Summer Reading

If one were to lift the curtain on the Rowley apartment this summer, one would more often than not find its inhabitants reading. Libby is taking classes that require reading, is part of a summer book club (so far A Severe Mercy and The Diary of Anne Frank) with some teachers from her school, and is also engaged in personal reading projects: currently The Brothers Karamazov. I don't have anything else to do after work, either, so I've been working my way through other Russian literature. In the last month I've finished both Anna Karenina and War and Peace as well as Hard Times by Charles Dickens. I've just started Dostoevsky's Demons. The result is a rather peaceful and contemplative life.

This is my first real foray into Tolstoy. Anna Karenina was a very well written novel, and some have considered it the greatest novel of all time. Nevertheless, I found it morally bothersome. Tolstoy's personal opinions are obscured, and I didn't enjoy the moral ambiguity surrounded the titular character's affair. While it definitely resulted in destruction, the actual cause of the destruction is unclear - is it Anna's fault, Vronsky's fault, or society's fault? Meanwhile, one wonders if the problems Levin is struggling with will expose a solution to Anna's unhappiness. Levin's solution is lyrically beautiful and powerful, but ultimately unsatisfying to an orthodox Christian.

War and Peace is not as good of a novel as Anna Karenina. In fact, in some places it is hardly a novel at all. Indeed, the whole second epilogue is a focused attempt at solving the problems of historiography and putting it on a footing that allows for its study as a positivistic kind of endeavor - to discover the very laws by which human activities are governed. This is very dull and history, ironically, has shown it futile. The narrative, on the other hand, is well written, and the characters themselves are engaging. The scope of the work, admittedly intimidating, is also a strength, as Tolstoy is able to approach many obstacles to true human happiness from a variety of angles. Pierre Bezukhov and Andrew Bolkonsky's concerns, especially, are very interesting reading and I found the thoughts Tolstoy expressing through them interesting and helpful.

Back to reading, now!

Wee Blue Heron

I know it's been awhile, but it's worth recording that last weekend we took a summer trip to Bolsa Chica. We hadn't been there since December, and the birds had mostly completed the transition to summer-time. Not a duck to be found- the only bird bobbing around in the water was a single Pied-billed Grebe. Terns were everywhere, though. The raucous calls of Elegant Terns, especially, filled the air. Least Terns were also nesting in their protected habitat, and Forster's Terns came right up to us on the boardwalk. I put up some pictures and videos at my Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/. I was happier than normal with the pictures. The terns really did come very close to us, and some of the pictures and one of the videos was taken without any zoom. The only drawback was the harsh light; they did come out grainy.

Little Blue Heron at Bolsa Chica
http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2540240986/in/set-72157605394003781/

The terns were a lot of fun to watch, but the best moment came right after we arrived. A helpful birder came up to us and pointed out a Little Blue Heron feeding a few hundred yards away. Heat waves inhibited even our scope, but we hurried over and get some very good views of the rarity. I even got a couple of pictures. This was our first for-sure wild Little Blue Heron. I remember seeing one in a distant exhibit at the San Diego Zoo a few years ago, but we didn't count it because we weren't sure whether or not it was wild. Now we have one that certainly was, and we saw it quite well. Little Blue Herons are a warmer-water Egret. The only breeding population in California is at Sea World, but they're quite common further south and over on the east coast.

We also finally saw our first Red Knots. We're not shorebird aficionados, but Red Knots were one of the common winter shorebirds at Bolsa Chica that we'd somehow overlooked in the past. Since this is probably the low point of the shorebird population in So Cal, it was easy to pick a few of them out among the few Lesser Yellowlegs, western Willets and Marbled Godwits that were foraging in the mud. I got some pictures of those too, but they were too grainy and I'm not going to post them.

Anyway, a two-lifer day in Orange County of all places! Not too shabby.

Field Trip!

We've been studying the human body in Science, so today I took my 5th graders to the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center in LA. It's really incredible. At the exhibit there are actual human bodies, preserved through the process of plastination. One can see every bone, every muscle, every blood vessel and how intricately they all work together without our thinking about it. It was a neat experience, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to do it.

It's a pretty popular exhibit, too. It was hard to get tickets; and it was rather crowded when we were there. Also, apparently, there are people who are so moved by the exhibit that they want to sign up to donate their bodies specifically for this purpose. I heard that they have more people who want to donate their bodies for this exhibit than they can actually use.

At the very end of the exhibit, there's even some information about how you too can donate your body for this. One of my students, after reading about the body donation process, asked me with knitted eyebrows and real concern in her voice: "Mrs. Rowley, when you sign up to donate your body, do they kill you?" I managed not to smile as I explained that they wait for you to die of natural causes before they take your body.

But then later, I laughed.