, I'm also a big fan of his fellow paladin Dame Kareitha, who has a sword divinely blessed to let her know when documents are forged and who settles boundary disputes with some deft legal expertise combined with using the sword in its more traditional fashion. 

*What Feasts at Night* by T. Kingfisher. I never know what to say if people ask if I like horror. I don't find horror particularly horrifying for whatever reason, so reading for pure adrenalin does not work for me. It's a book, nothing's going to eat me. If there's interesting psychological development, though, horror doesn't put me off. This series, by T. Kingfisher, tends to have a rather botanical twist and features frequent appearances by Beatrix Potter's aunt, a noted mycologist. 

Wind in the Willows

 Wind in the Willows, someone once said, is not a book that you judge: it is a book that judges you. But it is a kindly judgment, not the imperious magistrate casting you into the gaol, but the friends dragging you back home for your own good. It is a book I feel sorry for people who never got to read, or who cannot appreciate it. And I can understand why some people struggle with it (beyond those who have no enjoyment for anything fantastical): the pacing is erratic, lurching between pastoral lyricism and the crazy adventures of Toad. But so be it. It is not for us to judge. 

Whereas Winnie the Pooh deals with life's small and ordinary feelings and encounters, Wind in the Willows dives right into some of its hardest tangles: the line between supporting friends and enabling them; the tension between the longing for home and longing for adventure; the overwhelming weight of glory and the mercy of our day to day agnosticism. 

The thing that struck me most of all on this reread was that Grahame succeeds in a way almost unique to bring the modern (to him at least) world into his fantasy without losing any of the sense of wonder. It is extremely easy--nearly every modern YA fantasy book does it--to render magic into mere technology. It is not particularly unusual to write fantasy, like Tolkien did, in which technology is the enemy and hostile to magic. But to make a world where Mr. Toad can steal a motor-car--and a train for good measure--and yet every tree and streamlet is laden with mystery and purpose--that is quite uncommon. 

It had been too long since I read it (not since Dame and Dash were second graders, so eight years at least), and I will do my best not to let so long go by again. 

Other Books:
I finished How to Read a Tree, by Tristan Gooley, but I really think I need to own it because it's a book to read a tiny bit of and then go for a lot of long walks and noticing. Not that I get to spend a lot of time noticing since my walks are usually desperately trying to restrain or hopelessly trying to locate the dogs, but I still am spotting some more. Looking forward to trying out more by this author, the library has a bunch. 

I also got back from the library and finally finished The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. Last year everyone was reading Incredibly Bright Creatures, including our book group, and while we enjoyed it pretty well (especially for the local setting and for being more cheerful than *most* of the local books we get to read), the best part was definitely the octopus and if you really want to spend some time with octopuses, The Soul of an Octopus might be more what you want.

Our book club's newest selection is In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. I am looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions on it--it's the true story on which Moby Dick was based. I think everyone will enjoy it, except perhaps Barb who has some cannibalism-related trauma due to being a child before movie ratings systems came out. Adventure on the high seas and all that. I really want to give Moby Dick another go now (I last read that as an extremely stubborn but largely uncomprehending 10 year old) but I'm still only about a third of the way through the Brothers Karamazov. I definitely want to check out more by this author. 

In children's books that came out since my time, I've been reading a whole slew of Harriet Hamsterbone and Danny Dragonbreath adventures by Ursula Vernon. They're in the gaining fluency stage, somewhere between a graphic novel and a chapter book, and they're hilarious and inventive and in my opinion a significant cut above the better known series in that range. Harriet and her battle quail solve various fractured fairytale crises, while Danny and his small reptilian buddies cope with various more or less mythical monsters. They manage to have great adventures without dead or absentee parents, potty humor, or any excessive degree of family turmoil. I also highly recommend Castle Hangnail. 

The Brothers Karamzov I have moved to audio book--it's way easier to keep the characters straight with an actor doing different voices than it is to remember who is going by which name in what context. Russian literature, I suspect, is rather like watching reality TV or soap operas: one's own life can hardly escape looking better by contrast. It is great and profound and thought provoking and also sometimes I just want Flora from Cold Comfort Farm to show up and convince everyone to stop being so melodramatic. 

I saw a bunch of recommendations to try Louise Penny as a modern mystery writer and I must say the titles and cover art were very compelling. I read A World of Curiosities and found it pretty well done but in the end I really don't like the grittier kind of mystery very much. (Even though, if you think of it, cozy mysteries are far more disturbing--to think that an ordinary person living their ordinary life could have personal knowledge of dozens of murderers who mostly murdered for rather humdrum and ordinary reasons--is far more troubling than to think that the chief detective for a large metropolitan area would need to deal with the occasional serial killer.) But I will probably read a couple more because the titles are so lovely, but not right before bed.

Due to wanting to inspire Dame to keep up on her Latin I started doing Latin on Duolingo, but the course is not very long and I have already gotten to the part that's only review while still being very far from actually reading anything interesting in Latin. So I'm very excited to have purchased Scribblers, Sculptors and Scribes along with Wheelock's Latin, which promises reading real Latin writers from the very beginning, even if we have to start with graffiti and copybook headings. 

The Great Brain

 So for February my revisitation of children's literature went to The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald. There are more in the series, but we seem to have the first two. (My library consists of a very random amalgamation of books--mostly American history--purchased by DOB in his youth; books of many varieties picked up by me at random library sales, books obtained for school for the kids in various years, and quite a number that were rescued from the farm. Also Bookworm's library is slowly migrating this way. And in the past couple of years I have finally started deliberately purchasing books I actually want to re-read. So I am often in ignorance of what exactly is in our library. Also DOB hired some housecleaners to come install additional bookshelves and bring order to the chaos upstairs a couple of years ago and while they did make everything much neater, they had not the slightest conception of how books should be organized so pretty much everything is just random. After the addition goes on and Bookworm moves in we shall have a grand book reorganizing.) 

*The Great Brain* is in the category of realistic kid adventures with a strong historical and geographical setting--in this case turn of the 20th century (we have to specify which one now) Utah. They are based on his own childhood and I have no idea how fictionalized they are (or what his older brother immortalized as the titular character, a money-loving eleven-year-old con artist, thought of the series.) 

On re-read, these are solid but not immortal books. The prose is a little clunkier than I remembered. There are many things that might grate on modern sensibilities, but on the whole the series is good-hearted and doesn't shy away from tough issues (immigration, disability, suicide, lack of community care for an outsider). Honestly I think most parents would definitely put it in the read-aloud-and-discuss category. It's certainly a very different world, one where a boy's status is entirely measured by physical violence and girls don't even exist, where weeks of the silent treatment is the enlightened parental alternative to the whippings routinely handed out, where dividing along cultural and religious lines is hardly even to be questioned. But I think it's good for kids to visit some different worlds, and even to realize that places not all that distant in time or space still had dramatically different outlooks and unquestioned values. 

Other books I have been reading:

I finished Byzantium and it held up well through the end. The Vikings remained a hilarious RPG party throughout; even being sent to the silver mines could not squelch them and they horded as much silver as they could until rescued. And yet it also felt real when the one Viking convert, despite his entire instruction being at the hands of his captive/slave/friend, a disillusioned and apostate Irish monk, spoke movingly of the day he nearly died of torture in the mines that he knew that Jesu would be there at the harbor to welcome him home, and would understand, as he had suffered in the same way.

This also got me interested in Eastern European medieval trade routes, which is being further whetted by a podcast on The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors, about a journey from Germany through Russia and Persia in the 1600s, but I cannot find anything on it at all at the local library.  

On the monastery theme, I convinced my book club to read A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters, and I am always happy to spend some time with Brother Cadfael. We'll see how people like it. 

On a bit of a mystery kick, then, I also reread Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers. It is wild to think that this book is nearly a century old; I wonder if it is one of the first examples of the modern workplace comedy with its banter that still feels familiar territory but surely did not exist much earlier, before, well, workplaces were co-ed. (One cannot imagine such a place in Dickens.) Granted it's still early days and there are no women in management but there is one actual female copywriter and a couple of typists whom Sayers, holding true to her principles, treats as humans. And though the language of the actual advertisements have all the absurdities of vintage advertisements, the general motive of advertising and its very mixed blessings have not changed all that much even if the media have changed dramatically. 

I've decided my next tough classic to tackle is The Brothers Karamzov. There's nothing like a little Russian literature to remind one that one's troubles are not really so bad. 

Pooh and Alice

 I started off the year with A. A. Milne. I'm sure the idea is not original with me that children's literature can have a much broader scope than adult literature because, with the attention-hogging topics of sex and death off the table, the writer must delve into the more nuanced joys and sorrows that actually make up the bulk of life. Probably no books exemplify this as well as the Winnie-the-Pooh books, which celebrate life's small joys like sitting in the sun with a friend and its small sorrows like discovering one already ate the snack one was saving for later. Although I think it is the poems that I find even more enlightening, as there are few days in which I do not feel like The Old Sailor My Grandfather Knew, not to mention those days of discovering another knight whose squeak has gone, or needing to enlist a suitable third party to suggest an answer I am not entirely sure of. We will never forget Pooh, even when we are 100. 

Then I went on to Lewis Carroll, which are an entirely different kind of fantasy, the kind where even the ordinary becomes strange. This puts some people off, but for those of us who are always finding ourselves at odds with the world, it is strangely comforting. (Pooh and Alice view from different angles the joy of reciting one's own poetry and the horror of having to listen to other people's. Such is human existence.) There is also a special place in my heart for *The Hunting of the Snark*, though it is much less well known:

He had bought a large map representing the sea,

   Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

   A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,

   Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply

   "They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!

   But we've got our brave Captain to thank

(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best—

   A perfect and absolute blank!"

Anyway, they were both a good way to spend January, including one particularly exciting Friday when the temperature dropped to 12 Fahrenheit, the pipes froze, the heaters stopped working, the dogs got out, and CPS dropped by (due to an offender in the neighborhood).  

Other things I am reading:

Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead. This is the first time I've actually read Lawhead, as far as I know, though I've tried several times but always been stymied by not having the right books in the right order. As far as I know, this one stands alone. So far it's been quite enjoyable (and a nice medieval follow-up to Doomsday Book, which I read over New Year's). It does feel a bit like a role-playing game somehow in the sequence of adventures, but I do not consider that a demerit. 

The Planets by Dava Sobel. I wanted a reliable science writer after starting on a book off the library new books rack that had a glorious title and promised to be about deep sea creatures but instead spent an awful lot of time on the author's Tinder dates, which were of no interest to me. This was not about deep sea creatures, but it was, as advertised, about the planets, both their attributes, exploration, and the history of human views and legends about them. The only thing I wished it had was an update for the most recent fly-bys. 

How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley. I haven't finished this yet, because it's best read in small doses so I can then look for things on my next walk, or as much as I can do while disentangling the dogs from the huckleberry bushes. This book focuses on general species that have common traits throughout the Northern Hemisphere and then on specific things to notice about the trees in front of you and how their growth and patterns have been influenced by their surroundings. 

Book Goals 2024

 My personal reading goal for 2024 is to revisit my favorite childhood classics, which I have not revisited since the kids were small. I am shooting for one a month, but I consider a series one book for this purpose. My rules for this list are: It has to be one I enjoyed as a child (this eliminates ones I only encountered as an adult, such as The Prydain Chronicles); it has to be one my children enjoyed (this eliminates some obscure midcentury fiction or many that were not available on audiobook); it has to be one I haven't reread in a decade. (This eliminates The Hobbit and Anne of Green Gables, for instance.)

The World of Pooh

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass

The Chronicles of Narnia

Wind in the Willows

The Jungle Book

The Phantom Tollbooth

Little House series

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

The Great Brain 

Kim 

Misty of Chincoteague or Justin Morgan had a Horse or Brighty of the Grand Canyon, depends on which is easiest to find. 

Arabian Nights adaptation

Redwall (Not going to try the whole series here, one or two should do. Also not entirely sure I read this as a child, I might have been a teenager.)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

Tom Sawyer

OK this list is getting kind of long; it might be a two year challenge. Or I might get through them pretty quickly. As a pre-teen I typically polished off a book or two a day; I don't have that kind of time or focus any more but I don't think most of these will take me very long. 

Middlemarch

 I revisited *Middlemarch* via Spotify this fall. I am not one of those virtuous people who listen to lots of audiobooks while they get chores done, that is too much going on for me. I like to listen to audiobooks and play videogames on the rare occasion when it is quiet enough around here for me to get away with it. (Sadly the Spotify one fell about five chapters short, but luckily I found them on Librivox, I just had to actually click through to the next chapter.)

Anyway, I love *Middlemarch* and was not at all disappointed by a revisit. The characters are vivid and even the more villainous ones are well-rounded. Even the arch-hypocrite Bulstrode has to wrestle with his conscience and we are not entirely unable to distance ourselves from his self-justifications. And the boring ordinary characters are deeply endearing--I honestly came a way with a lot of sympathy for Sir James and Cecy and for Mr. Brooke's colossal but warm-hearted bumbling.  

When reading 19th century literature I always like to envision what the women would do if they *could* do things and how much this would help their frustrations. Dorothea, after a brief stint as Casaubon's graduate student teaching assistant (a relationship that would have suited both of them much better than marriage) would have gone into social work and wound up founding a large non-profit. I may be biased, but I believe Mary Garth would have been a wonderful small-town attorney: she has a strong sense of ethics, an ability to be tactful without being cowed, a very quick wit and tongue, and a deep loyalty to people and place. And she actually knows Latin. Rosalyn, I fear, would be an influencer, the kind that always wants everyone to give them things for free for "exposure." She might at least get some help for her postpartum depression, but fear it is too late to change her fundamental character. 

Mostly 19th century novelists like to expose the follies and false limitations of society, but from the 21st century it is likely to induce a bit of nostalgia for having something resembling society at all--for actually knowing your neighbors and their forefathers and expecting to know their descendants. And of course, having to behave accordingly. Social constraints and the need to pay the bills are not all bad: They might have kept Lydgate and Dorothea from full self-actualization and the noble achievement of which they dreamed, but they also turned Ladislaw and Fred Garth into productive members of society instead of wastrels. 

It seems to be a popular opinion about the book that Dorothea is too good for Ladislaw, or that she and Lydgate should have ended up together or something like that. I think this is quite wrong. She would have been as miserable with Lydgate as with Casaubon, because the primary issue with Casaubon is that he viewed Dorothea as a decorative furnishing for his own life, not as her own person with her own views. And Lydgate, though young and handsome and with a perhaps more useful ambition, views women exactly the same way. The fact that Rosalyn's independent goals and wishes are shallow and pointless does not change this fact. Sooner or later Dorothea would have thought about things differently than he would have, and he would have been as incensed by it as if the table suddenly declined to hold supper, and Dorothea would have been hurt and incomprehending because despite her wholehearted embrasure of model wifely duties, she is incapable of *being* a piece of furniture. Whereas Ladislaw, for all his weaknesses, simply values Dorothea as a person, for herself. Which doesn't mean no conflict, but does mean a chance of resolving it as fellow humans instead of locking themselves away into marital roles. Sure, she will be the dominant personality in their marriage, but then, why shouldn't she be? They are both happy that way. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray (and other books)

For the past few years I have tried to read one spookyish classic in the month of October; last year was Dracula (read on Spotify), which was delightful. Mina is my geek girl hero. And it was fun to see how much more recent productions draw on it (Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, I would estimate, 85-90% consistent with the Dracula universe.) I've also done The Turn of the Screw and Frankenstein in the past (though I don't think I quite finished Frankenstein, so I need to revisit it sometime.) 

This year I decided it was time to do *The Picture of Dorian Gray*. I've never read much Wilde besides the fairy tales. The book as a whole was hard to put down, once I got into it, and at the same time rather jarring. It reads like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by P. G. Wodehouse. 

I would concur with the writer of the preface (which I make a practice of never reading until after I've read the book) that Lord Henry is a more well-rounded and real character than Dorian Gray. But that did not make me like him any more. If he started expounding to me on the value of following every impulse and indulging in sensory delights, I would probably start with the delightful sensation of whacking him upside the head. He said many things that were memorable and some that might be clever, but there were too many and most of them rang false. It was as if he aspired only to be a quotation book. 

The book as a whole, whatever may have been titillating about its form in 1890, struck me as moralizing to outdo the Puritans. There is no redemption for Gray, not even a possibility of repentance, nor any moral ambiguity as to the plot itself. Gray chooses wrong, he does wrong, and he is punished. That is all. 

I did find it ironic that the quote of Wilde's that always gets bandied around for Banned Book week, "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame," is in fact uttered by Lord Henry after Gray has tried, unsuccessfully, to confess to him and told him that the book Lord Henry loaned Gray when he was young had destroyed him. In context, it is a false statement by a man who cares more about whether he sounds clever than whether any real harm comes to anyone. Perhaps it could be retired along with that one people always quote out of context of Jane Austen's, “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” which is uttered by the odious Miss Bingley solely in an attempt to get Mr. Darcy's attention away from his book.   

After I read The Picture of Dorian Gray I wanted to revisit *Heretics* by G. K. Chesterton and contrary to my recollection, Wilde did not get his own chapter. But then, Wilde was not truly a heretic. He says many heretical things, but mostly for effect. Chesterton did write about him, just not in that book: "[I]t was the very multitude of his falsities that prevented him from being entirely false. Like a many-coloured humming top, he was at once a bewilderment and a balance. He was so fond of being many-sided that among his sides he even admitted the right side. He loved so much to multiply his souls that he had among them one soul at least that was saved. He desired all beautiful things – even God."

Some other books I have also read somewhat recently:
Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner: Backyard naturalist is one of my favorite genres, and having one written so close to my actual backyard was a bonus. Now I must plan an exhibition to the massive crow rookeries near Seattle. 

The Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews: This was pure fluff (Vampires and werewolves! In space!) but I wanted pure fluff and it was well-composed, fun to read fluff and the romantic subplots were not icky. I found the titles, all of which are a terrible pun on sweep, to be a little misleading as, though Innkeepers have a broom as their magic wand/badge of office, no actual sweeping seems to be done. Inns are magically self-maintaining, and I could really use a house like that. 

On Basilisk Station by David Weber: I have never tried the Honor Harrington books but as I love the War God series and enjoyed the first few of the Off Armageddon Reef series, I thought I should at least give it a try. It's more the kind of sci fi that I don't really enjoy, hardware and tactics heavy, like the things that finally put me off the rest of the Armageddon Reef series, but I did like the main character and the overall plot, I just zipped through a lot of the technical bits. 

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery: This went back to the library before I finished it but I thought it went nicely after our book club did Incredibly Bright Creatures and I enjoyed the visits with octopuses and speculations on their understanding. 

I'm completely out of sync with my book club, I either read the book and can't make the meeting or make the meeting but didn't read the book. 

I've started but not finished yet Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is exactly the kind of sci fi I most enjoy--speculation on different forms intelligent life might take and how those might interact. 

Canterbury Tales

 I think it was sometime last spring when I started Canterbury Tales, because that was about when I assigned a sampler version (A Taste of Chaucer) to Dame. I finally finished it this month. I have no shame in taking a very long time to finish a book, and Canterbury Tales was definitely worth the time and no harm for meandering as each tale can stand up on its own. The translation I have, no doubt from some long-forgotten library sale, was by J. U. Nicholson, and it had illustrations of the different pilgrims, which were fun. 

I also don't generally read a lot of commentary which means what I think about things may be quite obvious or quite wrong as far as I know. It struck me that you could hardly imagine any book ever written since beginning with something like The Miller's Tale and ending with a sermon on all the vices and virtues that would have done Jonathan Edwards proud. Perhaps the enduring popularity of the medieval era as a land for the imagination is an era where we could be fully human, vulgar and divine, before we were enlightened into severing our souls from our bodies. 

For educational value, not only is it a quintessential work of English literature, it was also a great exercise in learning to differentiate between what the characters are saying and what the author is saying. Are we really meant to commend Griselda, or what is meant by putting her story in a clerk's mouth (who could hardly have had much experience with women)? And if not, then what might it be showing us about abusers and their methods and their apologists?

Chaucer's little asides and deeply snarky humor were a lot of fun. I was left wondering why poor Sir Topas, which was hilarious, got cut off before it got started, or why when we finally get a woman who's not hoodwinking her husband nor a patient martyr, but reasonable and intelligent, she must be so deadly dull as Prudence? 

My favorite tale of all, though, was the Franklin's Tale. After all the displays of human shortcomings and sufferings, I was honestly on tenterhooks to know whether it would come out all right. Would the couple actually talk to each other? Would Aurelius hold Dorigen to the bargain he had tricked her into? And in that suspense comes a burst of generosity and grace, like the sunlight after a storm. What if, we spoke honestly and trusted those closest to us? What if instead of each grasping for what we could get, we received and gave with generosity? 

A Biblical Mystery

DOB and I are taking our twenty-year-belated honeymoon this week, back to my favorite place in the world (which is luckily only a couple hours away) and more or less near the spot where we spent a very short weekend after the actual wedding. (Do not get any ideas, creepy internet lurkers, our house is still full of large, cranky teenagers, an alarming number of melee weapons, and very loud dogs.)  

It involved a ferry ride and on the ferry ride there was a vehicle with some kind of small boat tied to the top. (An outrigger?) There was a verse on the side, but because of the way the rope was tied, all I could read was "Zechariah ??:6"

Naturally once we arrived I had to do some research and figure out *which* Zechariah ??:6 was intended. The options are as follows:

1:6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us. (Kind of clunky, not a good fit.)

2:6 Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the LORD: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the LORD. (This sounds exciting, but we were traveling east, not south. They might have had Alaska plates, though, I didn't know to check.)

3:6 And the angel of the LORD protested unto Joshua, saying, (Kind of abrupt, not getting much here.)

4:6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. (OK, yes, I'm sure it was this one. Shush. We must check them all.)

5:6 And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the earth. (Well, I don't know what an ephah going forth is, but I also didn't know what the boat was called, so perhaps it is an ephah and that is their resemblance through all the earth.)

6:6 The black horses which are therein go forth into the north country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth toward the south country. (Not really seeing the connection here.)

7:6 And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves? (This seems like it would work better on a yacht.)

8:6 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvellous in mine eyes? saith the LORD of hosts. (It didn't seem like a particularly marvellous boat, but I don't know much about boats.)

9:6 And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines. (Kind of earthy, I like it!)

10:6 And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph, and I will bring them again to place them; for I have mercy upon them: and they shall be as though I had not cast them off: for I am the LORD their God, and will hear them. (A nice sentiment, and "cast off" is kind of nautical.)

11: 6 For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the LORD: but, lo, I will deliver the men every one into his neighbour's hand, and into the hand of his king: and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver them. (If the land is getting smitten, it's better to be on a boat?)

12:6 In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. (Not very nautical, but pretty exciting)

On the Plate

Dame was ranting a bit about parenting tactics she had observed with which she did not agree:

Dame: "How can people become parents without *any* of the necessary skills?"

Me: "Actually, it only takes one skill to become a parent, and you don't even need to be that good."

Dame: <eyeroll>

One of the great pleasures of parenting teenagers is being able to make obnoxious off-color remarks to a captive audience.

Anyway, one of the ones she was disagreeing with was requiring a child to either eat the meal served or go hungry. I understand the desire not to waste food or encourage pickiness, but we didn't wind up going that direction. And I had just been thinking today what a good thing that was. 

You see, it was Dash who had the most trouble eating what was served. It also turns out Dash has extensive allergies/food sensitivities which vary depending on exposure. Odds are most if not all of his emotional reactions to dinner were physical reactions he didn't know how to explain. 

Instead I tried to make sure something everybody could eat was available at each meal, treats were only present in small quantities, and if you really needed to, you could go fix something for yourself. Not that this made things easy, necessarily, when you have a small child with a tendency to anxiety and the metabolism of a hummingbird, who is already to the point of hysterics just making it from snack time to dinner time, and now has to think of something to eat that's not actually visible. (We never could figure out a reliable standby.) 

I am quite certain I was not always very patient or understanding through this process. But at least I didn't make things actively worse. And no one ended up unreasonably picky. It's been a good rule of thumb to assume that I don't know everything, and usually kids are acting they are for a reason, even if I can't figure it out right away. 

Common Ground

Recently I've had the chance to revisit some of my favorite sci-fi, one in books and one in tv series, which I like for pretty similar reasons. The TV show is Babylon 5, and the books are the Sector General short stories/novellas by James White. 

Both of them have a very similar setting: a space station on which various species meet in a challenging, but not hopeless, attempt to learn more of each other and live peaceably. Babylon 5's setting is a trade and diplomatic station, while Sector General is an enormous space hospital. I think part of the allure for me is a lifelong obsession with institutions in fiction--I loved boarding school stories as a child--which I suspect is largely because they are exotic, as I have spent my life entirely outside of them, never having attended an ordinary school or worked somewhere with more than a dozen employees. In real life, I'm pretty sure I'd go crazy inside of a week in a space station, I can barely handle a day trip to downtown Seattle. 

Sector General adds to this a great deal of speculation on different planetary conditions and types of sapient species. Unhampered by the limits of special effects, and with the need of the doctors to understand and prescribe treatment, the author goes wild with speculation on different theoretical body forms and social structures--an empathic giant insect, massive beings who can function in a vacuum but need to paint their food on, calm and small beings who form into a rampaging mass under stress, and of course plenty of tentacles.  Babylon 5, like most 20th century TV sci-fi, mostly has to stick with the humanoid with prosthetics on the head concept for the major species, although Dr. Franklin does get to tackle the occasional odd biological need.

On the other hand, Babylon 5, having been plotted as a multi-season show, delivers a uniquely satisfying and complex overarching plotline that deals with questions of identity, meaning, survival, and spirituality. That also gives time for some incredible character development, and my favorite part of the whole show is watching the individual choices and events that turn Londo and G'Kar, two washed-up playboy diplomats from different worlds, one into a saint (with a rascally side) and one into a supervillain (with some redeeming qualities), every step of the way perfectly believable and consistent. 

Sector General suffers from some of the obvious weaknesses of originally serial fiction, like the basic points being explained over and over, as well as the shockingly casual sexism of the 50s. Apparently it is much easier to envision a doctor with a carapace than a doctor with ovaries. Though it does moderate that in time and in the later stories the comely nurse is permitted to become a pathologist and the prohibition on women taking on the top role ameliorates from a universal rule to a possibly irrational prejudice of the Chief Psychologist. 

Babylon 5 fortunately is from a different era in that regard, and in fact has just as many main female characters as male, who have their own lives and goals and do not exist merely to be prizes for the men. Babylon 5 also is unusual in not assuming that spirituality will be cast aside just because a species develops interstellar travel, and religious figures and themes are frequently explored, in their potential for comfort, conviction, and conflict. (It is funny to watch B5 thirty years out and see the technology it misses that was just around the corner. Cell phones and laparoscopic surgery would have solved a lot of the problems that come up.)

But I think the thing I love most about these two things is the way they explore the question of how can we, seeing things differently, needing different (often conflicting) things, find a way to live at peace? Both Babylon 5 and Sector General are born out of a devastating war engendered by interspecies misunderstanding and a desire to know each other better to prevent future war. Sector General's backstory begins with two former combatants from the opposite sides, traveling about the galaxy to promote peace. But they are not pleased with the effects of the laborious efforts on all sides to avoid offense for fear of another war:

"We must get to really know them, Colonel," MacEwan went on quickly, "Well enough not to have to be so damnably polite all the time. If a Tralthan jostles a Nidian or an Earth-human, we must know the being well enough to tell it to watch where it's going and to call it any names which seem appropriate to the occasion. We should expect the same treatment if the fault is ours. Ordinary people, not a carefully selected and trained star-traveling elite, must get to know offworlders well enough to be able to argue or even to quarrel nonviolently with them. . . "

Eventually Sector General is established for that purpose--where different species can work alongside each other in common cause, and thus get the chance to really know each other--and cuss each other out as the need arises. And in time Babylon 5 provides similar opportunities to those willing to take them. Because it's not enough to have an arms' length tolerance and a list of offenses to avoid. What we need is to genuinely know each other. Which is pretty good advice for Earth, too, and we don't even have to set up a contact suit for chlorine breathers. 

Down to the Sea

The picture at the top of the blog, which I have no desire to ever replace even though the two people on the left side are somewhat fatter now and the two people on the right side are much taller, and the two people who were too terrified of the ocean to come within a hundred yards of it have become comfortable with it, was taken along the Pacific coast in Washington more than a decade ago. I can't remember the exact year because it all blurs together now. It has been our primary vacation spot for a very long time. 

I have many friends who love travel and seeing new and exciting places and I applaud them for their adventures and enjoy their photos and occasionally have a twinge of envy, but mostly I am completely OK with being very boring. I have always been a traditionalist. I was the small child with whom you did not dare to do things one Christmas unless you were prepared to do it every Christmas until the end of time. Also disposable income has tended to be in short supply and this is only two and a half hours away and quite inexpensive lodging if you can fit your food for the week in the car, as the only grocery option is the sole gas station. (Not easy when you are also squeezing in 6-11 people and all their luggage and a couple mobility devices and some beach chairs and boogie boards.)

While we have gone a few times as just us, most of the time it's a group trip with Their Majesties, Wondergirl, and Techboy and Toolboy and their respective families, all staying in separate houses but hanging out together on the beach. (Techboy's children having begun to have children themselves now, it was a four-generation trip this year.) It is not only a great way to spend time together without *too* much togetherness, it is very handy if you are someone like me and always forgetting something essential, because odds are someone else has paper towels on them.

For the past several years we have stretched this out to a week or a little more, which is really an amazing amount of time to unwind enough to actually be able to relax. Unfortunately, this year the Naval resort where we stay changed their reservation rules to give priority to active duty military (Her Majesty as a veteran makes our reservations). Her Majesty, who is a force of nature, after many days on the phone, still managed to find us all three nights at the same time, so we still had time for boogie boarding and s'mores and family taco and game night and ladies' brunch at the one nice restaurant, although it was definitely too short to actually relax. 

Burn bans permitting we have a campfire on the beach and spend most of the afternoon grilling things and toasting things and making smores and counting the heads of people boogieboarding. (Their Majesties can outlast any of the teenagers at this.) Burn bans not permitting, which was the case this year, my brothers have portable gas grills along with any other gadgets needed for comfort. Thus we can have the only fun parts of camping while still staying somewhere with showers and non-leaking roofs. (I have a theory about camping, which is that life needs suffering to be meaningful and people who have insufficient suffering in their daily lives for meaning pick up hobbies to supply it, such as camping.)

Naturally anything done this many times has accreted its own barnacles of tradition, such as the playlist of truly ridiculous songs which must be played each time and gets a little longer each trip, and the milkshakes from the one ice cream shop for the homeward journey. 

The really big thing about going to the same place year after year is that it makes coping with disability so much easier. It actually took us about six trips to be able to work out everything needed to go and make sure DOB was comfortable, could participate, and have adequate mobility to enjoy the experience. I recently came across an online conversation in which many people were criticizing Washington's practice of designating certain areas of the sandy beaches as public roads. While I am sure there is some impact on the environment, those beaches are still undercrowded and full of wildlife and it is immeasurably valuable to have a place where people who are stuck on wheels can get themselves down to the beach. (And no, being able to theoretically possibly rent a "beach wheelchair" so you can be pushed around by someone else is not at all the same thing.)  Washington has plenty more beach that is more protected. 

So though not quite what was hoped for, it was still a good time. DOB and I have plans for a 20th anniversary trip/honeymoon in a couple of weeks that will hopefully afford us a better chance to actually get some rest.

What a Day Looks Like Now

 Every once in a while I succumb to the nostalgia of old blog posts. (Sometimes I was quite brilliant in the past! Other times, not so much). Anyway, it was pretty fun to remember a pretty normal day twelve years ago and no doubt in another twelve years I will look back on today's equally chaotic but very different experience with similar nostalgia. 

4:30 a.m.: I wake up wracked with doubt about some eviction notices a client sent me for review yesterday. I *must* remember to check them again when I get into the office. I lie awake a long time.

7:00 a.m. DOB's alarm starts going off. I must have drifted off at some point because I did not hear Dash (15) get up and get breakfast and let his friend in. That or he has acquired ninja-level quietness skills, which is probably also the case being the only willing early riser among us. 

7:40ish a.m. I actually get out of bed and start fixing breakfasts. This is eggs and thawed frozen blueberries for DOB (he finds blueberries are the optimum size and shape for making sure all his massive pill regime has gone down); eggs, salad mix (I will do anything for arugula, even get out of bed) and a Granny smith apple with peanut butter for me; and I make tea for myself and Dame (15 but definitely NOT an early riser) and microwave some turkey bacon for her as she is allergic to eggs. She has been working very hard over the past six months on keeping a regular schedule and eating at reasonable intervals without oversight, things which can be quite difficult when you are dealing with ADHD and chronic pain and fatigue all rolled in together. But with the progress she is made I think she is ready to tackle 10th grade at public school this fall, even with the ungodly hours they subject high schoolers to. Deux (17) is on day two of his weekly migraine, so I make his breakfast (two burritos and a banana). While taking it up I have the bright idea of helpfully carrying up the laundry he didn't get finished before the migraine struck, only I try to do it one-handed with the hamper handle and the handle breaks and it spills spectacularly down the stairs. BUT breakfast doesn't fall and it furnishes some early-morning entertainment for everyone. Dash and friend laugh at the spectacle before they depart, I believe with my niece who is taking them to teach a 5-day club in the mornings this week. DOB heads to court. I sit down and finish my breakfast and drink my tea while I read the morning prayers and then (guilty pleasure) watch compilation videos of internet stories of people's terrible behaviors towards their friends and family. You would think I got enough of that at work. 

8:30ish I arrive at the office and check the eviction notices. Wonder of wonders, they *were* the right ones and all is well. My work morning also includes:
* A telephonic hearing on a topic of which I know nearly nothing, covering for our third partner. I disconnect us just as the case is called. We get through it anyway.
* A fun advisory meeting with a probate/business client with whom I have concocted a scheme that is at once perfectly above board, ethical, and legally appropriate and at the same time should allow some unpleasant natural consequences to fall on some people who are treating her rather badly. I hope it works out well. 
* Intermittent work on a fairly large project that needs to go out no later than tomorrow that I am still training a young staff person on because my main paralegal has been in the hospital for two months. Also this area of law just changed and I am still figuring out. I realize I used the wrong form in a different but similar case that is on for tomorrow and fix it while I am at it. I have some moments of panic when I think I have misplaced important documents for the third time with this client, but then locate them all.
*DOB returning from court and then heading off to apparently get a buyer for one of our cars (DOB has finally found the people he needs to fulfill his dream of being a car-flipper and so we no longer have a front yard), and he needs my power of attorney so I don't have to meet him but apparently we never scanned in our *own* estate planning documents like we do everyone else's so I have to execute a new one and email it to him.
* Quite a lot of phone calls as we just discovered missing paralegal was the only person who had checked most of our phone messages and so none of them had been reviewed in two months. 

Somewhere around noonish I notice that food should occur. If there aren't leftovers (as is often the case these days) I usually rely on my freezer stash of sausage patties and frozen vegetables, with almond crackers. I return phone calls and forget this three times while it is heating up. 

The afternoon continues with:
* A zoom meeting with a creditor on an estate (I have no idea why this was zoom and not a phone call, but since my camera was out it came out the same anyway). 
* Some tense and at times insulting negotiations with the public tenant defense on a case I haven't filed yet. I am annoyed with myself for not being as professional as I would like to believe I am. I am annoyed with opposing counsel for trying to guilt-trip me over taking a vacation when there are homeless people in the world, or at least for trying to using existential guilt as a negotiation tactic. We still come to resolution and I provide another staff person who is learning *that* area with direction to finish those pleadings.
* A meeting with some cranky clients that has to be delayed for 20 minutes because every meeting space we have is filled with people meeting. They are calmer after we meet and I send a months-overdue demand letter out afterwards. 
* Tackling a messy probate that I am hoping to keep my client out of too much trouble on even though I secretly suspect he deserves it. 
* Not quite finishing that one big project which really, really must go out tomorrow.
*  Making sure I have my files for tomorrow since I am still training staff on how to do this and this is where I really, really miss my paralegal with 30 years' experience who just handed me a stack without me having to think about it. However, everyone has been trying really hard with a great attitude and we are all learning more all the time. (And sometimes, I fear, forgetting other things like how to check the voicemails.)

DOB arrives back very late in the afternoon after a very frustrating court episode that is going to leave a vulnerable adult exposed to more exploitation. He'll probably figure out another tactic tomorrow. I consider drafting one last deed but I am cranky, tense and headachy and I have a potentially lively argument tomorrow morning, so I decide to call it a night. DOB still has a meeting and some other loose ends. 

5:30ish: I arrive home. I see from the signs about me that Dame remembered to eat lunch *and* unload the dishwasher. She is not here, though, which presumably is the fruition of plans she had to attend a youth support group of some sort at some church with some friends, which Duchess (19) was going to drop them off at. I therefore conclude that Duchess is also doing well, though I have not seen her as is the usual state of affairs. She is not working this summer but just got back from a two-week road trip with her friends from high school, all planned and paid for herself, and is looking forward to doing more assistant teaching at the private elementary school in the fall, and also teaching ASL at the private high school (where Dash will attend). I decide to make deconstructed egg roll (with no eggs) and the leftover rice from when Deux fixed dinner on Tuesday. I put meat in to thaw in the microwave. At this point in the day I generally resort to something with chocolate to fortify my resolve to get through the evening, because what I want to do is go straight to bed. I order groceries while the meat is thawing. Then I load the dishwasher with yesterday's dishes while everything cooks. Dash does not have an evening club today as he did earlier in the week, and he wanders through once or twice. I take Deux his supper. Dash and I eat in the living room while playing games on our phone and laptop respectively. (Dash's laptop died tragically last month.) DOB shows up about halfway through, on the early side for him, and takes dinner in our room. At this point in the day we have all had about enough on the human interaction front, except possibly Dash. 

7:30: I take the dogs for a walk. As the days get shorter I have to adjust my dog-walking time earlier and earlier and soon I will have to do it before fixing supper, which is challenging. We go around the block (a term I use loosely, three of the roads are private and two-thirds of them unpaved.) This counts as both aerobic AND resistance exercise because we never did get them leash trained and now they are middle-aged and set in their ways though no less lacking in energy and desire to chase every tiny thing they encounter. We make it two-thirds of the way around and then they spot a cat. I do not want to sit down in the gravel road, the only way I can get enough traction to stop them, so they escape. Thankfully they give up quickly and before they get entangled, so I don't need to spend an extra ten minutes climbing through brambles and untangling them.  We finish the walk. I sit on the couch and start writing this (usually I would be playing a video game). 

9:00 I start reminding DOB that he needs to start his evening stretching routine. Dame arrives home by some means and discusses plans for tomorrow and general angst. Duchess comes home and feeds the dogs. Duchess and Dame confer on ride plans for tomorrow. I put away what food remains and set things up for DOB's evening vitamin routine. Alas, Deux is still not up to help either with setup for that or so we can rewatch Babylon 5 with him, so we will just watch Prison Break by ourselves. And then I will take a shower and read a bit while DOB winds down by looking at ads for more used cars  . . .