DAILY PHOTO: The Chaminuka Cheetah
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Author Archives: B Gourley
Melancholy Autumn [Haiku]
wistful autumn days: i look up to the blue sky from the tawny grass.
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PROMPT: Out of Place
I feel out of place in social settings pretty much everywhere and always. This, perhaps surprisingly, has made me an excellent and avid traveler because I feel the same level of out of place among a group of people who speak a different native language, practice an unfamiliar religion, and who have different skin and hair characteristics as I would with a group of people who share a common ancestry, went to the same school, and grew up with the same cultural trappings. This creates an internal pressure to go to unfamiliar places, because familiar places offer the same anxiety with none of the learning opportunities, whereas the unfamiliar always offers new lessons.
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PROMPT: Sans Computer
Less productive but more peaceful… Except, perhaps, for the cursing every time I chiseled a typo into the granite.
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DAILY PHOTO: Skylines from Parks, Chicago
BOOKS: How Long Can the Moon Be Caged by Suchitra Vijayan & Francesca Recchia
How Long Can the Moon Be Caged?: Voices of Indian Political Prisoners by Suchitra VijayanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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It’s no secret that the Gandhian pluralistic vision for India has been taking some hard knocks under the current administration (and the rise of Hindu nationalism that it represents,) but it’s also not as widely and intensely discussed as it could be. This book represents an attempt to make the stories of dissident political prisoners more widely heard.
For that attempt, I would give it high marks, but the execution is problematic. The middle part of the book does a reasonably good job of telling the stories of these individuals. However, the book comes across far too much like a reference book than a journalistic account for much of its length — particularly in the beginning and at the end. The beginning has a long bullet point account of relevant events that I’m sure is meant to give readers an idea of the scope of the problem, but it also sterilizes the information. At the end there are letters and a chapter that consists entirely of data. Letters can be fine, but they aren’t the most evocative way to convey these stories because they contain a good deal of information that is extraneous to the author’s point, and thus the message is diluted.
I do wish supporting evidence was turned up and gratuitous statements turned down a bit. In other words, I assume the government could present a counter-narrative that these are not just dissenters voicing unpopular opinions but rather individuals actively engaged in subversive operations. Granted, the prominence of poets, the ill, and the elderly does make it hard to believe these are some sort of guerrilla warfare masterminds. True, there is a challenge in disproving a negative that makes it hard to prove a person has done nothing wrong.
At any rate, it’s a book I’m glad I read, and I did learn about the issue, but I wish the execution had been better. Maybe that’s for another book.
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BOOKS: A Double-Barreled Detective Story by Mark Twain
A Double Barrelled Detective Story by Mark TwainMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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This novella is Mark Twain’s satirical jab at the whole Sherlock Holmes concept. In particular, it pokes fun at a detective who eschews everything supernatural in favor of cold rationality, but who produces results so impossible that they are themselves supernatural.
The story has two temporally disjointed parts that almost seem like independent stories until the very end when all is tied up. (Holmes only appears in the second part.) This works nicely for parody of Holmesian detective fiction as it’s an approach that was used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on occasion — e.g. in A Study in Scarlet. The first part tells the tale of a woman who is treated foully by Jacob Fuller, the husband she eloped with but who harbored resentment towards her father, a man Fuller believed felt wasn’t good enough for his daughter. The woman makes her son, named Archy Stillman, promise that he will track down Fuller and make the man’s life a living hell.
The second part revolves around a murder that seems to be independent of the case described above, the killing of a man named Flint Buckner. Here Sherlock Holmes, who happens to be in town visiting his nephew – Fetlock Jones, “solves” the case only to be shown to be entirely and humiliatingly wrong by Archy Stillman using only a superior sense of smell and basic observation of the facts (with no elaborated inductions.)
While I never had anything against the Sherlock Holmes stories — in fact, I enjoyed them all — I did find Twain’s satire amusing and compelling as a story. [And it’s true that Arthur Conan Doyle did regularly strain credulity — that’s what made Holmes an intriguing character.]
Well worth reading.
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BOOKS: Hadaka-Jime by Moshé Feldenkrais
Hadaka-Jime: The Core Technique for Practical Unarmed Combat by Moshé FeldenkraisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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This is an interesting little book. I’m not sure how much stock I put in its utility, but the idea of it intrigues me. That idea is a system of self-defense built around a single technique, in this case hadaka-jime — i.e. the rear naked choke. (For non-martial artists, the “naked” is based on the fact that it works with or without a gi [coat] — i.e. it doesn’t require gripping the lapels or other cloth as many chokes in jiu-jitsu do. So, get your mind out of the gutter.) When I say “a single technique,” I’m talking about that technique being applied against a variety of unarmed, knife, and bayonet attacks — hence this being a book-length endeavor. Another way of looking at this central idea is an attempt to maximize muscle memory building efforts — i.e. by having a less extensive body of techniques one can more heavily drill a few basics rather than an elaborate set of complicated moves. As Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
I should point out that the version of hadaka-jime that Feldenkrais uses isn’t the one that I was taught, and I suspect that will be true for most readers. If you learned to have the crook of the choking arm in line with the opponent’s windpipe and have that arm’s hand tucked into the crook of the opposite hand (forming a triangular choke,) then Feldenkrais’s variation will seem strange. Feldenkrais’s variation seems to be both more brutal (because it drives the bone of the forearm against the windpipe) and more vulnerable (because one’s hands aren’t as well tucked in and the structure isn’t as self-reinforcing as the triangular variant, which is quite difficult to contend with even for a recipient who is much stronger.) All that being said, one could easily apply the same set ups for the more popular variant, one just has to move a little deeper.
As I say, I have mixed feelings about this single technique approach. On the one hand, one can see successes like Ronda Rousey had while using juji-gatame (a cross-body ground-based armbar) repeatedly. On the other hand, everyone had to suspect the days of that success were numbered as other fighters knew exactly for what they needed to prepare.
It’s a short and simple book, the chapters arranged by types of attack. It has adequate pictures to get across what Feldenkrais is trying to convey. Those interested in martial arts and self-defense may want to check it out.
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BOOKS: The Poet Li Po AD 701-762 Trans. & Ed. by Arthur Waley
The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762 by Arthur WaleyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available online at: Project Gutenberg – The Poet Li Po
Li Po, also Romanized “Li Bai,” is one of China’s most famous poets, the prolific Tang Dynasty poet wrote extensively at the nexus of intoxication and the beauty of the natural world. His well-loved and evocative poem, “Drinking Alone by Moonlight,” is a prime example [and is included in this selection.]
The selection consists of a small number of translations by [20th-century Orientalist] Arthur Waley. It’s only 20-some of the 1,000-ish extant poems of Li Bai, but it does offer variety in form and subject matter. It doesn’t include all of Li Bai’s most anthologized poems, which I consider a plus — i.e. Waley didn’t just assemble a greatest hits album.
The Waley translations aren’t as sparse as many that one will read. That offers the advantage of being clearer in meaning while losing some of the feel of the original. That said, I enjoyed this group of translations and didn’t feel they were too verbose – for the most part. It’s a selection well worth reading for those who enjoy poetry.
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PROMPT: Skills
There are so many. Life is short and there’s so much to learn. There are swim strokes (and related skills) I’d like to pick up, including drownproofing. I never learned to drive a proper motorcycle. Archery would be nifty.
