Hakuho Wins Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament

The Daily Yomiuri reports the results of the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament:

Hakuho confirmed the inevitable on Friday, winning his seventh career Emperor's Cup with two days to spare

Hakuho is a Mongolian and holds the highest of the sumo ranks.

from the International Herald Tribune:

With Mongolian compatriot and grand champion Asashoryu absent after pulling out with injuries a week ago, Hakuho faced little resistance in the Nagoya meet.

AFP reports that

The tournament was a disappointment for Kotooshu, a Bulgarian who had hoped for a strong showing to elevate him to the top rank of "yokozuna" or grand champion.

Kotooshu, real name Kaloyan Mahlyanov, put on a mediocre performance, losing four times during the tournament.

The Bulgarian stormed through the last tournament in May, becoming the first European to claim a tournament trophy.

Only two wrestlers currently hold the title of yokozuna -- Hakuho and fellow Mongolian Asashoryu.

This is a match from Day 7:


The photo at the top of the post is from user Arcimboldo at Wikipedia.

7/27/2008:
The International Herald Tribune has an update:

NAGOYA, Japan: A day after wrapping up his seventh title, grand champion Hakuho maintained his flawless record on Saturday with a win over Kotomitsuki at the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament.

7/28/2008:
update from AFP-

TOKYO (AFP) — Mongolian grand champion Hakuho said Monday he would return home with confidence to show sumo to his country after proving himself to be at the top of the Japanese national sport.

Hakuho, who swept the 15-day summer tournament that closed Sunday with a perfect record, will join other wrestlers in sumo's first-ever exhibition trip to Mongolia scheduled for late August.

The Daily Yomiuri:

James Hardy / Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter

Yokozuna Hakuho nailed ozeki Kotooshu with a huge left-hand overarm throw to close out the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament with a perfect 15-0 record on Sunday.

Moments later, the 23-year-old Mongolian received the Emperor's Cup from Japan Sumo Association chairman Kitanoumi, the seventh time he has done so but the first in Nagoya.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

We had not seen the 2005 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe until tonight. We are so satisfied with the BBC presentation that there seemed no need. Having seen the new one we like it fine but don't really see it as an improvement over all, and it left out what I consider some key elements.

trailer:

Let Einstein be your spokesperson

You really can put your own words in the picture. Click here.

D.W. Griffith

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1948 of D.W. Griffith. We have seen Birth of a Nation, Intolerance (some of us have seen more of it than others), and I have seen Broken Blossoms (embedded at that link). I've seen Abraham Lincoln, but it was very long ago and I don't really remember it.

PBS has a section on Griffith in their American Masters programs. Senses of Cinema has an article and a few links. CinemaWeb has a chapter on him from a 1922 book by Peter Milne. FilmReference.com has a page here.

The Adventures of Dollie (1908):


A Corner in Wheat (1909):

Senses of Cinema has an article on this film.

The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912):

The Wellington film society posted a review here.

Judith of Bethulia (1914):


Intolerance (1916):

FilmReference.com discusses this film here.

Orphans of the Storm, part 1:

part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14
Cinemaweb reviews this.

Abraham Lincoln (1930):


12/17/2008:
The Dancing Image has an article on Griffith and links to many reviews of his films.

The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy was on the top of my TBR stack, so I read it yesterday. I enjoyed it, but I still don't understand what all the fuss was about. It's not like this story has never been written before, but to read the mainstream reviews you'd think this was the first time. The New York Review of Books claims it isn't science fiction at all, while other reviewers seem to suggest that science fiction is an excusable venture for McCarthy or that the book is only "sort of" a work of science fiction. It just reminds me too much of certain other authors' disdain for genre fiction, as if there were some difference of real substance between all literary fiction and all speculative literature. These authors and reviewers must not have read widely in either.

That said, it is a compelling book, easily read. It's a keeper, and I'm sure I'll re-read it. I'm going to shelve it with the rest of my sff books.

from the back of the book:

The searing,
postapocalyptic novel
destined to become
Cormac McCarthy's
masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food — and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Apocalyptic Fiction Favorites

Locusts and Honey has listed 3 of his favorite apocalyptic novels:

Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart.

The Last Ship (1988) by William Brinkley.

War Day (1984) by Whitley Streiber by James Kunetka

Commenters are adding their favorites, though I'd never have classified some of them as apocalyptic fiction. From a comment the original blogger has made:

World War Z is not apocalyptic -- or even a zombie apocalypse -- because most national governments continue to demonstrate control over substantial portions of their territory

I see that his definition of "apocalyptic" differs from what I am used to. This is yet another reminder to me of the need to define terms in any discussion of import. Since this is just a list of books I like, and has no import at all, I'm not worrying about it.

As his list is novels I won't name short stories in mine. Here's my list of good books or just fun reads that I think should go on a book shelf devoted to an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic sub-genre:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Postman by David Brin
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
The Stand by Stephen King
Mara and Dann by Doris Lessing
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (the sequel is dreadful)
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
Earth Abides by George Stewart
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
When Worlds Collide/After Worlds Collide (a pair of novels) by Wylie and Balmer

I have McCarthy's The Road in my TBR stack, but I admit I resent the attention it got in light of the lack of attention given to genre books not written by "literary" authors.

Darkness
by
George Gordon, Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;--a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful--was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expir'd before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

Excursion to Tindari

Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri is the 5th book in the Inspector Montalbano mystery series. I read The Shape of Water, which is the 1st in the series, some time ago and have one other in my TBR stack. I enjoyed this one and will pick up others as I come across them. It is a series worth being on the look-out for.

from the back of the book:

A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building early one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari - two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montalbano to solve amid the daily complications of life at Vigata police headquarters. But when Montalbano discovers that the couple and the murdered young man lived in the same building, his investigation stumbles onto Sicily's brutal "New Mafia," which leads him down a path more evil and far-reaching than any he has been on before.

This book was short-listed for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger award, an award I don't remember hearing of before. It is "given by the Crime Writers' Association for best translated crime novel of the year".

Giant Squid Dissection

You can watch the dissection here (HT: Pharyngula), where they explain that

The squid which was accidentally caught in a fishing trawl off western Victoria, weighs around 245 kg, making it the largest giant squid that Australian researchers have encountered. It is estimated that, intact, the animal would have been over 12 metres long.

.

There's more information on the Giant Squid at Wikipedia. There is an informative site here on the animals. National Geographic has a page. The Smithsonian has an exhibit. There is a video report of a sighting of a live giant squid at youtube.

first video of a live giant squid:

Germaine Dulac

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1942 of Germaine Dulac. Senses of Cinema has an article, as do Art and Culture, FilmReference.com and ubuweb.

The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) can be watched without breaks at ubuweb or in parts below:

part 1


part 2


part 3

Sunday Psalm

Psalm 139

1 O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!

18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.

20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.

21 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

KJV

20 Must-read British Novels

According to It Doesn't Have to Be Right, here they are:

Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
Use of Weapons, Iain M Banks
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle
Life, Gwyneth Jones
Light, M John Harrison
Absolution Gap, Alastair Reynolds
Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock
The Drowned World, JG Ballard
The Separation, Christopher Priest
Somewhere East of Life, Brian W Aldiss
The Time Machine, HG Wells
The Time Ships, Stephen Baxter
1984, George Orwell
Pavane, Keith Roberts
The Road to Corlay, Richard Cowper
Chronocules, DG Compton
Silver Screen, Justina Robson
Oracle, Ian Watson
The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod

The list at his site is nicely annotated. I've got a long way to go to finish up this list and have never heard of many of them. The ones I've read are in bold print.

HT: SFSignal

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs is 4th in Ellis Peters' Inspector George Felse mystery series.

from the back of the book:

“Shed here no tears. No Saint could die
More Blessed and Comforted than I."

So read the epitaph composed by Morwenna Treverra centuries ago as she followed her beloved husband, Jan, into death. The couple have been together ever since, models of pious content, in the little seaside Saxon church near the village of Maymouth. But when curious scholars arrange to open Jan Treverra's tomb, it yields not one body but two... and neither of them is Jan Treverra.

Detective Inspector George Felse happens to be on holiday nearby; indeed, he helped to open the crypt and reveal its all too modern contents. Now from an ancient gave, a mystery unfolds; a trail of violence in Maymouth's history that casts shadows centuries long ...

Felse's son gets older in each book, and in this one he's 18.

I enjoy these books as quick interesting reads. Others I've read:
#1 Fallen Into the Pit
#2 Death and the Joyful Woman
#3 Flight of a Witch

Literature Map suggests Peter Tremayne for those who like Ellis Peters, but I've read nothing by Tremayne. I'll have to check him out.

John Coltrane

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1967 of jazz legend John Coltrane.

Impressions (1961):

Click the Ball

if you can...

Click here to try it.

Meeting of Grey Niche

Last Tuesday night I went to my first meeting. Tonight I went to my first business meeting. There were a lot more people at this meeting than at the class meeting last week. They have a long shared history, but I guess eventually I'll "get it" and know who people are and what the issues are. I can't even picture "Gulf Wars" in my mind, and it sounds like they've all been there every year for decades. They seem to have a lot of enthusiasm. It'll probably be at least a year before I know enough about things to really have an opinion, much less think of voting on anything.

After the meeting I got a chance to talk again with Mistress Alysia, who recommended a couple of online vendors for garb for me. I may well end up with these shoes from Revival Clothing and this gown and head gear from Historic Enterprises. That would get me started, I think.

The Awakeners: Northshore & Southshore

The Awakeners by Sheri S. Tepper is a one-volume compilation of Northshore and Southshore. There is a site here that includes information on Tepper and her books and has some links. The FeministSF Wiki has a page devoted to her. Locus has an interview. NPR has an audio of an interview.

For readers who like Tepper's work the Literature Map suggests Connie Willis as an author who might be appealing.

from the back of the book:

Come to the world of the River.

Come to a world distant in time and space, a world where the pace of life is counted by tides of the great River, but where, as in the river itself, there are swift dark currents flowing under a placid surface.

Meet Pamra Don - a young woman scarred by her mother's death, lured to a priesthood where the truth must be hidden from the faithful. And meet Thrasne, a young boatman who trades from town to town, free from the iron control of the towers of the Awakeners, and the priests of the world of the River - free, that is, as long as he never speaks his mind. These two, by design and accident both, are about to discover many truths.

And on the Northshore of the River, the truth can kill you.

I have read other books by Tepper. The first I read was Grass, and it is still my favorite.

Walter Ruttmann

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1941 of German film maker Walter Ruttmann. He is one of the writers credited for the notorious Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. FilmReference.com has a page on him here where they say,

As Ruttmann did not exhibit a social conscience in his early work, it is perhaps not surprising that, by the end of his life, he had been co-opted as a propagandist. An artist whose work was initially apolitical, Ruttmann neither protested nor went into exile with the advent of National Socialism. Instead, he conformed. His last documentaries were odes to Nazism and Germany's military might.

.

Berlin: die sinfonie der grosstadt (silent, 1927):

(also available at the Internet Archive)

Opus 1 2 3 4:

(also available at ubuweb)

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

The Husband, The Younger Son and I saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army today, The Elder Son having seen it Friday night. The only part I didn't like about it was the young Hellboy. The 10-year-old just didn't look real -more like he had a foam face. The scene was good, but I didn't like the look. The rest of the movie was great fun. Who'd have thought it would include the Tooth Fairy and Barry Manilow?

trailer:


SFCrowsnest has a review that says,

Hellboy II: The Golden Army has my vote for this year's "What Dreams May Come" Award for the most spectacular visuals in service to the least worthy story.
...
Hellboy II's visual images are spectacular and the film is full of fights and action, but there is only a bit of plot and that involves an epic fantasy premise that would have taken multiple films to do well.

SFGospel has a link to indy.com's review, which brings religion into the picture:

Augustine spoke of a God-sized hole within each of us - essentially we are relational beings hard-wired with a need for intimacy. Hellboy and his friends are no different. They are a bunch of loners and misfits, alone in the world, searching for love and meaning. They are looking for acceptance or, realizing that they might be the last of their kind, striving to not be alone. In the process, they look out for each other. With each other, they have found people to be with one another on their journeys, to encourage, mentor, chastise, their own entourage of misfits. Writer Phyllis Tickle once said that "Misfits give texture to life. They also tend, on a routine basis, to challenge the preconceptions that masquerade among us every day as normative behaviors."

"Let this remind you of why you once feared the dark." -Prince Nuada

The movies del Toro crafts are myth for adults, with all of its attendant elements

The House Next Door has 2 reviews. The first one is here; the second is here.

Other reviews:
Cinematical
CSMonitor
NYTimes
Rolling Stone
Variety
EW
Christianity Today
Roger Ebert
Salon.com

7/27/2008:
Reverse Shot's review:

What’s crucial to recognize in all this is not that HB2 is an especially dreadful movie, but that there’s nothing special about it one way or another. Del Toro is no more and no less than any other big-budget Hollywood pro, whatever Time magazine has to say (“the wildest imagination and grandest ambitions of anybody in modern movies,” in case any were wondering). Correspondingly, all the faux-serious talk about HB2 is merely an amped-up version of the intensive scrutiny granted every big Hollywood movie, which then promptly falls away to clear the decks for next week’s offering. These movies, and the writing about them, are not built to last;

Sunday Psalm

Psalm 65

1 Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: and unto thee shall the vow be performed.

2 O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.

3 Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away.

4 Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

5 By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea:

6 Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded with power:

7 Which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.

8 They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice.

9 Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it.

10 Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof.

11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.

12 They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side.

13 The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.

KJV

Lugh

The Younger Son and I went to Lugh today, a one-day event -our first SCA event- hosted by the Barony of Grey Niche. It was held out at the St. Columba Conference Center.

Nobody laughed at my pitiful attempt at "garb" -at least not where I could hear them- which was an even greater relief than I had realized it would be. We got to stay for the feast when someone at Troll said they had extra feast gear we could use. People could not have been more welcoming of us as newcomers and strangers. Baron and Baroness of Grey Niche Their Excellences Dagan al-Mahdi ibn Yusuf ib Hilal & Mahseed Leily (I got the names off the Grey Niche web site. It's still Greek to me.) were gracious and even commented to The Younger Son on how well they thought he had done. We were very impressed.

The Younger Son got qualified in rapier and won 3 of his fights. The rapier champion is a man who is regular at the weekly fighter practices and so is known to us. He and his Lady got to sit at the head table during the feast and were to be presented at the court to be held at 5:30 this afternoon. We were sorry to miss Court. The Younger Son got a chance to fight with 2 fighters from outside our Barony, one of whom was also a mat fencer, which was great fun. We saw the youth fighters' event. I attended the presentation on period shoes, which was fascinating.

If I could have changed anything about the event I'd have had everything announced loudly by the herald. I missed the talk on herbs, not realizing anything had started yet.

This was a great event, and it's interesting to me beyond just what it takes to support The Younger Son in his rapier involvement. I've always had a particular interest in medieval history, especially the pre-1400 part. There doesn't seem to be much local interest in music on its own, though I've heard some talk of dance events, and I haven't seen any mention of church history or pilgrimage topics, but there does seem to be some local interest in herbalism. There are weekly meetings alternating business meetings with Arts and Sciences topics. I went to their last meeting, which dealt with how to navigate all the issues around Troll-ing for an event. I'm planning to go to the meetings for a while.

7/15/2008:
Someone else who was there has written about it.

Minnie Riperton

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1979 of Minnie Riperton. She was only 31 when she died of breast cancer. She has a home page with lyrics and audio here.

Lovin' You:

How to Make a T-Tunic

I don't sew, don't have a sewing machine and had to buy thread 'cause I didn't have black, but I made a tunic that'll do (oh, I do hope it'll do!) for The Younger Son to wear tomorrow. I adapted this pattern, leaving out the keyhole at the neck and not sewing all the way down the sides. The shirt we ordered hasn't come yet, so this will hopefully get him through tomorrow. Lugh will be our first event to attend since he began fencing with the Society for Creative Anachronism about a year ago. He's hoping to get authorized to fight in rapier events, and Alyssia has offered to meet us early so she can observe and test him.

I'm thinking that since it's a Roman-themed event I'll wear a sheet and dare them to laugh. Well, I'll hope they don't laugh loud enough for me to hear.

Silence Day

On this date in 1925 Meher Baba began the silence that would last until his death in 1969. His followers observe this day as Silence Day and do not speak during this 24-hour period.

Meher Baba in the 1960's:

Loren Eiseley

"We loved the earth but could not stay"

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1977 of ecologist and author Loren Eiseley. He has an official website here, where there are some high school-level curriculum guides, a few reviews of his work and copies of the society's newsletter. There are excerpts from his works here. One of Salon.com's bloggers has some of Eiseley's poems and the oft-quoted but seldom-cited starfish story. There is an article on his spirituality which says

Loren Eiseley is very much in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau. He takes the circumstances of whatever “business’’ he is about as the occasion for new questioning, new searching for some sign, some glimpse into the meaning of the unknown that confronts him at every center of existence. For many scientifically oriented individuals, the unknown is a “not-yet” at the outer edge of the known. For reflective thinkers like Eiseley, who understand their science as experience, the unknown is always encountered in the midst of the known. That is to say, the more one is aware of one’s own involvement in a scientific enterprise, the more one understands it as participation in a mystery, rather than as a conquest of exterior and objective territory.

There is an essay on Eiseley here. LiteratureMap.com suggests that people who enjoy reading Eiseley will also like John Muir.

The photo at the top of the page is from the U.S. EPA site.

Paul Sharits

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1993 of avant-garde film maker Paul Sharits. His web site has a short biography written by his son, who mentions the bi-polar disorder which runs in his family. A number of his films can be seen online at ubuweb. There are some still shots and discussion of Sharits' technique and philosophy here. CanyonCinema has an annotated list of his work.

Word Movie (1966, 3:49):

Paul Sharits - "Word Movie"
Uploaded by arginati22. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G (1969, 12:00):

In the Bleak Midwinter

In the Bleak Midwinter is Julia Spencer-Fleming's debut novel and the first in the Claire Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mysteries. First, I think it is so weird that on the cover of the book and on parts the author's website the character's name is spelled "Claire" but in the book itself and on others parts of the author's website it is spelled "Clare". Truly weird. I wonder what's with that.

This book was a real page-turner. It won several awards for best first novel: Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Dilys Award, Macavity Award and Barry Award. The first chapter can be read online here. There are five others in this series.

from the back of the book:

Claire Fergusson, St. Alban's new priest, fits like a square peg in the conservative Episcopal parish at Millers Kill, New York. She is not just a "lady"; she's a tough ex-Army chopper pilot, and nobody's fool. Then a newborn infant left at the church door brings her together with the town's police chief, Russ Van Alstyne, who's also ex-Army and a cynical good shepherd for the stray sheep of his hometown. Their search for the baby's mother quickly leads them into the secrets that shadow Millers Kill like the ever present Adirondacks. What they discover is a world of trouble, an attraction to each other -and murder...

There is a page at her website where she deals with the question of what type of mystery this is:

At a recent mystery conference, someone asked me if my books were cozies. "Um...um..." I said (in part because my mouth was full of a Krispy Kreme donut at the time) "I prefer to think of them as traditional mysteries."

...
So, are my books cozies? Well, they take place in a small, rural area, involve a priest as the crime-solver, and take time to explore what else, besides murder and mayhem, make up the Rev. Clare Fergusson's day--vestry meetings, counseling, her daily run, parish dinners. On the other hand, the books take an unsentimental look at the hardscrabble existence in an economically depressed Adirondack town, explore the life-altering effect of violence on people's lives, and include what I hope is
heart-pounding, adrenalin-inducing action. Publisher's Weekly called my latest novel a "cozy-cum-thriller," and I rather liked that. For me, ultimately, what's important
about the books I write and the books I read are that they create a recognizable, believable world with characters I want to spend time with.

I'm pleased she's dealing with the question rather deciding to abandon the series because the question keeps coming up. I enjoyed it under any literary umbrella and will look for the others.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

died on this date in the year 1930.

R.I.P. Thomas Disch

I'm just now learning (via BoingBoing) that author Thomas Disch killed himself on 7/4.

obits:
Locus Magazine:

SF author, critic, and poet Thomas M. Disch, born 1940, died July 4, 2008, of suicide in his New York City apartment. Ellen Datlow reports that Disch had been depressed for several years...

SFSignal
SFScope

7/7:
Newscoma made note of it.

7/8:
The Bat Segundo has a podcast of his last interview. (via SF Signal)
NYTimes:

Thomas M. Disch, an author, poet and critic who twisted the inherently twisted genre of science fiction in new, disturbing directions, including writing his last book in the voice of God, died on Friday in his Manhattan apartment. He was 68.

LATimes:

The strange new worlds he created were an odd mix: dark and horror-filled, humorous and playful. His work outfoxed readers' expectations, one critic said, and made labeling a chore for publishers.

But being outside the box was a Disch trademark.

EW

7/11/2008:
Salon.com has an article by Elizabeth Hand. (HT: LocusOnline)

9/23/2008:
Strange Horizons considers the reasons.

This is a good day to die?

Lots of people died on this date. Here's my post from last year:


Actors, authors, artists and saints who died on this date:

Cameron Mitchell, Buddy Ebsen, Roy Rogers, Kenneth Grahame, who has works online, including The Wind in the Willows illustrated, Guy de Maupassant, William Faulkner, Odilon Redon, Louis Armstrong, St. Maria Goretti, Sir Thomas More.

opening credits for The High Chaparral, starring Cameron Mitchell:

Cameron Mitchell had an established film career before his TV work on this western.


The picture at the top of the post is Redon's Flowers.

I Love Matt!

I remember "Where the Hell is Matt" in his first 2 videos. I find myself smiling through them every time I see them. Now there's a brand new one:

Why are these so captivating? Who knows. I know I find this one just as delightful as the first two. Check out 2:33 for my favorite part of this installment.

HT: Cinematical

7/31/2008:
Smart City Memphis interviews Matt.

Sunday Psalm

Psalm 45

1 My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

2 Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever.

3 Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty.

4 And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.

5 Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies; whereby the people fall under thee.

6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.

7 Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

8 All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.

9 Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.

10 Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house;

11 So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.

12 And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favour.

13 The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.

14 She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.

15 With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king's palace.

16 Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.

17 I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.

KJV

The Great and Secret Show

The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker was suggested to me by The Elder Son. I think he has the second of this trilogy, and I'll be borrowing it from him soon.

from the back of the book:

In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.

In an interview Barker said,

My reality is open every minute to transformations, to transfigurations - a ghost haunted, vision haunted world in which magic and demonic doings can erupt at the slightest invitation... What preoccupies me in The Art is the idea of the dream show, what happens to us in the 25 years of our lives when we sleep. Our psychologies are so complex. We are telling stories to ourselves all the time. In the Great And Secret Show, the story is one which turns out to have a relevance beyond the realm of sleep. In other words, what we discover in the first book (albeit briefly, because there's a huge story yet to be told) is that sleep is a door, that dreams are more than casual fictions we whip up for our own delectation. Dreams are part of a matrix of mythologies where we are given clues for our survival and that intrigues me immensely. It's one of the reasons I love this kind of fiction. I value it because it's a manual for survival."

The New York Times review closes by saying,

From ''The Great and Secret Show,'' it is clear that Mr. Barker's intention is to force the horror genre to encompass a kind of dread, an existential despair, that it hasn't noticeably evinced until now. This is a tall order, one that this novel, which is skillful and funny but ultimately overwrought, doesn't quite accomplish. But, having announced the intention of writing a trilogy about the Art and its mysteries, he may yet achieve his goal.

The President's Analyst

The President's Analyst is the last movie we'll watch for our fun Family Film Festival focusing on political satires. It stars James Coburn, a favorite of mine, and also has Godfrey Cambridge, William Daniels, Arte Johnson and Will Geer.

Roger Ebert cuts right to the chase, beginning his review with this: "The phone company is the enemy."

trailer:

Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination

Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: a Handbook to Jesus on DVD, by Jeffrey L. Staley and Richard Walsh, focuses on describing and scene-indexing Gospel parallels from the following 18 films:

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ
From the Manger to the Cross
Intolerance
The King of Kings
King of Kings
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jesus Christ Superstar
Godspell
Jesus of Nazareth
The Jesus Film
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
The Last Temptation of Christ
Jesus of Montreal
Jesus
The Miracle Maker
The Gospel of John
The Passion of the Christ

I've long had an interest in films on the life of Christ. This book is a helpful resource. This link is included for some supplementary material. I am also interested in Christ-figures in film, and there is a short section at the end of the last chapter ("Teaching Jesus Films") on "Christ-Figure Films". 2 books are recommended: Movie Christs and Anti-Christs by Peter Malone and Imaging the Divine:Jesus and Christ Figures in Film by Lloyd Baugh, both of which look good.

My 3 frustrations were

1) the lack of an index;

2) inconsistent references to the films such that some chapters referred to the films by their titles while others referred to them by the directors' names alone, so finding which film is referred to when it is called "Zecca" requires a better memory than I have or searching through other sections of the book [thus my need for an index];

3) no addresses or contact information for the DVDs, so that "The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ" references "Image Entertainment" but gives no further information on address/phone/web addy to contact them or obtain the film. A search of amazon.com is easy enough, I guess, but I'd have thought the web address to the company (or even a direct one to the film, though I guess that kind of specific information might not be stable) would have been easy enough to include.

from the back of the book:

Movies depicting the life of Jesus continue to be a captivating way to consider how the Gospels present an image and a narrative of Jesus. In Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination, Jeffrey Staley and Richard Walsh employ their biblical knowledge and admiration for films to summarize eighteen popular Jesus movies and to provide readers with the precise hour/minute/second on a DVD where each movie parallels the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. This distinctive handbook includes practical suggestions for using Jesus films to teach, enhancing the value of this resource for pastors, those, leading discussions of films, church study groups, and libraries.

If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him...

If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him... by Sharyn McCrumb is one of the Elizabeth MacPherson series and won the Agatha award in 1995. The only other book I've read by McCrumb is She Walks These Hills, which I liked but which was part of a different series.

The book is not a mystery according to the author, even though it won a major mystery award. She stated in this interview that

Actually the Elizabeth MacPherson novels are cultural satires, and not mysteries for the same reason that Pride & Prejudice is not a romance novel-- that is, unless you are reading with your brain in too low a gear. However, since I am utterly weary of explaining this to people in tones of decreasing civility, I’m afraid I’ve given it up. No more Elizabeth MacPherson novels, --- because of questions like this.

There's very little mention of this series at her web site, and those aren't readily available -I had to do a search of the site to find the few passing mentions of "Macpherson". At one point she describes this series this way:

Even the early "mystery" novels that I wrote reflect this sense of purpose, that a good book should have a message. The books featuring forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson have been described as "Jane Austen with an Attitude" for the way that they blend social issues into the plots. In each of the early novels, the murder is committed by someone who is trying to protect an assumed cultural identity-- not for greed, or revenge, or any of the usual motives. Cultural identity, I learned from my dual-culture childhood, is optional. The point of those novels is not to reveal "whodunit," but to satirize a pretentious segment of society: in Highland Laddie Gone, for example, the Scottish Wannabes at the Highland Games are lampooned. The last novel in that series [note: there is a later one published in 2000], If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him is a synchronically structured meditation on the dysfunctional nature of contemporary relationships: i.e. there is a war going on between men and women these days, and in this book, Elizabeth MacPherson becomes the war correspondent. These satirical novels reflect the culture of my mother’s South: the mannered society where appearances and social position matter.

Sad that the fun of the books is lost because of her felt need for everybody to recognize, understand and agree with her vision. I wish authors would let books stand on their own and not feel the need to control how readers enjoy and interpret them. It reminds me of Margaret Atwood's insistence that her books are not science fiction because, “Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space.” It limits the genre to fit her own prejudice. But, then, I am just a reader; what do I know. Or maybe I have my "brain in too low a gear".

from the back of the book:

When forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson becomes the official P.I. for her brother Bill's fledgling Virginia law firm, she quickly takes on two complex cases. Eleanor Royden, a perfect lawyer's wife for twenty years, has shot her ex-husband and his wife in cold blood. And Donna Jean Morgan is implicated in the death of her Bible-thumping bigamist husband.

Bill's feminist firebrand partner, A. P. Hill, does her damnedest for Eleanor, an abused wife in denial, and Bill gallantly defends Donna Jean. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's forensic expertise, including her special knowledge of poisons, gives her the most challenging case of her career....

The book is a wonderful balance of the different characters and various plots. I'll pick up others by her as I come across them.

The Mouse That Roared

The Mouse That Roared is a political satire that was not included in the yahoo list that inspired our fun Family Film Festival, but none of us had seen it and all of us got a kick out of it.

As in Dr. Strangelove Peter Sellers plays several parts. In this movie the smallest country in the world declares war on the United States in an effort to benefit from U.S. largesse after an American victory, only things don't turn out quite like they're planned.

The New York Times review is here.

trailer:

32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read

How to Split an Atom suggests these:

Foundation - Isaac Asimov
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
Animal Farm - George Orwell
War Of The Worlds - H.G. Wells
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Minority Report - Philip K. Dick
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Accelerando - Charles Stross
I Robot - Isaac Asimov
Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Giver - Lois Lowry
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Jules Verne
Ringworld - Larry Niven
More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
Spook Country - William Gibson
Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Dune - Frank Herbert
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
1984 - George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick
Timeline - Michael Crichton

and also adds these extras:

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke
Old Man’s War - John Scalzi
Any good compilation of Venor Vinges short stories.
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller Jr.
The Star Fraction - Ken MacLeod
Spin - Robert Charles Wilson

Ones I've read are in bold print.

HT: SFSignal

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

When we saw The Road Warrior on that yahoo list of political satires we had a hard time remembering the movie in those terms, but we thought we had just missed that part of the film and would realize what made it fit in that category once we'd seen it again. Nope. I can't imagine why this film would ever be classified as political satire. Post apocalyptic dystopia, yes. Political satire, no way.

That said, it was fun to see it again, and The Younger Son had never seen it. I had forgotten parts of it. You'd think I would have remembered this movie when I first saw the Reavers in Firefly, but I didn't. And I still think the wardrobe of some of the bikers is impractical to say the least -I wouldn't want to ride a motorcycle in a leather thong.

Roger Ebert closes his review by saying,

This is very skillful filmmaking, and "Mad Max 2" is a movie like no other.

The New York Times says it

is not exactly fine art, but, in its stripped-down, cannily cinematic way, it's one of the most imaginative Australian films yet released in this country.

SciFi.com praises it as

a fine example of the kind of action film increasingly rare today: One that exists not as a thin collection of emptily explosive set pieces, but as a story of character, in which the action, however kick-ass, advances our understanding of the people at its core. It gives you reason to care.

trailer:

100 Books You Can't Live Without

The list is from a British survey done last year. Ones I've read are in bold print.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Not the complete works, but I've read many of the plays and sonnets)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (listed separately from Chronicles of Narnia?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read some of them. Does that count?)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

HT: Everything is Temporary, with whom I agree on this:

I will add that the fact that The Davinci Code is on a list, of any sort, placed before Hamlet and A Prayer for Owen Meany, seriously calls into question the sanity of everyone in the UK.

Mad Max

Mad Max is not on the yahoo list of political satires, but it's the prequel to a film that is, so we watched it in preparation for the 2nd in the trilogy. I had to leave during part of it, because I could just tell what was going to happen and I didn't want to see it. We did watch the original film with its Australian voices rather than the dubbed Americanized version.

The New York Times reviews it here.

trailer:

We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Today Mother, The Younger Son and I went to the zoo. Mother had never seen the China exhibit, though we had seen pandas at this zoo before many years ago, and she had not seen the Northwest Passage exhibit where the Polar Bears are. Today was "free day" during which there's no admission charge between 2 and 5, and I have never seen the zoo so crowded. The cars were lined up all the way out to Poplar Avenue, and the parking lots were full so cars were being lined up in the adjoining field. I guess we've just never come to a free day during the summer.



The China exhibit houses the pandas which were asleep, as they most often are when we go. The zoo has a PandaCam here. There is video of one of the pandas eating here. The Younger Son's favorite animals at the zoo are the otters. He was very disappointed when the China exhibit opened and they moved the otters there, because it requires a separate $3 per person entry fee to enter that section. [see comment below: I think this is included in regular admission and only has a separate charge on "free" days.] We talked to a zoo employee today when we were unable to locate the otters after searching their area for a while. She was very nice and called "Lucy" for us. She located Lucy's paw and tail sticking out from under a piece of wood where she was sleeping. It seems there's only the one otter left at the zoo now. The wikipedia article on this Asian Small-Clawed Otter, the smallest of the otters, has pictures. Here is video of the Memphis Zoo otters when there were more than one in this exhibit. The photo above is of the Bell Pavilion at the entrance to the exhibit.


Mother was disappointed to find out that most of the bears that used to be at the zoo are gone -no Sun Bears, no Spectacled Bears, no Grizzlies.... Only the Polar Bears and Black Bears in the Northwest Passage exhibit remain. I love the bears and still miss them. I don't understand why the zoo got rid of them. The polar bears do have a much better home now. The picture above is one I took today. The zoo has a PolarBearCam here. There is video of one of the polar bears swimming here. The sea lions are in this section also, and there is a video of them here.

The Butterfly exhibit is beautiful -lots of butterflies and the promise of more as the season progresses. The flowers are a treat. The adjacent spider exhibit is closed right now. We also saw the giraffes, zebras, elephants, rhino, Primate Canyon, the lions, but we didn't see everything. After all, we were only there a little over 3 hours.

7/2/2008:
I was sure Mother would be tired and sore after walking so much at the zoo, but she was not. When I talked to her today she said the trip had done her good. Everything went smoothly even though it was so crowded, and it was a treat for her to see all the changes that had been made in just the few years since she was last there. She was most impressed by all the space and water available to the polar bears and the viewing area for that exhibit, including seating inside.

8/12/2008:
The Memphis Business Journal reports that the Memphis Zoo has been ranked "the best zoo in the United States by TripAdvisor editors and based on traveler popularity".

Erik Satie

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1925 of Erik Satie. There are short biographies here and here.

The Gymnopédies: