[from the stabenow.com vaults, 4/26/2010]
We are lucky in our lifetime to have scientists who are as able with their pens as they are with their petrie dishes, people like Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, Lewis Thomas.
# Permanent link to Carl Sagan
My personal favorite is astronomer Carl Sagan, yes, he of the billions and billions. In his collections of essays, this curious and eclectic thinker writes about everything from the sex lives of dolphins to the prehistory of earth to Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories of alien visitation. No subject is safe from Sagan, in print or in life, and he was one of modern science’s great interpreters, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary, vide the following story.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it was a town, although a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion-skin landed here four thousand years ago. In the streets he met Anitus, the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the fashion among gentlemen in those days.
# Permanent link to “You may please to understand that I am hear in Salley, in most miserable captivitye, under the hands of most cruel tyrants.”
All Finnegan knew, and all he wanted to know, was that he was loved without question.
# Permanent link to “The pickle today might have been a miscalculation…”
The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession by Charlie Lovett
Peter Byerly, an antiquarian book dealer, has escaped to England to try to recover from the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, when he finds a painting of her between the pages of a book. The problem is, the watercolor of Amanda was painted a hundred years before she was born.
Peter steals it and embarks on a quest to discover who the mysterious painter, B.B., was, and who the model was who sat for the portrait. This leads by various ways and means to a breakneck and bloody chase across England in pursuit of the one book that may -- or may not -- provide irrefutable proof that Shakespeare did in fact write Shakespeare and shut the Oxfordians up once and for all.
# Permanent link to Shutting up the Oxfordians
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Born in 1762 on the French sugar plantation hellhole of Sainte-Domingue (now Haiti) of a French wastrel nobleman and a slave woman, Alex Dumas as a possession of his father would be literally pawned for a ticket back to France in 1775. Eight months later his father, having regained his patrimony, not that he ever lifted a finger to support or nourish it in any way, redeems his son and brings him to France, there to be raised as a gentleman. Highly intelligent and physically gifted, he becomes an outstanding swordsman. He enlists as a common dragoon in France’s Revolutionary Army, and through his own merits on the battlefield rises at a dizzying pace to the rank of general, in command of his own armies.
# Permanent link to You’ll even find out who the Abbe Faria was in real life.
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe by Thomas Cahill
Cahill is determined to redeem the Middle Ages from the likes of William Manchester (A World Lit Only By Fire) and Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court). On the contrary, Cahill writes
The reputation of the Middle Ages for thuggish cruelty is largely (if not wholly) undeserved.
which I find a bit of a relief, since I much prefer the Middle Ages of Brother Cafael to the Middle Ages of Torquemada. When Cahill cites Hildegarde of Bingen as proof of the rise of feminism in the Middle Ages, you might raise a skeptical eyebrow. When Cahill then proceeds to point out that Heloise and Eleanor of Aquitaine were contemporaries of Hildegarde, you begin to wonder if perhaps he might be onto something. It's easy to jam all these centuries together and label them as brutal, ignorant, misogynist and diseased (see any high school history course), but then, Cahill rightly points out, how do you explain Hildegarde, Heloise and Eleanor? Giotto? Dante? Roger Bacon? Chartres?
Lively prose and a wealth of contextual savvy combine to make this a quick read. There is lots of detail about life as it was then lived
The insoluble medieval problem in the face of such a company was sanitation. Plumbing was unknown; and the tradition of public bathing, though as much a part of the Greco-Roman heritage as plumbing had been, had perished beyond Byzantium. Because individual bathing in a copper basin in a drafty castle could lead so easily to chill, then to fever an death, kings and queens seldom bathed more than once a month, those with neither washerwoman nor ewerer at their command scarcely more than once or twice a year.
Saint he might have been, you could smell Francis of Assisi coming long before you saw him.
Cahill isn't shy about using the present to illustrate the past, either
Yes, the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq was an immense blunder engineered by adolescent fantasists, ignorant of cultural realities. But no one, whether Bush or bin Laden, has the right to blow up innocent civilians...Islam began as a warrior religion bent on worldly conquest...
When Francis of Assisi joins the Fifth Crusade
...the Mediterranean had become, in fact, a Muslim sea, its African and Asian coasts entirely dominated by the Crescent.
Francis, in fact, meets in person with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, nephew of Saladin himself, he who booted Richard the Lionheart out of Palestine once and for all. The saint proselytizes the sultan, to no avail, and Francis takes his admiration for the five-times daily Islamic call to prayer back to Europe where it becomes the three-times daily recitation of the Angelus. Who knew?
I particularly enjoyed the footnotes, which are in this case sidenotes, with illustrated letters. For example
[imagine an illustrated lower case b here] In the ancient world, women never addressed large crowds, not only because their opinions were unsought, but because there were no public address systems, and the unaided casting of the voice to a large crowd, especially in the open air, present insurmountable difficulties to most women...The late Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals of the Middles Ages, because they were echoing sound boxes, gave women their first opportunity to address large meetings.
Again, who knew?
In the next to the last chapter, Cahill parallel's Dante's Inferno to our own time with startling aptness, but the last chapter is reserved for a polemic against the Catholic Church in its present pedophilic incarnation, although said polemic feels more heartbroken than accusatory. From the Scrovegni Chapel to the Ryan Report, lo, how the mighty have fallen.
# Permanent link to Hildegarde, Heloise and Eleanor
Everyday Life of Medieval Travellers by Marjorie Rowling
Less than two hundred pages packed with information on the title subject, written in lively prose and illustrated mostly with line drawings from the times, plus a few photographs. Where else are you going find out that during the Middle Ages
An amusement gallery was sometimes run in conjunction with a medieval zoo...In these galleries visitors...were soaked to the skin on pulling the handle of one of the machines, then found themselves precipitated through a trap-door into a sack filled ith feathers or even soot, when they tried to run away.
I wonder if they ever suspended the local mayor over a tub of water and threw balls at a target to see if they could dump him? Bet they did.
The chapters are arranged first by means (Road, Bridges and Hospitality, Sea-Routes, Ports and Ships) and then by travelers themselves, explorers, merchants, royalty, soldiers and the notorious Free Companies.
It was inevitable that these companies should be formed during a period when there were no regular paid standing armies...It is difficult to find anywhere in the records a favourable comment on the Free Companies in the Middle Ages...Roads were rendered dangerous by them to travellers, fairs could not be held, craftsmen and traders could not pursue their livelihood, nor peasants cultivate their fields, monks had to flee from monasteries...
The reputation of wandering scholars called goliards suffered likewise:
These wandering clerks are wont to roam about the world and visit all its cities till much learning makes them mad; for in Paris they seek the liberal arts, in Orleans classics, at Salerno medicine, at Toledo magic, but nowhere manners or morals.
Tsk.
And I was delighted to learn that
There were of course many women entertainers among the lower ranks of jongleurs. These were mainly dancers who performed sword dances and acrobatics, balancing on the points of swords and aiding jugglers.
The magician's assistant in the cleavage-y glittery costume has a long history.
# Permanent link to Thieves, mendicants, and Free Companies, oh my.
So, we all know about the cloud, right? The whole of human knowledge and interaction connected through a big bunch of internet servers stationed all over the planet. Never has so much information been so available to so many. Never have so many comment threads been available to so many trolls.
But what if they aren't trolls? What if this assimilation of information and connectivity allows all the disgruntled patriots/anarchists/skinheads/tea partiers/greenies/terrorists a "room" in which to feed on each others' hatred for the world as it is? And then facilitate their ability to manifest that hatred in a series of attacks that will destroy that world, without any idea of the consequences? Or, as one of Barnes' characters puts it
Whenever some damn idiot starts wanting life to have meaning, he finishes by helping other people to meaningless deaths.
This is the short version, of course, you have to read Barnes' book (the first of three, I've got the second on order and I'm praying he's writing the third one as we speak) to understand what he's getting at here, but in the meantime you'll be on a white-knuckle ride through a sequence of worldwide catastrophes, after each of which you think, "Okay, that's it, his locker's empty, there's nothing else he can throw at these poor people." And then he does.
Of course a terrorist group piggybacks onto the Daybreak attacks, as they are called, and then there is that mysterious...nah. Won't spoil it for you. In the meantime, we drop in on a whole bunch of likeable, capable people who are doing their best to support and defend the Constitution and keep the US from dropping into complete chaos. The main character is Heather O'Grainne, head of the department that discovers Daybreak just too late, who winds up being sort of the enforcer for the guy who becomes essentially the constitutionally provided for (yeah, you read that right) dictator of the US. There is a terrific journalist character, Chris, through whose eyes we see what's going on around the country, but Heather is at the center of everything. We also get to follow the Daybreakers around and then see in horrific detail the kind of death and destruction they are wreaking, sometimes to themselves, because you just know a lot a people are going to be out for someone's blood. And then we get to drop in on those affected, the people who are trying so hard to pull their families and communities back from the edge (love Pale Bluff, Illinois). And the right wing nuts (or not) creating personal fiefdoms (you'll love the Castle Movement), and the politicians who sort of personify that old adage, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
There has been a fashion in dystopian literature lately (Hunger Games, Madeleine E. Robins' The Stone War, Susan Beth Pfeffer's The World We Knew series, Diana Peterfreund's For Darkness Shows the Stars, to name just a few), but this is the first book I kept looking up from and wondering how I'd do if the world ended tomorrow but I survived. I'm okay for water, I'm on a well. Oh wait, it's got an electric pump. I've got a wood stove, I'm okay for heat. Oh wait, I don't own a chain saw, or even a hatchet. I've got canned goods and a freezer, I'd be okay for food. For a while. So then I thought, okay, I need help, but why should anyone who can survive take me in, what skills do I have to offer? And then I remembered: I can knit. Wow. I'm so in.
Spooky and powerful book. An exemplar of the "if this goes on" sf genre, and better than any horror story I ever read for scaring the bejeezus out of me. Can't wait to read the next one.
# Permanent link to “Okay, that’s it, his locker’s empty, there’s nothing else he can throw at these poor people.” And then he does.
A Death in Norfolk by Ashley Gardner
Captain Gabriel Lacey, veteran of the Peninsular War in Regency era England, injured, prey to melancholia, retired on half pay, lives a hand-to-mouth existence in rooms over a bakery in Covent Garden. Until one day a girl goes missing, possibly kidnapped, possibly by a member of Parliament. In the brutal rough-and-tumble that is Regency England's underworld, no one cares what happened to her. Except Gabriel.
Which is pretty much the plot of all of these novels. In this, the seventh in the series, Gabriel goes home to Norfolk with his affianced bride to check out his ancestral home, abandoned after his father died and in great need of repair before they move in. He also carries with him a missive from Denis to one of Denis' many minions, which causes the minion to decamp forthwith and mayhem to ensue.
Gabriel is such a good, decent guy, who wants the world to be better than it is and so determined to make the occasional corner of it so, you can't help but like and admire him and cheer him on. The cast of characters includes Grenville, heir to Brummel whose acquaintance with Gabriel moves from fashion to friendship, Marianne, the annoying actress-slash-courtesan who lives upstairs from Gabriel, Pomeroy, Gabriel's ex-sergeant and a Bow Street Runner bent on profit, James Denis, the cold-eyed king of London's criminal class, Lady Breckenridge, Gabriel's acid-tongued, billiard-playing, cigarillo-smoking love interest, friend Louisa Brandon, her husband and foe Aloysius Brandon, and more.
This isn't Jane Austen's England, it isn't even Georgette Heyer's, it's grimy and smelly and terrifying and tragic. Justice, try as Gabriel might, is not always done. Also, Gabriel never wins a fight, he is always getting the crap kicked out of him by somebody, which leads me to wonder how he made such a successful soldier. But that's all the criticism I got. Fun.
# Permanent link to This isn’t Jane Austen’s England, it isn’t even Georgette Heyer’s…
Earlier this year I was transiting through Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. I wandered into a bookstore and found an entire carousel devoted to the adventures of Asterix the Gaul. There went my trip budget.
Asterix and Obelix occupy a small corner of Gaul in the time of Julius Caesar. Thanks to the magic potion of the resident druid, Getafix (the names are almost the best part), the duo triumphantly defends the borders of their village against Caesar’s legions, to the legions’ great dismay (“I hate those Gauls.”).
My personal favorite is Asterix and Cleopatra where they travel to Egypt to help Getafix’s buddy Edifis win an architectural contest between Caesar and Cleopatra. Oh, and the Sphinx’s nose? Obelix did that. And the Egyptian characters speak in hieroglyphics. Don't worry, translation provided.
I also love Asterix in Spain, a sort of "Ransom of Red Chief" homage where Asterix and Obelix come to the assistance of a young Iberian man who says, proudly and repeatedly, "I am the son of Huevos y Bacon." Who wouldn't want to help him out?
But they're all great, especially the first ones with Goscinny writing and Uderzo illustrating. In this graphic novel series there is great storytelling, superb drawing, awful puns, wonderful sound effects (yes, really), and sneakily, insidiously, while you’re laughing, you’re learning. Go get some.
# Permanent link to The Sphinx’s nose? Obelix did that.
