John Bell from the National Portrait Gallery – London

While reading Nothing Like the Sun the narrator, who hither to now, spoke to the times of Shakespeare, said something betraying. So I thought. In it he says:

There is one, a God-fearing true Christian named F. Lawson Gent., who has been vouchsafed, by God’s holy grace, a vision of these poets screaming in hell, the which he has set down in a treatsie called A Watchword against Wickedness and the Lewd Trumperies of Poetified Sneerers, wherein he recounteth the horror of their deathless punishment in hellfire (as seen by him in his vision), burning stinking brewis of venomed maggots and toothed worms that do gnaw to the very pia mater. Thou dost well to stir and sweat in thine unwholesome sleep.

I perked up to the word pia mater, which is a membrane of the meninges that cover the spinal column and brain. Being set in the 1500s I figured they didn’t know of, let alone have named the pia mater. How could they? This brought me, through Google Books, to John Bell. He, along with his brother Sir Charles Bell and John Davidson Godman wrote a multivolume work entitled The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body(with the amazing sub-heading of The Whole More Perfectly Systemized and Corrected by Charles Bell). In it he says that it(the pia mater) is formed by two membranes, one of which(tunica arachnoidea; the upper layer and not the proper pia mater which is the tunica vasculosa) he attributes discovery to the “society formed by Blasius, Sladus, Quina, [and] Swammerdam” in 1665. Though, following in a footnote it says that Varolius had described it “plainly, covering the medulla oblongata.” Some quick notes before moving onto Varolius include the fact that they named the tunica arachnoidea because “…its extreme tenuity, comparing it to a spider’s web. It was called also Membrana Cellulosa, from the appearance it took when they insinuated a blow-pipe under it, and blew it up, separating it from the pia mater.” Now, I don’t know about you but sticking blow-pipes into membranes to separate them is some fantastic science.  Maybe I forgot to mention the book was published in 1827? Also, as another note, the arachnoid mater and the pia mater are now typically considered distinct from one another and are sometimes referred to as a single structure called the leptomeninges, there being cerebrospinal fluid separating the two. The pia mater sinks into the sulci of the brain(the folds), riding atop the cerebrospinal fluid is the arachnoid mater, and finally the thick layer above that is the dura mater(from which we get the subdural bleed(between dura and brain) and epidural bleed(between dura and skull) but that could be a post all by itself and Varolius is getting impatient to be outed. Lastly, John Bell is buried behind the poet John Keats. Mhm, small world.

So. Constanzo Varolio, who is this man? He was from Bologna and, aside from being an anatomist, he was the papal physician to Pope Gregory XIII. He was best known for his work with cranial nerves and erectile function. Strange specialities. He falsely attributed the erection to “erector muscles” which kept anatomists fooled for three centuries, yet they still say he was surprisingly accurate with his mechanistic description(and I am unsure how you can be right and wrong like that?). Like the Bell’s, he had some artistic ability and left us with this fine woodcut(show right). I don’t think that I have ever seen a view of the brain from the bottom up complete with eyes splayed to either side. Finally, there is a note a small ways further into Bell’s anatomy that says Varolius’ assistant, and future professor in Rome, Columbus, explained the pia mater’s intimate connection to the brain back in 1559.

And so, this was all to say that, Burgess, I apologize for doubting your narrator. Secondly, I really hope that the anatomy textbooks are as interesting as this one has been. Maybe I need to merely supplement my modern textbook reading with that great stuff of the 1800s? All in all I am pretty excited for A&P which, well, only further instigates the unverified rumor that I am kind of nerdy.

Vedran Smailovic playing in the ruins of theNational Library in Sarajevo – Mikhail Evstafiev

In reading Vollman’s Rising Up and Rising Down I was slowly realizing how little I know of the Bosnian War. I was talking to Marina about it last night and decided to read about it today. I knew there was a genocide(I guess it should always be written as ‘attempted’? Though I knew a man that would say “I committed suicide,” even though he was most certainly alive to be able to tell me so) and there was something to do with Islam. I thought it strange that until reading it in Vollman I didn’t know anything about the Muslim aspect, and that the genocide was pointed at them, the Bosnia Muslims or Bosniaks. Still, I know near to nothing about the war as, upon working my way down the Wikipedia article I came across the photograph above.

Vedran Smailovic played Albinoni’s Adagio in Gm on his cello where 22 people where killed in a bread line. It is things like this that derail me for a day. The Bosnian War article waits for me now. I, of course, looked up the sheet music and taught myself the first handful of notes until I realized I cannot play too deep into third position on my violin since me and my grandfather flattened my bridge out quite a ways for playing French Canadian music. Then to Youtube to watch every version of the song I could find. Then to reading about the book The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steve Galloway which enraged Smailovic because he was never approached about the book in any way. So off to reading an article about the disagreement in which a really interesting line comes up: “I didn’t play for 22 days, I played all my life in Sarajevo and for the two years of the siege each and every day.” and he goes on to further attack the idea that he sat at 4pm each day for 22 days defying the snipers.

I am not sure that I understand his hurt by this piece of fiction, especially since it is said that he is really a peripheral character, more of an idea than anything else. Luckily, we have the book at the local library which will permit me some further investigation(as soon as I finish Nothing Like the Sun. It is Vedran’s likeness, of course, his actions, and those were an inspiration. So, the character is inspired by him, though maybe he never meant to inspire anyone but to live inside of his own grief during the siege and to own it through his music(in saying this it is hard to forget the other book I came across, that Smailovic made with a friend, a childrens book telling a fictionalized version of his story).

Though likewise, it seems like his grief is now owned by all of us as well:

Northwood, NH 2009 – Marina Hale

Pictures like this remind me, not only do I not live in NH anymore with all those places that I love, but that I now live in PA with all the new places to find and love. Where are the secluded lakes? Which are the beautiful mountain hikes? Which streams start where, what rivers pour here? I am excited to find them. I am already taken by the beauty of this place and its ability to be gorgeous valley and rolling farmland, and dingy, dirty city. The small meditations come from thoughts of finding a place(and fingers double triple quadruple crossed for an apartment we want) here. We have been lucky to land the jobs we want and Marina is happily a new addition to the children’s library downtown.

We have this new land to explore, farmers markets, antique stores, endless woods and mountains and I am inspired by it. I can look for this desk down into the valley of York and it always strikes me as some Brugelian landscape to be painted, but maybe Icarus is driving the tractor, falling but trying to make it, as the corn kicks into the air behind him rolling acre by acre.

Iced coffee is a renewed revelation. Winter is a funny time for said revelation. Glenlivet is a damn fine moderately priced Scotch. My wife’s surge into the craft world has me reeling for something, too, to put my hands to. Current thoughts include piano lessons and quilt making(specifically recreations of icons in a somewhat stained glass look). As another small note: I am surprised when the snow melts completely each time which is certainly outside of my experience with snow in the north, the grass is still green? Someone should tell the grass that it is cold outside. And winter. Just saying.

I have not written here since October 19th I think it said. October 19th. That was before both of my maternal grandparents passed away and I drove 3,000 miles in under 30 days visiting nursing home, funeral home, childhood’s home. It was before I lost a man I never knew, my grandfather in law. It was before we ordered a double disc set of Bing Crosby tunes and played in incessantly. It was before I was hired as an emergency nursing assistant at the 560-bed hospital downtown. Before the New Year, before much change.

And since then I have not finished a book, since that Stegner that had me all fire. George Chapman lit me up over the Illiad, but mostly over English fourteeners. But I didn’t finish it, nor the Lattimore translation I changed to at Book 5, and re-read from the start. I did finish the Oresteia, so I lied above. But I didn’t finish Heaven: A History, the New Testament(which I was mostly just carrying with me as some sort of comfort and not reading along with the Book of Common Prayer), and the Web and the Rock.

Loss is a funny, ignoble thing that sneaks in and steals without teaching and feels odd to truly learn about it at 27. One could say I suffered the loss of my biological father, but I’ve never known to have him, so thats that. It hurts, but it doesn’t drive me to live life renewed of vigor, to cherish and all the other cliches wrapped tight around death. I nearly hyperventilated the night I tried to approach it, reason with it, and found that it didn’t matter. I will grow old and die, or maybe not so old, but still die. But has life, the way I lead it, been changed? Or changed for the good? I am still unsure. Maybe I am averted to what its trying to teach me, and still looking at walls, in corners, at the mirror and the pain of it as opposed to the lesson?

Now I work around death, though it doesn’t stalk the emergency room, it seems to be more of an event and much less of a process. The sick are people with strange vital signs(which is ultimately a set of numbers), and maybe sweaty or soiled, but just people in a white bed in a busy room surrounded by a curtain. Some tell jokes, some want and some try to sock you one as you put the blood pressure cuff back on.

I’d like to say I plan to write in this more but I know myself pretty well, and it only took 27 years to get there. Let’s say I hope to find time to write something down, let’s also hope that I find thoughts to write down and have less of these general spillings. I’m reading a 700 page book about violence by Vollman, and Burgess’ book about Shakespeare’s love life, so maybe those will bubble something up.

We’ll see.

I do not often try to sit and write about a book, and surely not about one that I have just begun. I have sat down to listen to the story Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner, as told by Lyman Ward. Rarely do I feel so entrenched and thoroughly taken by a narrator’s voice but I find that listening to Ward is like listening to my own grandfather. That I am immediately filed with quiet; the cold from outdoors seeps around all window sills, between the jambs of doors, and fills me with autumn in that pulling back through time. No matter how clichéd the idea of fall’s nostalgia, I bear witness to the fact that autumn bears only history, where spring carries only promise. And there is that presence of quiet; of time’s motion while walking through snowed in fields, of that very smell that ice has(which I thought I caught on the air two nights ago), the very consonance of being in this world and this life so soaked in history.

“Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was[...]“

I would protest that, not only are we each everything we ever were, but also all that has ever been. We are gathered up, totaled, and made anew, a unique sum.

Richard Wright has decided to go communist at the end of Blackboy and I am left shaking my head and hoping that it is short lived. A hope I think may not come to bear fruit. I am left to wonder about what may have been accomplished had the thoughts and minds of the people of that era not been consumed with the idea of The People as a single, revolutionary unit. As a teenager I stole a copy of the Communist Manifesto and parked it on the shelf next to Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life and remained ignorant to them both, allowing them to collect dust. I was drawn to my idea of Communism, as a people working together communally, but for some reason denied myself the reading of the books that I owned. I may have been tainted by the small bit of knowledge I had on the history of Communism, seeing it as defunct, prone to totalitarianism, and well, just another political party. This is just a small note, about how I always find myself shaking my head when I run face first into this stuff in literature, though, I guess it is bound to happen when you read too much from the early to mid 1900’s.

Home Cooking: Jonah Lehrer

Yup, that smart, cute guy Marina mentioned before. Why do I have to like his writing so much? The section on August Escoffier in Proust Was A Neuroscientist was a fantastic read. Yet to hit the other sections. I picked it up while Marina was checking out a small town library in Maryland. The title caught me, and on inspection of the sections inside it seemed like a good read. I went with the Escoffier essay and loved it. Incidentally, Julie and Julia was a fantastic movie.

I am still waiting on jobs. I heard back form one hospital already with what seemed like a resounding, “No.” The letter they mailed me, though cordial and professional and most certainly a form letter, was post marked two days after my interview and in my mailbox on the third day. Opps. I seem to be up against a wall with the hospitals and I am hoping that once my PA EMT license comes in I can start in with a private company to garner a bit of experience and then give the hospitals another go.

I still waffle a bit on getting advanced degrees in Nursing. The more I see what Marina is doing with library sciences, the more intrigued I am about doing it myself. Spending all day helping people answer great and strange questions, using my limited yet vast surface knowledge to direct people to the right books, who wouldn’t like that? But, I haven’t given the proper or any real chance to nursing, and I still may love it as much as I think I have a chance to, hope so! As a way of assuaging my waffling tendencies and for need of something to do I have started on Amy Hungerford’s open course The American Novel since 1945. Listened to the McCarthy lecture already, and have gone back to start at the beginning, Richard Wright’s Blackboy is the first novel. So far, so good. Also knocking around through Thus Spake Zarathustra(you may notice Spake as opposed to Spoke, mking this a Thomas Common translation. Apparently he wanted to mimic the German biblical-Lutheran by writing the English a la King James. Here to, so far, so good.

Cooking has taken on a life of its own here. I have been doing a lot of it, especially with only Marina working currently. I decided to step out of my comfort zone and take a cookbook out of the library. Not big on those really. Well, bravo Batali, you have taught this New Englander how to make a damn fine basic tomato sauce and I thank you for it. I have been using Cento canned tomatoes and think that they have made a big difference. I am trying the Rienzi packed in tomato puree, being a lover of a ridiculously thick tomato sauce. We made some acorn squash and cashew lasagna with ricotta and pecorino and homemade noodles, damn good. Having made way too much filling we used it for a couple of base sauces, with a couple cloves of garlic sauteed, thyme, parsley, and peas, served over farfalle as a cream sauce. Marina now asks for pasta daily. I call that a win. This week is Greek week and thus far we made an eggplant stuffed savory pie and a greenbean and zucchini soup. Soon, another savory pie, this time with squash. Small note on the pies is that they too, are small. More like an empanada I’m told. Dipped in tzatziki and delicious.

It is fall, and our walks in the woods, deep in with the groaning of the trees and the spill of acorns and hickory nuts from the trees above, makes me smile deep inside.

A sobriquet (pronounced so-brik-ay or so-brik-et) is a nickname or a fancy name.
-Wikipedia

No, a sobriquet is a fancy name for a nickname.

Many know Eadweard Muybridge from his photographs from the 1870s when he took a series of stills to show whether all 4 hooves of a horse leave the ground. Maybe not so known is his trial.

 

In 1874 he discovered a letter written to his wife by a Major Harry Larkyns, apparently her lover. He sought Larkyns out and said, “Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here is the answer to the letter you sent my wife,” punctuating the sentence with a single gunshot, killing the Major.

 

He was put on trial and acquitted as a justifiable homicide.

Gloomy gray afternoon, morning, et al. Normally don’t see many like this here. Tom Waits on the way home, not normally my style but really fit the feel of everything.

Still reading and enjoying Sherman’s memoirs, just finished the battle of Shiloh. Have switched to nursing school and soon enough switching states. Just a small pile of notes today.