Nathan Coulter, Remembering, A World Lost - Three Short Novels, Wendell Berry

I love Wendell Berry's fiction.  I love his concept to tell the intertwined stories of many families, across generations, in a non-linear way in many works each of which can stand on its own.  I love the understated, quiet, calm tone of his writing. I love his appreciation of beauty in the simple.  I love his portrayal of the black sheeps in families.  I love his romantic portrayal of land and family farming and physical labor.  I love that his lawyer character is honest and good.  I love that there's a map and genealogy tree that is a useful supplement to his works. I love his portrayal of drama-free, steadfast marriage.  I love his portrayal of small community life in which there is no anonymity and, except in rare circumstances, everyone must just make do with everyone else in the community. I love his portrayal of a time and place in which parents knew more than their kids about that which the kids were going to do for a living (farm), with parents educating their kids by working side by side while the kids are respectful sponges. I love reading about kids growing-up where they had land and time to explore.

Dreamers of the Day

Mary Doria Russell wrote two novels (The Sparrow (sci-fi) and Thread of Grace (historical fiction)) that we've read for book club that I liked a lot.  She's a fan of Walter Miller and wrote a forward for a recent publication of Canticle for Leibowitz.

The premise is absurd.  In 1921, a middle-aged school teacher from Ohio retires and takes a trip to Cairo during the Cairo Peace Conference at which was born Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.  On her first day in Cairo, by happenstance, Agnes meets Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Stein and their friends.  She hangs out with them and has a fling (her first ever) with some guy who may or may not be a spy.  I knew this much about it before I began reading and recognized the ridiculousness of the premise, but I thought that Mary Doria Russell was so supremely skilled that she could make a believable story out of this.  Alas, no.

Update:  One more thing.  Agnes meets Lawrence because her dog causes a stir at the hotel.  She meets the maybe-spy when he comments on her dog.  Obvious plot device is obvious.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

This was a book club pick. I had pitched it, in part on LJ's suggestion.

The story is a re-imagining of Hamlet (or of The Lion King, if you prefer), set in rural Wisconsin in the mid-to-late 1900s.  The Sawtelle family is in the business of breeding and training dogs, as it has been for a couple generations.  They do not breed according to customary breeding practices, but instead find dogs with remarkable qualities (temperament, intelligence, etc.) and introduce them into the breeding population.  Before their dogs are sold into homes, they spend a year and half training them and recording the results of training, and use that data to better the lineage of the Sawtelle dogs.

The main character is Edgar who is not deaf but cannot speak.  This makes him similar to the dogs in the sense that he has a communication barrier; Edgar and his family develop a custom sign language to be able to communicate.  I appreciated this focus on communication because I find that 70% of successful dog training is about learning to communicate with your dog.  (The other 30% is operant conditioning; good training has virtually nothing to do with dominance or getting your dog to "obey".)

Some of the chapters are narrated by Almondine, an old dog with whom Edgar has grown up.  I think Wroblewski does a beautiful job of presenting dog thought in a unique way.  He makes Almondine something of a poet, and I preferred this to the usual approach in which authors turn the dogs into not-very-intelligent people.

I was hooked from the beginning and didn't want to put it down.  It wasn't slow for me at all.  I do have a couple quibbles with the ending.  Since they're spoilers, I'll slip behind the cut.

If I Had You

I'm working on a (not entirely positive) review of Adam's show. In the meantime, enjoy the music video for his next single, If I Had You. It's a straight-up disco tune, if you ask me. The video features oodles of Adam's real-life friends, many of whom are famous to Adam's fans. Watch for Allison Iraheta (the redhead on Season 8 of Idol).

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Flaws in Dartmouth Atlas' health care cost analysis

Have to cite this because Bismarck, ND and Houston are mentioned in the same sentence and how often does that happen?

But the real difference in costs between, say, Houston and Bismarck, N.D., may result less from how doctors work than from how patients live. Houstonians may simply be sicker and poorer than their Bismarck counterparts. Also, nurses in Houston tend to be paid more than those in North Dakota because the cost of living is higher in Houston. Neither patients’ health nor differences in prices are fully considered by the Dartmouth Atlas.

I've always wanted to be a drummer in a band..

this guy makes me jealous....ah, not really.

Twitter as social commentary

Speaks for itself (here).

Oil subsidies

This is a topic we covered ages ago. Kate Sheppard, writing at Ezra's WaPo blog, discusses the subsidies that flow to the exploiters of fossil fuels.

Even that [$39 billion over 10 years that would result from Obama-proposed cuts to subsidies] would only be a fraction of what we hand over to fossil fuels every year. The government spent $72.5 billion on fossil fuels between 2002 and 2008, an analysis from the Environmental Law Institute found last year. The government directly spent $16.3 billion on petroleum, natural gas, and coal products, and gave the industry another $53.9 billion in the form of tax breaks.

Testing the embedding of an audio player and audio file

Testing how to embed audio clips with an audio player. Here; have a bit of Slash talking about Adam:

Update: Cannot get this to work. Ought to be easier than embedding video, but it's not.

Update II:  As an unintended consequence of my efforts here, I may have turned the blog into a podcast.  Oy.  Why is this difficult when video is easy?  Back to the drawing board.

Go To FileFactory.com

Update III: OK. That's a huge and ugly player, but it works!!! I'll see if I can find a better looking one.

Update IV: Because it's so much easier to embed video, some user forums describe turning your audio file into a video by adding a picture, then uploading to youtube.



GRRRRR - doesn't work Test

Apparently, being a guitar tech for a band has its frustrations

Cute challenge

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find something cuter than this:

Winnie Cooper fantasy

She's in Maxim this month. Her clothing is not.

New music from Trent Reznor

Here. For LJ.

Did I mention...

I'm going to see Adam in concert on June 12?!!!!!!!!!!!

Glam Nation Tour

We have tickets to Adam's tour show June 12 at the Mystic Lake Casino, just a hop and a skip from Minneapolis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The shows that have been announced are at pretty small venues (2000-3000 people) which means demand exceeds supply.  (Scalper/reseller tickets are going for 2-4 times face value and they're not really even on sale yet to the general public.)  Small venues also mean that there's nothing but great seats and an amazing chance to hear his voice in a room with decent acoustics.

Allison Iraheta is one of his opening acts. 

So far, no tour dates announced in the South, but more dates and venues will be announced later.

I'm shocked...SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here

Roger Lowenstein's op-ed for NYT yesterday advocates for: 1) trading derivatives on exchanges and in standard contracts; and 2) banning or at least regulating credit default swaps. These seem like eminently reasonable suggestions.

Adam at River Rock

This is Adam singing Mad World at a concert Friday at River Rock Casino and Resort in Vancouver:
It's all great, but I'm particularly fond of the improv starting midway through. Lyrics are unnecessary.

"None of us is as smart as all of us"

I find this fascinating:

In one study, groups and individuals were given a complicated card game called the Wason selection task. Seventy-five percent of the groups solved it, but only 14 percent of individuals did.

From David Brooks' column yesterday.

I guess Winnie and I won't be getting married after all...

Wonder Years star expecting.

I've finally reached my breaking point

Not sure if anyone else has taken the time to delete spam comments we've been getting over the past several months. Doing so has been part of my morning internet routine and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm getting VERY tired from doing so. I also hate waking up to see 10+ comment emails in my in-box, knowing that more than likely they are all spam comments.

I've made some changes to the blog settings to see if that will stop them - the changes shouldn't affect anyone, other than a certain named ex-blogger. Sorry....