The Nature of Things

Earlier this year, I read and enjoyed  The Secret History of Costaguana  by Juan Gabriel Vasquez. That book was based on the germ of an idea from Conrad's  Nostromo . It was set in the fictional country invented by Conrad for his book. Reading that book made me curious about  Nostromo  and I added it to my reading list. I hardly knew what I was letting myself in for.  This was a very difficult read for me and it took me a seemingly interminable amount of time to finish it, but I persevered and did manage to read all the way to the end. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that I read it on my Kindle. It might have been easier with a physical book where I could turn back and reread sections or refer to previous sections with greater ease. As it was, the story was very difficult to get into and I was fully one-third of the way through the book before I began to get a real sense of the story.  One problem that I had with the book was that Nostromo, the ...

On Tuesday night, Rocky Mountain National Park got 18 inches of snow.  Most of the snow was still there when we visited today. Hiking in the park today was like walking through a real winter wonderland.  A quiet winter wonderland.  The silence was amazing.  I'm so glad that we timed our visit so that we could experience this snow.

"Mountains, Gandalf, I want to see mountains again!" - Bilbo Baggins to the wizard Gandalf in Fellowship of the Ring  Bilbo and me - we both love mountains.  By the time you see this, I should be well on my way to Colorado where, I am reliably informed, they do still have mountains.  For the next ten days or so, I'll be enjoying those mountains.  During that time blogging will be sporadic if it occurs at all.  But don't forget me!  I'll be back!

Here's your Friday kitty break! I love Maru, too.

Can you stand one more reference to Occupy Wall Street?  Here's proof that the movement really has spread to the far corners of the earth! Yes, even in the frozen tundra of the North, a man and his dogs have caught the "occupy" fever.  There's no stopping it now!

The movement that started out as "Occupy Wall Street" has now spread right around the world as people everywhere who are angry at what financial institutions are doing to society have begun to believe that perhaps they can fight back.  In most (although not all) places, the Occupiers have been peaceful even when provoked.  To see thousands of ordinary people gathered together in a peaceful protest against the depredations of the super-rich super-powerful Masters of the Universe on Wall Street and other such financial centers is a powerful thing. But the most powerfully moving and utterly joyful demonstration that I have seen took place in Madrid last week, where tens of thousands of demonstrators sang Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" from his Ninth Symphony.  I've often thought of Beethoven's Ninth as the most perfect music ever written.  Surely, the "Ode to Joy" is the most perfect expression of joy in music.  The demonstrators expressed their joy wit...