Thursday October 2, 2008 5:40 am Missoula, Montana
It is +8 C with a high forecast of +25 C. Sunrise 6:35 Sunset 18:14 Hours of daylight: 11:19.
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Sunday, October 5, 2008 6:57 AM
A. Morning Musings
I am looking forward to today. It will be a change of pace as much of the time we will be birding in some of the nature reserves north of Missoula. But the proportion of time spent driving will be much less than the last few days. Thunderstorms are forecast for the late afternoon and evening, but I think we will be back in Missoula by then.
I have made a cup of coffee (the machine in this room makes only one cup) and will sit back and try again to get into Salman Rushdie's novel "Midnight's Children". The book won "The 1993 Booker of Bookers" award but I have been getting away from reading for the last few weeks so I am having difficulty maintaining the flow of the novel.
| Learning Category |
Planned Activities for Today |
Time |
| Literature |
Continue reading "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie |
2 hr |
| Birding |
Viewing marshland north of Missoula |
2 hr |
B. Actual Learning Activities
6:00 am
Here are a few quotes from the early chapters of "Midnight's Children" that I liked:
- "Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. [describing his birth at midnight] [p. 9]
- Rushdie describes the simple act of bumping one's head on the ground, bleeding a few drops and bringing a few tears to the eyes, as creating "rubies and diamonds". [p. 10]
- What is apparently insignificant in our lives may also be incredibly valuable.
- "And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumours, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane! I have been a swallower of lives; and to know me, just the one of me, you'll have to swallow the lot as well. Consumed multitudes are jostling and shoving inside me ... " [p. 9]
- This is worth remembering when thinking about any individual. Anything less misses the point.
- "Tai, bringing an urgent summons to Doctor Aziz, is about to set history in motion ... while Aadam, looking down into the water, recalls what Tai taught him years ago: 'The ice is always waiting,Aadam baba, just under the water's skin.' " [p. 13]
- Insignificant events may have important consequences, and what is initially viewed positively may also have a negative dimension to them. Yin and yang in all things.
- "Tai tapped his left nostril. 'You know what this is nakkoo? It's the place where the outside world meets the world inside you. If they don't get on, you feel it here. ... When it warns you, look out or you'll be finished. Follow your nose and you'll go far.' " [p. 17 - 18]
- I agree, but I have never seen this expressed so well.
- "Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence." [p. 19]
- This is what I like about Rushdie - his personal insights. That, and his special way of crafting sentences.
This first chapter of 14 pages describes the day that the narrator's grandfather first meets his grandmother and thus begins his genealogical history. Yet look at how much is contained in these few pages. This is a novel worth mining. It is a book to be read slowly. Perhaps I am sensitive to this possibility because of an email I received recently asking about the article I wrote in 2001 on "The Art of Slow Reading".
Now to set up a structure for making these notes.
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Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie |
| Book One |
chapter 1 The perforated sheet |
| Characters |
Tai: a Kashmiri boatman
Saleem Sinai: the narrator
Dr. Aadam Aziz: the narrator's grandfather
Ghani: a rich landowner
Naseem: Ghani's daughter |
| Quotes |
- "Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. [describing his birth at midnight] [p. 9]
- Rushdie describes the simple act of bumping one's head on the ground, bleeding a few drops and bringing a few tears to the eyes, as creating "rubies and diamonds". [p. 10]
- What is apparently insignificant in our lives may also be incredibly valuable.
- "And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumours, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane! I have been a swallower of lives; and to know me, just the one of me, you'll have to swallow the lot as well. Consumed multitudes are jostling and shoving inside me ... " [p. 9]
- This is worth remembering when thinking about any individual. Anything less misses the point.
- "Tai, bringing an urgent summons to Doctor Aziz, is about to set history in motion ... while Aadam, looking down into the water, recalls what Tai taught him years ago: 'The ice is always waiting,Aadam baba, just under the water's skin.' " [p. 13]
- Insignificant events may have important consequences, and what is initially viewed positively may also have a negative dimension to them. Yin and yang in all things.
- "Tai tapped his left nostril. 'You know what this is nakkoo? It's the place where the outside world meets the world inside you. If they don't get on, you feel it here. ... When it warns you, look out or you'll be finished. Follow your nose and you'll go far.' " [p. 17 - 18]
- I agree, but I have never seen this expressed so well.
- "Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence." [p. 19]
- This is what I like about Rushdie - his personal insights. That, and his special way of crafting sentences.
|
| Summary |
The narrator was born at the exact moment (midnight on August 15, 1947) that India became a country. In many ways he is the personification of the country.
The narrator describes the day that his grandfather first met his grandmother and thus begins his genealogical history. The doctor has been called to examine her because she is complaining of a stomach ache, but he is only allowed to view a small part of her through a small 7" hole in a sheet that is held between him and his patient. |
This has been a very enjoyable first hour to the day! Now to create a chart for the second chapter.
| |
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie |
| Book One |
chapter 2 Mercurochrome |
| Characters |
Padma: the narrator's wife
Saleem Sinai: the narrator
Dr. Aadam Aziz: the narrator's grandfather
Naseem: Ghani's daughter |
| Quotes |
- "She stirs a bubbling vat all day for a living; something hot and vinegary has steamed her up tonight.... Things are always getting her goat." [p. 24]
- a nice metaphor for one who is always unhappy.
- "On the day the World War ended, Naseem developed the longed-for headache. Such historical coincidences have littered, and perhaps befouled, my family's existence in the world." [p. 27]
- Rushdie continually contrasts important world events with mundane personal stories - which is more important?
- Rushdie describes the Amritsar massacre of 1943 and how Dr. Aadam Aziz survived it by falling down at exactly the right moment. When he arrives home later, covered in blood, which Naseem first thinks is mercurochrome, Naseem asks where he has been. " 'Nowhere on earth', he said. [p. 36]
|
| Summary |
One of the most horrific events leading to India's independence is described and is contrasted with a trivial personal accident that permits one individual to survive and continue to lead his life and affect, and be affected by, numerous others. |
8:30 PM
One sign of a good day is that I am away from the screen until late evening.
The surprise this morning was the church at St. Ignatius, a small town north of Missoula. The murals inside were stunning! Our trip north was disappointing in that the nature reserves were not very well marked and even when we found them we saw very few birds. But we had a good lunch at a family restaurant on the shore of the Flathead Lake. Mine was a bison stew (aka Irish stew with a slight change to the meat) and a deep fried slab of bread.
Here are a few photos:
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north of Missoula |
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marshland on Flathead Nature Reserve |
Here is a photo of a sign that caught my eye:
Once we were back in Missoula I made a trip to Barnes & Noble where I ran amuck again. Here is the damage, listed in the order that I selected them:
- Archimedes to Hawking. (2008). by Clifford A. Pickover.
- I buy almost everything that I see by Pickover. I have yet to be disappointed.
- The Lightness of Being. (2008). by Frank Wilczek.
- Wilczek won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004. He is a professor at MIT. This looks like a neat introduction to many of the leading edge ideas about mass, ether and the unification of forces. While skimming the book I noticed a diagram about grids and noticed that the grid was viewed as a fundamental feature of reality rather than a way of organizing it. I think I am going to enjoy this book.
- The Calculus Lifesaver. (2007). Adrien Banner.
- This looks like a great book on this topic. I must get back on track with this!
- Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species. The Illustrated Edition. (2008). David Quammen (Ed.)
- This is a beautiful coffee table book.
- The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. (2008). Jonathan Zittrain.
- This should be worth a close look.
- Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago. (2006). Douglas H. Erwin.
- I am aware of the Permian extinction but other than I have heard of it, I have never read anything specifically about it. This should be interesting.
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. (2008). Clay Shirky.
- This is another book in the tradition of Wikinomics.
- Iconoclast. (2008) Gregory Berns.
- The cover says "a neuroscientist reveals how to think differently". I am curious.
- Excursions in Number Theory. (1966). C. Stanley Ogilvy & John T. Anderson.
- This is a small pocket book with a number of interesting activities involving prime numbers.
During another quick trip in a bookstore I bought one novel - Prey by Michael Crichton. This is a novel about nanotechnology.
Once again, I am getting excited about Learning and moving forward on a few fronts simultaneously: calculus, biology, symmetry, Literature & Model Trains. I did resist buying a book on wood carving today. I still want to insert some geocaching activities into my days as well.
