This holiday, in between shopping for presents, I began reading an amazing book, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde. It is, in part, about the cultural meaning of gift exchange, and though my timing in reading it during Christmas was coincidental, the resonances were very welcome. By day, I would buy gifts and experience a familiar twinned pleasure and guilt at all the consumption. By night, I would read The Gift and find myself getting to the source of that dual emotion.
For the last few years, when the vacation and holiday seasons come around and
the news stories start to dry up, I've looked back in time to previous centuries
to find something newsworthy. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour 300
years back in time to the year 1709 ....
An usually cold weather front hit Northern Europe on January 6 (believed to be
the coldest period for 500 years). The Great Freeze lasted three months but the
effects were felt all year. The seas around the coast of Britain and Northern
France froze over, crops failed and in Paris alone 24,000 died. In London, the
Thames froze solid and markets took place on the ice. Some suggest that the
freeze was caused by volcanic eruptions of Mount Fuji in Japan and, to a lesser
extent, Santorini and Vesuvius in Europe.
Although
it was a very cold winter it was not entirely out of character – 1709 was one of
the 24 winters between 1408 and 1814 (a period broadly known as the "Little Ice
Age") in which the Thames froze in London. Although the people at the time
probably didn't think much of the weather, music lovers have reason to be
grateful for the Little Ice Age as Antonio Stradivari created his finest
instruments between 1698 and 1725 and it has been proposed that the particularly
cold climate caused the wood used in his violins to be denser than in warmer
periods, contributing to the tone of his instruments.
About a year ago, I wrote a blog about ebook readers and my
decision to purchase a Sony PRS-505. I have absolutely no regrets, and I still love my reader; I can no longer say, though, that I "wouldn't trade it for anything."
First, I'm thrilled, pleased and tickled to death that after decades of owning ebook readers I'm finally using a product that's likely to become part of the mainstream. I've got at least three obsolete devices sitting around for which I can no longer purchase books. I truly believe that ebooks are here to stay this time. You can't read an industry publication these days without seeing at least one article about the evolving ebook market. Ebooks are the only segment of the book industry whose sales have seen a dramatic increase during the recession, and I know at least half a dozen people who are asking for an e-reader for the holidays this year. (Not to mention the fact that I'm frequently seeing others with these devices on the bus; mine is no longer a novelty.)
Not long ago I awoke in the middle of the night and realized immediately that it had
arrived. The air, when I had gone to bed, was still faintly sultry, the air of evening that comes after a day of golden, soft sunshine. But when I woke in the dark I felt how the temperature had dropped, and the air smelled of autumn. It was like learning a secret, the rest of the city asleep around me, while I felt that I was the first to learn: autumn had come swiftly, quietly, to town. The moment was brief and delicious, and resonant with sudden memories and sensations
that pulled me back into the comfort of sleep, and when I woke it was still there, the edge of the chill, but even more – the faint smell of this change in the seasons.
It made me want to read.
OK, I confess, I joined Facebook. Now, you have to remember I'm a computer geek, and as such, I'm not really all that
good at dealing with people, face-to-face. I'm much happier working with machines; they're logical, they don't talk back, and generally do what you tell them to without argument. (Although I do have one server that I swear wants a blood sacrifice before it'll condescend to behave.) If I have to interact with people over the course of the day, I do everything possible to do it in writing (yes, e-mail is my friend). So, it only makes sense that a medium that allows me to interact with others, without actually having to talk
to them, would offer some appeal.
At first I thought it was kind of silly; I had four or five "friends" (distant cousins and co-workers) with whom I'd rarely communicated in the past and have little in common with now, and I just couldn't understand the attraction. (Sadly, I didn't really care that my cousin spent her evening watching Glee on Fox.) Then, one day, the oddest thing happened – I got contacted by a former high school boyfriend. From there, one thing led
to another, and now I'm in contact with all these people I have had nothing to do with for decades. (Still not entirely sure whether or not that's a good thing – and they probably feel the same way.)
Steampunk: It's not as new, confusing, or weird as you may have heard. In fact, this sub-genre of science fiction is actually quite warm and welcoming - and it's loads of fun. So let's take a minute to talk about what it is, and where it came from.
"Steampunk" is a style (of books, video games, comic books, movies, and more) that hearkens back to the fantastic/adventure literature of the nineteenth century. Jules Verne's stories about exploration and mayhem, H.G. Wells and his
tales of alien invasion and time travel, and Mary Shelley's tome about science gone awry ... in these famous works you'll find the seeds of the modern steampunk sensibility.