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Tuesday: The Library, Part II

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The Fertility Myth "Telepinu"

Myths attempt to answer questions that are eternal to all civilizations: Where did I come from? How much control do I have over my life? What must I do to survive? How should I live?  They often reflect the political, economic, social, and religious foundations of the culture, and are ensconced in the mystery and mysticism of nature.  Ancient civilizations were so dependent upon the forces of nature for success or failure that these forces were often personified as gods. Fertility Myths Fertility myths respond to a need for economic security in a world dependent upon nature for stability.  Lives in ancient cultures revolved around the agricultural year.  Because a good harvest was central to survival, fertility --  reproduction, birth, growth, abundance -- came to be personified as a powerful fertility god, and the seasons came to reflect the cycle of life.  Spring is the season of birth and summer is the season of growth.  Autumn is the season of maturation (the harvest) and w
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Book Review: Otherland: The City of Golden Shadows

Author Tad Williams Genre:  Fantasy Verdict: Very Cool! I think it’s been forever since I started seeing Williams’ tomes eating up shelf space at the library and at book stores.  He’s not an author often mentioned in the same circles as Martin, Weeks, Lawrence, Rothfuss, Sanderson, Erikson, and Hobb.  He’s not a favorite of the in-crowd, and I’ve always wondered why? What’s different, if anything, about his work?  It isn’t that he isn’t popular. There’s another crowd that likes him or his books wouldn’t take up the precious shelf space that they do.  But why aren’t his books recommended more often than they are?  Too many self-generated questions that I needed answers to, so I dove in. Now that I’ve finished book 1 of his first series (a tetralogy), what I still don’t know is why his books aren’t recommended more often.  But what I now know is how much I liked it.  I enjoyed it so much that, once finished, I immediately started reading book 2, something I have only done wi
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Book Review: Possession, by AS Byatt

Rating: 3/5 What saved this book from a 2 rating was the last few chapters.  They were well done, and there was closure for characters and readers. The author, Byatt, struck out on an ambitious undertaking, and I admired her effort.  But I think she over did it by inserting herself into the narrative and laying it on thick with her own descriptive powers. Byatt likes a lot -- and I do mean a lot -- of minute, detailed, useless hyphenated descriptions.  For example, one can't just sip a cup of coffee in this novel, one must sip a cup of "walnut-colored Nescafe."  I don't know about you, but I have never seen another color of Nescafe other than the walnut-colored kind -- not without adding a lot of creme anyway.  But whether there is or there is not, can't we all just sip the coffee and assume it's the color of every other cup of coffee we have ever laid eyes on and get on with the story? Over describing once or twice is a foible; lots of times is a neuros
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Sara Winchester and Her Mansion

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Winchester mansion was built by Sara Winchester of Winchester Rifle fame.  Legend has it that after the death of her husband and infant daughter, Sara Winchester came to believe her family was haunted by ghosts, possibly the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles.  So she built this mansion in San Jose, California, and had construction ongoing everyday of her life to ward off the ghosts.  The reality is that she did have construction going on her entire life, but she also dismissed the builders for periods of time.  Maybe she needed peace and quiet.  The results include: --  160 rooms (some hidden) --  40 bedrooms --  2 ballrooms --  40 stairways (some hidden) --  One stairway goes nowhere ending at the ceiling. --  47 fireplaces --  10,000+ panes of glass --  17 chimneys --  Some chimneys stop floors short of roof. --  Small rooms built inside larger rooms. --  Balconies built inside mansion rather than outside. --  Doors that can't be opened --  Child-size
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The Driving Test

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As I mentioned in a previous post, when I first moved to the Washington D.C. area I did not have a car and chose public transportation over buying one.   See  http://shadowflutter.blogspot.com/2015/07/mass-transit-and-loneliness-of-commuter.html By the time I had decided to buy a car, my driver’s license had expired long ago.  In Sallyland — name changed to protect the guilty — when this happens, you have to take the written and driving tests over again.  This is no small matter, because I come from a long line of bad drivers.  My grandfather on my father’s side didn’t drive at all, and my dad didn’t learn until his late twenties, early thirties when he was in the army.  The story goes that upon refusing a superior’s order, he was banished to the car pool.  It was there he allegedly learned to drive, but not before wrecking the clutches of several jeeps and smashing another one or two into fences and walls.  (He was yanked out of there when the base commander learned a
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My Eclectic Reading Interests

I’m reading  Sea of Rust , by C. Robert Cargill.  It’s a post-war, post apocalyptic, post-human world.  The machines won the war and got rid of us all because we didn’t treat them well.  But things aren’t turning out as planned.  Sometimes liberation is awfully confining.  The machines are suffering existential angst because it turns out   machines don’t treat machines any better than humans did . . . and to make things worse there are a couple of badass mainframes rounding up liberation loving machines for spare parts.  And as if that isn’t enough, there is a shortage of WD-40.  What else could go wrong? I might be confusing that last one with something else, but you get the idea. It’s truly amazing how human-like these oppressed machines are.  It’s as if we are still around.  I think the author wants to say something profound about the plight of humanity, and to do so he needs all the machines to be as human as possible.  After all, readers don’t care about alien existential angst.  
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The Execution

You are being led to you own execution.   You are fixated on your impending death, and your mind is in shock as it desperately looks for a path of escape.   For the first time in your life you are forced to face your own immortality.   “This can’t be happening to me,” you say to yourself.   Your senses flip to maximum overdrive as they search for something, anything that might lead to your escape.   But w hen your senses open up everything comes at you all at once, too much, too fast, and so it happens -- your brain overloads and your mind explodes.   Suddenly everything turns surreal, everything happens in slow motion. The input comes at you slower and you can now process it, but a penalty is paid: you see it all through the fog of a numbed brain.   Everything is real and unreal at the same time.   And there is one other thing.   You are now standing outside yourself, looking down at someone marching ever so slowly to his death.   On both sides of the path that leads to the g
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The History of Television -- Part II

You can read The History of Television — Part I directly below this post. Fast forward to the 1980’s. They say cable television was invented in 1948 or 1950, but I think they are lying.  I think that Wikipedia entry in the History of Television has been put there to test us, to see if we are paying attention, to see if we are exercising our critical analysis skills, because if cable existed in the early ‘80s I never saw it.  They must have been hiding it in some lab.  But the technology had improved in many areas. We now had color TV — black and white had been consigned to the museum — Good Riddance — you could see the picture at night, there was no crackle in the audio, I almost never had to jiggle the antenna wire, and I no longer had to watch potato farming and Gumby on Sunday mornings. But entropy was conserved with the preachers.  Gone were the small town preachers, replaced by televangelists who were everywhere. In addition to being on TV all Sunday morning, they were on at nigh
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The Purposeless Driven Life

So you dread retirement.   You worry that retiring means the end of life, that you have passed from the center aisle to the checkout lane, and that the days of fruitful contribution will be replaced with a feeling of ennui, even dread as you pass hour after hour, day after day in unending boredom and sameness.   (I was going to use the checkout clerk as a really cool metaphor for the angel who guards heaven and cashes in your chips, but I can’t remember his name, so the heck with it.)   And you hear stories.  Stories about a retired gal you used to know who couldn’t stand it anymore, so she got a job at the nearest Walmart where, for minimum wage, she shouts meaningless “welcomes” to customers all day long, until one day she isn’t there and no one notices.  Or an ex-colleague who after retiring trots on down to the local hardware store where he whiles away blissful hour after blissful hour making keys for harried people with too many burdens and never enough time — working people
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The Lightbulb Man

This happened twice some years ago. I received a phone call from some guy in Texas. In a most humble and non-threatening voice, not sounding like a telemarketer or scam artist at all, he says to me he’s handicapped and confined to his house but makes a living by making light bulbs in his home and selling them over the phone.   He asks me to buy some. Usually when I get a sales pitch over the phone it’s more direct.   Either I am asked to give to a charity I’ve never heard of, or I'm asked to surrender my social security number so they can free all the money in an account an uncle I never knew I had died and willed to me.   These are old, tried and tired telemarketing gimmicks, but this one was new and fresh.    The whole idea of someone calling asking me to buy homemade lightbulbs to support a handicapped person such as himself was refreshing.  He had succeeded in turning the ignition to my brain on, and my pistons were chugging at a rapid pace wondering all s
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