Blowing & Drifting

I was surprised this morning to discover that a blogger on the Motley Fool personal-finance website quoted me – or rather, an article I wrote a few years back on the US economy during World War II – in an op-ed on the need to move to renewable and green energy. This would be gratifying even if I didn’t agree so much with the argument that we as a society have within our capacity, if not our will, to launch a huge effort to switch to sustainable energy sources, and then reap the economic, environmental, and social benefits of such a changeover. We need some bold leaders to push this point.

I grant that today was the day before a three-day weekend, but the Carleton campus has been deader than the King of Pop all week. The only excitement anyone can find is a roofing project that requires a gargantuan red crane, apparently borrowed from Dubai, and periodic showers of roofing debris. If you visit the campus center after the snack bar closes (at 1:30 pm! well before my afternoon iced-coffee jones kicks in!), you’ll probably find only some dusty chairs, a groggy clerk in the bookstore, and the post office’s two bins of undeliverable magazines. (Anyone for fifty copies of the current Economist? Or twice as many copies of ESPN The Magazine?) In making – over the course of the week – four round-trip bike commutes and three walks to and from the Rec Center, I’ll bet I didn’t encounter a dozen people, total. Hell, in the Arb, I saw about three times as many red squirrels as people. And I saw three of those surly rodents.

Oh well. The plants in the little garden plot on the lawn between Olin, Goodsell, and Boliou have all sprouted now, as have signs all over campus inviting anyone – anyone? anyone! – to go ahead and pick whatever’s ripe. Anyone? Anyone! I don’t know about you, but I’m having radishes for lunch on Monday.

And the trees! God. The maples and oaks are shimmering with life. If you get too close, you might get knocked down by the photosynthesis. I discovered this beauty in the Upper Arb, just north of the concrete bridge near Bell Field – sublime, in the truest sense of beautiful, awe-inspiring, and a little bit frightening. This giant has already seen more summers than I ever will.

On Tuesday, Shannon couldn’t eat dinner with us, so I suggested in passing that Julia and Genevieve draw pictures for her showing how much we enjoyed the meal – home-made lentil soup. After dinner, Julia took about an hour to work up this incredible drawing – which she first drew in pencil, then colored in with crayons. Click here for an annotated version.

Hans Holbein’s portrait of Richard Southwell is incredible to see and study.

Richard Southwell, Holbein (c1536)

The drawing is even better when you know more about Holbein and especially about Southwell, who was both a murderer and a sheriff, and complicit in the killing of Sir Thomas More.

Leaving the Carleton Rec Center this afternoon, I walked through a fantastic plume of scents from this little patch of restored prairie, just outside the Rec. It’s practically emitting life these days – blooming, flowering, sending out wonderful smells…

A minute ago, in the middle of a conversation about our post-bath, pre-bedtime activities (centered on coloring pictures of Disney Princesses [I'm ready for my lobotomy now]), I commented on how I was having fun with the girls. Julia paused, pencil poised over her sheet of paper, scowled, and said, “But grown-ups don’t have fun, Daddy.”

I’ll grant that I’m rarely having a blast at 7:45 p.m., but nonetheless I did have quite a bit of fun today. I used the bike trailer to take the girls to the Arb for a nice long walk, I went downtown during their naps to do some drawing, and after nap we played outside until the sun said, “Oh my god, can’t you people take a rest?” Julia enjoyed jumping off our Little People slide/climber thingy – jumping being a skill she has lately been cultivating) and Genevieve enjoyed running the bases after her mother helped her use our big new oversized baseball bat to clobber a line-drive triple to center.

Short version of the above: today was a perfect summer weekend day.

Having been to the optometrist or opthamologist a total of 21 times since May 2008, I have had some time to poetize.

H B C F Z
An optometry haiku
D Z L E V

The girls enjoyed another 45 minutes with the sprinkler this afternoon. Well, Julia did. As these photos show, Vivi was as bored by the whole deal and Julia was energized by it. The funniest part of the activity was Vivi’s constant requests that I “durn up” or “durn down” the sprinkler, which accompanied promises that she would run through the appropriately high or low sprinkler. She never did. After roughly 20 trips to the faucet (I counted!), I only had to touch the handle, but not even turn it, before one or the other said, “Oh, that’s the perfect height!” I bet I didn’t actually change the height at all over my last 20 trips (I counted!).

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is hard to review in that it’s exactly what the jacket copy and other online reviews suggest: a cogent, informative, well-written narrative about London’s 1854 cholera epidemic, which was caused by the giant city’s pathetic sanitation system and ended when a brilliant scientist, John Snow, figured out that the disease was being transmitted through the (foul) water being consumed in one impoverished neighborhood. Along the way, Johnson describes the recycling economy of mid-nineteenth century London, the battles between those who thought disease was spread through the air and those who didn’t, the invisible importance of modern sanitation, the workings of bacterial diseases like cholera, and a host of other topics. I highly recommend the book.

I have only two cautions. First, much of the last chapter and all of the epilogue serve as an extended exercise in extrapolation – to modern megacities and to bioterrorism, chiefly – which would have been much more powerful at half the length. The book effectively ends midway through the last chapter, on the origins of the titular map, which is justifiably famous for visually summarizing the causes and effects of the outbreak.

Second, you should not read the book while eating. The details about London’s sanitation system and cholera are literally stomach-turning – though they also made me glad to live in a time and a place where my shit literally vanishes down the tubes and I can get clean, cold water at any time.

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing by Margaret S. Livingstone

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an excellent overview of the science and biology of seeing, especially as related to modern art. The author, Margaret Livingstone, a neurobiologist, skillfully presents the scientific material, though some of it is nonetheless pretty tough going. Livingstone, is very good at using a wide range of spectacular diagrams, photos, paintings, and other illustrations to advance her exposition and argument.

This argument – and its applicability to how we make and see art – rests on a critical distinction between our two overlapping systems of vision. Though colorblind, the older “Where” system of vision is good at detecting small changes in brightness (or what is technically called “luminance”), motion, spatial position or depth, and the general configuration of a scene. The evolutionary newer “What” system, present only in primates, is slightly slower and less sensitive to brightness but is capable of recognizing objects and their characteristics, including color and details. Livingstone’s discussion of the Where/What systems roams over topics ranging from the structure of the eye and the arrangement of visual ganglia to the functions of cones and rods and the critical “center/surround” neurons which are sensitive to sharp changes or breaks in luminance, rather than subtle shifts. She also comments more or less in passing on the evolutionary failings of the eye and human vision. We cannot, for instance, see colors in dim light or in darkness: without quite a bit of light, all colors look like black or gray to us, even though one would imagine that an Intelligent Designer would have been able to endow us with the ability to see colors at sunset.

All of this neurobiology is adduced to a clear and powerful explanation of why and how certain kinds of art – centrally painting, especially the Impressionists and their master, Monet – work visually. In short, focused sections, she explains, for instance, how Monet achieved remarkable effects such as flowers that seem to sway in the breeze or water that seems to flow or why Ingres’ stunning portraits are believable even though he often painted or drew his subjects’ faces in far more detail than their bodies or clothes. Three chapters on depth perception effectively show how skilled artists use both artistic rechniques such as perspectival drawing and neurobiological concepts such as stereo vision to achieve depict three-dimensional scenes on a two-dimensional page or canvas. While 2-D depth is itself an illusion, many chapters also include one or more entertaining optical illusions which take advantage of our neurobiology – for instance, the sequential processing of our Where and What systems – to mess profoundly with your mind. (I was impressed by the experiences and the explanations of the perspectival illusion on page 102 and the “scillintiliating grid” illusion on page 56 and the endpapers.)
View all my reviews.

Who goes first.
Why the other one went first.
Whether one really needs to wash one’s hands.
Whether hand-washing is actually just “a silly grown-up idea” (an actual quote).
The content of the next meal/snack.
Whether or not that next meal/snack has the “right” number of items in it. (”A starch and a fruit or veggie for snack; a starch, a protein, fruit or veggie for a meal, plus milk and water.”)
Whether they need to have their hair washed today, tomorrow, or this week.
Dogs.
People walking dogs.
Dog poop.
Whether that thing on the sidewalk is a worm or dried bird poop.
Whether they can take off their sandals.
Why they can’t take off their sandals.
Which day of the week it is.
Which day of the week they thought it was.
Whether today is a “weekend day” or a “work day.”
What those kids are doing.
Why those kids are doing that.
Who is passing gas (or as Vivi says,”pathing gath”).
Whether the gas-passer has said “Excuse me” with any sincerity.
The Disney Princesses.
The distinctions among the various princesses.
The similarities of the various princesses.
Why this or that princess ought to be your favorite.
Why it is not, in fact, quite time to clean up.

Five things I’ve drawn in the last week. I’d draw something besides still lives (still lifes?), but nothing else will stand still long enough.

My girls gave me very nice more-or-less home-made cards for Father’s Day:

Julia’s

(What’s she implying by leaving the “H” out of “Happy Father’s Day”?)

Genevieve’s

The last rider in the Tour de France is called the “red lantern” or lanterne rouge. That’s my usual position when Julia and Genevieve are out for a bike ride.

This afternoon, the girls enjoyed their first “swim” of the season in the wading pool. They played for about 45 minutes, which easily doubled their previous record, and best of all, most of my time was spent in the lawn chair, making sure nobody tried to (make the other one) drink the water. Easy, wet, and fun.

I stepped outside for a few minutes to enjoy the evening air but was stopped short by a spectacular light-and-cloud show in the western sky. Click here for the full-sized shot, which still doesn’t do justice to the sight of orange, yellow, white, gray, and blue clouds racing north…