The City Gate

First Backpacking Trip

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We made our first backpacking trip back in April. We only hiked a total of six miles but carrying your bed on your back is different from what we usually do. The weather was great - only a little bit of rain during the night.

Les Trois Mousquetaires

The Three Musketeers is a novel about the adventures of four musketeers in 17th century France. Muskets are only used once by the musketeers. Swords and occasionally pistols are the weapon of choice. The story line consists of conspiracies, daring escapes, duels, and lots of hard living. The horses have the hardest lives as they are frequently left for dead on the journeys.

The novel is the first of a trilogy though I doubt that was intended during its writing. The second definitely feels like a Hollywood sequel capitalizing on the success of the original. It is still a very good story with high tension moments.

All the novels were published as serials. They read very differently from the serialized work of Dickens. The latter two novels have climaxes in odd spots and have self-contained stories within them. Dumas seems to have had difficulty ending the third. English editions of it are usually broken up into three volumes. The entire trilogy in my collection is 3,464 pages. That's a lot of sword fights.

Dumas does a great job creating evil characters. I have rarely seen the lust for vengeance portrayed as well. He seems to have forgotten his revenge-driven character in the third book, but I didn't mind as it kept it from being too formulaic. My primary complaints are two-fold. First, the shaming of the primary hero, d'Artagnan, by the king near the end of the last novel did not fit with the larger than life character that Dumas had created. Second, in the second and third books the musketeers begin to become caricatures of themselves.

A great side benefit of working through this trilogy is a greater understanding of French history during this time period (and to a lesser extent, English history). My editions had ample backnotes on all the historical characters and events. I have already come across a few references in my reading that I would have not appreciated before.

The descriptions of the French court and its frivolity, excess, and endless intrigues were enough to make me think that perhaps the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror weren't such bad ideas after all. Maybe I should read A Tale of Two Cities again or perhaps something like Scaramouche.

My New Pet

I've already fed him.

First Hike of the Year

We hiked our first trail in Patapsco Valley State Park on Saturday. It was a peaceful two miles — thousands of flowers along the trail, the echoes of woodpecker activity, the gurgling of running water, and mountain bikers crashing down the hills.

Bored in New Mexico

What do you do when you're driving down a country road in New Mexico and you're bored? Pull out a gun and shoot a sign I guess.

STS-123

I have spent one night in the last twenty years in Florida and it just so happens that the Space Shuttle Endeavour was launched that night. I had no idea there was a launch scheduled until I arrived at Cape Canaveral that afternoon. It was the RVs lining the road to the Air Force station that tipped me off. The security guard confirmed it. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity even if it did mean missing a lot of sleep to see the 2:20 am launch.

I awaited the launch on the edge of the base. There were hundreds of families, high school students and college spring breakers there. A favorite activity among the high school crowd was to mock the photographers with tripods and lenses as long as my leg by standing in front of their cameras without seeming to notice. I hadn't brought a tripod or my newer camera so I was limited to a point and shoot.

The general attitude among the teenagers was of being too cool to be there. They were talking to friends on cell phones, standing around in circles looking oblivious to the scene around them, and making jokes about last minute repairs that the shuttle might need. That ended quickly when the shuttle lifted off. At ignition, there was an audible gasp from everyone at the brilliant light. This video does a reasonable job of capturing what we saw (though with more detail). After several seconds of only seeing the shuttle take-off, we finally heard the rumble.

At some point while everyone was waiting around, some teenage boys were joking about swimming across the water to get a better look at the launch. A 7 or 8-year old boy quickly corrected their distance estimate. His fathered added some technical details to this and really impressed the high schoolers. At this, the father proudly told his son, "See, it pays to be a geek."

Spring is Here

The crocuses are out. The temperature was up to 70 degrees today. Ants are invading our house. Spring is here.

Eclipse Photos

Every time I hear there is going to a meteor shower or a lunar eclipse, I promise that this is the time I will be out there watching it. Any every time I forget or decide I'd rather be in bed. I finally got out there this past Wednesday. It was tempting to give up hope due to the overcast skies but everything cleared up by 8 pm.

Since I was braving the cold, the camera came out with me to produce a record of this event. I set it up on our deck with its mode set to night-time shots. The first shot was a blurry, bright mess. I started running through the menus trying to recall how to get this thing into some sort of manual mode. But of course, this is a consumer camera that only grudgingly allows anything resembling manual control. These sorts of settings each require the navigation of 3 or 4 menus using tiny buttons—buttons that don't seem to be designed for adult fingers, especially not gloved, adult fingers.

I eventually found a mode that gave me a little more control and managed to get some decent photos. The one on the left shows the Earth's shadow beginning to obscure the full moon. When taking these shots, I had the choice of setting the exposure to catch the part of the moon in the shadow or the other part. It was impossible to get both. If you click on this link, you can see the moon just before full eclipse. It is a rust color with a very bright sliver still illuminated by the Sun. Saturn is the yellow dot off to the lower left and Regulus is the blue dot above the moon. I tried to convince Shannon it you looked really closely at Saturn you could see its rings. I don't think she believed me.

PBS and Jane Austen

PBS is part way through a Jane Austen marathon on Masterpiece Theatre. They have already featured adaptations of the lesser three of her novels (Persuasion, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey). Any of Austen's novels lose something in film versions due to the limitations of the medium (for example, lack of narration). These particular movies are only 80 minutes long so there is also the general problem of a rushed storyline and lack of characterization. All of this is to be expected. What I have a harder time understanding is why important plot details have been changed which work against the themes and purposes of the novels.

In Mansfield Park, Austen contrasts the attractive, witty Mary Crawford against the shy, dull Fanny Price. Throughout the book, we learn that Fanny is to be prized for her moral character and this is realized in the end by the hero of the story. Her moral principles are most notably displayed when she declines to act in a play of questionable worth. In the PBS version, she is persuaded to take a part and so we lose the contrast between Fanny and the other characters. We don't really learn any reason for the hero's selection of Fanny other than it was just meant to be.

One of the turning points in Persuasion is the fall of Louisa Musgrove. Captain Wentworth had been praising Louisa's strength of conviction as an indirect criticism of Anne's character. Louisa insists on taking another walk by the sea before leaving Lyme even though the party should have returned home. She seriously injures herself. This causes Captain Wentworth to begin reexamining Anne's character and his overreaction to the past. The fact that it was Louisa that pushed for the late walk is left out of the movie. We are not left with any reason for Captain Wentworth's change of mind concerning Anne other than her clearness of mind during the accident. (Also, near the same time, Anne receives an obvious admiring look from someone which causes Captain Wentworth to do some more rethinking. This is also left out.)

Northanger Abbey is a satire of the Gothic romances of the late 18th century. Due to her novel-fed, overactive imagination, Catherine begins to suspect that her host has murdered his wife. No self-respecting person would have believed such a thing if put in the same position. That is part of the satire. Instead, the movie includes a scene of someone telling the heroine about rumors concerning the man's wife. So not only does the idea not originate with her, but other people treat it as a possibility thus losing some of the strength of the satire. To finish it off, Catherine is told at the end of the movie that her judgment was correct even if she had the details wrong.

Cranford

Reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell made me laugh. It is a great satire of the social customs of the Victorian English gentry (or at least of the women). Gaskell is able to poke fun at their imitative manners and general quirks while still creating sympathetic characters. The story focuses on the lives of five or six older women who make up the self-defined high society of Cranford. They have developed a set of very artificial protocols governing visits and other such society interactions. In the end these just end up making life more stressful and inconvenient than it needs to be.

It is a very easy read. The sixteen chapters contain eight almost separate stories. The format is due to the novel being developed for inclusion in a magazine published by Dickens. It is considered one of Gaskell's best novels and evidences her ability as a story teller. Charlotte Bronte said about it: “I find it pleasurable reading: graphic, pithy, penetrating, shrewd, yet kind and indulgent.”

Mormonism and American Politics

This article (registration may be required) is a good presentation of the difficulties that Mormons have in national politics — especially given the emphasis on ‘faith’ that exists in the Republican party. I don't think the author's analysis of Romney's difficulties is as insightful since I doubt that his Mormonism is the issue that's hurting him right now.

Brief Items

We have finally added caller ID to our phone service. One of the first calls we subsequently received was from Verizon telling us the modification was complete. The caller ID read "Bell Atlantic".
I greatly dislike introductions to books that give away major plot details. The most recent example of this is the mention of the sudden death of a main character in the introduction to Cranford. Argh.
During the first World War, Germany experienced some extreme food shortages. They experimented with trying to develop butter substitutes from animals that were plentiful like rats, hamsters, crows and cockroaches.

The Key to Reserva

This is just a commercial, but it is so well done. It features a documentary with the filmmaker Martin Scorsese discussing a "lost" manuscript of Hitchcock's that he is making into a short film. That is followed by the film. It really feels like a Hitchcock movie (partially because it contains so many references to his films).

Romney and Faith in America

Last week Mitt Romney gave his Kennedy speech where he addressed the relevance of his Mormon faith to his candidacy (transcript here). I thought about writing an extended review, but I guess I am too lazy for that so it will have to be bullet points instead.

Romney said, “A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.”

I assume he is saying that individual voters should not vote against candidates because of their religion since the Constitution already prohibits religious tests at the system level. I think a person's religion says something about the way that person thinks. I certainly wouldn't vote for a scientologist for example.

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. ... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Romney lost the militant atheist vote here ;)

“Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.”

This confused me because this is the very definition of secularism when he earlier said he was against secularism.

Romney needs the evangelical Christian vote to win the Republican nomination. He wants to be able to play to the faith crowd without bringing any specifics of his own faith into this. This is why I don't understand why he said “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind”. If he feels this is an appropriate question for a candidate to answer, couldn't this lead to other questions that won't play so well with his target audience.

And finally, if you've read the speech, you'll probably appreciate this spoof.

Offered Without Comment

This selection from The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins is offered without comment.

“The influence that instantly stopped him, on the way to his carriage, was the silent influence of her face. The startling contrast between the corpse-like pallor of her complexion and the overpowering life and light, the glittering metallic brightness in her large black eyes, held him literally spell-bound. She was dressed in dark colours, with perfect taste; she was of middle height, and (apparently) of middle age—say a year or two over thirty. Her lower features—the nose, mouth, and chin—possessed the fineness and delicacy of form which is oftener seen among women of foreign races than among women of English birth. She was unquestionably a handsome person...”