Lift Up Your Hearts!

We awoke to our first hurricane warning of the season: Hurricane Katrina is heading towards South Florida, but that doesn't mean we're in the clear. It doesn't look like anything we need to worry about, but it's worth noting. I observe that the first hurricane warning comes one letter of the alphabet further than the last hurricane warning of last season.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Typhoon Mawar is aimed straight at Janet, and it's a lot stronger than Katrina. I'm trusting the mountains will remove some of its fury before it reaches Kofu. Classes have been cancelled for the first two periods tomorrow, although the teachers still have to come to school.

This has been going on long enough I'd better post a notice here: our phones have been out since some time after 3:30 p.m. today. This is the biggest problem we've ever had with our almost entirely delightful AT&T CallVantage Voice Over IP service. It's not a local problem, as other CallVantage customers in the midwest and on the west coast have reported the same problem. Apparently when you call us, you get the "All circuits are busy" message. If we try to call out, we have a dial tone, and the phone appears to dial, but the connection is never made.

We can still access the Internet, except for getting our phone messages; we can't access the CallVantage site, which also tells me this is a major problem, and that it is AT&T's, not ours.

I'll post here when service is restored. In the meantime, I have my cell phone on, and you can post messages here (via comments) if need be.

After lunch we used our United Arts two-for-one card to visit the Orlando Museum of Art and their new M. C. Escher exhibit. I’ve been a fan of Escher's works for as long as I can remember. The travelling exhibit is from Portland, Oregon, and most of the prints were anonymously lent. The collection represented works from the obscure to the famous, from all periods of his art. University of Central Florida composer Stella Sung created the ambient music for Orlando’s presentation of these works, and the exhibit was complemented by a video presentation of Escher-inspired animations created by UCF students. (More)

It hasn't been this hot in Orlando since 1950.  Today's high was 97 degrees, officially, though when we were out in the car its thermometer read 100.  Naturally we chose today to struggle about  a dozen heavy boxes up the the aluminum ladder and pack them into the attic.  But there was really no point in waiting till October....

I've noted before some of the problems with epidural pain relief during childbirth, and my latest reading, Lise Eliot's What's Going on in There: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life confirms my worries. Here are a few of her concerns: (More)

Nobody's Fool, by Richard Russo (Random House, New York, 1993)

I can't say as I recommend Nobody's Fool, since it's the kind of book that makes me want to wash my brain out with soap afterwards. However, I will admit that his characters are somehow so human (if not humane) that the sleaziness seems essential to their characters and not gratuitous.

The incentive for reading a book that would not otherwise have attracted me was learning that its fictional town of North Bath is based on Ballston Spa, New York, which is not far from where I grew up. It was easy to recognize Schuyler Springs as the real-life Saratoga Springs, and other places that I know (Albany, the Northway, the Adirondacks) are not disguised. Unfortunately, all I know about Ballston Spa itself comprises one family, one home, and one church, none of which is evident in this story, for which they all should be deeply grateful.

My experience reminded me of another time I read a book solely for its setting: Catcher in the Rye is set in Wayne, Pennsylvania, another of my home towns. That book was no better, though probably no worse, than this one. It's been a long time since I read it, and I have no intention of doing so again, setting or no setting, so I can't say for sure.

I'm reading an extraordinarily important and fascinating book: What's Going on in There: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life (Lise Eliot, 1999, Bantam Books). I'll probably end up making several blog posts out of quotations from this book, so here's a start. I always wondered why deliberate smiles, such as those manufactured for photographs or in an attempt to look more cheerful than one actually is, usually look so false:

There's purpose and meaning in all aspects of our lives, even the seemingly random incidents. We don't often have the privilege of glimpsing the pattern as well as I did last night.

Our local Target store has a two-layered system of checkout stations, which makes finding the best line a little more complicated than usual. After checking out several in the first tier that turned out to be longer than they looked, I found an almost-empty line in the second tier and headed for it. When I was almost there, a man popped up from another direction, striding determinedly toward my goal. Not wanting to fight him for it, I swerved and settled on the nearest available station.

While I was standing in line, a fellow customer looked at my purchases and asked, "Is that clear contact paper?" It was. "Where did you find it? I've been looking all over for it." She had come up empty at Wal-Mart and found nothing at Target. I was not surprised, as the first time I tried to purchase contact paper at Target I couldn't find it and neither could the clerks I'd asked for help. But I'm a seasoned clear contact paper buyer now, and upon entering the store had headed immediately for the sign that says "Small Electronics" and picked up the last three rolls. At the checkout line I was therefore able to hand one of the three to the very grateful woman and her more grateful daughter, who I'm guessing needed it for a school project.

It was gratifying to know there was a good reason for my comical, pinball-like bouncing around at the checkout stations.

Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000)

My nephew is going into seventh grade, and this was part of his required summer reading. He didn't have much to say about it, not surprising since it's hardly a title, nor a story, I would expect to appeal to most middle school boys. Or girls, for that matter. At that age, I would have picked up the book, assuming it was a science fiction story, then put it down in disgust when I discovered what it really was.

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this book, since the setting is high school and the themes adolescent, yet the intellectual level seems more geared towards elementary school.

Nonetheless, when I picked up the book recently to check it out, I became intrigued when I discovered that the title character was homeschooled before making her way into public high school—and definitely not fitting in. So when my nephew left for home, taking the book with him, I borrowed it from the library so I could finish reading the story. (More)

Janet is currently in Japan, preparing to teach English. Perusing an old diary today, I discovered an inclination toward that profession appearing much earlier in her life than I had supposed. The incident took place in the fall of her third grade year.

I've heard it said that the male human body has enough blood to power the brain or the sexual organs, but not both at the same time. I'm not convinced women are any smarter, but this news report about the Third International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment goes far in proving the adage for men. (More)

This cannot be a detailed review, as too many of the people who read this blog have not yet read the book. But I will say that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince did not disappoint me. The fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I had found tedious, and I was disappointed in that I thought J. K. Rowling had set herself up for a great ending which never came.

Not so with the sixth book. It held my attention from beginning to end, not easy to do when the competition is an adorable 20-month old grandson, a flock of other wonderful family members and friends, and a lovely converted houseboat on the Connecticut shoreline. It did help that I found Harry's behavior less obnoxious this time. There were a few annoying points—I never did care to read about the tribulations of adolescent love—but they were minor.

Grace, sacrificial love, and persistent hope for the salvation even of one's enemies show more clearly here than in previous books. As always, Rowling's great contribution to children's literature is that she does not sugarcoat evil, nor minimize the cost of the battle, yet still manages to produce a book full of goodness, hope, and fun.

This afternoon, searching for a birthday gift for my nephew, I ventured into long-forgotten territory: a Toys R Us store. Just as a child's growth is more noticeable to one who has been away for a while, so did I find the cultural changes represented by the toys and games to be startling. While there were a few of what I might call generic games, most were branded with characters from television shows and movies. Even the old standby, Candyland, now comes in Dora the Explorer and Winnie the Pooh (Disney version, of course) flavors. Back when I was a more regular visitor of toy stores, there were already a few media-inspired toys, but now the genre has exploded. I did not linger, but left with the impression that I would find more of reality at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

Women who want to get pregnant are now being advised to avoid tofu and other soy products, at least around the peak times for conception. New studies have shown that even small amounts of genistein, which mimics the hormone estrogen and is found in soy products, cause sperm to lose their fertility.

Well, I guess that explains why 20% of the world's population is Chinese!

I've never read Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:  A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, and frankly I doubt it will ever rise far enough up on my "must read" list to see the light of day.  For all I know, it's a great book full of interesting and useful information that would do me good to read.  But if so, why does it have a title that sounds like a pre-adolescent playground taunt?  That alone makes it hard to take the content seriously.  Someone needs a ghost title-writer.