Impossible Read: The Once and Future King

After four months of my Impossible Read project, during which I spent most of those days not reading, I have finished the first book on the list: T. H. White’s 1939 book The Once and Future King. I have an Ace Fantasy edition that was printed, and possibly acquired, in 1996.

As I have stated before, when I began this project I demanded far too much of myself — so much that I got in my own way and stymied any progress at all on reading the book. I wanted not only to read the greatest classic works of all time but also to create a neat, creative, multimedia reading journal for the ages. And that was just too much. (I still want to do it, but I’m now telling myself that I can do all that on the second pass through the reading list.)

Once I got over that issue, it was much easier to make time for reading. And after I got past the second “book” in the novel, “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” I was hooked on the story. Sometimes I stayed up late just to read a few more chapters.

The story begins with the boy Arthur, nicknamed “Wart,” being raised by Sir Ector along Sir Ector’s son Kay. The eccentric Merlyn presents himself as a teacher to both of the boys, but since he is living backwards in time his focus is on training Wart — who he knows will eventually be Arthur, King of England.

Along the way in this first section (“The Sword in the Stone”) we meet Robin Wood (not Robin Hood!), Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and other members of Robin’s band that we remember, or think we remember, from the 1973 Disney movie. I was surprised to see these two very English tales combined in one narrative.

The way this particular version of the King Arthur tale is told, however, soon reminded me of the storytelling structure used in “The Princess Bride” (1987). Though Arthur’s tale is timeless, it’s definitely being told, perhaps as if to children or grandchildren, in 1939. There are references to cricket, to contemporary politics and fashions, and to Nazis. As much as Merlyn cautions Wart to learn to think for himself, the narrator expects the reader to make certain connections between Arthur’s story and contemporary events.

Another curious aspect of this version of the story has to do with how many times the narrator straight-out tells the reader that if they’d like a blow-by-blow retelling they should just read Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Now that I have finished The Once and Future King, a friend is sending me an 480-page edition of the Malory so I can do just that. (Next time around, of course.)

Anyway. In the first section we also meet King Pellinore and view his curiously codependent relationship with the Questing Beast, who is lost and purposeless when she has no one to hunt her. But we don’t just meet characters; we learn the rules of chivalry and tournamenting that we will need to know all through the book.

Each section of the book views the larger story through the lens of a particular character: Arthur; Queen Morgause and her sons; Lancelot; and an omniscient narrator who jumps from view to view and finally settles back in the mind of Arthur. By the end of the book, Arthur is an elderly king who finally understands Merlyn’s reasons for trying to teach him how to think both rationally and on behalf of his entire nation rather than for his own self-interest. He is able to look back on his life and view his actions in context, now seeing where his mistakes have caused harm. The final pages give Arthur, and the reader, hope of a bright future. In fact, the last two words of the story are the label, “THE BEGINNING.”

Before I read this book I was only vaguely familiar with the notion of Camelot. In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), which I have seen several times, it was presented as the home of the Round Table, both a mythic and noble destination and “a silly place.” But it was also used to describe the Kennedy White House. I read hundreds if not thousands of pages about John F. Kennedy when I was a teenager, and came across this reference several times. But since I had neither read the King Arthur story nor watched the movie “Camelot” (1967) by that time, I assumed that it referred to the society of King Arthur and his knights in its glory days. By the time I reached the third book, “The Ill-Made Knight,” I began to see other associations between King Arthur and Kennedy — tragic ones. When I neared the end of “A Candle in the Wind,” the final section, I was reading with a more sober and slightly broken heart.

I mentioned earlier that Merlyn was living backwards in this story, which immediately brought to mind the “Doctor Who” character River Song. She also could not remember when she had last met the Doctor, which would be the first time that he met her. Their relationship was always confused, not the least because the Doctor regenerated two times during her story arc. But thinking about the Camelot connection to the Kennedy administration put me in mind of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, particularly at the end of “The Waters of Mars” (2009), when the Doctor succumbs to pride and begins to see himself as an all-powerful force. It’s a terrifying episode in so many ways, but the final minutes of the episode hint less at the monsters than at the tragedy that lies ahead. And of course, “Doctor Who” is another very English tale.

The Doctor, thinking he has control over destiny.

This week I’ll continue the Impossible Read by starting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1982 novel The Mists of Avalon, of which I own a 1984 Del Rey/Ballantine edition. This time, the Arthurian legend will be told from the point of view of the women in the story. After I finish this book, I will close out the segment with three movies: “The Sword in the Stone” (1963), “Camelot,” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Huge thanks go to my friend Casey for suggesting that I watch the movies in this order. The idea is that I’ll watch a child’s version of the Arthur legend, then watch a grown-up’s version of the story, then watch a version which turns everything upside down and then blows it all up.

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I added one more typewriter to my collection this weekend, despite the fact that its thrift store label read “DOES NOT WORK.” The label also read “$2.00,” so I was willing to take a chance that it might just turn out to be a parts machine for another collector/restorer. But I’m not sure that will be its fate.

This 1951 Remington-Rand Super-Riter Standard was designed so that its top, side, and back panels would practically pop off for access to the insides for cleaning and adjustments. (They were loose when I bought it; perhaps that convinced the previous owner that it was truly falling apart.) After I brought it home I was able to quickly find and download, for free, both its user manual (“Operating Instructions”) and its 77-page service manual (“Mechanical Instructions”).

Meet “Vincent.”

And after a few minutes of skimming the manuals and fiddling around, I was able to get several things working that hadn’t worked before. The carriage still doesn’t advance when the keys are pressed, but that feels like some kind of mechanical misalignment; something just isn’t catching. I will have to learn more and dig deeper to find and address the mechanical difficulty, so for now I have fastened the panels on more securely, taken some photos, and created an entry in my typewriter inventory.

The typebars are in wonderful shape: this is regular-motion elite type.

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Knitwise, I added a few rows to the Habit-Forming Scarf in the course of the week and weekend. It’s now 22-1/2 inches long. I usually get more knitting done on a Formula One weekend; the next race (Imola) isn’t until next weekend, but Monaco will be held the following week.

I did pull the rest of the yarn from the skein and wind it into a little ball. That reminds me that the next skein is soon to come.

My campus (and community) based yarn community will meet on May 21 for lunch and yarning. Surely by the time the green flag is waved at Monaco, I will have joined the second skein of yarn to the scarf.

Wooden’t it be nice

So, hear me out. There was this desk on Marketplace that I thought was a steal at $40, and I picked it up on Saturday morning after it popped up in my feed a week ago.

I have a new philosophy with regard to Marketplace listings. If I see something interesting, I message the seller to get in touch with me if they still have the item in a week. In this case it worked out perfectly for me. When I picked up the desk at the seller’s house, he told me that several people had contacted him about the desk, criticized its condition, and tried to talk him down to half the listed price.

Anyway, here is the desk, all closed up:

And here is the desk when it opens to reveal its secret writing surface:

My mother, who has done countless furniture refinishings over the years, has given me suggestions for the stages of this restoration project. I’m currently at the stage of looking for tools that I may already have, like rubber gloves, chemical strippers, rags, scrapers, and putty knives. She has advised me to scrub it with soap and water before I start experimenting with the chemicals to remove the weathered stain, peeling paint, and cracked varnish.

The legs need some repair, but I’m leaning towards replacement. We’ll get there when we get there.

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At long last, I have an Impossible Read update for you! After getting out of my own way (with a little help from my friend Rick) I have been able to get back into the habit of reading. Just reading. No notes, no Post-It flags, no multi-volume reading journal — just reading and thinking. If I see something that I really really want to mark, I tell myself that I’ll flag it the second time around. (Sometimes I’m concerned about how easy it can be for me to trick myself.)

(Should I start a new blog just for the Impossible Read reactions after I finish each book? Well, I can just hear Rick saying No! You’re making more work again. Okay already. I’ll use this blog to record my reactions/reviews and I’ll make sure to add the Impossible Read keyword and tag.)

Sir Launcelot versus Sir Mador (art by N. C. Wyeth).

I’m still reading The Once and Future King, which is divided into four books; last night I finished Book Three, “The Ill-Made Knight.” That makes 544 pages down and about 120 to go. After I publish this post I’ll read a few chapters in Book Four, “A Candle in the Wind.” Hmm, I have heard that title somewhere before. Do you think that Sir Elton John may have possibly read this book as a child, or heard it read to him?

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Knitwise, I had time during ThirdSon’s choral concert on Saturday night (which I watched live via YouTube link) and this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix qualification, sprint, and race sessions that the Habit-Forming Scarf is now 22 inches long. That leaves eight inches to knit from this skein, in case you lost track.

This is an honest measure. I’m not just moving the tape measure around to fake my progress, I swear.

I haven’t started any new knitting. Last week’s urge to do so may have just been restlessness. I’m not sure it would help me at this point to cast on for another project unless it was an extremely quick knit and I had an extremely good reason to knit it. Since I have so many other things going on these days, it might be better for my knitting if I stuck to one project and finished it before moving on to the next one. (Brandy, can you believe I’m saying this? I’m back to the way I thought when I was just learning to knit: I’m becoming a product knitter again! But I have much more yarn now than I did then.)

Funeral for a Friend

This was a rather draining week for me, and it would be easy to say that it was spent preparing for, attending, and contemplating the funeral of my friend Marsha. She was beloved by many, many people, and of everyone present at the farewell I may have had the shortest and slightest relationship with her. I’m grateful to have had even a brief acquaintance with such a lovely person, and one of my long-term projects will be to learn to play a song that she and I shared a love for. Marsha, this one’s for you — at least, it will be after I learn a few guitar chords.

The projects are starting to pile up again. In my daily freewriting sessions I have begun to refer to the two writing projects as the Primary Projects. Other interests, and their reference materials, are forming higher and higher stacks on the coffee table in the library. And just when I had finally knocked the old stacks down to a manageable level. But I’m gratified that these reference materials are ones that I already own. Over the years I have bought many books that caught my eye even though I wouldn’t actively use them at the time. “Someday,” I told myself, “these books will come in handy.” And now, some of them have shown themselves to be relevant — and connected to each other in ways I could not have even imagined at the time.

Regarding my typewriter collection, I’m going to plead the Fifth Amendment this week. (That will give me time to find the serial numbers and take some pictures. And to sneak the machines into the house when Eldest isn’t looking.)

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Knitwise, I’m thinking of starting another, slightly more colorful project. Spring is springing upon us rather violently at the moment, swinging between cold and gutsy to hot and humid and gusty. We’re almost able to keep a window cracked so we have a better chance of hearing the tornado siren (whether it’s a test or an actual emergency). So it might be nice to have a current project in a color other than grey, and whose progress is a bit easier to see.

Last weekend I found these materials already set up in a project bag while I was working on a different project of reorganizing my CD collection. I’m thinking of using the solid color yarn (“Robin Egg”) for the body of the shawl and using the variegated yarn (“Surf and Turf”) for the edging. It would be less risky to do things the other way around, of course, but I think this way will look better. And if it doesn’t look better, of course I can frog the whole project and knit it all over again in a different way. Doesn’t that sound great?

I know this is all very exciting, but my writing time has run out for the evening. I must excuse myself to do some reading that will restore my soul and, possibly, ready me for the week-to-come.

Independent author

Last week I started reading The Alignment Problem, a scholarly exploration of the history of neural networks (the ancestors of what we now call artificial intelligence). I have only just begun the book, having read the prologue, the introduction, and the first chapter, but it’s already giving me a lot about which to think.

I started thinking about different forms of electronic assistance in various activities and wondering when certain amounts are too much.

Racers and car fanatics might say that the only real form of driving is with a car that has a manual transmission. But the vast majority of drivers have cars with automatic transmissions. That’s driving, too, isn’t it? What about if you use cruise control on long stretches of highway driving? Is that driving, or is the driver merely managing the driving that the car has now been programmed to do? What if you have a car that can do parallel parking for you? And what if you drive a Tesla and give over your control completely? When does driving a car end and something else begin? And what is that something else?

Let’s think about reading. Many of us still imagine reading as something that’s being done when you’re curled up with a physical book. But many readers use their Kindles and Nooks to read e-books. Others drive (cf. “driving,” above) or work out while listening to audiobooks. Aren’t those books as well? Similarly, music has gone from a live experience to a vinyl record to a tape cassette, a compact disc, and a downloadable digital file. It’s all music, isn’t it?

Two years ago I participated in an online songwriting group. I don’t play any musical instrument well enough to accompany myself while singing, so I opened the Garage Band program on my iPad and used the tools it provided to me. I laid down a percussion track and used a virtual session guitarist that (who?) was provided in the software. I recorded my singing of my lyrics to the beat of a digital metronome, then edited and saved the file and uploaded the link to my file to a shared Google Sheet. I wrote a few songs via this process, but does this make me a musician? A singer/songwriter? Or something else?

Art is another obvious continuum. If I apply pencil or pen to paper, brush and paint to canvas, hands to clay, or chisel to stone or wood, I’m rather obviously creating art. But what if my process is digital, and I can Undo the virtual brushstroke I just made and give it another try? What if I have an infinite number of do-overs in Procreate and can create several layers in my file before I save it to my hard drive? Am I still an artist?

And now let’s look at writing. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the only real writing is done using a dip pen in gall ink on parchment. We accept that writers can write (as I am writing now) their words on a computer and published to the Internet. No paper was impressed upon in the composition of this blog post. But is a blog post “real” writing as opposed to a newspaper column? A short story in an electronic magazine? A printed novel? What makes the writing real?

Must I come up with my own words in that written piece utterly on my own? Am I not permitted to use a dictionary or thesaurus? Can I allude to another work or create a parody of it? Can I use spellcheck or the grammar tools within Microsoft Word, or need I turn those functions off within my Preferences menu? May I tap the center button on my iPhone and use predictive text if I’m in a hurry? Or can I enter a prompt in ChatGPT and still call myself a writer?

Where does it change and where does it end? Who drives and who writes? Who is an artist or a musician? You’ve seen the AI-generated art that isn’t informed by the rules of real life. This is something we’ll have to think about as a society, and something we’ll have to decide — preferably before the artists and the writers lose their hope and creativity.

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Knitwise, I did all of my knitting on the Habit-Forming Scarf during the sessions of the Grand Prix of China this weekend. The scarf is now 18 inches long, so there is still quite a ways to go in the yarn of the first skein.

This weekend I organized my collection of compact discs, which are stored in a cabinet that was also being used to store yarn. Until I emptied out the bottom two drawers, that is, and found evidence that mice had gotten into the yarn stash. That yarn has since been moved to sealed plastic storage (and I’ll probably set a trap in the bottom drawer). I’d better pick up the pace of using my stash or start giving more of it away before it turns into rodentine bedding.

Half-spacing

In the course of this weekend I acquired two more typewriters. The first one, a Smith-Corona Model 88 Secretarial, was purchased from a somewhat local seller via Facebook Marketplace. He ended up being able to deliver the machine to me at work on Friday afternoon.

There are some issues with the tab and margin settings, but I’m sure that if I actually read the manual and do what it says I will have a better understanding of how to move the right levers and press the right buttons, all in the right sequence. But my goodness, look at this beautiful machine! She will clean up just fine.

Ah, 1954.

When I brought her home, I really didn’t know where I was going to put her. She sat on the dining room table for a while, then moved to the coffee table in the library. It’s not the best place, but I’m definitely running out of room for typewriter display and storage.

On Saturday afternoon I met up with a friend who hinted that she would have a “weird surprise” for me. We sat in a coffeeshop and talked for hours about everything and finally had to leave when we noticed that the owners were closing for the day. (Next time we’ll definitely have to try the coffee.) She was getting into her car when we both remembered about the weird surprise.

Someone had set out this little typewriter case in downtown Milwaukee, labeled thusly. How could she not pick it up and take it to a new home? And how could I not take it in?

This machine was built in Korea in 1988 or 1989, as the American market was shifting towards electronic word processors and home computers. Somehow it ended up in the American Midwest, broke its right platen knob, cracked and popped off the key to the right of the spacebar, and became irrelevant to its owners.

I have the broken pieces and I’ll ask someone more experienced than I am to put them back on. In the meantime I have fixed the ribbon setting (in the photo it’s still set to red, not black) and done a little typing test to assess the key action and have a look at the typeface. This Safari III is a little trouper weighing just 10 and a half pounds without its lid.

But where is it going to go?

One of the features of some of the more clever manual typewriters is the half-space. It’s a way to make room for a correction as an alternative to retyping the whole page. You erase the mistake and then have a way to fit the correct word into the space you have left. You hold the spacebar down, then type the next letter before you let the spacebar up. Then a longer word fits into a smaller space without looking obviously scrunched. It’s like a tight kerning before there was word processing software that did the kerning automatically.

I wish I could do some half-spacing around my house. If certain items could take up half their usual shelf space, I could easily slide two more typewriters onto the shelves, the tables, or…wherever. In lieu of that magical happenstance, some of these typewriters will need to find new and more spacious homes.

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Project updates: This week, as research for Black Walnut, I listened to a lot of bluegrass music, then switched to a CD set I bought online called Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields. All of the (48!) songs are related in some way to coal mining, strip mining, unionizing, Mother Jones, and/or black lung. They sometimes tug at your heartstrings and occasionally just run you over with heavy-duty machinery.

I mean, this is from the cover art.

Well, you really shouldn’t have been standing there anyway. My mother’s family comes from an area where these kinds of things are talked about all the time: strikes, mine disasters, being killed by a train. Stuff happens, life goes on, and you have to make a living somehow. The area of focus on my story doesn’t have mountains but it does have some very hilly places, some of which are labels as strip mines on my county map.

I didn’t move forward on the other project at all this week. I kept thinking that I would just sit down and take care of one last task with my library copy of Development of Mathematics, but so many things were happening that I just didn’t make the time. Next week, next week.

I did finally start a short-term project that I had planned to do over spring break, but it expanded and became more complex until I had to figure out how to reschedule it on my own terms. I don’t get time off during spring break anyway — nor for “summer vacation” either — so it’s more of a state of mind than any time away from work. I’ll just say that this is a movie-review project and leave it at that for now. I will be working on this in the background, as it were, and when I have finished it I will share the link to my work. That will probably be sometime in August.

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Knitwise, I made one row of progress on the Habit-Forming Scarf this week. I should be able to do more next weekend while I’m watching sessions for the Grand Prix of China.

The Improbable Read: Dialing back the big plan

One or two of you may be starting to wonder whatever happened to my Impossible Read project. To be honest, it’s still sitting in a tote bag next to my Comfy Green Chair in my home library.

I have been very frustrated at running out of time before being able to sit down and work on the project. Eventually I realized that this was happening because I took an admittedly very very long book list and converted it into an extremely time-consuming project. Not only was I planning to read some of the greatest books of all time, but I was also going to create a series of books filled with my own thoughts and annotations. And not only that, but the physical space necessary for working on these notebooks wasn’t even anywhere in my own house.

So I am setting aside the idea of creating a multi-volume artifact for myself. Instead I have a new plan, and I hope that you are sitting down as you read this. You’re simply not going to believe it.

I’m just going to read the books.

You heard me.

I will just read the books, and then watch the movies. I have plenty of other places where I can write about my reactions to the texts — in my morning freewriting, in my evening journaling, and here in my weekly blog posts. It’s even possible that as I work on my two primary writing projects, the great works and my thoughts about them may spill over into the writing I do there. (That’s kind of the point — to finally read these books and be influenced by them in my thought and my expression. To be edified, and to be improved.)

So hang on, Wart! I’ll be back soon to enjoy all of your adventures with Merlyn. I’ll just try not to be taking notes at the same time.

This weekend, for the Impossible Improbable Read-ing list, I found a very good used copy of Grendel by John Gardner. (I’m frustrated that I had to buy it at all, because I recognize the cover but cannot find the copy that I surely already own. ANYWAY.) Then I splurged on a new unabridged copy of The Tale of Genji, translated by Royall Tyler. Evidently this edition was originally published in 2003. It’s more than a thousand pages long and includes exquisite line drawings, a timeline, and a glossary. It’s full of helpful notes to the reader (hooray!) and it’s printed on paper that is soft to the touch (a high clay content?) and makes you want to just sit and pet it.

I marked these titles as “owned” in my Google Sheet, then scanned down the list to what I would next need to acquire. There are several books in a whole time period that I need to find — but they were written in the late 1600s and the 1700s. Before I even get to that point, I will have read The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, The Tale of Genji, The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), Orlando Furioso, Don Quixote, and Salman Rushdie’s novel Quichotte. I have no idea what that cumulative page count even looks like (and I think it will go better for me if I don’t work it out in advance; I will log them in the spreadsheet as I finish each book [I have already created the formula]). There are also movies planned for viewing at the end of each segment, and those (so far) are The Sword in the Stone, Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, Beowulf, Aladdin, and Man of la Mancha (okay, I do need a DVD of this).

It may be two-three more years before I reach Oroonoko by Aphra Behn or Pamela by Samuel Richardson. But if you do see a nice used copy, could you let me know about it?

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On to the Primary Projects mentioned above.

For Black Walnut (the fiction project), I continue to collect and listen to bluegrass music. I’m reading mostly about the early years because that’s the timeframe that will impact my characters, and I’m doing a little side research into the bluegrass radio shows of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the Ohio-Appalachia area. In the last few days I managed to pick up a used DVD of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a CD of the soundtrack, and a CD of live music from the groups on the soundtrack. I also snagged CDs by Mac Wiseman, Alison Krauss, and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. From the reading I’m doing, I am starting to recognize the names of key bluegrass musicians. Some of these names may or may not sneak their way into the manuscript when I’m writing again. (I also promised an archivist that I would name a character after him, and I have absolutely no problem with that.)

I can see now how thin and underdeveloped my original storyline was. I’m reminding myself that it was a NaNoWriMo project from 2014 and that it didn’t have to be any better than it was. I wrote 22,500 words in 30 days and it was okay. But now I want to meet the characters and their parents and grandparents, get to know them, get to know the time and the region, and find the big story that’s worth telling. Every so often I get a glimpse of it.

For the Development of Mathematics project (doesn’t that sound thrilling?), I have catalogued almost every annotation in the copy of the book held by my own university’s library. When I’m done with that, the logical next step is to do the same for the other copies in the University of Wisconsin System libraries. The catch is that Inter-Library Loan operates by choosing a copy at random from the system holdings. I’m in consultation with a research librarian and our library director as to how to tweak that system so that I efficiently receive each copy in the system for evaluation and possible cataloguing. That phase will start in June so that I will have the maximum possible time with the books.

Another thing I need to do for this project is to brainstorm until I understand what the core project actually is, then what are the possible spin-off projects. That was something I had hoped to tackle this weekend, but plans changed and that’s been postponed until next weekend.

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Knitwise, this week I did put in a few sessions of work on the Habit-Forming Scarf. This evening it measures 15 inches from the cast-on edge, and the remainder of the skein weight 51 grams (out of 100). This backs up my calculations from last week about getting 30 inches out of each skein. Hooray, my scarf is now 25 percent complete.

I’m going to have to normalize adding a couple of inches every couple of days if I want to get out of “slog” territory.

And with that in mind, it might be nice to have a small and colorful project to do on the side, to keep me motivated to work on something so long and grey (although certainly elegant and sophisticated).

My friend Nicole recently crocheted an office plant for me, and my friend Mary sent me a link to some crochet patterns published by the U.S. National Park Service. Here is one for a halibut. Here is another for a walleye. There are some fun patterns out there, including one (somewhere; I don’t have a link) for a crocheted Scottish thistle. It’s time to go stashbusting and color this place UP.

The battle of the brain

This week, otherwise known as Spring Break, I concentrated on research for a primarily nonfiction writing project. Or at least I tried to.

Almost as soon as I had scheduled the appointments with the University Archives, my brain rebelled and thought it would be much more exciting to focus on the fiction project and research the history of bluegrass music. (Not to say that it was wrong…)

It has been a revelation to discover that, instead of beating myself up for not correctly identifying the One Best Thing that I should be working on at any given time, it has been much more productive to work on two projects at the same time and let themselves fight it out for priority. That way I always have something to do.

The result is that, rather simultaneously, I am listening to CDs of bluegrass music, accumulating more histories of mathematics, figuring out where and how to print and laminate large topographic maps from the early 1960s, updating my spreadsheet of the UW-Whitewater Math Department roster, learning about GM models of the 50s and 60s, thinking about the post-World War II market for math textbooks, and wondering if someone (Casey?) can lend me a mandolin. You know, like you do.

I’m leaning into a lot of neurodiversity here and hoping that I can figure out what works best for me. Oh, and I made another pizza on Saturday. With all sautéed sweet onion slices and half portobello slices. And a homemade whole-wheat-blend crust this time, not a mix from a box. I’m trying to learn one little thing about pizza-making each week.

The next thing I need to learn is who would like some leftovers, as Youngest didn’t take those away at the end of the weekend. More to learn, more to learn.

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Knitwise, I added a few more rows to the Habit-Forming Scarf this week. I know that I added eight rows during the Yarnhawks get-together on Monday, because I warned the others that I would probably fall asleep after six rows. But I vowed to push on.

The project is now exactly 12 inches long. I weighed the remaining yarn in the first skein, and was able to estimate that one skein will yield approximately 30 inches of scarf. This makes it a two-skein project when I have three skeins of the yarn. I don’t really want to turn this into a 90-inch scarf, so what should I do with the third skein? A matching cowl? A hat? A brooch? A pterodactyl?

Part of the reason this project is a bit of a trudge (though I’m sure it would go quite quickly if I were able to knit Continental) is that it’s grey. It’s almost spring now: I should probably be knitting a project with an Actual Color™. What would you suggest? Don’t be shy; I have a rainbow of colors in my stash. Whatever you name, I probably already have it.

Another day, another history of mathematics

So…one thing led to another, and here I am waiting for Amazon, or DHL, or somebody to deliver another history of mathematics to my door in the next thirty minutes. Or ninety minutes, depending on where I check the tracking.

The most unusual thing about the previous paragraph is probably not that I have ordered a history of mathematics; if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I am capable of ordering almost any book. It’s not strange that I have received different estimates on when this book will arrive; in fact, based on past experience, this book probably won’t arrive tonight and instead will travel to Watertown or back to Milwaukee to spend the night before being delivered tomorrow with the rest of my mail. That would be fine as long as it doesn’t go back to Oak Creek, the black hole of Wisconsin shipping facilities.

Doesn’t it seem odd, though, that there should be multiple histories of mathematics? Math always seemed to me like the kind of subject that was, well, just there. Five was five, two plus two was always four, and if you didn’t get the correct answer you just needed to try harder. Math wasn’t a matter of controversy or opinion. It just was.

But if you start to talk to people who study the history of mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics, you find out that it’s whole different story on the inside. To be fair, you wouldn’t want to confuse junior high school students with controversies over whether mathematics is discovered or it is created. (Eight-grader me might have responded, “If you don’t know what math is, why should I have to do my homework?”) It turns out that mathematicians can get really invested in the origin story. So one author writes a history of math and leaves out the parts he doesn’t quite agree with. Another writes a history with colorful stories about the key players in math history; this makes the people easy to remember, but it turns out that some of the stories aren’t quite factual. So another fellow writes a history of math, and so on.

Right now I’m circling one particular rabbit hole that concerns one particular history of mathematics, and if I find any interesting rabbits I’ll be sure to write about them. (You don’t have to read about these rabbits if you don’t want to. I understand.) The reason I ordered a copy of a different history of mathematics was that I wanted to understand why there were so many different histories on the market. What kind of competition was there in the publishing industry at this time (post-World War II), and why? (Like I said, these rabbits won’t be interesting to everybody.) So that’s why I’m waiting to see if a book will make it to my porch in a few minutes, later this evening, or tomorrow afternoon. If it’s not already on its way to Oak Creek.

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This week I did not purchase any typewriters. I celebrate my amazing restraint. I did type up a list of tasks for my math-related project (see above) on my Smith-Corona Skyriter. It was originally on a typewriter table, but using it there made such a racket that I positioned it on my lap and typed that way.

It worked for the page that I needed to type in the writing loft, but next time I might try using a different typewriter. I do have a few options.

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Knitwise, I have been making progress on the Habit-Forming Scarf. It’s now 10 inches long. The primary occupational hazard is that after about six rows of work on it my eyes start to close, which makes it difficult for me to maintain the quality of my stitches. This, in turn, might be an occupational hazard of my not knowing how to knit Continental. That’s not likely to change anytime soon, especially not in the middle of a project, where it would surely affect my gauge. So I cope by setting the work down and either (a) resting or (b) drinking several cups of coffee before starting again.

Tomorrow I’ll host a get-together of faculty and staff folks who knit and crochet. I’ll have cookies to share and some yarn to give away. And Nicole, I’ll bring the pattern for that slipper you want to make. Can’t think of a better activity on what’s expected to be quite a rainy day.

The Amazon app that I just downloaded onto my iPad now lists my order status as “was expected by Sunday.” As long as it doesn’t go to Oak Creek….

Minor adjustments

This weekend was the first one in which Youngest, who has lived all their life-so-far in my house, was a guest here — having shifted their primary residence to a site closer to a potential full-time job. I was a bit anxious about it because we didn’t have anything special planned to do and because hanging out with me is rarely particularly interesting. But we managed by going grocery shopping, visiting Goodwill, cooking and baking, and providing an occasion for me to watch them play an incredibly silly game on the GameCube. (In case you’d like to get a glimpse of the silliness, check out this video of the Wario Ware Mega Party Game$! from 2003.)

The change in dynamic is one that I have to keep reminding myself is The Way of the World. It’s supposed to be the case that your children grow up, are not children any more, and move on with their own plans. All of my offspring are at different stages in this process.

The house is also transforming — albeit mildly — in other ways. I ordered a woven jute runner for the dining room, and it finally arrived on Friday morning. Here it is, providing a path for the office chair to move from desk to desk. It also provides a variety of spots on which the dog may lounge (not pictured).

The chair doesn’t exactly roll along the heavily textured weave, but I can raise it slightly and move it to where it needs to be. I do love the look of it, which will be more dramatic when I’m able to move the four-drawer metal filing cabinet and two typewriter tables (topped with typewriters, of course!) out of the dining room. Maybe it will all look better in Next House.

I have gradually begun to make more progress on a couple of my writing projects, not that I’m less likely to be interrupted in the evenings. I’m thinking about setting evening “office hours” for myself so that I can focus on the correspondence I need to keep up for these projects.

The Impossible Read is on hold until I decide how I’d like to proceed with my reactions and annotations. I don’t want to write directly in the books I’m reading, but my method for creating a record of my comments has shown itself to be rather cumbersome. I hope that after I develop a more practical and efficient process I will be able to get back to the reading.

Yet, in the course of the week I have been doing regular freewriting and journaling, coming up with some ideas and concepts to work into the stories that are also hanging out in my head.

Spring? I know you’re trying, but you can’t come soon enough.

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Knitwise, I did get in a few more rows on the Habit-Forming Scarf. It is now slightly longer than it is wide. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring it home for the weekend so I can’t measure it and provide any numerical evidence of my progress.

The bigger news on the knitting front is that I’m organizing a get-together for campus knitters and crocheters on the first day of Spring Break. That won’t be until next week, so we’ll see what elements might come together. People bringing projects? Swap yarn? Free patterns? Bring it on, Yarnhawks.

The Great Upheaval

This weekend was the occasion for a lot of change. Youngest has moved out and will henceforth be visiting occasionally rather than living here, which renders my nest nearly empty. I hope that they are not upset that I immediately decided to convert their room into a writing loft for myself, in which I will allow them to stay every other weekend.

But if you know me at all, you know that I can’t change just one room. Everything is moving around. A new bed-set was moved into the loft, the old mattress and [broken] frame were moved into the garage prior to proper disposal, and I moved my recently acquired secretary desk and hutch into the dining room; I still need to figure out a permanent location for a four-drawer filing cabinet full of writing. But first there was the clutter which needed to move aside so we could do things like bring in a mattress and box spring and bed-frame and a desk and a hutch, and move a four-drawer filing cabinet. Then there was the cleaning that needed to be done if Other People would be in the house. It’s exhausting, I tell you. Many thanks go to my friend Elizabeth, who rented a U-Haul and brought me the whole sleigh bed set all the way from Madison.

part of Before

part of After

part of After

It’s all for the good — or at least for the better. All of the Things are getting nearer to where they ultimately need to be, including me.

Writing loft or guest bedroom? Why not both?

I have already moved in the perfect little wooden office chair, which I acquired this week for $4.99. It’s 110 years old and I love it. I need to clean up the cast iron pieces a bit, and it has some settings that I will need to investigate, but it’s lovely and fits right in at the two wooden desks that are already in place along the south wall of the dining room. The next piece I’d like to get is a heavy-duty runner to span the width of all the desks, so the little office chair can just slide back and forth. The runner will also give a visual and physical definition to this end of the room. (The green bath mat below the computer desk? That’s Monty’s mat for curling up while I write. Right now he’s splayed out on the bare floor in the front of the typewriter desk, but sometimes he likes the cushioning.)

One chair to sit at them all.

I also acquired another typewriter and typewriter table this week. The typewriter in question is a Smith Corona electronic with a built-in dictionary; it beeps if you misspell something, and with the touch of one (or more) buttons it will correct the spelling before you go to the next line. The manual was included in the purchase, and I’ll have to consult it before doing much more with it: the machine by itself was not especially intuitive. It’s from approximately 1988, which makes it older than the electronic typewriter I took with me to college in Fall 1985, but a couple of years younger than Ernie, the other electronic typewriter in my current collection.

The typewriter table that I purchased with it is, possibly, more interesting. It may be a Tiffany-brand table — not that Tiffany — which was sold as a kit in the 1940s and 1950s, to provide a sturdy base for the new (and heavy) electric typewriters. It is certainly very solid, and it now supports a 1942 Royal KMM with a 14-inch carriage. I wouldn’t want to rest that beast on anything flimsy. The typewriter table that formerly support the Royal has gone up to the writing loft to support a 1953 Smith Corona Skyriter, which weighs about 3 pounds without its metal lid. I suppose that I’ll need to put some typing paper in the loft as well. Twist my arm….

(Not my carpet.)

Before I picked up the table I thought about cleaning it up and repainting it gloss black with gold trim. But now that I see it’s actually kind of an Army green, I think I’ll repaint it in that color after I clean it up and treat the rust. Someone with a military typewriter might especially appreciate it.

After all that moving around, I just couldn’t stop. Materials for my novel went from the library to the loft, materials for Formula 1 and another writing project went from the library and the dining room to the brick room, and books from the shelves in the brick room went to shelves in the dining room. Where will it end?

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Knitwise, I have carried my current project to work and back home again but not knitted a single stitch — not even during the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia (guess who won). But isn’t it the thought that counts?