Today I was through in Glasgow for a Killy reunion. It was fun to meet all these people that I hadn’t been at school with, although it transpired that I’d tried to teach some of their offspring. One lady there was a member of another of Edinburgh’s Buddhist sanghas and she’d just been visiting the Portobello Priory (which is where I attend) last Friday. Another nice thing this same lady told me was that she’d given a eulogy at the Scottish Parliament for a recently deceased, long-standing member of the Edinburgh Buddhist scene. So this was an ex-Killy kid addressing the Scottish Parliament—which was one of John A’s great dreams (a Scottish Parliament that is).
I’ve not been through in Glasgow for a while and about the only place I always must visit when I do go through is Borders bookstore (to be American). However I defy anyone to go into that shop and not buy something (it’s much nicer than their Edinburgh shop), and today for me was no exception.
Leafing through one of my purchases on the train home I came across the following:
On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as “bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges—curiosity.”
From The Times
January 12, 2008
Burns was a Scot after all, US library admits
Mike Wade
The literary world was hailing a remarkable coup yesterday after the United States Library of Congress – one of the largest and most influential in the world – agreed to reverse a decision to classify all Scottish writers under the general heading of English.
The original move, which was disclosed by The Times, had meant that the term ‘Scottish Literature’ was no longer to be used. Instead, Scottish authors from Burns, Scott and Stevenson to Irvine Welsh, Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin…
Then We Came to the End is your life and my life. It is how we spend our days and too many of our nights. It is about being away from friends and family, about sharing a stretch of stained tiled carpet with a group of strangers we call colleagues. It is about sitting all morning next to someone you deliberately cross the road to avoid at lunchtime.
Joshua Ferris’s brilliant first novel follows a group of white-collar workers as they struggle to go about their lives amidst the constant fear of who will be next to ‘walk Spanish down the hall’.
(Via .)
I’m thinking of reading this next.
walk Spanish down the hall sounded kind of familiar and a google produced this
Last week I managed to finish rereading The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. I say managed to but the book is a pleasure to read (it’s my laziness that’s the problem). In fact it is one of those books which are touted as great novels but clearly is a great novel, dealing as it does with the decline in fortunes of a family of Sicilian nobility.
There is a very poignant chapter in which the main character Don Fabrizio dies.
He must have had another stroke for suddenly he realised that he was lying stretched on the bed. Someone was feeling his pulse; from the window came the blinding implacable reflection of the sea; in the room could be heard a faint hiss; it was his own death rattle, but he did not know it. Around him was a little crowd, a group of strangers staring at him with frightened expressions. Gradually he recognised them: Concetta, Francesco Paolo, Carolina, Tancredi, Fabrizietto. The person holding the pulse was Doctor Cataliotti; he tried to smile a greeting at the latter but no one seemed to notice; all were weeping except Concetta; even Tancredi, who was saying: “Uncle, dearest Nuncle”.
I urge everyone to read it:)
Note: the Wikipedia article points out the animal mentioned in the title is really a serval and not a leopard.
Whilst waiting on the bus this AM I was debating with myself whether to read on my way over to Portobello (journey time about 30 minutes). One of the books that I currently have on the go — Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec — was in my knapsack, it’s quite cold in Edinburgh today btw. Don’t be so lazy I was telling myself here’s a good half hour opportunity to read — take it. So that’s what I did.
Opening the book at the place where I’d left off on Thursday I found I’d already started the chapter where Perec talks about reading (Reading: A Socio-physiological Outline). Under the section on Transport this is what I read:
Cars and coaches are no use (reading gives you a headache); buses are better suited, but have fewer readers than you might have expected, no doubt because of all there is to see on the street.
That is true for me at any rate (as well as laziness) .
Perec goes onto say that the place for reading is the Métro (he was a Parisian not a Geordie).
I’m surprised that the Minister of Culture, or the Secretary of State for the universities has never yet exclaimed : ‘Stop demanding money for libraries, Messieurs. The true library of the people is the Métro!’ (thunderous applause from the majority benches).
Sadly Edinburgh does not have a Métro, so the bus will have to do despite the distractions of the street.
