Read-y Goodness

After a dry spell with fiction that was only temporarily improved when I pulled out E.R. Burrough’s A Princess of Mars after seeing the “John Carter” movie, I’ve hit the jackpot with every book I’ve picked up over the last week.

First up, because I was really naughty at the Air and Space Annex gift shop:  How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, by Mike Brown.  The loss of Pluto has always annoyed me.  When I was a kid I walked ten miles to school. Uphill. In five feet of snow.  Both ways.  And we had nine planets. The model I made in elementary school, assembled out of a bike wheel with painted styrofoam balls attached to the spokes, was lovely, deserving of an A, and perfectly represented that nine planet system.

I was good with the discovery of more moons, and really good with the discovery that Saturn isn't the only planet with rings.  But then, just as it looked like they were going to ADD a planet to the system, Pluto got downgraded to a dwarf planet, which isn't really a planet at all, just a large object in the Kuiper Belt.  Bleah.

I was seriously bummed.  Haven't got over it, either.  But I'm feeling forgiving now.  Mike Brown tells the tale of how he found planets beyond Pluto and then worked to have Pluto and those planets stripped of planet status, mixing the science with the story of a man who was passionately searching the solar system and making historic discoveries at the same time as he was falling in love, getting married, becoming a first time father.  Note to sleep deprived new parents - don't keep the powdered laundry detergent and the clumping cat litter sitting next to each other in the laundry room.  Popular science, clearly and humorously presented.

Then I jumped back 2,000 years to Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff.  Turns out the cover picture for the book is perfect:

What we think we know about this last of the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic ruler who mostly is known for romancing both Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, is, at best, minimal, and a popular creation more based on Shakespeare and Shaw than the real woman. The last of the Greek rulers of Egypt, Cleopatra reigned longer than Alexander the Great did. She demonstrated her appreciation for Ptolemaic tradition by marrying and eventually assassinating her brother, as well as removing other siblings who stood in her way.  The Ptolemies, it seems, could make the Borgias look like good guys.

She did try to consolidate her power through an affair with an aging Caesar, which produced the male heir Caesar's marriage didn't.  That didn't bring her the guarantees she hoped for.

When Caesar was assassinated and a power struggle broke out she sided with Marc Anthony, carrying on an affair that lasted years and produced three children. In the end, she backed the loser, and Egypt was absorbed into the Roman Empire.

The descriptions of Alexandria at its height, of the court, of traditions and rituals, and of world politics are fascinating and well drawn.  And all this plucked off the shelf at the local Good Will store.

Then there's my current read by Janet Wallach:  Desert Queen.  

Gertrude Bell - Victorian woman, explorer, adventurer, passionate Arabist, friend to Lawrence of Arabia, major force behind the redrawing of the national borders of the Middle East as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.  She traveled where the Turkish authorities were afraid to go, smuggling her rifle past border guards by wrapping it in her petticoats, the ammunition hidden in her boots.  When she wasn't climbing Swiss peaks.  

Amazing woman, but driven by loneliness, suffering the tragedies of lost loves, filling up the silence in order to keep the pain out.  This is an incredible look at the Middle East 100 years ago as well as the story of an utterly fascinating woman whom Bedouin sheiks welcomed to their fires and called a queen.

OW and the Rich

Being a history buff often leads to my shaking my head at folks.  So often they think that they've got a bright new idea and I think "Been there. Done that."  The latest to cause this are the Occupy Wall Street groups.  There are multiple reasons for this, of which these are but a few:

1) There seems to be a desire for that vague entity known as "the government" to pay for everything.  That, of course, requires that the government take from one person to pay for "stuff" for someone else.  Witness the current turmoil in various countries in Europe (not to mention the food lines of the Soviet Union and the death by starvation of millions in China) - eventually the government runs out of people to take from and the system breaks down.  Been there, done that.

2) Particularly ironic with the Oakland group - In 1899 a ship out of Hong Kong arrived in San Francisco with more than just a standard cargo.  It brought one of the most terrifying diseases history has ever known - bubonic plague.  The disease took root particularly in the shambling wooden structures of Chinatown, which  provided good hiding places for the rats and their disease carrying fleas.  The city fathers battled to keep it out of the news, fearing that if the world knew about the outbreak it would damage city trade and tourism.  Eventually the disease was beaten back by killing as many rats as could be found and destroying rat habitats by such actions as replacing wooden porches with poured concrete, closing foundations, and enforcing hygiene throughout the city.  Then came the great quake of 1906, and the city was filled with tent cities for months, providing a perfect breeding ground for rats.  The rat population boomed, and plague returned, this time entering the ground squirrel population, and then spreading to other rodents. As a consequence, it is now endemic to the American southwest.  If the OW folks do not get themselves together and monitor hygiene they are inviting the same sort of disease outbreaks that cities saw a hundred years ago.  And I suppose no history class touches on the fact that we lost more soldiers to disease caused by communal living during the Revolution and Civil War than we did to combat.  Been there, done that.

3)  I just finished Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday", and one paragraph in particular grabbed my attention. In a nutshell, the story follows a man, Syme, who has infiltrated a group of anarchists.  It has been a puzzle to me as to why folks like Soros would fund anarchic (is that a real word?) behavior.  After all, why would the rich call for their own money to be taken away?  Why would they call for the very structures that have allowed them to become rich to be destroyed?  At one point, Syme and a fellow infiltrator are fleeing the anarchists through the countryside, looking for shelter, and this bit of conversation takes place:

"What can you mean by all this?" cried Syme. "They can't be running the real world in that way.  Surely not many working men are anarchists, and surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat modern armies and police."

"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn.  "So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question.  You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor.  Why should it?  The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government.  The poor man really has a stake in the country.  The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.  The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.  Aristocrats were always anarchists..."

This was written in 1907.  So to the OW folks I say - you are being used by people who have no real stake in the outcome except power over you.  Been there.  Done that.  Is this really what you want?

A Parcel of Rogues in Our Nation

Scots poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) well knew the sad history of his once free country.  Power became more important than duty to those who should have led their nation, and time and again the Scots were sold out to the British until all hope was crushed at Culloden and with the Highland Clearances.  As a terrorist (thank you Mr. Biden) who believes that the entrenched and comfortable politicians of both parties in this country are working to preserve their own power rather than to serve the country, this poem by Burns is resonating strongly with me these days.

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,
Sae famed in martial story!
Now Sark rins over Solway sands,
And Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England's province stands -
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue
Thro' many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor's wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour's station;
But English gold has been our bane -
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O, would or I had seen the day
That treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I'll mak this declaration:
We're bought and sold for English gold -
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!