Polarity

My current nonfiction read―and it's a pretty hefty one―is Jared Diamond's Collapse. Subtitled "How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", the book details a number of failed societies, some of which weren't entirely at fault, or could be forgiven for not seeing what was coming.

The case of Norse Greenland is an interesting one. The settlement of Iceland, despite some turnarounds, was basically successful, in that most of Iceland's current population is descended from Medieval Norse, probably Norwegians. Not so, Greenland. Settlers did arrive from mainland Scandinavia, and they had ideas. But the subarctic climate and rocky soil didn't support their farming economy at all. In this and other ways they tried to keep going as if they were still in Europe, but they weren't. Inuit settlers actually got there later but their methods of hunting and their innovative kayaks gave them the advantage.

William Vollman's novel The Ice Shirt is a fictionalized account of this history. I read it a while ago. It's pretty vivid. 

White & black

We got snow today. Seems to have started around noon. Substantial, but was turning to (cold) rain by 4:30. I wouldn't say overwhelming, in a physical sense. But it takes surprisingly little to start getting stuff canceled. For example, the library closed around two in the afternoon.

On the plus side, this all meant that the evening sky was somewhat fluffy and light. Which meant that I was able to make out a black bird flying across. Crow? I think it just might have been. They stick around. Hope it had a warm and dry place to roost.

It's time to dress up right

Did you know that Paul Klee made puppets? If I ever heard anything about it, I must have forgotten. Which is a shame. The brilliant thing about this is that these look like the kind of puppets children could spend hours watching or playing with. They are that kind of simple puppet. But there's a little bit of dark expressionism that doesn't dilute the playfulness, or vice versa.

Nothing wrong with his paintings on their own, but the puppeting adds a new dimension to my image of the man.

Mid-Atlantic Murder

Reading now? Well, one thing I'm reading now is The Blunderer, by Patricia Highsmith. Written in the 1950's, it's about a lawyer who wants to divorce his life, which she doesn't want him to. But she gets murdered, so it doesn't matter what she wants or doesn't want. Which is convenient for him, as the police seem to notice. Also he makes a lot of stupid mistakes that don't help his case.

There's something that escapes me, maybe I'll understand when I finish. The detective investigating the case is on the Philadelphia PD. He questions the protagonist (can't really call him a hero), who's from Long Island, but the crime did take place in Philly, so that makes sense. He's also trying to close a murder case that happened in Newark. I mean, it's a legitimate case, but it's way out of his jurisdiction. Maybe Highsmith just didn't want to complicate things by bringing in another set of detectives.

Otherwise it's a good, tense story. Highsmith doesn't seem to be the kind of novelist who falls in love with her characters, but that's not always necessary. A little 'net research showed that this one was filmed just a couple of years ago as A Kind of Murder. I could have seen Hitchcock making it his second Highsmith adaptation, but he never got around to it.

MCMLXXXIV

When I was in junior high we learned about the stock market crash of '29 and the Great Depression. Our teacher, a very smart and dedicated guy, said at one point that there wasn't a big spike in crime because people were more pious and moral back in the thirties. He said he'd hate to see what would happen if the economy crashed in 1984.

Yes, this was 1984. Which is funny because that's now a long time ago. The Good Old Days, you might say. If you were a kid back then you get to pretend that you and people in general were just better back then.

The world has changed in ways that I personally find annoying, no doubt. But do people just plain suck now more than they used to? I can't imagine being comfortable making that claim.

Seen on the road

I saw a minivan today. It had the license plate TUTHDR. This puzzled me. "Tut hider"? "Truth or dare"? I was somewhat pleased with myself when, a couple of minutes later, I got "Tooth doctor." Ah, a dentist.

Anyway, to the extent that there's such a thing as a good vanity plate, I'm pretty sure they were all taken years ago.

Marches

little women from Abigail Eckstrom on Vimeo.

I've actually read Little Women, although I wasn't/am not the kind of reader the book is expected to have. I liked Alcott's tenderness and patience towards her characters.

This little animation is more suggestive than anything else. No characters actually appear. A little surreal maybe. Or just dreamlike. The house made up of newsprint is quite evocative.