WebliminalBlog

I’m not sure why I picked up the The Mapmaker’s Wife, by Robert Whitaker, at our local library (The Central Rappahannock Regional Library), but I’m glad I did. He spins a tale of adventure, scientific exploration, bad decisions, bad luck, atrocious conditions, and perseverance. The book is set in 17th Century Peru (what is now Ecuador) and South America in the mid 17th Century. The continent had not been fully explored at that point. The story concerns first a scientific expedition to measure a degree of latitude at the equator, with the hope of deciding whether Newton’s or Descartes’ predictions of the Earth’s shape was correct. Whitaker does a good job helping us to imagine the difficulties theses scientists form England and France had to endure. Still it’s difficult for me to imagine that these people would embark on a mission that they new would take several years and from which they may never return. That’s part of the story and explains how the mapmaker got to Peru and married the daughter of a well-to-do land owner. The remaining story of her perseverance and good and bad fortune as she and her brothers travel from Peru tot he other side of the continent on the Amazon, is as fantastic and believable. Thoroughly worth a read, and thanks to Whitaker for writing it. You’ll also want to see the accompanying Web site.

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Comment from Kathryn Birch
I enjoyed the book because I have always loved science. I only wish historians would realize that this is a great way for people who hate reading non-fictional history to have more of an interest in the past.
I also wish the book had an addendum of the actual letter that Jean Godin sent to La Condamine regarding his wife’s travail in the Amazon. I will see if I can access this on the web!

A few stories are starting to appear about the new book “The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden” by Stanley Kunitz and, our friend Genine Lentine.

In the NY Times: A Poet in Winter Relishes Spring in His Garden - New York Times

Stanley Kunitz, Pulitzer Prize winner, poet laureate of the United
States - twice, the first time from 1974 to 1976, when the title was
“consultant in poetry,” the second in 2000 at the age of 95 - will turn
100 this summer. And he is still hard at work, he says, in his office
and his garden.

In The Boston Globe: Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Magazine / Earth Angel

Although Stanley Kunitz began spending summers in Provincetown in 1957,
he didn’t buy a house there until 1962. It was on Commercial Street in
the West End, with about 2,000 square feet of front yard. Or, rather,
sandbank: It lacked even a single blade of grass.

An AP story on Yahoo! News: Kunitz Works on Poetry Ahead of Tribute - Yahoo! News

“It’s harder as the years go by,” Kunitz says. “One is always looking
for something to say that hasn’t been said before, that doesn’t seem to
be an imitation of the old work. It is always a search for something
… that is representative of the best you can do. And if it isn’t
that, it isn’t worth publishing.”

I just finished reading “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World” by Michael Pollan. What an enjoyable book! Pollan’s writing is intelligent, witty, and just a pleasure to read.

We correctly have the notion that we effect the plants in our environment. Not doubting that or diminishing our role in our environment, Pollan writes about the effect that plants have humans. The ways they have changed us, just as we have been changing them through selective breeding and most recently through genetic engineering. Reading this book reinforces the notion that humans and plants are connected, not separate from each other in the world. He does this by taking an in-depth view of the interplay between humans and four representative plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. All the while I reading it I felt I was with a kind, smart friend. The book is wonderful and I’m looking forward to reading some of his other work.

Here’s a favorite quote from the book: ” There is another word for this extremist noticing –this sense of first sight unencumbered by knowingness, by the already-been-theres and seen-thats of the adult mind–and that word, of course, is wonder. Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present. This is why, unless you are a child, wonder depends on forgetting–on a process,that is, of subtraction.”

In his book “The Universal Computer The Road From Leibniz To Turing,”
Martin Davis presents a history of the development of logic that focus on creating a system in which computation is purely symbolic .

Starting with Leibniz’s ‘wonderful idea’ - a language based on an alphabet whose “elements represented not sounds, but concepts. A language based on such an alphabet should make it possible to determine by symbolic calculation which sentences written in the language were true and what logical relationships existed among them.” In his exposition he takes a clear path from Leibniz to Boole to Frege to Cantor to Hilbert to Godel and then to Turing. As a former student of mathematics (in the 60’s and 70’s, and current teacher of computer science (since the 80’s) my appreciation of his exposition was enhanced by my own recollections of the names and events he describes. Furthermore, he gives you the feeling that you’re reading something written by an insider - telling us stories and tidbits that we on the outside can enjoy and appreciate. The book is nicely done with extensive notes. Give it a read when you get the chance.

A more detailed review is available at “Read This! The MAA Online book review column” , by Mark Johnson.

We’re leaving for a two-week trip in a few days and so we’ve go to return our books to the Library, because they can only be checked out for two weeks. We love our library - The Central Rappahannock Regional Library. It has a great collection and a very good online presence. It has been the recipient of several awards, as well. Still, whenever we take a prolonged trip we try to gather up the books that we’ve been renewing and renewing for many months and return.

Some that we’ve had checked out are great cook books, some are used for reference, and some, for one reason or another, we have been taking a very long time to read. So this entry, and maybe some others will list some books, that I’ll want to check out again when we return.

The Dream Machine by M.Mitchell Waldrop. A great account of J.C.R. Licklider and his influence on the development of the Internet, and time-shared and personal computing.

Some cookbooks:

• This Can’t be Tofu by Deborah Madison. This one has been a mainstay in our kitchen. We love it and what comes from it. Check out my blog entry about the recipe for Sauteed Asparagus with Curried Tofu and Tomatoes
• Lulu’s Provencal Table, by Richard Olney. Although we use it for just a couple of recipes, I’m always planning on using it more. I wrote up the recipe for Chard Omelet in a blog entry of last July.
• Cooking With Nora: Seasonal Menus from Restaurant Nora : Healthy, Light, Balanced, and Simple Food With Organic Ingredients by Nora Pouillon, Koji Hayashi . We ate at Restaurant Nora in D.C. for the first time last fall. It was wonderful, and her recipes are great too. Not too hard to follow, and not too complicated. Go to Restaurant Nora when you get the chance. It’s in the Du Pont Circle area of D.C.