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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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[cross-thread alert]
I'm now reading Peter Mattheissen's stirring and frightful chronicle of the struggle for survival of our world's crane populations. I'm going along, minding my own (and the cranes') business, when suddenly, out of nowhere, I encounter this:
Northwest of Beijing, the teeming plain is left behind, the soft farm greens cut off abruptly by dark forest jades on the evergreen slopes of sudden mountains. Here the Great Wall--begun in the third centruy B.C., and the one evidence of man said to be visible from the moon--winds like a stone serpent along wooded ridges. Soon the mountains descend to the drier, less fertile landscapes of Inner Mongolia, which subside in turn into the harsh grays and yellows of the Gobi Desert.
I hope I can forget that one unfortunate throwaway aside and continue to appreciate this book.
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Joined: Oct 2000
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veteran
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[cross-thread alert] Condolences. I'm surprised it wasn't nunc dimittis straight off.
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old hand
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>A lot of countries went right downhill after the British upped sticks. Although that was probably just because the British took everything of value with them when they left.
And sometimes that was nascent nationalism at work. At partition in 1947, My grandfather had worked his way up from being a guard to deputy traffic controller for what today would be the entire Pakistan Railway network. He was invited to stay on as a ticket collector. Similar stories abound, instances where the newly-minted nations felt the need to cut the umbilical too quickly and throw the baby out with the mixed metaphors.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,467 |
I saw an article about trying to take some endangeredcranes to the Barcelona zoo the other day to start a new breeding program. The flew them in on a 747 but the cage wouldn't go out through the door it went in at. Yep. The cranes in Spain stay mainly on the plane.
TEd
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Joined: Oct 2000
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the newly-minted nations felt the need to cut the umbilical too quickly and throw the baby out with the mixed metaphors.Yup. And once you've lost a supposed source of all ills, you only have yourself to blame when things go wrong. This often leads to in-fighting. Reminds me a wee bit of "What have the Romans done for us?". 
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Kinda busy right now. Response in September, if the thread is still going and I haven't forgotten.
k
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that story is too much
... In the midst of a project ... coming up for air ...
As a former Army brat, I confess to getting a little teary-eyed when I hear a particularly well-sung rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. It's possible -even probable, in retrospect - unconscious patriotism underlay some part of my lachrymosity, but considering that such a word as patriotism is commonly conjoined with modifiers like "blind" and "foolish" and "bigoted" (and, unfortunately, far too commonly correctly so), I doubt I would have mentioned it.
If I were aware that patriotism were the sole or even a major cause, I would probably have teared up anyway, but I would almost certainly have kept it to myself.
However, that's not what I thought the story was about. I thought the story was about taking rash actions in youth and facing the consequences of them for years beyond anything sensible.
I reflected on some the incidents of my own youth - pulling a knife on the kid in the second grade (and a few things much worse than this that I don't have the stomach to rehash). How might my life have been different had I plunged it into my attacker as I had threatened? With someone younger than yourself, maybe it would seem condescending to compare the actions of a 10 year old with those of a young man (early twenties late teens?), but in the glory of my pompous arrogance, I classify them both as "kids."
I also thought it was a story about the occasional lack of justice in extreme retributive justice.
When I was very young - about 2 - my biological father was sitting on his friend's front porch swing. He saw two men coming towards him and recognizing their intent, jumped up and ran around the house. They pegged him - twice in the head and three times in the heart - as he was bounding the fence into an alley. They each got a paltry five years for it. One of them died in prison and the other got out - to be promptly killed by my uncle, who then spent 20 years of his life behind bars. I suppose his lawyers weren't as good. I saw him very briefly about 10 years ago. He was such a shattered man it seemed to me. He took one look at me and - weird as it seemed at the time - this scraggly, bikergang-lookin' redneck started to tear up hisself. "You look just like your daddy," he said. Ah, well. Another story.
He made the same mistake as Camus' stranger -- failing to recognize and acknowledge the ultimate authority of those who make the decisions. But they taught him. When they said justice had been served, he ought to have accepted it and just gone on to live his life. (Completely irrelevant, but I have a cousin who spent 7 years in jail and 13 years probation for alledgedly selling marijuana. So murder is 5 years if you suck up to the judge and 20 years if you fail to recognize The People as the ultimate arbiter, and selling MJ is worth 7 years.)
On the other hand, when I read literature, I always wonder - am I understanding what this guy is really trying to getting at? Most of the time I'm pretty sure I'm not. Even when I think I'm on to something, I suspect I took a wrong track and am wondering aimlessly.
I guess it *was* a story about patriotism, after all. These other things I thought I saw were phantasms. But, heck, I've made worse mistakes than that in my life.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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That BBC Classic "The Pallisers" is re-,made and will be on Public TV this autumn Yaaaa-Hoooo!
Reading "Secret Soldiers" the camoflage men of WWII including, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, designer Bill Blass, the heir to the Ringling circus fortune and many more artists, sound men, engineers.
Better than any mystery I ever got into.
Highly recommend.
Opps - thinder storm. I'm gone.
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old hand
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old hand
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Gee, you finks don't read much these days do you? Since the question was last asked, "What are you kats reading these days?" I've read five more books! My heavens, simple people, have you all forgotten how to read? Or, considering how busy you all are in today's axiomatic world, have you all forgot how to think? Below I list books that you all apparently find tiresome. Great Goobly-Woobly!, it is time that you all begin to think... thoughts!PAINTING AMERICAM : The rise of american artists:
Paris 1867 - New York 1948
The Traveler's Calendar new poems - Daniel mark Epstein
CORN 40 recipies: roasted, creamed, simmered, + more
Beyond The Deep: The Deadly Descent Into The World's Most Treacherous Cave.
And...
THE FUTURE OF SPACETIME: by folks that professes to know.
and, oh yeah, I almost forgot...
A MATTER OF DEGREES: What tempreture revels about the past and future of our species, planet, and universe.Pretty Impressive, huh! milum. Thank you for your understanding, milum.
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old hand
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In reply to:
Below I list books that you all apparently find tiresome.. . . it is time that you all begin to think...thoughts!
On what do you base your assertion that others find the books you listed tiresome? To imply that one is not thinking simply because one has not read books that you feel one ought to have read is, at best, condescending and patronising, and at worst, openly insulting.
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