Walking on the Moon

I love to read history and I love to read Sarah Vowell.  I expected to love reading Lafayette. And I enjoyed it a great deal, but I didn’t love it.

Probably the aspect of Vowell’s writing that I love the most is her enthusiasm for her topics – especially when it’s America and history. Her first book that wasn’t a collection of columns, Assassination Vacation was full of excitement and gleeful asides. I had the impression that finding out everything she did was so exciting and so much fun that she couldn’t control the desire to tell everyone.

Better than that, she clearly could control that desire and turn that excitement into a wide-ranging, beautifully written book. It includes delightful historical facts, a sincere paean to the National Parks Service, and a dozen other merits. One of those merits is an ability to connect history and modern times with a brilliant turn of phrase.

All of these are present in Lafayette as well, but not to the same extent. There is a lot of the book that reads like a well-researched, well-written popular treatment of Lafayette’s time in America and its effect on our nation. That’s a great accomplishment, and we need more books like it. And yet, I miss the sparks that fly from every sentence in Vacation.

Recommended.

I’ve been skirting reading Borges for some time.  Several authors I greatly enjoy point to him as an influence.  Those pointers are always delivered in the sort of hushed tones that one reserves for the influential and unique. A close friend recently recommended Borges’s work and that was the kick I needed to actually go get some.  Hushed tones from Warren Ellis are one thing, but no reason for avoiding the experience sounded good when I tried to say them out loud.

The short stories in Ficciones turn out to be witty and playful in an intellectual sense.  Borges takes an idea and runs as far as he can with it, often under the guise of a literary review. Creating a fictional writer who exemplifies whatever odd approach he wants to explore and then critiquing that author seems the long way around, but the structure is generally powerful and engaging.  He manages to convey the idea of taking himself too seriously and not seriously at all in the same constructs.

It helps that his writing is both technically brilliant and fantastically dense. The first paragraph or two of one of his stories often contains the whole of the story.  The remaining pages simply illuminate it from other angles, as a hologram.  Most of these are master classes in composition and structure.  Often this is where I say an author makes that look easy.  Not Borges.  It looks like he worked hard to get these stories perfect.

Overall, these stories are rewarding and entertaining on many levels, but expect to invest time to reap those benefits.

Strongly recommended.

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” – On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, 1908

I spent most of the day yesterday with my instructor doing more transition training.  I’m still metaphorically clawing my way toward the left seat from the tail as I try to internalize all the complex and high performance operating procedures.  I did perform a feat that qualifies as a landing and not an ugly arrival saved by my instructor.  That made me feel undeniably better.

After we stopped for lunch, we started back around the pattern at Camarillo for a few more landings, and noticed that the alternator was no longer charging the battery.  We shed load landed and tried to debug, to no avail.

The fine folks at Camarillo Air Service sent over an electrical tech to try to get us on our way, but there did not seem to be a quick fix in the offing. We had to leave the Viking with them.  Their fellow – Harvey – was one of those fine, competent, eccentric people that one gets to meet in GA.  He went out of his way to help us at every opportunity, but it was not to be.  While I was working with Harvey to arrange for further debugging (and a probable alternator replacement) my instructor went off to look for car rentals.

And here we lucked out.  Nick, my instructor, somehow discovered that Patrick – a pilot who flies out of SMO – was on his way back in his Comanche.  Patrick more than graciously invited us to hop in the Comanche and fly back with him.  Even more graciously, he let Nick fly her most of the way home.  We exchanged numbers and e-mail addresses and hopefully I’ll get a chance to return the favor someday.

So, training was cut short by an inconvenience, but it turned into more of an adventure.  The Viking continues to be a charmed creature that leads me into interesting places.

Nick’s off at his day job for a few days and then we retrieve the Viking and I get back to clawing.

After a few weeks of moving money and airplanes and matching schedules, I started actually flying my new Super Viking today. It’s a big jump from my Archer to a high performance, complex aircraft with a full complement of quirks as well.  I’ve been reading and preparing as much as possible, but shaking hands with 300 horses for the first time is pretty exciting no matter how you slice it.

The first day went as well as I could reasonably have expected.  I wasn’t an instant natural, and my flight instructor kept me from serious trouble more than once.  He and I seem to be developing a reasonable rapport.  We’re both figuring out how the other works best.  I’m getting a lot out of his Viking experience and teaching skills.  We both recognize it’s a big hill to climb and I think we’re up to the challenge.

I’m still feeling the Viking out, but so far it’s been a great plane.  It has plenty of unique characteristics.  The good ones are very good, and the bad ones – so far – are mostly just endearing.  I’m very happy with my choice to join the Bellanca family.

Speaking of the Bellanca family, another member popped up and introduced himself today.  A fellow at SMO saw the unfamiliar Viking on the ramp and came over to talk.  Since I’ve gotten involved with Bellanca owners that’s happened more than in all the years I’ve been flying the Archer.  It’s fun and exciting to join the “cult.”

Tomorrow is another day of trying to claw my way from being far behind the Viking to getting ahead of it.  I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Stone Mattress collects several of Margaret Atwood’s recent short stories.  The collection seems a lot like a series of etudes. In the notes she mentions that several are from stunt collections – authors produce works within loose but binding constraints.  Etudes are often interesting, but rarely satisfying.  So it goes here.

The collection certainly has its enjoyable passages.  This is Margaret Atwood, after all.  every story has at least one passage that is worth reading the whole story for, even if the passage is taken in isolation.  Most of the works do considerably better than that, having some structural or thematic points of interest that are unexpected at the outset.

Still, these stories feel fluffier than Atwood’s long fiction.  Worth it if you like to see a great writer noodling around on the keyboard.

Recommended.

Dale Gronic’s Tales is misnamed.  There are some stories in here, but by and large they aren’t fascinating anecdotes.  Largely Tales is a fairly ad hoc study of the Steelers’ draft classes.  I will say that the Steelers’ draft history turns out to be pretty checkered – much more so than I realized – but this treatment doesn’t capture things very well.

From Gronic’s research, it does seem clear that a book about the Steelers’ drafts would be interesting.  The various coaches have had widely varying philosophies on the role of the draft in team building.  When coaches are changing every few years, this can lead to extremely unusual personnel. Furthermore, each coaching staff brought different skills to the draft. It was common to have a principled plan and a poor eye for talent, that added further noise to the signal.

The 1970’s dynasty was as much a product of the staff’s continuity as its philosophy, but both contributed to some incredible years.

Now, as interesting as that analysis is, it doesn’t fit well with the title.  That title promises me great stories from exciting characters or interesting games.  This is pretty much lacking.  Gronic primarily follows a few draftees who would grant him interviews and tells their history in Pittsburgh.  This is diverting (at best) but never compelling.

On the last Sunday of August I was standing next to the grave of Chief Sealth on Bainbridge Island in Washington.  I hadn’t intended to visit the place, but serendipity is like that. A storm had blown through the day before, and a the pines were still whispering about it. Brenda and I were getting ready to head to a pair of friends’ wedding. We were alone at this nexus of history and possibility, commemoration and commencement.  I stood for a while, looking out at the Sound, listening to the wind.  I finally pulled out my phone, dialed a number, and left a message.  “This is Ted Faber. I accept the offer…”

With those words I severed my longstanding employment at ISI.  USC/ISI has employed me for longer than I lived in the town I was born in, and longer than any other job I’ve held.  The decision was a difficult one, but a combination of my earlier decisions and changes to ISI and the research climate in general combined to convince me that is time to do something new.

I’m happy to discuss the details of that decision with people, but the issues were primarily of autonomy and funding.  ISI has always given the most support and autonomy to people who can fund their own research – you eat what you kill.  I have always been more comfortable turning research ideas into prototypes than in evangelizing new areas of work.  That led to me putting myself in a bad position to evangelize when necessary, and support for the roles I chose was on the wane. The specific set of forces that caused that are a bit arcane.

I continue to have great respect for ISI as an institution and especially for the people I was privileged to work with there.  They do top-notch work there from the researchers and students who are blazing new research trails to the project assistants who support that work. I still have many friends there and hope to for years to come.  It saddens me that I cannot continue there, even as I’m excited about my next adventure.

My last day will be 2 October 2015 almost exactly the last day of my 20th year at USC/ISI. The synchronicity of that also appeals to me.

I’ve  chosen to make a fresh start at The Aerospace Corporation. It sits at an interesting space in the national research infrastructure and employs many people I respect and enjoy working with.  The goals and projects of the place are familiar, but the focus different enough that it all looks new.  The place is familiar yet fresh and the work both new and comfortable.  I’m looking forward to setting out on a new journey with my old bones.

If you only have my ISI contact information I’m easy to find on social media, should you want to stay in touch.  Don’t hesitate to friend or follow me.  Come take a journey with me.

Laurie Penny is a feminist.  She’s not a feminist in the way that many dilettantes – and I include myself here – are.  She is a deep thinker on matters of sex, gender, and society.  She’s also a vivid, engaging writer.  She’s compassionate without excusing accidental sins.  Her writing is passionate and analytical at the same time.  Readers always know a person is speaking, but never hear someone excusing poor thought with emotional language.

Her book, Unspeakable Things, largely reflects these brilliant qualities. It’s a fine introduction to feminist thought in our modern, daily, technical world. If you’re interacting with people on the internet, it’s a great book to read.  If you’re thinking about why women’s issues and diversity issues are moving to the core of so many discussions, the book is a must. It has ramifications for hard core techies, too, but that’s not what I mean by “technical world.”

Unspeakable Things expanded my thinking about these issues from the personal to the political.  Other friends and Internet writers have made me understand how often and effectively individuals’ rights are trampled.  Penny showed me how these same attitudes and the mores and laws that they have spawned create our society.  Viewing that society in terms of how those mores and laws control and constrain populations in society was new to me.  It’s the difference between sympathizing with people who have been harassed and seeing that the same attitudes prevent women from taking part in the world. Things is very effective at opening the mind.

Particularly enlightening to me was the discussion of birth control.  That’s a technical innovation that could restructure society, except for the fact that society – people who make it up – are resisting that technical change.  As powerful as the personal stories one often hears are (both sides) – the political issues are at least as important.  Penny brought those to me.

Unspeakable Things is not a perfect book, of course.  There are times when I found the writing repetitious.  Some parts were more opaque than others. I can’t tell if it will make others think new thoughts as it made me do.

Overall, the ideas in here are powerful and the writing accessible.  Strongly recommended.

Rusted Blood is triumph of setting and tone from Warren Ellis. Ellis is a man of strangely eclectic tastes, even for a writer.  The Elektrograd setting comes from a long standing fascination of his with architecture or an interesting brutalist bent.  He’s done a brilliant job constructing a city of such architecture and reflecting its tastes into his characters.  The result is a grim police procedural that you can’t take your eyes off.

Rusted Blood is fairly short – a long short story or a short novella.  It’s easy to swallow in one gulp, which enhanced its immersiveness for me.  I think Ellis can sustain the effect for longer, but a short stay in this world was fine for me.

I don’t want to spoil the mystery – though I didn’t find it to be even the third most interesting aspect of Blood – so I don’t have much more to say.  This is an inexpensive, short, absorbing tale.  Risk the two bucks.

Strongly recommended.

One of the many interesting things about living in Los Angeles is how much Japanese and Hawaiian history permeates the environment.  Incidents and trends that are completely alien outside are part of the local cultural landscape.  Intellectually I know this is true, and I’ve read other hidden histories. There’s something about the combination of the uniqueness of the Japanese culture and the locality of the references that makes hidden Japanese history particularly compelling to me.

Valerie J. Matsumoto’s City Girls is a slice of the Nisei life rooted in WWII and women’s lives.  It chronicles the rise and influence of girls’ social groups in Los Angeles from the 20’s and 30’s through the Second World War and Japanese-American internment through the early 1950s.  Part social clubs, part support groups, part cross cultural meme breeding grounds, these clubs shaped and reflected women’s experiences as Japanese groups became Nisei groups.  There’s a lot of ground to cover and a lot to learn.

While the groups are vivid and lively, and their evolution and influence fascinating, Matsumoto’s presentation is unflaggingly scholarly.  This is completely understandable.  Her goal is to document these groups for posterity.  This is a serious work of scholarship and journalism, and the tone is entirely correct for it. It can make parts of the read slow going for an outsider to the time and the culture, but more than makes up for it in clarity and completeness.

Matsumoto brings the full picture of the groups and people who made them up out sharply.  It’s enlightening and compelling history in both the large and the small.

Strongly recommended.