November 2009 Full Moon – Right Brain

Although the correct time of the November Full Moon is dated: November 2, 19:14 UTM, I thought I’d post a day earlier. Since we have just fallen off Daylight Savings Time here in the USA. I’ll let you calculate the exact phase of the November moon when this image was taken at 6:00 PM Sunday Evening November 1st. 2009!

Just to trick you, I filtered this image through GIMP so there would be no way of seeing a difference between this phase and the exact Full Moon Phase.

This way you can imagine looking at it with the Right Brain just like you would glance up at it while walking hand-in-hand with your favorite friend or spouse.

Just in case you never heard of your Right Brain – your body is controlled by a Right Brain and a Left Brain! Are you surprised?

The right-hand side of the human brain, believed to be associated with creative thought and the emotions.

The left-hand side of the human brain, which is believed to be associated with linear and analytical thought.

Ever wonder why some of us are so unsatisfied with our positions in life? I’m not saying there is anything wrong with our positions in life, but just maybe there is something missing and we can’t seem to put our finger on it?

I can say I’ve been there, Done that! I don’t want to rule the future, but I want to someday retire and live the rest of my life with that something the past 40 years had been missing as part of my profession and to make it a priority the rest of my life! I consider the majority of my hobbies as Right Brain, so after retirement – hobbies WILL EVOLVE INTO FULL TIME!

Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future says:
A Whole New Mind is for anyone who wants to survive and thrive in this emerging world – people uneasy with their careers or dissatisfied with their lives, entrepreneurs and business leaders eager to stay ahead of the next new wave, parents who want to equip their children for the future, and the legions of emotionally astute and creatively adroit people whose distinctive abilities the Information Age has often overlooked and undervalued.
In this book, you will learn the six essential aptitudes – what he calls “the six senses” – on which professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend. Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning. These are fundamentally human abilities that everyone can master – and helping you do that is my (Daniel H. Pink) goal.

Summertime Reflections

on September 1st, 1985, my wife, daughter, and friends joined me on a short journey to Haverhill, Massachusetts to the homestead of John Greenleaf Whittier. if you are familiar with this early american poet, the following will make sense to you:

we took a ride to visit his homestead
the poet i read while laying in bed

we saw his house, the small desk and chair
the poems i read, he wrote sitting there

we saw his fireplace and felt the glow
remembering Snowbound shut-in by snow

hung on the wall was a red riding hood
left behind by love we have understood

my wife found an acorn under a tree
now as i hold it the homestead i see

well on August 15, 2009, saturday, before noon,  after reading from Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, i thought it would be interesting to spend the afternoon being tourists around the Haverhill, Massachusetts area, while imagining the summers of long ago that may have influenced John Greenleaf Whittier to translate into poetry.

Well, traveling in Southern Maine and Coastal New Hampshire, with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees, we decided to turn westbound, get something to eat, then head back to Southern Maine. traveling on interstate highways are scenic to a point and the RampVan air conditioning was working well, but today was too hot to play follow the leader in erratic traffic.

comparing the image on this post with the few verses of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Dream, i’ll let you decide if traveling with the stop and go traffic patterns of restless families heading to ocean beaches before some of them reach their boiling point. the northbound lanes were backed up for MILES!

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” 2.1. 249-256:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

The Reapers – A Thriller

i finished reading The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl for the second time – missed subtle things the first time around. this time i researched The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), while reading the novel. it is amazing what you discover re-reading a novel.

i have been reading a half dozen or so John Connolly books and i’ve decided to read The Reapers next. this is private detective Charlie Parker book#7 and i don’t know much about this book – it will be interesting to find out.

sometimes it is good to start reading a novel without any previous knowledge of the story and be surprised as it unfolds. a good thriller helps you forget your surroundings – a great escape.

John Connolly used to live here in southern Maine, a few miles from me, although i never knew him. He now lives in Dublin, Ireland.

The Dante Club Quote

“Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.”

Matthew Pearl – The Dante Club

The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl

I’ve own hardbound copies of The Harvard Classics and after reading Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, I discovered The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri in The Harvard Classics is not the translation translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1882), but the translation translated by Henry Francis Cary (1805-1814).

The first American translation of The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri was by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and still widely read.

I recommend reading Matthew Pearl’s  The Dante Club. I’ll keep my opinions to myself and let you discover your own – There is plenty to discover!

I have read most of Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, but decided to read it again – only this time I am going to follow along with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation of The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri.

Who in the world is Dante?
Dante degli Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet wrote The Divine Comedy (1309-1320) an epic poem that describes his spiritual journey through Hell and Purgatory and finally to Paradise. (What’s love have to do with it?)

You may enjoy discovering facts about – Dante degli Alighieri…

Note:
Comedy – ORIGIN late Middle English (as a genre of drama, also denoting a narrative poem with a happy ending, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy)

Two more novels of a great writer.  I picked up Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow to read next. I also plan to read Matthew Pearl’s The Last Dickens real soon. I’ll let you know what I discovered in both of these novel after reading them.

For Your Info:

The Harvard Classics

The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot that was first published in 1909.

Eliot, then President of Harvard University, had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf.)

I think those who are interested in these volumes will read every word and spend hour after hour enjoying the journey through them.

Annie Dillard – The Maytrees

somewhere around 34 years ago, i read the Pulitzer-Prize winning “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” by Annie Dillard. i have read all of her books since – thanks for sharing Annie!

this weekend, i finished reading “The Maytrees”. the next time i visit Cape Cod, Massachusetts, i will see things i didn’t see on my last visit back in the 1980s. it is always nice to brush up on your history when traveling or visiting somewhere – it makes all the difference in the world.

i love big words to look up and name dropping – i look them up too. if you don’t know what i mean, you may want to read Annie’s books – it will be like taking a class for extra credits about…well…

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?”

“Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?”

Annie Dillard, “The Writing Life” 1989

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Annie Dillard – Official Website

Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game Series

thank you Orson Scott Card for sharing your creativity – excellent series with excellent characters.

years ago, i read and enjoyed the Ender’s Game Series – every time I hear the series or any of the characters mentioned, a flood of characters fill my mind with memories of their adventures.

i have my favorite characters, but i’ll let you decide for yourself, who your favorites may be!

below are the titles and sequence of the series with summaries copied from various places.

# 1 : Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

# 2 : Speaker for the Dead (1986) by Orson Scott Card

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: the Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War. Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered by Portuguese colonists on the planet Lusitania. But again the aliens’ ways are strange and frightening … again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery … and the truth. Orson Scott Card infuses this tale with intellect by casting his characters in social, religious and cultural contexts.

# 3 : Xenocide (1991) by Orson Scott Card

In this continuation of Ender Wiggin’s story, the Starways Congress has sent a fleet to immolate the rebellious planet of Lusitania, home to the alien race of pequeninos, and home to Ender Wiggin and his family. Concealed on Lusitania is the only remaining Hive Queen, who holds a secret that may save or destroy humanity throughout the galaxy. Familiar characters from the previous novels continue to grapple with religious conflicts and family squabbles while inventing faster-than-light travel and miraculous virus treatments. Throw into the mix an entire planet of mad geniuses and a self-aware computer who wants to be a martyr, and it’s hard to guess who will topple the first domino.

# 4 : Children of the Mind (1996) by Orson Scott Card

The planet Lusitania is home to three sentient species: the Pequeninos, a large colony of humans, and the Hive Queen, who was brought there by Ender Wiggin. But now, once again, the human race has grown fearful; the Starways Congress has gathered a fleet to destroy Lusitania. Ender’s oldest friend, Jane, an evolved computer intelligence, can save the three sentient species of Lusitania. She has learned how to move ships out-side the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the network of computers in which she lives, world by world. Soon Jane will not be able to move the ships. Ender’s children must save her if they are to save themselves.

# 5 : Ender’s Shadow (1999) by Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card brings us back to the very beginning of his brilliant Ender Quartet, with a novel that allows us to reenter that world anew…. “The human race is at War with the “Buggers,” an insect-like alien race. The first battles went badly, and now as Earth prepares to defend itself against the imminent threat of total destruction at the hands of an inscrutable alien enemy, all focus is on the development and training of military geniuses who can fight such a war, and win…. “Andrew “Ender” Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School; he was just the best of the best. In this new book, Card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean—the one who became Ender’s right hand, his strategist, and his friend.

# 6 : Shadow of the Hegemon (2000) by Orson Scott Card

This sequel to Ender’s Shadow finds the wars over, with Ender in self-imposed exile off-planet. The remaining students of Battle School, now young teens, are trying to adjust to their civilian status when they are suddenly abducted-all except Bean, who escapes and goes into hiding with Sister Carlotta, the nun who raised him.

# 7 : Shadow Puppets (2002) by Orson Scott Card

In this the 7th book in the Ender saga, the governments of the world all want to have control of the smart children from the days of the formic wars. Peter Wiggen has an idea about how to solve this problem. He wants to bring back the world government.

# 8 : Shadow of the Giant (2005) by Orson Scott Card

Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins’ right hand, Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender’s defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family – something he has never known – but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies – old enemies from the days in Ender’s Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender’s footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.