Casual meanness

Jul. 12th, 2025 07:18 am
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Air temperature 63 F, south wind about 5 mph, fog at the airport. Our lower elevation seems to be below that particular cloud. Morning errand, then walk? Lethargy rules. The world can fix itself.

Friday miscellany report

Jul. 11th, 2025 11:40 am
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Roadkill included a smeared mess on Main Street that I am calling a woodchuck based on fur color alone. Also, an intact crow by the roadside. First year bird miscalculated?

More chicory blooming, more bindweed, more milkweed, more water parsnip, more of the cursed purple loosestrife. Think I saw some mullein shoots, flowers not open yet.

USMC still defending our airport, both Ospreys and helicopters.

Got out on the bike, across town and back and that bridge is now open to traffic both ways, so no more detour! Did not die.

15.71m, 1:31:02

Another Friday

Jul. 11th, 2025 06:58 am
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Air temperature 63 F, southwest wind 4 mph, cloudy. Showers and a thundershower south and west of us, but fading and not really aimed here. Trash out. May get a bike ride in, if the Marines don't attack first.

Coffee in the mug

Jul. 10th, 2025 06:57 am
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Air temperature 64 F, wind south about 3 mph, cloudy. Rain showing on the weather radar across town, not reported at the airport site. Dew point 61 F, so the sticky abides. Walk later?
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Actually I've been doing a ton of reading while I shake off the last of this influenza, which is mostly now lingering chest crud and zero stamina.

While nothing has blown me away, and I've abandoned some other "not for me" books, I did make a virtuous start on The Cull. Beginning with C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet, first published in 1938.

My copy, the 1965 paperback edition printed in the US, has a cover that actually sort of fits the book, unlike a lot of SF covers of the time depicting generic space skies and cigar rocket ships, with or without a scantily clad lady joined by guys in glass helmets and bulky space suits.

No woman on the cover here, which would have been false advertising as the only woman on stage during the entire novel is a distraught country housewife in the first few pages. (And no, I do not think that this is a sign that Lewis despised women, so much as that he had spent all his childhood and early manhood among males, so his default characters are going to be "he" among "hims". But that's a discussion for another book.)

I've had Lewis's space trilogy since high school (1968). This one I read I think twice, once that year, and then again when the Mythopoeic Society had branches and our West LA discussion group covered the three books.

Teen-me trudged through the first reading looking for story elements that would interest me, and though a line here and there was promising, I found it overall tedious, missing the humor entirely. On that second reading during my college years I saw the humor, and found more to appreciate in Lewis's thematic argument, but that was a lukewarm enough response that I never reread it during the ensuing fifty years.

Now in old age it's time to cull a massive print library that neither of my kids wants to inherit. What to keep and what to donate? I reread this book finally, and found myself largely charmed. The structure is strongly reminiscent of the fin de siecle SF of Wells, Verne, etc--inheritors of the immensely popular "travelogue" of the 1600-1700s--which means it moves rather slowly, full of the description of discovery (and anticipatory terror) as its protagonist, a scholar named Ransom, stumbles into a situation that gets him kidnapped by a figure from his boarding school days, Weston, and Weston's companion, a man named Devine.

As was common in the all-male world of British men of Lewis's social strata, the men all go by last names--I don't think Weston or Devine are ever given a first name, and there are at most two mentions of Ransom's first name, Elwin, which I suspect was only added as a nod to JRRT. Apparently this book owes its origin to a bet made between Lewis and Tolkien, which I think worth mentioning because of the (I think totally wrong) assumptions that Lewis was anti-science. The bet, and the dedication to Lewis's brother, make it plain that they read and enjoyed science fiction--had as boys.

I suppose it's possible to eagerly read SF and still be anti-science, but I don't think that's the case here; accusations that Lewis hates scientific progress seem to go hand-in-hand with scorn for Lewis's Christianity. But I see the scientific knowledge of mid-thirties all over this book. In fact, I don't recollect reading in other contemporary SF (admittedly I haven't read a lot of it) the idea that once you're out of Earth's gravity well, notions of up and down become entirely arbitrary. Though Lewis seems not to understand freefall, he does represent the changes in gravity and in light and heat--it seems to me that the science, though full of errors that are now common knowledge, was as up-to-date as he could make it. That also shows in the meticulous worldbuilding--and to some extent in the fun he had building his Martian language.

What he argues against when the three men are at last brought before the god-like Oyarsa, is a certain attitude toward Progress as understood then, and also up through my entire childhood: that it didn't matter what you did to other beings or to the environment, as long as it was in the name of Progress or Humanity. We get little throwaways right from the start that Lewis's stance clear, such as when Devine and Weston squabble about having a guard dog to protect their secret space ship, but Devine points out that Weston had had one but experimented on it.

Lewis hated vivisection. He knew it was torture for the poor helpless beasts in the hands of the vivisectionists, who believed animals had no feelings, etc etc. He also hated the byproducts of mass industrialization, as he makes plain in vivid images. Lewis also makes reference to splitting the atom and its possible results; I think it worthwhile to note that during the thirties no one knew what the result would be--but there was a lot of rhetoric hammering that we need bigger and better bombs, and splitting the atom would give us that. All in the name of Humanity. Individual lives have no meaning, and can be sacrificed with impunity as long as it's in the name of "saving Humanity."

As his theme develops, it's made very clear that moral dilemmas trouble Ransom--he's aware that humans contain the capability for brilliant innovation and for vast cruelty. He also holds up for scruntiny the idea that the (white) man is the pinnacle of intelligence in the cosmos. The scene when Weston talks excruciating pidgin in his determination to subordinate the Martians and their culture to the level of "tribal witch doctors" is equally hilarious and cringey.

In short, it took over fifty years for me to appreciate this book within the context of its time. I don't feel any impulse to eagerly reread it, but I might some day. At any rate, it stays on the shelf.

Wednesday metal bird report

Jul. 9th, 2025 11:37 am
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When in doubt, send the Marines. USMC aircraft flocking over at the base, including a pair of (metal) Ospreys coming in for a landing just as I headed across the end of the runway. Funny-looking things.

First goldenrod blooming, tansy, continued St. John's wort. And the first purple loosestrife of the season, bedamned invasive weed.

No fresh roadkill. There *may* be a different dried-out skunk on my detour road, since I haven't been over that section in more than a week.

Got out on the bike, air temperature 78 F when I got home so marginal conditions for my aged body. Did not die.

15.58 miles, 1:30:55

Existence continuing

Jul. 9th, 2025 06:59 am
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[personal profile] jhetley
Air temperature 63 F, wind near calm, fog at the airport. Clearing here, sunshine. Hill-side's dew-pearled. Bike ride probable.

Recouping losses

Jul. 8th, 2025 07:10 am
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[personal profile] jhetley
Air temperature 65 F, wind north 9 mph, rain shower on the weather radar but not seen here. Breakfast internalized after a "fasting" blood draw at a lab across town. Glad they open at 0600 . . .

On to coffee.

(no subject)

Jul. 7th, 2025 05:04 pm
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[personal profile] jhetley
“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Attributed to Sinclair Lewis, but probably not.

Yucky abideth

Jul. 7th, 2025 06:46 am
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[personal profile] jhetley
Air temperature 70 F at 0630, wind near calm, sunny. Dew point 67 F, so that soup's on. Another nasty day, and that's just the heat. AQI and pollen index both "moderate." Will walk early. Do not expect cat friends to be available.

(no subject)

Jul. 6th, 2025 10:17 pm
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Thunderstorm rolled and rumbled through this evening. Moved on now but hasn't cleared the air, still hot and sticky out there. Waxing moon shines through the murk.

Predicted weather

Jul. 6th, 2025 09:34 am
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[personal profile] jhetley
Back from walk, 78 F out there and damp. All cat friends had enough sense to stay inside. First thistles, bell-flowers blooming, nightshade, bindweed. Even birds mostly silent, but we have seen some juvenile robins about.

Wimping out again

Jul. 6th, 2025 07:03 am
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[personal profile] jhetley
Air temperature 66 F before 7 AM, wind south about 8 mph, partly cloudy. We are headed for a high of around 90 F and rising dew point. Think I'll skip the bike ride and swap in a walk. After all, I do want to live to see the apocalypse.

No web-footed friends

Jul. 5th, 2025 07:00 am
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Air temperature 63 F, wind west about 7 mph, partly cloudy. Dew point 53 F, so the humidity hasn't kicked back up. Yet. Tomorrow is supposed to revert to hazy hot and humid. We live in the frozen north to avoid that shit . . .

(no subject)

Jul. 4th, 2025 10:21 pm
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Be kind to your web-footed friends.

Friday floral report

Jul. 4th, 2025 11:49 am
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White sweet clover, rabbits'-foot clover, and rambling roses now blooming. Definitely both yarrow and Queen Anne's lace. Cattails and sumac flower spikes up but not open yet. Almost all the lupines have gone to seed.

No roadkill identified, not even a squirrel. Several blotches on the asphalt, but the cleanup crew has been active.

Got out on the bike, upriver and then back through the bog. Paving project on hold for the weekend, but they have advanced and may get done in a week or two. Did not die. Ride takes me over 200 miles for the year, half of what I would like to have done by this point.

15.59 miles, 1:31:35

Squirrel sabotage

Jul. 4th, 2025 08:05 am
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Power out for about an hour this morning, after a boom up the street. Back on now. Found a corpse in the sidewalk on my local survey.

Air temperature 64 F, wind northwest gusting to 21 mph, partly cloudy. Should be able to get a bike ride in.

(no subject)

Jul. 3rd, 2025 10:05 pm
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[personal profile] jhetley
Hazy gibbous moon
Cooler, storm has moved the heat
Scattered fireflies

(no subject)

Jul. 3rd, 2025 12:53 pm
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When you read about Fearless Leader attacking the Fed for not cutting interest rates, remember that F.L.'s empire is built on borrowed money.

(no subject)

Jul. 3rd, 2025 12:41 pm
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Severe thunderstorm warnings and watches stalk the state. Nothing directly dire here yet. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode . . .
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