Wednesday, November 23, 2022

The Great Gatsby an Alternate View and an Alternate History

The family is reading The Great Gatsby. It is something new for us. About 12 years ago our daughter and I read The Sun Also Rises. After that I read For Whom the Bell Tolls on my own. My wife and I have read some of the same books—I read four Rex Stouts for her; she read some cyberpunk scifi for me—but we never read together like a book club. 

About page 44 for me, Laurel asked about study guides and I examined four online, from the New York State Regents Examination Preparation down to GradeSaver and Shmoop. The Regents want you to know your tropes but the criticisms are all pretty much the same about the decadence of the Roaring Twenties. For the academic critics parallels to America today are impossible to ignore. I can take a different view. I can find in The Great Gatsby the hints and tendrils of new virtues then and now, supplanting Victorian sensibilities, which I can contend are also misunderstood by critical theorists from sociology and literature today.

 

Consider Jordan Baker. She earns an independent income as a golf pro, competing in tournaments. That would have been impossible before World War I. We easily accept that Nick Carraway sells bonds, but that, too, did not exist until about the 1820s. It could have been explained to a medieval banker or merchant factor. They bought and sold paper. Gaining understanding from a noble, knight, or peasant would have been difficult. Industrial capitalism of the mid-19th century created the bonds markets to finance canals, railroads, etc. The soubriquet nouveau riche was an insult. It should have been a compliment, speaking to the creation of new wealth. 

 

When I read this in college (1967), the only thing that I took away was that Daisy’s ineptitude as a driver symbolized her inability to manage her own life. I understand. But, really, no one could drive back then. Today, we have two or three generations raised in automobiles, conditioned to perceiving the world at 60 mph. And cars are much safer with seatbelts, airbags, impact resistant superstructures, automatic transmissions, power steering, and steel belted radial tires. We still kill 40,000 people a year, but the population is three times larger than it was in 1925. So, the symbolism stands: Daisy is a wreck. That being so, automobiles nonetheless deserve context.

 

World War I was the turning point. When I cannot get to sleep, I imagine that I have a time machine and box of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. To whom would they go? What would be the reaction? I could have the books on a Kindle or iPad, itself a wonder to underscore the veracity of the claims. (And then I am asleep.) But what if…? Had World War I not destroyed the status quo of Europe, what would the world of 1940 have been like?

 

I like to think that we could have been on our way to the Moon. The Internet would exist via telephone, radio, television, and teletype. But would any woman earn an independent income playing golf? Would women vote? 

 

I am enjoying The Great Gatsby for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing. I underline phrases and block off paragraphs of narrative. That in itself is motivation and reward. 


PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Aaron Feldman: Buy the Book Before You Buy the Coin 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

Dealers Make the Show: Amadillocon 41 Day 3 Part 2 

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet 

Libraries of the Founders 

 


Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Lunar Eclipse 8 November 2022

This was the last total Lunar eclipse until 14 March 2025. I got out early and took my time. Other snapshots have gone better. 

These were taken with an iPhone 11 on a Celestron NexYZ adapter connected to an Explore Scientific 102 mm f/6.47 refractor with a Nagler 32-mm Plössl ocular at 20X. Snapshots with an iPhone 5 did not go well this time. I also relied on a Celestron 32-mm eyepiece. For both, the Neutral Density Filters (“Moon Filters”) were from Celestron. These are the best of 45 tries.


Snapshot 1 just before 50% in the penumbra.

I got out at 1:00 AM CST for the 2:00 AM start and set-up went well. I made time to observe naked eye and through the telescope between exchanges of attachments. At 4:50, I stopped adjusting the hardware and only observed. 


The photographs do not represent the image captured by the eye. Naked eye, the Moon was never completely dark. Totality did not look like this. Also, the color was never a full startling red, only a dusky red-gray. 


Snapshot 38 close to 50% in the penumbra.


As the Moon passed 50% into the penumbra, darkness brought out the stars, about 150 in all including the Hyades and Gemini. Through the telescope, I viewed Messier 42, Messier 41, and the Pleiades. Mars was high in the west and even at 20X the sky was clear enough and dark enough to show surface markings on the planet. Predicted clouds arrived at 5:20 AM.

 

The fans kept the dew off. 
Dew point and ambient were close all morning.


Also, as soon as it got noticeably dark, the world got quiet. Past 50%, I do not recall hearing an emergency vehicle siren for the remainder of the morning.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Antikythera Device 

The Drunken Astronomers 

Eclipses? 

Astrophotography and Me 

Observing with NASA: An Open Platform for Citizen Science