Am I into anarchism?

I think so. Thank Urusula Le Guin and her novel The Dispossessed. Here are passages that capture the two planets of comparison:

Odo wrote: “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart."

[...] There was an undercurrent of joy, in that sense, in Abbenay that summer. There was a lightheartedness at work however hard the work, a readiness to drop all care as soon as what could be done had been done. The old tag of “solidarity” had come alive again. There is exhilaration in finding that the bond is stronger, after all, than all that tries the bond. (247)

vs.

Everyone was very polite and talked a great deal, but not about anything interesting; and they smiled so much they looked anxious. But their clothes were gorgeous, indeed they seemed to put all the lightheartedness their manner lacked into their clothes, and their food, and all the different things they drank, and the lavish furnishings and ornaments of the rooms in the palaces where the receptions were held. (83)

Wiki Friday: criminalized colour schemes, bonsai kittens, and more

Where to even begin. I guess with hello. It's nice to be back. Nice to be writing a Wiki Friday.

Today is the first day my daughter is in daycare. She's barely there for a few hours, but wow, the spaciousness I feel in this toddler-free home. Even with a head cold I can imagine, for the first time in a while, completing the writing process involved in a Wiki Friday. 

Composing Wiki Fridays is, believe it or not, one of my great joys. I haven't read Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, but I think I get the gist. Most day to day activities, these days anyway, ask us to think quickly, to give opinions quickly, to react quickly. Thinking slowly, deliberately, while living with a smart phone strapped to one's hand, seems nigh impossible. Pausing from reacting, to pursue my own line of inquiry, is a true refreshment to my mind and spirit. Let us begin.

Red, yellow, green – a criminalized colour scheme

The book Gardens of Water, by Alan Drew, had been sitting on my shelf for years. I knew the novel was set near Istanbul after the devastating 1999 earthquake, but I guess I hadn't read it through to the end. It's quite gripping, and really goes deep with the perspectives of different characters, from a Kurdish teenage girl to an American father who can't resist proselytization. In one plot point, a Kurdish boy in Eastern Turkey is shot by the Turkish military because he appears to be wearing red, yellow, and green, which make up the colours of the Kurdish flag, above. 

Folks on the internet debate whether this colour scheme, or the flag itself, is technically illegal or banned in Turkey, but suffice it to say, the colours have been dangerous for many. I am personally drawn toward red, yellow, and green, in art and nature, and as a result have been thinking about these colours together a lot. As we go into fall in the northern hemisphere, we will see them everywhere, in berries, leaves, dried grasses, and vegetation made lush by rain. Perhaps more on this another time.

Grapes

This search was generated by the fact that I couldn't picture grapes vines having flowers. But as with all fruits, they do flower. The flowers are just small.

While scanning the Wikipedia pages, I learned that Concord grapes are named so because they come from the city in Massachusetts. They were cultivated from wild grapes there by farmer Ephraim Wales Bull. I only tried Concord grapes as an adult, and my first response was, "Oh, this is 'grape flavour'". And indeed it is! Concord grapes spawned an entire industry of grape-flavoured products, from candy to soft drinks.

Bonsai kittens

I tentatively brought up 'kittens in jars' to David. Did he remember this urban legend that was floating around when we were kids? It was an urban legend, right? No one was actually growing kittens in jars to stunt their growth, surely. David looked at me with bemusement. He had never heard of such a thing.

Wikipedia confirms that this was a big hoax around the year 2000. An MIT student created a website that described the "lost art" of bonsai kittens, and the internet, particularly animal rights people on the internet, went nuts. Somehow the hoax even reached me.

Tolkien

Good old J.R.R.

We're watching the news Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series, or, as I call it, 'Ring TV'.

Maya will be home soon, so I'm just going to share some quick little zingers:

Tolkien worked for the Oxford English Dictionary, on Germanic words starting with W.

We have his mother, Mabel, to thank somewhat, for she homeschooled him, including in botany and Latin.

He was bitten by a large baboon spider as a child.

He served in World War I and it is understood that Mordor is based on scenes from the trenches.

He was very into Beowulf.

In a letter, he said that the purpose of life is to know God and be moved to thanks.

He may have been the first to use the term 'phonoaesthetics', regarding the relative beauty and pleasantness of certain words or sounds within words.

Until next time.

The motherbaby

 

This sculpture at the Art Gallery of Ontario made me think of the idea of the motherbaby, which I had come across in one book explicitly, but in many places implicitly.

The end of history

 I’ve never exactly known what this expression referred to.

Wikipedia reassures me that it has been in play at different times and different ways, namely, since the late 1800s and in the fields of history, economics, politics, and culture.

Francis Fukuyama used the term for the title of an essay in 1989 and then a book in 1992, perhaps fixing it more firmly in the minds of many. Apparently he suggests that the end of history, a settling into a single accepted socio-economic framework worldwide, will be a sad time. We won’t be animated by grand, different ideas of a better world. We will just tinker around the edges. 

From what I gather, though, we aren’t there (yet?).

The Geography of Memory

Poets are the best at prose. In this case the poet is Jeanne Murray Walker, who wrote a memoir about her mother's years with Alzheimer's and her own memories of a Midwestern, fundamentalist Christian upbringing. I really enjoyed this book, so much that I stayed up way too late multiple nights in a row.

309
She talks about metaphor. Her mother's ("Mother's") speech can be compared to the poetry of surrealists like Pablo Neruda, who "stuff their poems so full of metaphor that it's next to impossible to find a literal meaning." Accept the metaphor. Work with the metaphor.

263
On deciding which items will go with Mother to the care facility: "...I'm horrified by the responsibility of making these choices."

331
When she breaks free from Mother as a teen to travel to Peru: "The steep, husky, endless, snowy mountains gave me vertigo. I felt thrilled by the smallness of my own body and by the way the road ahead dwindled to a gray thread."

343
Watching Mother in a hospital bed after a hip is broken: "Watching is like hearing an alarm wailing, like an arrow slowly going through my heart."

319
A recounted prayer: "Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love, make haste to be kind, live without fear. Your Creator has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Go in peace and follow the good road and may the blessing of God: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, be with you now and always."

Life in third person

Niña

Cuatro y medio 

Casi cinco meses

Tiene cinco meses

Si muy linda

Si ella es muy feliz

No llora mucho

Está durmiendo

WikiFriday: Hippos, cortisol

 

Hippos

Are most related to... 

whales and dolphins! 

They all share a semiaquatic ancestor, and diverged 55 million years ago. Hippos and whales and dolphins. Something in me feels that everyone should learn this.

Cortisol

Is extremely connected to our blood sugar level, which I learned is tightly regulated in the human body. Side rabbit hole: Apparently the average adult human only has about 4 teaspoons of sugar in all of their blood at a given moment.

Contrary to what social media influencers say, cortisol does not cause inflammation. To the contrary, it prevents inflammation. 

It does, however, lead to osteoporosis.

I learned that you cannot say that cortisol suppresses the immune system. It actually triggers a specific immune response.

That's all I've got for now. As always, thanks, Wikipedia.

Mansions vs democracy

I’ve been thinking about the intangible damage done by bigger homes. They can erode community within the household by drawing people to separate rooms. At the extreme end, when people have private pools and movie theatres, they can completely obliterate social connections, because residents have no reason to go out and use public services.

And then I think of the book with the thesis that democracy relies on unplanned encounters and common experiences. Mansions vs democracy.

Plus, they are hard to clean.