Books Read and Not Read in 2023

This past summer, I read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. I also read The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds in quick succession. I just finished Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Between those markers are several other science fiction novels left unfinished including The Iron Heel. James Joyce’s Ulysses was quickly abandoned. 

Curious Books in East Lansing.

Hurston was recommended to me by a co-worker, a garage attendant with a degree in English. I had no idea who Hurston was and reading about her was as compelling as her work. She was complicated. So, she is a Rorschach inkblot to every biographer. I will not add my uninformed opinions. I like Huston’s narration. 

 

“Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters, walking together like harmony in a song.”

 

“They sat in the fresh young darkness close together. Pheoby eager to feel and do through Janie, but hating to show her zest for fear it might be thought mere curiosity. Janie full of that oldest human longing—self revelation. Pheoby held her tongue for a long time, but she couldn’t help moving her feet. So, Janie spoke.”

 

“Sop and his friends had tried to hurt her but she knew it was because they loved Tea Cake and didn’t understand. So she sent Sop word and to all the others through him. So the day of the funeral they all came with shame and apology in their faces. They wanted her quick forgetfulness. So they filled up and overflowed the ten sedans Janie had hired and added others to the line. Then the band played, and Tea Cake rode like a Pharaoh to his tomb. No expensive veils and robes for Janie this time. She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.”

 

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (Harvill Secker, 2006. Set in Stempel Garamond), is a fantasy. As parody, it is a spoof and quickly became cloying. And yet, it remains interesting as I read night after night. It is a story about books, writing them, printing them, buying, selling, and collecting them. Our hero, Optimus Yarnspinner, is a dinosaur. This world is also inhabited by many other fantastic creatures. Their images were drawn by the author. 

Inhabitants of Bookholm.

 

Not being steeped in literature myself, many of the allusions went over my head. About halfway in, the anagrams leapt out at me because of a parody of “The Bells” written by Perla la Gadeon whose anagram I deciphered on sight. Much else fell into place. I already understood the bookstores and the other avenues of commerce and the inelegant pathways of earning a living by writing for readers. 

 

Bibliophiles who live underground.

I also found something that the author did not intend with his description of a book hospital where devoted cyclops creatures repair old books. “It’s where we restore worm-eaten or damaged books. We reconstruct texts and reprint them or repair the bindings. Books can be damaged in many ways,” explains the guide. It sounds benevolent but we just attended "The Long Lives of Very Old Books" at the Harry Ransom Center and among the displays were forgeries in which stolen books had been cut apart, pages reproduced (sometimes by hand lettering), and the books rebound, and sold to collectors. The British Museum bought a large inventory of its own former shelving.

Addendum 21 January 2024

I finished the book. I thought that Moers wrote it in English because I did not believe that the translator, John Brownjohn, is a real person. He is. Moers himself is secretly famous. 

Walter Moers on IMDb
Walter Moers in LibraryThing 
Walter Moers in TVTropes 
Walter Moers in Wikipedia 
The City of Dreaming Books in Wikipedia 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Start the Presses! 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

ArmadilloCon 45 

Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard Serenity 

Libraries of the Founders 

 

OBSERVATION LOG

 I am writing an article about the 31 January 1783 and 1862 first sightings of the white dwarfs 40 Eridani BC (companions to Keid Omicron-2 Eridani) and Sirius B. We have another night (maybe two) of good viewing. My targets for tonight are Gamma Ceti, Uranus and Neptune, and Keid ABC. For the triple stars, I have other Barlows and even an Explore Scientific 5X focal extender.

We had some clearing and I got out on the 11th and 17th for a few minutes and again on the 24th with my "grab-and-go" Explore Scientific 102-mm achromatic refractor on an Explore Twilight 1 mount. With the forecast encouraging, I set up my Astronomics AT-115 apochromatic refractor on its Celestron AVX mount. It took me a couple of nights to get everything in place and get myself out of the house for the night. The oculars were a Meade 5000 UWA (ultra wide angle: 80 deg) 14mm (57X) and an AstroTech PF (Premium Flat because they cannot say Perfectly Flat field of view) 5.5 mm (146X). For the Pleiades, I used a Tele Vue 32mm Ploessl without and with a Tele Vue Bandmate Type II filter with narrow bandpass for doubly ionized O-III and excited hydrogen H-beta. 

Setting up the multi-star alignment, Keid was offered in the menu. That was my first view of that star. Last night, I viewed Keid 40 Eridani again and made three sketches at 57X, 146X, and 292X. I was not able to split the companions and saw them as a single star.

From 2102 PM to 0115 AM

• Keid 40 Eridani – see drawings
• Uranus – small white circle 14mm (57X) and 5.5 mm (146X)
• 52 Eridani 
• Gamma Arietis (Mesarthim) 
• Eta Cassiopeia 
• Messier 103 no joy
• Andromeda Galaxy
• Gamma Ceti
• Messier 41
• Messier 42
• IC 2118 "Witch's Hat" no joy
• Pleiades.

Tonight: Gamma Ceti (split AB primary), Uranus and Neptune (both in Aries), Keid A and BC split.

Added 30 December 2023 5:52

When I started the alignment the area around Deneb which was low in the west was very clear. "My god. It's full of stars." Starting with low power from 14 mm at 57X and 7 mm at 114X, I increased the magnification with the Explore Scientific 5X focal extender to 285 power and then to 570+. And I found the lesser member of the binary pair with Keid. Herschel first found them at 460X with his 48-inch f/10 reflector. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1785, Vol. 75 (1785), pp. 40-126. Introduction on page 46 and stars reported page 87.)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction 2020 

Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirshfeld's Astronomy Activity Manual 

Against Dark Skies 

Seeing in the Dark: Your Front Row Seat to the Universe

Christmas Stars: Menkar and Keid; Scrooge and Franklin

Every Christmas we wonder why astrologers were compelled to travel a thousand kilometers across the desert. I have no idea. But I do know that there is always something interesting happening in the sky. In 2020, the December conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter rewarded anyone who looked up at night. This year my telescopes will be turned to the constellations Eridanus and Cetus. 

Not being on the zodiac, they do not enjoy the attendant mysticism. It is just that my living now at 30N latitude makes those constellations easier to explore. Also, I am writing about Keid (40 Eridani) and its companion omicron Eridani. (It has two, denoted B and C, but I do not expect to overcome the urban sky here.) I observed the orange giant Menkar alpha Ceti last week. Tonight through Thursday, the sky should be clear and the full Moon not obscuring the view with Thursday night being the best opportunity with a later rising of the Moon.  

It is nice to have the week off as a paid holiday. That is an old tradition, but not the one most people usually think of. The year of 365¼ days was reconciled with the circle of 360 degrees by not counting the five dead days between the winter solstice feast of Saturn and the start of the Julian New Year. It was a direct import from Egypt because of Cleopatra Ptolemy’s alliance with Gaius Julius Caesar.  

The Thebans say that they are the earliest of all men and the first people among whom philosophy and the exact science of the stars were discovered, since their country enables them to observe more distinctly than others the rising and settings of the stars.  Peculiar to them also is their ordering of the months and years. For they do not reckon the days by the moon, but by the sun, making their month of thirty days, and they add five and a quarter days to the twelve months and in this way fill out the cycle of the year. But they do not intercalate months or subtract days, as most of the Greeks do. – Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book I, paragraph 50. (Online at U Chicago Penelope here.) 

We think of Christmas as a continuing tradition, uninterrupted for 2000 years. But it was interrupted and abandoned. We do not understand Ebenezer Scrooge. He was a religious conservative of that time, a fundamentalist Protestant. Calvinists of that time had come to accept that you demonstrate your election and bring others to salvation by working hard and being thrifty. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism begins by republishing Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth. 

A Colonial Christmas

Christmas on December 25 has not much support in Biblical text. After a hiatus, Christmas was re-invented. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) fit with the invention of the Christmas greeting card (1843) which took advantage of the invention of the postage stamp (1840).  

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Merry Newtonmas 2022 

Merry Newtonmas 2011 

The Christmas Star 2017 

Before Email 

30 Minutes with Dinosaurs

I made time during my campus patrols to visit the Science and Natural History Museum at the University of Texas at Austin. The collection is impressive, far surpassing what I grew up with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and also what I have seen over the years at other museums. It is emblematic of Texas that the museum had to be closed because it ran out of state funding. I am happy that it is open again.

Clearly, not my field. Judging by the rocks revealed by excavations at
construction sites here in Austin, I thought that this all was underwater
for the last 500 million years. 

The specimen drawers are arranged to encourage exploring.

For a good picture, you really need to stand far enough back
that it could not get you.

Just saying "Dimetrodon" is half the fun.

Who knew? Xenophora clean and attach to themselves random
bits off the floor. 

We have a rule in the house against more bric-a-brac
but the Selenite was calling to me.
So, I bought two. I also got a coffee cup for myself.

Previously on Necessary Facts

The Unremarkable Origin of Species 

Epigenetics and Evolution 

The Origin of … (What?) 

The Philosophical Breakfast Club

The Map that Changed the World 

AFK: Parking Enforcement

Working as a University of Texas parking enforcement officer since 11 September has allowed me easy access to the libraries that I use most often, even though I have not been able to pry away time to visit more. (I did see the Gutenberg Bible at the Harry Ransom Center.) The morning drive to work takes one hour (40-50 minutes) and the commute home can take two (45 to 90 minutes). I am working tomorrow’s football game against Texas Tech from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM. (The pay is great: with game day overtime and event bonus, it comes to the same as being a technical writer.) 

Some Saturdays have been devoted to the City of Kyle Public Library Astronomy Club and others to the Austin Astronomical Society and I still edit (and sometimes write) a monthly column for the Historical Astronomy Division of the AAS (here: https://had.aas.org/resources/astro-history). Something had to give. 

I try find whatever personal rewards that I can for self-actualization and transcendence (from Maslow’s Hierarchy). It has been a very long time since I watched the clock and looked forward to Friday. The advantages include UT healthcare insurance, as much walking as I choose to do (and I love walking), along with the light physical challenges of wrestling 22 lbs. of iron around an SUV’s tires to immobilize a scofflaw.  

I also have the opportunity engage in
philosophical discussions about semantics.

 

At the snack bar here,
the food is not labeled correctly
and they do not give out receipts for purchases.

 

This is still my favorite.

 Waiting to be written are these researches.

Like the problem of the tree that falls in a forest when no one is around, the fact is that there is sound in space. Stellar events create shock waves that cause compressions and rarefactions in the particles that comprise what we too easily call empty space.

NGC 6231 is easy to see in the lower body of the Scorpion. It has not been easy for professionals to sort out which stars are bound in the open cluster, which are background and which are foreground. I sketched it several times.

IC 1296 is a barred spiral galaxy that often appears in amateur photographs of the more famous M57 Ring Nebula in Lyra. In fact, I believe that it is an easy claim that amateurs have produced more photographs than professionals. I ran a literature search on the Harvard NASA database of articles and found some references. 

Messier 30 appeared here in October. I would like to recast those as a single magazine article. The cluster is moving opposite to the inertial frame of the Milky Way. So, professional astronomers believe that it was captured in a collision with another galaxy.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

AFK: Away from the Keyboard

AFK: Hurricane Harvey

Minimizing the Likelihood of Bad Cops

Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science

TOMMY JAMES AND THE SHONDELLS AND THE MOB

You are known by the company you keep. When Thomas Gregory Jackson became Tommy James of the Shondells, he was already on a career arc that included the most popular musicians of his (our) generation at that time and also drew him into the circle of Morris Levy’s Roulette Records which was a subset of the Mafia crime families of New York and New Jersey. 

Though his own family moved in his early years because his father was a hotel manager, basically, Tommy James came from Niles, Michigan. So, this could be the story of Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band or of Joe Walsh and the James Gang, or a dozen others from the 1960s who lived anywhere between Pittsburgh and Chicago. I did not know all of his gold records. Some I had to listen to on YouTube. His early hits echoed in my memories of times and places over the two weeks in which I was immersed in reading this. 

 

Tommy James’s autobiography is unassuming and revealing. 

  

Me, the Mob, and the Music:
One Helluva Ride with Tommy James
and the Shondells 
by Tommy James with Martin Fitzpatrick,
Scribner; Simon & Schuster, 2011.

The title comes from a statement by Morris Levy after the first hit song: You’re in for a hell of a ride (pages 62-63). In the wake of that chart topper, Thomas Gregory Jackson became Tommy James. The name “Shondells” had no special meaning except that several pop groups had similar names: Rondels, Del-Tones, Delfonics, etc.

 

For much of his career, he lived in residence hotels and apartments. And of course, he was often touring, playing in town after town, city after city. I was surprised that even though he grew up in the hotel business, he seemed never to have used any special knowledge to garner a room upgrade, off-hours room service, or anything else. 

 

It took him a long time to come around to being a parent and he did not do very well at it. Abandoning his wife and child, it took about 90 pages before he called home, even though his wife was living with his parents from the very first. (Her family was opposed to the marriage because they were opposed to the pregnancy.) 

 

It was interesting that he absorbed the Mob mentality. After several scenes in which Morris Levy threatened people, Tommy used the same language and tone when he felt that Gene Pitney had taken his music. 

 

Hubert Humphrey wrote the liner notes for the album Crimson and Clover (page 165). This was a time of protest and very few young musicians were aligned with the Establishment, not even with the Democrats and certainly not with the Republicans. On another matter entirely, I once read that Barry Goldwater said that listening to Hubert Humphrey was like trying to read Playboy with your wife turning the pages. So, the story here of Tommy James giving Vice President Humphrey amphetamines struck a responsive chord. Humphrey said that he got a lot of work done that night. I can only imagine. 

I have to confess that I did not know until I read it here that Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago arranged for ballot boxes to disappear, thus swinging the electoral college votes from Illinois into the Republican column, contributing to the Nixon victory. Daley was furious because at the convention, in a speech nominating George McGovern, Sen. Abraham Ribicoff denounced Daley's administration for the "Gestapo tactics" of the Chicago police department.

 

Some years after that, eventually, Tommy James found his religion, realized that he was always a Christian, and had himself placed at the Betty Ford Clinic. 

 

Hit Songs I Know

Hanky Panky 

I Think We’re Alone Now 

Mony Mony 

Mirage

Crystal Blue Persuasion

Draggin the Line

 

Mentioned in the book, these songs I did not know but found on YouTube. 

Ball of Fire

Say I Am

She

Sweet Cherry Wine

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Austin at Night 

South by Southwest 2013 

Rachmaninoff 

Music Makes You Braver 

State Guard Song “Texans Serving Texans”

Messier 30 and a Nearby Star

I made a project of viewing globular cluster Messier 30 again over three nights.

I located the object by drawing a triangle from Delta Capricorni (Deneb Algiedi - tail of the Goat), and Zeta Capricorni and the expected position of Messier 31 which was not visible. I found that dropping vertically not from Delta Capricorni, as recommended by Sue French in Celestial Sampler but from Nashira (Gamma Capri) to the same altitude as Zeta Cap worked better.  M30 is as far east from Zeta as Delta is from Gamma. I found Messier 31 in the field of view. 

Last night I investigated the star to the east of M30, which according to the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas (Jumbo Edition) is a double. I could not split it. I used these oculars (eyepieces):

Meade 5000 14 mm. = 47X

Tele Vue 7 mm = 94X

Stellarvue 4mm = 165X

Tele Vue 7mm + 2X Barlow = 188X

That last did make the center of M30 a little sparkly and showed more of the elongaged shape of the cluster, but the overall view was poor at high magnification.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Globular Clusters

Two Deep-Sky Targets

The Andromeda Galaxy

Binocular Highlights (Book Review)

Messier 30 and Other Views

Last night and this morning was my first time out since 30 August. I used the Celestron AVX mount and AstroTech 115 mm Apochromatic refractor to get reacquainted with familiar objects. However, for me the big win was a new target, Messier 30. M30 is likely an outside visitor. A  globular cluster attracted away from a satellite galaxy, it moves retrograde through the Milky Way disk.

(This was originally a post in the Observation Log IV on Cloudy Nights.)

 

I also set up my Explore Scientific 102 mm doublet refractor on the Twilight 1 mount. This is something that I do for learning, so as not to be totally dependent on the computerized goto AVX. The AVX found M30. Then, I located it in that telescope's red dot and found it again in the manual mount. It took some panning and scanning but was worth it, of course. I spent about 20 minutes with Messier 30 and the two telescopes. Planning my night, I found it in Sue French's Celestial Sample and logged it as my first goal. 

 

These were viewed with the 115 mm f/7 and a 14mm 82-degree Meade ocular:

 

14 October from 2130

(I re-ran the calibration because going from Vega to Altair, the mount wanted to drive the telescope into its own leg and I had to hit the power switch and start over. Never jog a robot without covering the E-stop.)

 

2208 - Dabih beta1,2 Capricorni

2214 - Algedi alpha 1,2(a,b) Capricorni

2225 - Epsilon Lyrae (Not split at 57X, I changed eyepieces to an AstroTech 5.5 mm Premium Flat for 151X and it was perfect. Also discernable at 102X with a 7 mm Tele Vue. I know that we all can achieve the double-double with less aperture and magnification, but a lot depends on the sky. My sky was good for the city, which is why I hauled out the AVX and AT-115 but it is very urban for a nominal suburb.)

2232 - M57 Ring Nebula. 5.5 mm. Large and almost colorful.

 

15 October 0550 AM

0556 - Messier 41

0607 - Venus almost first quarter, fuller crescent. Used 90% Moon filter.

0614 - Messier 31 Andromeda Galaxy - almost elliptical, large fuzzy patch over the hospital to my north.

0622 - Messier 1 Crab Nebula: many stars but no joy.

0628 - Messier 35 open cluster in the foot of Gemini

0634 - Rosette Nebula: many stars but no joy.

0642 - Castor - 14 mm (51X) not quite split. 7 mm split well.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Focus on Simon Georg Ploessl 

Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirshfeld’s Astronomy Activity Manual 

Austin Under the Stars 

Meteorites 

Annular Eclipse 14 October 2023

The City of Kyle Public Library Astronomy Club hosted viewing of the annular solar eclipse of 14 October 2023. The Library also pitched in with extra viewing glasses, a case of bottle water, and a bucket of sidewalk chalk. We gave out 22 pairs of glasses, 12 from the club and 10 from the library. About 30 people attended, many staying up to an hour past maximum.

From Kyle, Texas, we were not on the "Ring of Fire" path, but one of the viewers reading her cellphone reported that we would be at 88.9% coverage. 

Helping the crowd, I never got to take a photograph with my 102 mm refractor.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Lunar Eclipse 8 November 2022 

Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction 2020 

Redshift: Six Years with Astronomy 

Cursing the Moon 

Eclipses? 

An Amateur Astronomer’s Credo 

When Worlds Collide 

On Second Thought

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Open Secrets

NYC, Covid-19, and Conservative Business Interests 

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights 

How to Start Your Own Country