Hands Down Winner

In an earlier post, I wrote that I was reviewing several books as part of this year’s Hugo Award voting packet. I have enjoyed most of the selections very much and find myself in a bit of a quandary as far as the novel selection is concerned. If, however, the above book were eligible this year, there would be no contest. I picked this up thanks to my Kindle Paperwhite (I am a late adopter, but I have to say that it is a fantastic little device…and makes it embarrassingly easy to buy new reading material). It is a brilliant example of hard science fiction, and would easily emerge as the best of this past year (it was a 2011 self-published volume at first, which is why it doesn’t qualify for the award). . . still, with a movie deal in the works, it looks like Mr. Weir is getting plenty of notice. Good for him.

In which Piers keeps up the Effort

Doing my level best this month to catch up on some writing that I’ve been leaving on the back burner for several months. I’ve looked at some previous stuff — things I don’t remember writing, but apparently are the result of the end stages of the sabbatical I had in 2014.

Everyone who does writing for a living says that the steady and incremental approach is best — that the thing is to steadily keep at it every day. That has proven to be beyond what my schedule or my discipline will allow. I’m not giving up yet, though.

A Wealth of Reading

Yesterday the voting packet for the Hugo Awards was made available for supporting and attending members of the 2015 Worldcon. I would not have normally paid any attention except for the recent hullaballoo surrounding award nominations . . . and my fairly muted reactions to recent winners of the novel award (for example, Ms. Leckie’s book, which swept awards last year but I found better in its conception than its execution. Likewise with Jo Walton’s book). Just doing my part to send recognition where I think it is deserved.

As a result, I am reading as many of the nominated items as I can. Meanwhile, other books have arrived on my doorstep, notably the newest Ishiguro and Stephenson novels. I would be tearing into the Stephenson one at this second if I didn’t feel obligated to give the awards packet a thorough perusal.

All this is to say nothing of my continued wrestling with Elizabethan church history and many of the pamphlets that mark the decades of the 1580’s and 90’s.

Thinking Long Term Part Two

From today’s reading, a reminder from long ago much to the same purpose I was writing yesterday:

First, needful it is that he which desireth to excel in this gift of oratory, and longeth to prove an eloquent man, must naturally have a wit and an aptness thereunto: then must he to his book, and learn to be well stored with knowledge, that he may be able to minister matter for all causes necessary. The which when he hath got plentifully, he must use much exercise, both in writing, and also in speaking. For though he have a wit and learning together, yet shall they both little avail without much practice. What maketh the lawyer to have such utterance? Practice. What maketh the preacher to speak so roundly? Practice. Yea, what maketh women go so fast away with their words? Marry, practice, I warrant you. Therefore in all faculties diligent practice and earnest exercise are the only things that make men prove excellent. --Thomas Wilson, The Art of Rhetoric (1553)

Thinking Long Term

Writing—serious writing of the academic sort—probably does more to focus my mind on metaphysical issues than anything else. I imagine it’s because I’m avoiding the hard work of actually putting useful words down in an essay form. Writing is also a discipline, however, that forces me to think in terms of small increments and long time-lines. Needless to say, it’s uncomfortable. I have interesting material to work on, and I’m putting in the time, and I’m learning a ton of stuff. Also, it rubs very much against the general cultural grain to have a task that works on a timeline of months rather than days or hours.

Without veering too far into the realm of generalized and, frankly, not-too-useful cultural maundering, I recognize that my children and I live in a time where having to wait for results (of a Google search, a YouTube buffer, or a Netflix loading screen) seems almost intolerable. We can do so many things so quickly, and we want that immediacy to translate to every aspect of our lives. Part of wisdom is recognizing that very few things worth having in life actually work quickly. I think of the time involved in learning to play baseball (so intricate the movements and permutations of each time the ball is put in play); the patient practice that makes a guitarist able to fly through his chords; or the easy pace of Triathlete as she runs, developed over about 17 years’ worth of running shoes.

I can certainly accept and appreciate such things in my own career…the rub is how to prepare my children for their inevitable confrontation with the same hard reality.

The Return of a Two-Wheeled Object of Desire

With the end of the spring semester and the arrival of the warmer weather comes the biking season for me, and this year is already special because it features the re-introduction of a fine machine:

The Raleigh Record Ace. It is no specialty bike, or a custom made race machine (Speedvagen is just a pipe dream for me). It’s just a really pretty steel bike that keeps it simple, that matches my ability level, and that I could upgrade with new parts from time to time. It also happens to be within the realm of financial possibility.

To be fair, it doesn’t match the glory of the 2011 version, but I would still proudly ride it.

Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 48

In which we see the beginning of the end of childhood for Number One Son, but also give thanks that he has not quite finished with it yet.

Over the weekend, Number One Son got to attend two birthday parties…a sleepover at one on Friday night, and then a party at Sky Zone on Saturday. He came home from both of them just a ball of ten year old energy and overstimulation. Fine, fine, we can deal with that as long as it’s the happy kind of thing. And at this age, there’s a lot of that happy kind of thing because the self-consciousness really hasn’t set in yet.

Later that evening, after the children have been put in bed and as The Triathlete and I are watching our nightly episode of Psych, in comes Number One in the “I’m sleepwalking” attitude (which he totally was doing, in fact), collapses headfirst into the blue recliner, and goes right back to sleep. I noticed an instructive similarity:

Library Fun for the Summer

I recently read Emily St. John Mandel’s end-of-the-world novel Station Eleven. I was lured in by the blurb premise that the novel is about a traveling troupe of Shakespeare actors in the wake of a deadly pandemic. As it turns out, the novel doesn’t really do much with the Shakespeare angle, but it is an effective piece of work. One of the interesting little set-pieces in the story is the way a group of survivors sets up a museum of sorts for relics of the world gone by: electronic devices, for instance.

And that got me thinking: of what use could a person such as myself be in an apocalypse? What service could I provide? I’m a professional bookworm! So, if I look at my view every afternoon this month...

...there’s my answer. What kinds of books would I retrieve and try to preserve if things began to go sideways? What in a moderately sized library would be worth saving?

• Shakespeare
• Milton
• Dante
• Homer
• Virgil

…the literary figures add up quickly. But say we had to choose things that are not poetry or humanities in general? What would we need to squirrel away? I immediately think of more technical, practical volumes to remind us of how to do things that we now take for granted:

• Mathematics texts
• Physics texts
• Manuals for horticulture and animal husbandry
• Manuals for building structures and roads
• Books for identifying plants
• Medical texts

I’m sure I’m missing something. There are also several categories of things we could utterly do without. That’ll have to wait for another entry in Library Fun For The Summer!

Believing and Behaving like it's a Crisis

Every day around lunchtime, this is the scene on the East edge of my campus; employees from all over campus have driven golf carts to lunch at one of the several restaurants adjacent to the campus. It is a pain for them, I am sure, that they have to get out of the motorized conveyances and shuffle the rest of the way across the street on their own two feet.

It is a small thing, I know. Yet all day, every day, I see people zooming around this little campus (and it is little—at least the classroom and administrative building area of it) on golf carts and Gators and what-not. The housing office. Admissions. The print shop. Housekeeping. Athletics. Computer services. The campus cops…I think even the key guy has one. Every office, it seems like, has a golf cart or something similar, and they appear to be constantly in use.

We are told, repeatedly, that money is tight, that we are in a period of financial crisis and need to make sacrifices. Yet people ride their little golf carts to lunch—to save themselves the time and effort of a ten minute walking round-trip. Seems that if Those That Make Decisions were serious about saving money, they would cut glaringly obvious costs like this.

One of many reasons I’m pretty sure they’re not serious.

Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 47

So we have entered into baseball season, with all the blessings that entails—late nights at the rec park, keeping track of uniforms (especially hats), and many pretzels and handfuls of bubble gum. Lefty is starting tee ball and Little Red is doing his first year of machine-pitch baseball. The latter is showing some promise at least at the hitting part of the game, having surpassed in four games the number of hits gotten by his older brother in three years of playing (Number One Son has unsurprisingly decided to give up the baseball for other pursuits). It is fun to watch Little Red out there, though he admittedly has some work to do in the fielding and generally paying attention category.

Number One, meanwhile, has decided to go all in on the running. For the past couple of years, he has joined The Triathlete doing various 5k runs, and apparently (I get this second hand because you’ll never see me out there on the course) he talks the whole way. In order to help him, he has been allowed to join the HS cross country team during their practices (we know the coach). He had a brilliant time on Monday afternoon and plans to go out there again on Wednesday. I’m thrilled for him.