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Year: 2007

House Sparrow

Along with White-winged Doves and Blue Jays, House Sparrows are the most common birds in our back yard.

I’ve been trying to get a good shot of one for a few weeks and so far this is the best one. The trick was moving the cake feeder that they like closer to the porch.

Some interesting facts about the House Sparrow via Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds site:

  • The House Sparrow was introduced into Brooklyn, New York, in 1851. By 1900 it had spread to the Rocky Mountains. Its spread throughout the West was aided by additional introductions in San Francisco, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah.
  • The House Sparrow has been present in North America long enough for evolution to have influenced their morphology. Populations in the north are larger than those in the south, as is generally true for native species (a relationship known as Bergman’s Rule).
  • Although not a water bird, the House Sparrow can swim if it needs to, such as to escape a predator. Sparrows caught in a trap over a water dish tried to escape by diving into the water and swimming underwater from one part of the trap to another.
  • The House Sparrow is a frequent dust bather. It throws soil and dust over its body feathers, just as if it were bathing with water.

They have a rep for being a nuisance bird, taking over the nests of other birds, especially the Eastern Bluebird, which may be why nobody has moved into my bluebird box, although the sparrows don’t seem interested in it either.

Old Photo Friday

When you’re at the beach it’s all so clear, but later, looking back it fades and blurs and starts to feel more like the lazy aimlessness you felt while there.

Sometimes photography yields happy accidents like this random shot made with a junky underwater throwaway camera. I find this blurred and washed out image far more satisfying than whatever I was actually trying to do.

This is the beach outside our hotel in Cancun. We were there in Jan ’98 for our honeymoon. The water was rough, black flags and all, so the calm Carribean seemed more Pacific to me.

We stayed in Cancun a few days drinking gringo drinks from coconuts before renting a car and breaking out for Yucatan. We visited Tulum, stayed a few days in Merida where we went to Uxmal (I posted a picture of some of the ruins here) and the Puuc Hills before returning via Chitzen Itza.

Friday Random Ten

Another Friday, another ten, except that it’s eleven with *’s by the ones I’ve seen live…

  1. “Riff Raff” – Helle’s Belles* – We Salute You
  2. “Never Here” – Elastica – Elastica
  3. “Stepping Into Tomorrow” – Donald Byrd – Stepping Into Tomorrow
  4. “Foreign Exchange” – The Burnside Project – The Networks, The Circuits, The Streams, The Harmonies
  5. “Wilson (Live)” – Phish* – A Live One
  6. “Merry Christmas from the Family” – Robert Earl Keen – KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 6
  7. “What We Did Last Summer” – Eighty Mile Beach – Om Lounge
  8. “Sanctuary” – Miles Davis – Black Beauty: At Fillmore West
  9. “Lose Control” – Missy Elliott – The Cookbook
  10. “Oran” – Cal Tjader – Soul Burst
  11. “Autumn Sweater” – Tortoise* – A Lazarus Taxon

This one opens with Hell’s Belles, my cousin’s killer all female AC/DC tribute band. I’ve seen them twice and both times, well, they rocked and I saluted them. I wrote about their shows at Stubb’s and Antone’s (links go to my posts) and hope they come back to Austin soon.

Donald Byrd flies off in the third track reminding me why I have all his electric albums, and we close with Tortoise, a band I saw at ACL Fest a few years ago and would love to see again. Based on the members of that band and all the other bands they’re in (Gastr Del Soul, The Sea and Cake, Chicago Underground Trio, Isotope 217) I suspect the Chicago music scene must be something to behold.

Continuing last week’s tradition of looking in wikipedia for today’s musical anniversaries, I find that Ron Carter was born in 1937. Carter played bass in Miles’ second quintet, the better of the two, in my opinion, though he fled when Miles discovered electricity and told jazz to go funk itself.

They Spoke

One of the things many of us teachers wrestle with is how to bring technology into the classroom in a way that is meaningful, useful and relevant.

Here in Texas some of the state standards require us to have students use technology to communicate with writers outside the classroom. I can’t really do that one since I teach in a correctional facility, but I think it’s important for kids to be aware of social media and how to use it well and in ways that won’t embarrass them later.

I learned today that Mr. Powell at St George’s Technical High School in Delaware required his English classes to read and comment on web sites that reviewed the novel his students are currently reading: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, which I reviewed back in February. One of the sites he asked his students to look at was mine. From his students, I received 83 comments at last count, making my Speak post the most commented post on this blog. By a long shot.

I haven’t yet read all of them (I had to work at work, you know), but I will. The ones I’ve read so far are honest, polite and direct. Everything a good blog comment should be.

Cheers to you and your students, Mr. Powell, and thanks for helping to get young people interested in both books and social media. It looks like your assignment worked pretty well. I’m enjoying the comments, so thanks to your students also for taking the time to write interesting things. Perhaps over the weekend, I’ll be able to respond to a few of them.

The Lost Book Club: Laughter in the Dark

Continuing my trek through the Lost books…Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark makes its appearance on Lost in the season three episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Hurley and Charlie find it while ransacking the missing Sawyer’s stash of goods found in the wreckage of Oceanic 815.

Ever since I read Lolita many years ago, I’ve wanted to read more Nabokov, but I never got around to it. Fortunately, the island has a magic box that gives you what you want (despite Ben’s revelation in last night’s episode “The Brig” that the magic box is just a metaphor) and I was served up an author I wanted.

Laughter in the Dark is thematically similar to Lolita – middle-aged man seduced by a wicked young girl ruins his own life – though in Laughter, the girl is eighteen thereby making the middle-aged man merely a tragic fool rather than a felon.

Nabokov tells the whole story in the first two paragraphs:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling…

Eventually Albinus is blinded in an accident and his young lover – Margot – invites her lover, Rex, to live with them, unbeknownst to Albinus. The invisible man in Albinus’ world subjects him to all forms of mockery and humiliation as he and Margot rob Albinus blind (har-har, couldn’t resist).

How right he is that there is pleasure and profit in the telling and the reading. Nabokov’s writing here is thrilling. This is a writer who seems to love his work and this time, his work is to tell the tale of some really rotten people (not unlike on Lost).

While the story is grim and often depressing, Nabokov’s style keeps things light and humorous most of the time. Give Lost another point for introducing me to a cool book that I wouldn’t otherwise have read.

Speaking of Lost

The novel shows up in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” one of the more unusual episodes in the series’ history. It’s a Desmond episode and it’s one in which the flashbacks appear to be more than just memories. Desmond seems able to interact with his flashbacks, giving the viewer the sense that Desmond might have some ability to change the past, in a sort of dreaming time travel. We know he can see flashes of the future as well.

Many of Lost’s storylines revolve around cons, and not just those perpetrated by such con artists as Sawyer and Anthony Cooper. Laughter in the Dark is a con story as well. One in which the con works because the victim – Albinus – can’t see. In a way Desmond’s view of the future and potential parallel time streams is much like Albinus’ limited perception of the world around him.

This is not unlike the situation on the island where the Others have so much more knowledge of the survivors than the survivors have of the Others. (It also makes me wonder if there is an Other in the survivor’s midst, one that the survivors aren’t yet aware of.)

Another potential connection is Albinus’ blindness and the fact that he constantly mistakes the intentions of the other characters, most notably Margot’s. Mistaken intentions is a recurring theme on Lost and in the Lost books. Like Albinus, our survivors are definitely in the dark, able only to listen to the strange sounds of the Others that sometimes echo in the jungle, knowing only what the others want them to know.

The closest parallel between Laughter and Lost comes in the similarities between Albinus and Desmond. They are both cowards, afraid and unable to find the strength to change the course of their lives when they have the opportunity to do so. Desmond, though, is not as far gone as Albinus and it seems he has the capacity – and desire – to change the course of fate, beginning in the lucid dream of his flashbacks. We see Desmond attempting to defy fate and prove the idea of free will.

Laughter in the Dark also reminds the viewer of Desmond’s experience of spending years in the Dharma hatch prior to the Oceanic 815 crash. For years, he entered the numbers and pushed the button. Like Albinus, Desmond was unaware that he was being observed from the Pearl Station the whole time.

I often wonder how much the Others know about Desmond since he wasn’t on the plane, but then Laughter reminds me that the Others at least know of him and have probably been watching him, making me wonder how many of Desmond’s experiences could be the result of an Other con.

Thinking about Laughter in the Dark and “Flashes Before Your Eyes” has led me towards my very own Lost theory…

Last night’s episode which included Anthony Cooper’s assertion that they were in Hell (“It’s awful hot for Heaven”) along with last week’s revelation from Naomi the parachutist that everyone on 815 had died (of course Cooper may have been delusional and Naomi may be lying) adds fuel to the (hell)fire that they are all dead. This had been hinted at with several of the other Lost books, most notably The Third Policeman and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” but the creators have allegedly debunked the theory.

I’m still bunking it though, because when you factor in the alternate time stream theory (reinforced by A Brief History of Time, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and A Wrinkle in Time) you’re left with the notion that in one time stream Oceanic 815 did crash and everyone did die, but when Desmond let the numbers in the hatch run down (revealed in the season two finale) somehow Oceanic 815 was pulled into another time stream (possibly accelerated) in which they crashed on the island. In their original world, they all died, but in the newly created timeline, they are alive.

“Flashes Before Your Eyes” further points in this direction, thus opening the possibility that the happy ending for the series would be for the survivors to reconcile the two time streams and get home alive. I suspect that Desmond is the key to this somehow, since he seems able to alter the various streams. In this way we see a free will/fate battle emerging (another recurring theme on the show). If free will wins, the time streams reconcile and the survivors get of the island. If fate wins, then they’re all dead. Of course I wonder if each survivor would get to choose his own path.

Regardless of what happens, the sound of “real” time will be as nothing more than the ghostly echo of laughter in the dark.

For more thoughts about last night’s “The Brig” check out…

Next up on my Lost reading list is Stephen King’s On Writing.

Check out the rest of my Lost book posts here.

Old Photo Friday

I got this shot of Honolulu, looking out towards Diamond Head in July of ’79. During that summer, we moved from Washington, DC to Subic Bay Naval Base in The Philippines, but the journey was as exciting as the destination since we had a three-day layover in Hawaii.

I was between 2nd and 3rd grade, but all through 2nd grade we had studied Hawaii. I learned all about the various islands, King Kamehameha, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the humu­humu­nuku­nuku­āpuaʻa, and had even tried poi. We were in Arizona visting my grandparents when we found out that we were going to get to go to Hawaii.

I was very young, but I remember it all very clearly. I think it was the combination of spending a year studying it before actually getting to go that had the effect of searing it all into my mind. Unfortunately, I was recovering from chicken pox and had some kind of infection on my foor that prevented me from getting to go to the beach, but we saw quite a bit of Oahu anyway.

Friday Random Ten

Ten with *’s by the ones I’ve seen live followed by a value-added Friday Random Ten feature…

  1. “Dead (Live)” – Pixies* – Death to The Pixies
  2. “Man with a Gun” – Jerry Harrison* – Casual Gods
  3. “Turn it Out” – Soulive* – Soulive
  4. “Spring Song” – The Fence Sitters – Mission to Mars
  5. “Flat Backin'” – Brother Jack McDuff – Moon Rappin’
  6. “Castles Made of Sand” – The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold as Love
  7. “19” – Paul Hardcastle – Living in Oblivion: The 80’s Greates Hits
  8. “Biological” – Air – Talkie Walkie
  9. “Samba de Orpheus” – Vince Guaraldi – Greatest Hits
  10. “Agent Orange” – Depeche Mode – Music for the Masses

“19” takes me by surprise. Suddenly, it’s the ’80s and I’m following my mom around a K-Mart in Rhode Island hearing this song and wondering when “Money for Nothing” will cycle through again. I guess that’s kind of how it goes when you dump every CD onto your ipod. I didn’t even know I had it. I wonder what else lurks among the bytes.

 And for a music history bonus via Wikipedia, on this day in…

  • 1810 Beethoven composed “Für Elise” so that Schroeder would have something to do while Lucy Van Pelt made eyes at him
  • 1932 Casey Kasem was born while a special long distance dedication from dad to mom played
  • 1948 Kate Peirson was born in a loveshack under a moon in the sky (called the moon)
  • 1951 Ace Frehley was born snowblind in a New York groove

Blogging from Beyond the Grave

When I was but a newbie blogger, I wrote about listening to the audiobook version of Pepys’ Diary, in which Samuel Pepys wrote about his life as a Royal Navy administrator in seventeenth century London.

At the time I was new to blogging and found myself thinking about the old-fashioned diaries that provide historians with glimpses of times past and wondering if these diarists would have done things differently as bloggers. I imagined Old Sam Pepys having a blog and wondering what it would be like.

Today, I learned that Pepys does have a blog (h/t to infobong for the link) complete with RSS feeds so readers can subscribe to his daily entries. From what I remember, I doubt he’d want his wife subscribing, though.

Pepys posts entries from his diary each day. Today, we get to read his entry from April 26, 1664.

Fascinating stuff and an interesting way to experience literature.

The Lost Book Club: Catch-22

I love it when I catch a break in my effort to read and write about all the books on Lost. The latest break comes from last week’s “Catch-22.” Not only was the episode named for Joseph Heller’s brilliant antiwar novel, but one character – the mysterious parachutist – was even in possession of a copy, albeit the Portuguese translation, Ardil-22.

I read this book a few times in college and even devoted a large amount of time in grad school to studying the film. Naturally, I was pleased when Lost served up a book I already know and love.

Catch-22 is about the absurdities of life on a World War II airbase on the Italian island of Pianosa. The central character, Captain Yossarian, is a bombardier who wants out of the war because, well, millions of people are trying to kill him. Exacerbating his paranoia is the fact that each time his squadron completes the required number of missions, the number required is increased, creating a hopeless situation for the airmen.

Yossarian fakes illnesses and ultimately tries to get discharged on the basis of insanity, but in one of the novel’s many catch-22’s he is informed that trying to avoid flying combat missions is an act of pure sanity and therefore the harder he tries to prove he’s insane the more sane he appears.

There are a number of similarly circular and impossible situations that crop up throughout the book, each one deeply absurd and highlighting the ultimate absurdity of war and the immorality of those who profit from it.

It’s a great read and one that makes you laugh an uncomfortable sort of laughter. The kind of laughter born of pain and disgust.

On to Lost

Like Lost, Catch-22 is a nonlinear narrative, often relying on flashbacks – particularly one in which Yossarian comforts a dying tail gunner – that are repeated, each time revealing new information. They’re also both about people stuck on an island.

The episode in which it occurs is a Desmond-centric episode in which Desmond gets one of his glimpses of a possible future. In his flashes, it seems that Charlie will die, but Desmond will be reunited with the love of his life, Penny Widmore, who may be coming to island to rescue him.

This situation presents Desmond with a terrible choice: Save Charlie and risk changing the course of the future in which case Penny won’t show up, or let Charlie die – essentially sacrificing a friend for his own happiness. Desmond ultimately decides to save Charlie and when they finally find the mysterious parachutist who should be Penny, it is instead some woman with a copy of Ardil-22 and a picture of Desmond and Penny.

The big unanswered question, of course is did Desmond change the future by saving Charlie? Can Desmond even affect the future? As Hurley says, his super power is kind of lame, especially if all it can do is leave Desmond stuck in the catch-22 wherein his only hope of being rescued is in sacrificing a friend.

At the end of Catch-22, Yossarian is busted for being AWOL, but he is given an opportunity to save himself and receive an honorable discharge if he will speak highly of and praise the policies of his crooked superiors. He ultimately refuses to sacrifice his fellow airmen just to save himself. Is this Desmond’s choice? Will he sacrifice the Oceanic 815 survivors to save himself or will he throw his lot in with theirs in an effort to save them all?

Last night’s episode, “DOC” (which stands for date of conception) contains its own catch-22’s (this time for Sun and possibly Juliet) along with one of Lost’s biggest wtf moments when the mysterious parachutist from the outside world informs Hurley that Oceanic 815 had been found and that everyone on board was killed. Holy living dead, Batman, that’s quite a bombshell. It kind of makes the whole show a sort of catch-22, as in, “hey we got off the island, but oh crap, we’re dead.” This leaves me thinking that the time warp theories are probably on the right track. Although it does also kind of point back toward the supposedly debunked purgatory theory, which is suggested by a large number of the Lost books from seasons 1 and 2.

I still say the island is a metaphorical purgatory, if not the real one (???).

For some interesting write-ups of “DOC,” check out:

  • Dorkeriffic (great name for a blog, btw) where some interesting questions are posed
  • Magic Lamp where Steve wonders if there is some kind of military op going on based on the parachutist’s gear
  • Brian at BRIAN!!! Top Marks for Not Tryin’ has a good analysis with some interesting thoughts about some of the dialog
  • The Atomic Blowtorch has some thoughts about Mikhail
  • John at Critical Myth wonders if the the-crash-was-planned theory is back on the table

And, I’m still working on Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark from “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Look for that post next week.

Click here for a list of my other Lost book posts.