Rapture of the Deep

Today I watched an interesting Nature episode about the pigeons of London and New York City. Did you know that both male and female pigeons feed their young milk? They make it with a gland in their throat. The only other birds who do something like this are female flamingos and female emperor penguins.

Later, our Friday movie was I, Robot, which I’d only seen once, maybe 20 years ago, so it was fun to see it again.

Today I finally (finally!) bought a new pair of shoes. These shoes are “barefoot” or “minimalist” shoes that are designed to be worn in water, if one wants, so they’re good for the rain. I was hoping that since I don’t have any sciatic issues with walking barefoot that these would instantly fix my problem, but no. It’s good to have the information, though. They didn’t have the black ones in my size; instead I got “Pacific teal” – which is pretty but much more colorful than I’m used to for footwear. If they work out, I can get black ones later.

A few weeks ago some cable channel was showing lots of Mission: Impossible movies, and I decided that could be good for watching with meals. I’d seen one or two many years ago but wasn’t clear on it – I only remembered two scenes. One was the breaking of a large aquarium, and the other was an idyllic Chinese neighborhood with canals. The Internet tells me the first was from MI 1 and the second from MI 3. So last week I watched MI 1. It was okay but not really very interesting, not like the TV show used to be. Then I started watching MI 2 - boring people, torture? I stopped watching. Today I decided to try MI 3 and sure enough, it started with yet more torture. I ended up fast-forwarding through it and found that the pretty canals were less than a minute, near the end. Presumably they spend more time earlier at the canals, doing danger things, but I wasn’t in the mood to watch torture, so instead I watched the last 20 minutes of Notting Hill again, which was great. If I want to see pretty Chinese scenery, I should watch my DVD of Michael Wood’s The Story of China, which is also educational.

Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp.

I had high hopes for this book – I expected that the author would remind us that every “collapse” is instead a transformation. Instead, he is focusing specifically on “societal collapse,” in which the government, economy, and population all collapse together, and his concern is that structures with centralizing governments and intermeshed economies are “Goliaths,” which strive to dominate their people, and which are bad.

Much of his early focus is on reminding us that the “state of nature” that early people found themselves in was not “nasty, brutish, and short” for those who survived to adulthood – many people led satisfying lives without having to work especially hard, many people travelled great distances and had interesting social networks, etc. At this point I started to worry that his agenda is anarchy… it’s all well and good to tell us that people can be happy in Paleolithic communities, but the prospect of transitioning from what we have now to something like that is a nightmare. Seriously, if we suddenly realized that we all now had to live off the land, don’t we expect that the millions of people who are socialized for dominance and for coping with their fear through aggression – many of whom have guns – would decide that we need some intermediate form of government, by force?

I skimmed ahead to the end and found that he prescribes “deep-rooted and systemic changes” that will involve teaching people not to want dominance or hierarchy. Um, sure. In the epilogue he gives us a few facile paragraphs on several key topics – how to overcome climate change and the risks of AI and nuclear weapons and to recreate civilization with an emphasis on equality, democratic decision-making, and transparency. He concludes by telling us that “A world free of nuclear weapons, carbon emissions, killer robots, and the threat of collapse, one full of genuine democracy and economic equality, is no utopia. It is within reach.” I’d like to think so, but again, there’s no clear path from here to there, so…

Pemberley: Mr Darcy’s Dragon, by Maria Grace. Jane Austen’s Dragons #1. I was very much in the mood for rereading this trilogy – it’s the story of Pride and Prejudice stretched out over three books, but with dragons! This is an England with two types of sentient beings: humans and a variety of species of dragons. Ever since the days of Uther Pendragon, the two groups have lived in reasonable harmony due to a special treaty that provides human Keepers for most of the dragons. However, only some humans can hear dragons’ voices and thus know that they exist – everyone else sees birds or cats or whatever and the voices that go with them. Elizabeth and Darcy can hear dragons, though, as can Mr Bennet and Mary and the Gardiners; the men all have roles in the Order that coordinates the interactions between humanity and dragonkind.

So this book is very fun. If you were Jane Bennet or her mother, for example, the story would be essentially identical to the real Pride and Prejudice, with a few extra birds around (and the Gardiners visiting at the beginning of the story). The story will diverge in the other two books, but from their perspective, much of the story and the dialogue is the same (although occasionally someone else says the dialogue, which is at times extremely funny to have happen, which is why it’s better to be familiar with the original story than to start with this version).

Elizabeth and Darcy, of course, are experiencing the original story but with a whole added layer. Elizabeth has a fairy drake companion, April, who is very fluttery and darling, while Darcy is awaiting the hatching of the major dragon for his estate. The egg has been stolen, however (thanks to Mr Wickham), and Elizabeth must enlist the major dragon for her own home, Longbourn, to help recover it before it hatches.

If you like both Jane Austen and dragons, I definitely recommend this series. The author has written other, related, books since I’ve read these, and I expect I’ll keep going and have fun with them too.

Tonight our mini-book-club met for a special occasion – to celebrate HB’s college graduation! She’s been working on the project for, hm, 33 years? At something like 8 different schools? She’s had health issues and other complications over the years but finally found a university with an online program, and as of today she’s a college graduate!

The party was at JS’s house; we were joined by JS’s husband (and their grand-dog Danvers, a hyper Australian shepherd), HB’s husband and also their friend who I think is their permanent housemate, and another friend of hers who is in the same stitch-n-bitch group where HB and JS originally met. They made s’mores and also had something called “London Fog” cake, flavored with Earl Grey tea and lavender. The event was wholly outside, in a covered area, and was their first use of their new fire pit. The rain had stopped by then, and we would have been pretty crowded if it were still wet, but as it was, it was lovely, except that I wished I’d dressed more warmly.

I have to say, we had an unusually low-key Halloween. The weather was fine, but we had only one trick-or-treater! I think part of the issue was that we don’t have many children living on our street anymore, and part was that I went to J’s house at 6 pm for movie night, so my porch was dark, and few people want to venture all the way up his driveway without some encouragement. In the past we’ve usually had several before 6 pm, though. We’d bought at least five bags of candy…

So, today I wore my “Gabrielle: Bard of Poteidaia” t-shirt and some black cat-ears. J wore the elf-shirt I sewed for him years ago and his wizard cape. With lunch I watched most of a PBS show about the wildlife of Transylvania, which was fun. We decided that this week’s movie, Event Horizon, sounded much too gory, so instead we watched the first three episodes of the Netflix Castlevania series. Then our trick-or-treater came, a small girl with her… sister?, who is our neighbor C. They were both dressed in cow costumes and were very cute, and the little girl exclaimed happily when she saw my cat-ears. Then J went to DG and AA’s house to give DG some of his banana bread and to enjoy AA’s fancy decorations; I had done quite a bit of sneezing today so stayed home and read. They had 31 trick-or-treaters there.

The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart, by Noël Carroll. I'm using this book as the basis for my Halloween blog post, so it won't be up for a while. I'll link to it here when I have it.

Let’s see – today I was fairly productive, getting a bunch of work done, visiting the university library and coming home with six books, etc. The cats came inside for dinner with no problem. I got to chat some on the phone with my friend BHW. I also learned a useful new stretch… I wish I had a name for it, because the only way I can describe it is highly offensive (although not vulgar). Maybe if I look at yoga books I can find it.

Jung and Star Wars: A Contemporary Mythology, by S.G. Ellerhoff. This book is an astounding work of scholarship – and written in an accessible style, despite all the references and the Jungian vocabulary. I’m only moderately interested in Star Wars at this point, and only curious rather than serious about Jung, but I felt I got q lot out of this fascinating book. The author begins by talking about the problems of “canon” – Star Wars lost a lot of its semi-official history when Disney took over, but he concludes that this is compatible with other mythologies; we can all have the versions in our heads that are most meaningful to us. He then devotes one or more chapters to many of the major characters and to the Force itself, exploring them and the movie events through the lens of Jungian psychology. Impressive and very well written.