a_muse_d

Made it to Ohio! Since my passport card is my real id, i left my drivers license. It was very last minute after taking the shuttle to the car rental place, and picking out a car, and driving to the gate when i realized.

At least there are things such as cabs and delivery dinner (salmon salad!) and colleagues with cars -- this should all work out just fine.

But argh. This is why check lists. Lessons learned can accrue on them.

Dublin, Ohio is far to the west of this timezone. The sky lightens up fairly late compared to what i am used to. That and the latitude, i guess. (It's north to me! 40° instead of 35.8°; y'all who live in real north can just laugh.)

summersgate

Sleeping.

We go to Meadville today so Dave can get his eye shots. We're supposed to get a high of 27F today! That's going to feel warm.

Tomorrow I see a heart doctor for a follow up to when I was in the hospital with aFib back in September. It took this long for them to schedule an appointment. I don't really think I need an appointment anyway. I have pretty much put that episode down to being so itchy with tick bites and taking benadryl plus drinking alcohol that night. My heart has been running much better since I gave up my evening shot of brandy before bed. My blood pressure is always high in doctor offices so I want to take my BP a bunch of times today so I can show them it's good at home.

summersgate

The Entity. I like the juxtaposition of colors inside with the gray and white outside. That's what life feels like now. All the comfort and color is inside while outside it is cold and difficult. Anyway. Dave just asked me if I want to go for a walk down to the creek. He made a path with his tractor so the snow's not so deep anymore. The last time we went I had a terrible time slogging though the snow and keeping my balance. But I forgot my walking stick. I'm thinking today it'll be better with a stick.

asher553

I finished another chapter of Kafka's 'The Castle', too, although I am finding it slow going; I have to agree with Bamberg in the I.B. Singer story 'A Friend of Kafka' that it's "very interesting, but what is he driving at? It's too long for a dream. Allegories should be short." In the preface to 'The Collected Stories' (1983), Singer warns that the "verbal pitfalls of so-called 'experimental' writing have done damage to even genuine talent", and I agree. Singer doesn't name names, but he might well have Kafka in mind, and almost certainly Joyce.

The translator's introduction to my edition of 'The Castle', by Mark Harman (1998), faults the earlier effort of the Muirs: "The literary sensibility of Edwin Muir, the primary stylist, was molded by nineteenth-century figures such as Thackeray and Dickens, and he had little sympathy with contemporary figures such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. He had this to say about Ulysses: 'its design is arbitrary, its development feeble, its unity questionable.'" And I would probably agree with Muir. Harman cites this quote as a point against his predecessor Muir, but it only reminds me (reading the volume now a quarter-century later) that nothing stays "modern" forever, and that 'Ulysses' and 'The Castle' - both dating from 1922 - are over 100 years old. What still sounded edgy and "modern" to an academic in the 1990s now sounds old-fashioned. Let Harman preserve Kafka's run-on sentences and comma splices, by all means, in the interests of being true to the work and the author's style; but it is this very "modernness" itself that makes the work sound dated. [270]

summersgate

In the Belly.

More Imbolc stuff. White for purity, green for new life, blue for protection and gold for fire. I'm planning to weave these together later today. Maybe it's just thinking about it being mid winter, groundhog day, halfway to spring, but I'm feeling a bit hopeful today. I've gained weight this winter with practically no hiking. I hate slogging through deep snow. And I don't like being cold. But I'm feeling like spring WILL come and warmth will return. My body can recuperate. Being able to hike in the woods will come again.

It's only 4F right now. Blaa. But it's supposed to get up to 15F later and Candy and I are planning to walk in town on the sidewalks.

summersgate

Just now.

summersgate

Imbolc. Not my best work but at least it is something for today. I've always liked making pictures along this theme, a seedling coming alive. That's what my user pic is.

Went shopping with Jules this morning. We went to the Meadville Walmart and Giant Eagle instead of our usual Cranberry and Franklin ones. There was a neat thing that I noticed when Jules and I were walking back to the car. It was only about 10F and cold. Blue sky and the sun was shining brightly. If you looked towards the sun there were the tiniest of little light flashes happening in the air. At first I thought it was my usual old person eye aberrations. A lot of the time I see all kinds of little splotches and wiggles flashing in my vision in addition to what is really there. But it was actually super tiny specks of ice floating in the air and reflecting the sun. Very easy to overlook because they were so small. It seemed very magical. I think I've seen the phenomenon only once before. Maybe if I went outside more often in the cold, cold winter I might see it more. I called up Dave (he was ice fishing) and asked him if he ever saw it and he said he can't remember seeing it. So maybe it really is a rare thing. I just looked it up - it's called Diamond Dust.

asher553

I was re-reading Agnon's 'A Book that Was Lost' (the story, in the collection of the same title) this morning. The first part of the story involves events that transpired maybe a century before the narrator's lifetime; so the narrator is effectively in omniscient, rather than first-person, mode here. We may assume that he pieced together the events of Rabbi Shmaria's absent-minded encounter with the bookbinder (and with the manuscript of the then-new Machtzit ha-Shekel, which R Shmaria believed eclipsed his own work) from circumstantial evidence or from oral history from the townspeople.

My first take-away on this story, speaking as an IT professional, is: This is why you always back up your data before you send your media out!

But the thing that jumps out for me about this story is the theme of self-doubt: R Shmaria, thumbing through R Kolin's work, immediately concludes that his own work of 12 years was a wasted effort and abandons the ms. on the counter of the bindery; and the young narrator, eager as he is to restore R Shmaria's work to its rightful place, sends it off to Jerusalem without copying it, apparently on the assumption that he himself will never see Jerusalem - even though he is busying himself with Zionist journals and activism.

I think there's a key in the narrator's observation that "every man who does not live in the Land of Israel is put to the test whether he is worthy of settling in the Land of Israel" (and likewise for Jerusalem itself). (This might also be a key to understanding 'Agunot', where Ezekiel makes aliyah to Israel and Jerusalem - seemingly a good thing - but for the wrong reasons, because of Ahiezer's slight against the existing community there; so the result is tragedy.) R Shamaria's doubts about the value of his own work are seen to be unfounded, as everyone who reads it - "[the narrator's] father, my teacher of blessed memory, and ... other scholars" - agree that it's a fine and worthy work; but all of this comes much too late to do poor R Shmaria any good. And the narrator's own younger self, even as he reads 'Hamitzpah' and writes poetry about Jerusalem, cannot really envision a future in which he himself will make the journey to Jerusalem to deposit the precious manuscript in the Ginzei Yosef archive; instead, he entrusts the manuscript to the post office. (Didn't even get a tracking number.) And - spoiler alert - the manuscript never arrives in Jerusalem; it is lost forever.

The narrator, now firmly settled in Jerusalem, attests that he has made many trips since then to the archive in search of the manuscript, but it has never been found. There's an ironic reversal in the ending of the story: the curator tells him that "due to lack of funds, piles and piles of books are lying around that still haven't been given out for binding". And yet the whole reason the manuscript was written (as well as the better-known Machtzit ha-Shekel) was to serve as an exposition for the classic work Magen Avraham - which is "obscure and enigmatic due to overabbreviation. For though a man of great learning, he was poor, without the means to buy paper ... and when a piece of paper came into his hands, he would compose his thoughts and jot down their essence in extremely concise language." So the problem went from being not enough paper (due to lack of funds) to too many books (due to lack of funds).

So at the end of the story, the "book that was lost" is never found, but the narrator does settle in Jerusalem, where he had long dreamed (even if with perhaps imperfect faith) of settling. How did he overcome whatever doubts he might have had? He tells us: "I can't tell whether the poems of Zion and Jerusalem brought me to Jerusalem or whether it was my longing for Zion and Jerusalem that brought me to compose poems about them." In either case, the narrator perceives a direct causal connection between the expression (in writing) of the wish, and its manifestation. [684]

elainegrey

Friday, i managed to get ice off much of the deck and sidewalk. Deck's gonna need repainting and i think i will do it myself this time and address the issues that were not by the professional. (Eye roll). It was physically engaging, and i felt i'd had a real work out. The salt was impressive: while i didn't get rid of some of it in the driveway, i could rake and roughen the surface in a wa where i'd scattered salt that i couldn't elsewhere. Seeing the rusty salt on the white sleet-creet did give me opinions about my seed spreader: it definitely is not even. (But more even than hand casting.) I just disappeared into a book after all the effort.

Yesterday morning Other Places were snowed in and we were in the "dry slot." My feelings churned around the changing travel, but around 12:30 snow started. By 4:45 pm we had 1 7/8" of snow (measured using the recommended white board, which was then swept off), and it kept coming. This morning we have an additional 2 5/8" on the board, so that's a nice even 4.5" total

I hope i can relax today and also prep for the trip. I got a cancellation notice for the Sunday flight i had changed to Monday, but i've confirmed that i am booked Monday.

summersgate

Rainbow Forces.

summersgate

Another night where I went to bed very early (7pm) and now here I am awake at 1.

I was curious yesterday to see what the AVERAGE woman of my age (72), weight and height looks like. So I asked AI for a picture. I had to have AI make her be hunched over a bit to match me.

I feel like I can love this person and her body and looks. Much more that I have been loving my own body and looks. So I'm seeing this as an aid to help me accept myself and my aging better.

I'm going to call this little guy Wonky. Wonky Monkey. My newest everything book is in the background. I'm planning how I can use this book as both a writing journal and an art-a-day book. This is the same type of book I made for Nancy a while ago (years ago) but I never used mine. It didn't have enough pages for writing - too many artsy and weird paper pages for a writing journal. So I decided I can just tuck in more plain writing pages as I go and use the fancy papers for art-a-day stuff and get some use from it finally.

asher553

"And God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, to distinguish between the day and the night; and they shall be for signs and seasons, and for days and years." - Genesis 1:14.

"He counts the number of the stars, to all of them He calls by name." - Psalm 147:4.

Nowadays I don't think we usually think of the science of astronomy as proceeding directly from mathematics (or vice versa). We might think about observing the stars with a telescope in the backyard and of learning the constellations; or we might think about the nuclear fusion process that powers the stars, having learned something about it from a book or a science documentary on televison. We might think about space explorers in science and science fiction, and how man harnessed the power of the rocket to overcome gravity and explore space. If you were to ask me to design a scheme to organize books, I might start the sciences with Mathematics, and then go to Physics, and maybe I'd put Astronomy after that. But the Library of Congress system - designed by John Russell Young and Herbert Putnam at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century - puts Astronomy (QB) immediately after Mathematics (QA); Physics (QC) comes after that.

The astronomer Fred Hoyle explains (Astronomy, pp. 10-11) that if man had not been able to observe the sun, moon, and stars, he might not ever have evolved the idea of the compass directions, time, geometry, or mathematics itself. Mathematician Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man, p. 165) agrees: "Why did astronomy advance as a first science ahead of medicine? ... A major reason is that the observed motions of the stars turned out to be calculable, and from an early time ... lent themselves to mathematics. The pre-eminence of astronomy rests on the peculiarity that it can be treated mathematically; and the progress of physics, and most recently of biology, has hinged equally on finding formulations of their laws that can be displayed as mathematical models." When speaking of mathematical models in the life sciences, Bronowski is undoubtedly thinking of the skull of the Taung child, which led to JB's own interest in the broader evolution of science.

It was Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica which formulated the basic principles, not only of astronomy or of physics, but of mathematics itself (calculus) - prompted by a visit from the young Edmond Halley (TAOM, p. 233).

And when you think about it, astronomy, like mathematics, is not only in the heavens, but it is a thing very near to you. If you want to look at Mars with that backyard telescope, you've got to know where to aim it; and that entails learning how to use astronomical charts and right ascension and declination and sidereal time. And all of that, in turn, means thinking mathematically about your place in the universe. And not just with a telescope: understanding the cycles of the moon, and even the times of sunrise and sunset - that's astronomy too. And all of it proceeds from understanding the basic fact that you are standing on the surface of a sphere that is spinning and orbiting in space.

And even the measurement of that sphere leads us to mathematics (geometry, or geo-metry, the measurement of the Earth). And that brings us back to "universals of experience. There are two experiences on which our visual world is based: that gravity is vertical, and that the horizon stands at right angles to it." (TAOM, p. 157.) [589]

asher553

This morning I picked up my old copy of Loren Eisley's 'The Invisible Pyramid' (1970) and began reading, from the Prologue through the end of section III (p. 22). Eisley begins by recalling being held aloft as a young boy by his father to see Halley's Comet in 1910; there are some meditations on the immensity of time and space. He reflects on the revelation during the 19th century of the antiquity of the world and the universe; the voyage of Lewis and Clark was a journey in time as much as in space. "Tell us what is new," the explorers were enjoined, but really they were telling us what is old; and yet, that in itself is new. Evolution as described by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace (who is profiled extensively in TAOM, ch. 9) was a great stage play in which the actors, one by one, would each expire, "pinched out of existence in a grimy corner". Man, uniquely, developed a brain "whose essential purpose was to evade specialization" (p.19). This brain could use language with the "tongue and hand, so disproportionately exaggerated in the motor cortex", as illustrated by the iconic "homunculus" diagram of Penfield that's reproduced in my LSL book on 'The Mind' (p. 38).

"About ourselves there always lingers a penumbral rainbow - what A.L. Kroeber [the father of U.K. LeGuin] termed the superorganic - that cloud of ideas, visions, institutions which hover about, indeed constitute human society, but which can be dissected from no single brain. This rainbow, which exists in all heads and dies with none, is the essential part of man. Through it he becomes what we call human, and not otherwise." (p. 21)

Loren Eisley (1907 - 1977) would not live to see the return of Halley's Comet in 1986. The Wikipedia entry on Eisley has a generous section on his early life. Growing up on the outskirts of Lincoln, Nebraska in the early 20th century, he would have memories of the "far-off train headlight ... on the prairies of the West" (p. 9). On the early ancestors of man, Eisley writes (p. 10), "We talked, but the words we needed were fewer. ... We meant well, but we were terrifyingly ignorant and given to frustrated anger. There was too much locked up in us that we could not express." Perhaps he was thinking of his own deaf and mentally disturbed mother when he wrote these words.

Eisley himself proved to be a man of words from early on, publishing in the then-new 'Prairie Schooner', which sees its centennial this year. The bio lists him as an anthropologist, but the Wiki article clarifies that "he came to anthropology from paleontology, preferring to leave human burial sites undisturbed", which sheds light on the numerous knowledgeable references to paleontology, archaeology, and prehistoric burial practices already evident in the few pages of the book I've read so far. [483]

summersgate

Earth, Sun, Moon. The moon was very bright last night. Full moon coming on Sunday.

elainegrey

And déjà vu: Sunday flight to Ohio has been moved to Monday. This time i really need to go (or give up). At least the forecast for Ohio temps next week isn't quite so arctic. Never above freezing, yes, but one can see the balmy temperature of the freezing point from the forecast.

Our north slope shaded house still has plenty of ice about. The clumping clay litter for traction ... well, better than breaking a neck. So glad i covered our steps last weekend. Expect this weekend will have Real Snow that can be shoveled instead of Sleet-crete, the accumulation of sleet welded together with freezing rain.

I had a meeting with my product people where i set Worry That We Are VERY AMBITIOUS at their feet to think about.

Christine is getting better but it's still soon after surgery.

summersgate

A pic of where Skye slept last night. There are 2 beds in the hallway. The other one is in the closet and this one is just in a corner of the hall. Rainy and Skye both use these little cozy beds. Andy is a couch man.

I took this pic on Wednesday. Thought it looked neat how the skin of snow was wrinkling down.

Then on Thursday it was even better.

-10F this morning. Dave's gone ice fishing. I'm just going to stay in, do some art, crochet and watch The Closer (again). I don't think it will exactly be a pajama day today but there will definitely be no bra.

summersgate

Pine Cone Quilt. I came across a quilting pattern called "pine cone" or "pine burr" today and thought I'd try it (sort of) with collage. Usually the pine cone pattern radiates out from the middle in quilting but I didn't have enough room in my book with the size of paper squares I had cut so I did more of a scales thing. This is the first page of my most recent daily journal book, Everything #20. Number 19 took me from April 2025 till this morning. It always feel momentous to me when I move into a new book for some reason.

Another cold day today. Though the sun shone for a while and that was nice. Char, Berdella and I had lunch at Granthams. This was the first time in years that I got anything other than my usual seafood salad. I got bourbon grilled salmon. It was good but I think next time I'll probably go back to seafood salad again.

asakiyume

I've been reading Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo because it was our book group book. Usually I can take or leave (or prefer to leave) our book group books, but this one I expected I'd like, because I loved Acevedo's The Poet X (ended up teaching that one in the jail). And I am liking it! So much that although the book group date came and went, I've kept on reading it because I want to finish it.

It's about two generations of Dominican women, whose life stories we get in bits and pieces around the occasion of a living wake that one of them is throwing for herself. The characters, their lives, the language--it's all so vivid. I marked this, one woman (older generation) talking about her older sister:

The person I've hugged most in the world, beside my own offspring, has been Flor. It was she who carried me on her hip. As a child, hers was the first body I remember vining around, the way climbing plants claim homes.

Also, the women all have gifts. One has dreams that foretell when someone will die. Another can tell if someone is lying. Another can salsa like nobody's business. And one has an alpha vagina ;-)

( cut for frank talk about down-there )

I've been surprised and delighted by how much I'm enjoying this character's thoughts and experiences with her gift. The book is overall super sensual and VERY sex positive.

I'm also still reading and enjoying Breath, Warmth, and Dream, by Zig Zag Claybourne, but I had to put it aside to read this one. But this one is nearly done, and Breath, Warmth, and Dream is very easy to fall back into.

elainegrey

Yesterday after work i just escaped into a book. I finished Rachel Neumeier's Death's Lady trilogy. The first book felt complete and stand alone, and i found the in this world with a mental institution housing a distressed person from another world to be different and engaging. Would real therapists and psychiatrists approve? I dunno, but i enjoyed it. The next two books are one story that i was impatient with -- just as likely a me problem as that of the text, as in retrospect i regard it with some pleasure. The fourth book, last night, was of redemption. The lovely aspect of these books is the alternate world has recovered from a long traumatic time of cruelty and the young leader has an instinct for healing.

And i escaped there again.

I am privileged in that generally we can sit out the ice and snow and enjoy looking and walking in it. The stretch of road we are on retains the ice long after it clears elsewhere, our north slope grounds are shaded by tall pines and we keep the snow for a long while. I suspect that once we get round the curve i will, as usual, be surprised at how different everywhere else is.

"KEY MESSAGE 1...Confidence continues to grow in at least measurable snowfall in central NC Fri night into Sun morning, but considerable uncertainty remains with an incredibly wide range of potential snowfall amounts and related impacts.... This pattern is favorable for at least light snow with a high snow/liquid ratio within central NC, but also brings an incredibly difficult forecast challenge.... The likelihood ... remains a point of considerable uncertainty and may not be ironed out until 1-2 days before the event begins. However, the top analogs and latest suite of ... model guidance highlights at least the potential for significant snowfall totals somewhere from the Carolinas into the Mid-Atlantic. There are a few failure modes for this setup which would result in less precipitation over central NC. "

I like reading the local NWS (RAH) area forecast. The above is essentially how i skim the text. Whole paragraphs of technical air masses and troughs and poetic phrases like the "stronger synoptic ascent overspreads" i consume to produce some abstract impressionist concept of weather maps in my head, but i am on the look out for the process. These forecasters speaking to other forecasters focus on certainty and uncertainty and the basis for claims. The meaningful weather maps right now focus on what the probability is that warning or watches need to be issued -- not how much. The graphical ten day forecast i look at has no way to condense in all this uncertainty, except for the numbers to jump around as new models are run.

The Weather Channel is apparently naming it Winter Storm Gianna.

Meanwhile, the project planning for which i am scheduled to fly to Ohio this weekend -- exhale, it will be what it will be -- gripped my heart yesterday with dread. I am feeling inadequate as i look into some cryptographic technologies and consider the chuzpah with which we undertake this planning. I think i had forgotten the depths of some of the issues facing us in this work, and yesterday it all came back to me. I am ... thankful ... for the pause that means i have this complexity in mind as we head into the planning.

Meanwhile, i read one of my Republican senator's statements critical of ICE and fume at the wishy washy way he weasels his critique to "protect President Trump's legacy." The press has carried stories about the fear these politicians have of getting in the crosshairs of the MAGA and Q faithful who have shown themselves willing to assault and attack. The attack on Paul Pelosi, on judges, on governors, even the attempted assassination attempts -- yes, i can understand the fear. But there are people on the street in Minneapolis who are brave and are also facing violence and attack and no doubt MAGA and Q faithful are doxxing people who have made themselves visible -- can this senator not be brave enough to do more?

The number of deaths in ICE's custody has shot up this year and part of it is the ignorance in which they bring people into custody, the lack of support for the people who have chronic conditions, the utter lack of care. Funding of DHS should also be contingent on hiring the medical staff and translators and custodial staff, and buying supplies to support the people in custody. If ANYONE is in custody, the state should be meeting their physical and legal needs.

ICE needs to be held accountable for those deaths, too. Not just the terror they are causing on the streets, but the tedious quiet horror of neglect in custody.

Argh, there is so much wrong with the whole horrible, racist process.

summersgate

-5F this morning. The back door screeches on its hinges when you open it.

Last night - I wanted to get a pic of how the lights in the front window light up the snow on the ground. I have the lights on a thermostat that turns on when the temps outside go below 20F. They have been on a lot this winter.

Art a day - Seven of Wands.

Yesterday I bought my plane tickets to go to Florida in April. Started a monkey amigurumi. I've been watching The Closer. Well, hardly watching, more like listening to it in the background. I love hearing her voice. I'm not really sure what's going on most the time.

Nothing much on the agenda today except more of The Closer and crochet. Dave is taking a day off from ice fishing. Day after day outside in this kind of weather is brutal.

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Page generated Feb. 3rd, 2026 01:57 pm

Reading

(morning writing)

tuesday

monday later

Reading - Kafka, Singer

monday

moonlight

sunday

Reading - S Y Agnon - Book That Was Lost

(morning writing)

saturday later

saturday

Reading: Astronomy.

Reading: Loren Eisley.

friday later

(morning writing)

friday

thursday

Reading Wednesday

(morning writing, work, weather, fascism)

wednesday

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October 2017

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