Sunday, December 11, 2011 Lethbridge

5:20 am

The temperature is -7° C, with a high predicted of -3° C. From the Environment Canada website: Today Cloudy. Periods of snow beginning this morning. Amount 2 cm. High minus 3. Tonight Snow. Amount 2 to 4 cm. Low minus 10. Normals Max: 0°C Min: -12°

5:30 am Literature

I finished a reread of the first 400 pages last night. The number of special quotes has decreased but the story line has really ramped up. I have no idea what is likely to happen next.

• "Aomame devoted a great deal of attention to her daily diet. Vegetarian dishes were central to the meals she prepared for herself, to which she added seafood, mostly white fish. An occasional piece of chicken was about all the meat she would eat. She chose only fresh ingredients and kept seasonings to a minimum, rejecting high-fat ingredients entirely and keeping her intake of carbohydrates low. Salads she would eat with a touch of olive oil, salt, and lemon juice, never dressings. ... 'Forget about counting calories,' she would always advise them. 'Once you develop a knack for choosing the proper ingredients and eating in moderation, you don't have to pay attention to numbers.' " [p. 185]
  • This is good advice. I bought 2 recipe books at Costco earlier this week: The Best of Clean Eating and The Best of Clean Eating 2. I bought one of these magazines this summer when we were in Kingston and was impressed with it. There has been a noticeable shift toward a more healthy diet over the last decade or two. These books help reinforce that shift, while still emphasizing that one's diet can be delicious.
  • A quick google search locates the web site for this magazine:
    
    http://cleaneatingmag.com/Recipes.aspx
    
    
  • This is not just a novel, but an entry into a parallel universe.
• "They had no television and did not subscribe to a newspaper. Even news was looked upon in her home as a nonessential." [p. 183]
  • This is similar to my own lifestyle. I do have television but rarely turn it on (except for some sporting events). I do make daily use of the internet, but news items take a back seat to google searches. News items emphasize the negative and can be a real drag on one's disposition. The primary purpose of television is to provide advertising. Unfortunately this is rapidly also becoming the main feature of the internet. Most news websites devote almost a third of the screen to advertising. We are truly being saturated with advertising. In North America even sporting events now have numerous "time-outs" so that the television screens can provide more ads. Movie theatres have major breaks between showings so that ads can be shown. I could go on and on ...
• "But pure, unadulterated feelings are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to go on living with such feelings. That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earth - firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon." [p. 185]
  • This requires thinking about.
• "Aomame hung up and finished stir-frying her vegetables. Then she made some miso soup with bean sprouts and had that with brown rice. She drank half a can of beer and poured the rest down the drain. She had washed the dishes and was resting on the sofa when Ayumi called again." [p. 186]
  • Stir-frying veggies, miso soup, half a can of beer, resting on a sofa. There is much to commend it.
• "I'd like the lentil soup, the warm spring green salad, and the parchment-baked monkfish with polenta." [p. 188]
  • The last three pages contain many examples of a healthy diet. Unusual in a novel.
• " 'Even if you do order the wrong thing [in a restaurant], it's just food. It's no big deal compared with mistakes in life.' " [p. 189]
  • Perspective is important. One doesn't even eat in a restaurant that often.
• " 'But still,' Ayumi said, 'it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.' " [p. 195]
  • Why?
• "... seated in her reading chair and listening to John Dowland's instrumental piece 'Lachrimae' while reading a book." [p. 213]
  • Another quick visit to iTunes and to Google.
• " 'To think that people four hundred years ago were listening to the same music we're hearing now! Doesn't it make you feel strange?' " [p. 214]
  • This novel is a journey into the past and how it affects the present. Truly fascinating.
• "Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland." [p. 214]
  • This is worth remembering.
• "The word processor was undeniably more convenient for writing speed and for saving documents, but he loved the classic act of writing characters by hand on paper." [p. 251]
  • I agree.
  • I recall reading something a few years ago that suggested that hand writing was rapidly disappearing. In another generation there may be few people who are able to write (or read) cursive script.
  • Cursive script is the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the modern age?
• Pages 254-256 contain a verse translation of part of the Tale of the Heike. This is beautiful! I have read McCullough's translation but it is in prose and fails to convey the sense of the oral tradition of this classic Japanese work. I am not aware of any English version that corresponds to the lines on these pages.
  
  
• "Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves." [p. 257]
  • Murakami is writing a powerful novel about the dangers of rewriting history.
• "He had read many books over the years, but he owned few. He tended to dislike filling his home with a lot of possessions. When he finished a book, unless it was something special, he would take it to a used-book store. He bought only books he knew he was going to read right away, and he would read the ones he cared about very closely, until they were ingrained in his mind.When he needed other books he would borrow them from the neighborhood library." [p. 257]
  • This is not me. I have kept many of my books and I often buy books that I hope to read some day - but that day is often months, sometimes years, in the future. I have built a resource that I trust will prove useful later.
• "After a good deal of indecision, he pulled out Anton Chekhov's Sakhalin Island, which he had just finished reading the week before. He had marked the more interesting spots with paper tags and figured this would make it easy to choose suitable passages to read." [p. 258]
  • I must order this book. The marking of interesting passages is definitely something I like to do. But retyping them into this web page is a new venture.
I am now on page 390. The action is really picking up but I am only near the half-way point in the story so there must be a few twists and turns ahead.

4:00 PM Model Trains

I have kept the trains running today. Having a set of operating instructions makes a huge difference. I have now finished the period for Session 2, 6 am. There were 3 trains on the go during this time frame. At any one moment two of the trains are on sidings and one is actually moving. There is a nice balance between switching operations and mainline running. I am really pleased with the time I am spending on this aspect of the hobby. My mind is totally in another space during this activity.

I did not spend any time working on the viaduct.

9:00 PM Literature

Speaking of time and another space, Murakami's novel "1Q84" is a gem. I am about 2/3 of the way through and now have a good sense of the overall story but there is still a lot of action and suspense to come.