Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:03 PM

How was your day?

I could use some uplifting news -- happy or funny or cute or fuzzy -- right about now, myself...

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:00 PM

Right now, I should be at opening night of Actors' Shakespeare Project's All's Well That Ends Well.

But instead, well...

Be good to one another, okay? If you have an animal companion, give him or her a hug for me.
[And send good thoughts Sami's way; I think she could really use them.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:18 PM

Just noticed articles in the paper that this weekend, HBO will be airing Elizabeth I, a miniseries starring Helen Mirren.

Unfortunately, I don't have HBO.

I do hope some of you watch the show and can tell me all about it. I mean, sure I can read newspaper reviews, but they're critiquing the acting and direction and talking about how it works as a movie for lay audiences. I'm interested in the historical accuracy in sporking detail.

FWIW, I enjoyed last year's PBS offering: The Virgin Queen, and am expecting this to be analogous, although with a higher-profile cast. Jeremy Irons as Dudley, prettyboy Hugh Dancy as Essex, Ian (Palpatine) McDiarmid as Burghley.

This is amusing. The HBO site includes a Flash-based Elizabeth I Matchmaking Game. Choose among ten suitors -- can you find a match that's approved by (a) the queen, (b) her advisors, and (c) her subjects? Just gut reaction, but I'm guessing the answer is "no."

Although this reminds me again to check the libraries for Monarchy and matrimony: the courtships of Elizabeth I by Susan Doran. [Pardon me for filling this week's archive with so many book titles; I figure this will make it easier for me in future library visits, by concentrating them all on one page...]

PS added later: I hadn't heard of Toby Jones, who plays Robert Cecil, but looking over his credits on IMDB, how appropriate is it that the man Elizabeth called "her elf" is played by the man who voiced Dobby in the Harry Potter films?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:30 AM

Finished Longitude last night. (#36 for the year) Fun book. Fascinating story. Quick read.

I'm going to try to stop back at the library over my lunch break for the illustrated edition to see some of the objects he's describing.

Sobel's got a great way with a turn of phrase.

So little is known of the early life of John Harrison that his biographers have had to spin the few thin facts into whole cloth.

[...]

John "Longitude" Harrison was born March 24, 1693, in the county of Yorkshire, the eldest of five children. His family, in keeping with the custom of the time, dealt out names so parsimoniously that it is impossible to keep track of all the Henrys, Johns, and Elizabeths without pencil and paper. To wit, John Harrison served as the son, grandson, brother, and uncle of one Henry Harrison or another, while his mother, his sister, both his wives, his only daughter, and two of his three daughters-in-law all answered to the name Elizabeth.

Oh, and one other colorful detail:

Harrison, according to those who admired him most, never could express himself clearly in writing. He wrote with the scrivener's equivalent of marbles in the mouth. No matter how brilliantly ideas formed in his mind, or crystallized in his clockworks, his verbal descriptions failed to shine with the same light. His last published work, which outlines the whole history of his unsavory dealings with the Board of Longitude, brings his style of endless circumlocution to its peak. The first sentence runs on, virtually unpunctuated, for twenty-five pages.

I may want to seek out other books by this author... [Sobel, not Harrison]

Anyway, can't stay to chat. I'm going to stop at a bakery on my way to work, because although Passover may be over, we don't have any good nonPesadich foods for breakfast.

[Written at 7:30, but not posted until later, because Blogger is being annoying.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:29 AM

I've spent many an entry praising Michael B. Young's 1999 book King James and the History of Homosexuality and lamenting it's scarcity and price (most copies I see for sale online sell for over $100).

Well, I just got an automated notice from Abebooks.

Bolerium Books in San Francisco has a copy of the book for sale, for only $38.50 [I think that's even less than I paid for my copy, and I was grateful to find it for that price...]

Details here.

I already own a copy, so first come, first served!
[Though do let me know if you buy it on my recommendation, and what you think of it when you read it...]

PS: Written at 7:05 am, not posted until later because Blogger's down.

PPS: Sold! by 9:10 am!
In the future, if you're interested in this book (or any other used, rare title) Abebooks does support wantlists, where they will email you a notice when a book appears in the inventory of any of their affiliated stores. That's how I got my copy of the book, and how I found out about this one.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:54 PM

A few quick items on my mind:

Outside our house this morning, I saw a bird with a sprig of yellowish-green flowerbuds in its beak -- first sitting on a branch, then flying away with another bird playfully chasing it.

Saw two bluejays on a branch. I think both were male, based on the plumage.^* One touched beaks with the other (like a kiss). Then the second hopped up to a higher branch, followed by the first, before they both flew off together. It looked almost romantic, rather than aggressive.

Clearly, spring is in the air.

^* Whoops; checking some bird guides, male and female blue jays have a similar appearance, unlike (for example) cardinals.

Misstatement of the morning:

"Do you need anything to read? I have Scurvy."

Alas, that was unintentional on my part, unlike my last library book reference.

Word of advice: it may be unwise to go walking in the high grasses right after listening to coworkers discussing the diagnosis of Lyme disease. A slight itch on my leg and I find myself pulling up my cuffs and down my socks to check for ticks...

Finally, I finished reading The Queen's conjurer last night. It drags a bit in the middle, while Dee is travelling through Central Europe (where I abandoned it in my earlier reading attempt), but perks up again shortly before the end, with its explanation of why people believed in alchemy and then when Kelley proposes the spirits speaking to Kelley order the men to wife-swap. Well, that kind of thing always adds tension and excitement...

And in case anybody was wondering what's next, I'm about thirty pages into Longitude and enjoying it immensely. [Did you know the speed of light was first calculated in 1676!? Wasn't perfect, but I hadn't realized it had been done so early. Wikipedia has further details.]

Chametz tonight!

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:10 AM

It's hard to explain why, but this headline on the front page of today's Globe inspired mixed emotions:

See, it's been a worrisome trend that the Massachusetts population has been dropping in recent years. May be good news for homebuyers, but bad for jobseekers and our taxbase (and our political clout?).

I'd actually thought we were highest in the nation, so on the one hand it's a relief that others are having it worse.

On the other hand, we're talking about New York, Boston's longstanding rivals (in our eyes, at least).

So, some small part of me is screaming "Damn you, New York! You can't beat us forever!"

I may not have been born in the region, but I have so gone native...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:45 AM

I have a couple regular commenters who haven't filled out the name field in the comment form.

If you don't want to give out your real identities, that's fine. I respect pseudonymity.

But just for ease of reading, could you pick some consistent handle or nickname for yourself, so I can know who I'm talking with.

Thanks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:35 AM

Many of the blogs I'm reading have been discussing the Duke rape case. Heated words are being exchanged among blogs as different liberal values (feminism, rights of the accused) collide, and some fascinating insights are emerging about race and class and gender.

Not something I've been inspired to discuss, as I don't think I have anything to add.

Fortunately, Jon Stewart has no such compunctions, and last night made some cutting remarks about the media coverage of the story.

Whatever your opinion, I think this Daily Show video is worth a watch.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:30 PM

Skipped lunch (ate at my desk) to prep for a 2pm meeting.

So after that was over, I printed out a stripped-down version of my booklist from yesterday's posts (1 & 2) and headed over to the local library for a half-hour (well, 15 minutes -- half the time was in the walk).

My selections were limited by what the library had available (I'm not interested enough in any of these to request them from other branches). And here's what I came back with:

• Scurvy by Stephen R. Bown
• The Book nobody read: chasing the revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich
• The grand contraption: the world as myth, number, and chance by David Park
• Longitude by Dava Sobel
  • The library also had The Illustrated Longitude -- same text, with pictures -- which I rejected in favor of the smaller, more portable, book.

After flipping through them, I decided to defer The Frozen-water trade and The Confident hope of a miracle: the true history of the Spanish Armada as not to my current tastes.

Oh, and while looking up something else in my archives, I came across yet another book to check libraries for: The Spanish Armada by Colin Martin (as recommended by Josh Marshall).

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:10 PM

I'm sure this must exist somewhere...

This morning in the car, I was thinking about library classification systems.

Most modern libraries seem to have standardized on Dewey or LC.

But Dewey began in the mid-1870s, LCC in 1898. What about libraries that predated those?

There are many colleges and universities with older established collections. They wouldn't want to re-catalog all the old material, so probably preserve proprietary or otherwise arcane systems. I know most of the Boston Athenaeum's collection is cataloged according to Cutter's rules, although newer material now uses LC. What about Harvard or Yale?

Anyway, I was just thinking that this would be a fascinating topic for a book. Enough so, that it probably already exists somewhere. Anybody know where I might find it?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:40 PM

While trying to remember some other intriguing books I saw on somebody else's blog, a few more titles for perusal my next trip to the library:

• Menstruation: a cultural history by edited by Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie
• The Curse: a cultural history of menstruation by Janice Delaney, Mary Jane Lupton, Emily Toth
• The Curse: confronting the last unmentionable taboo: menstruation by Karen Houppert

[No, I'm currently not, but it's an ongoing issue.]

Again, if anybody's read, reviewed, and particularly compared these books, I'd love to hear further opinions...

A few others I wish to read, probably too academic for any of the library networks I belong to...

• Christopher Marlowe and Richard Baines: journeys through the Elizabethan underground by Roy Kendall
• Eating right in the Renaissance by Ken Albala

And, coming out next month, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography. The publisher's page already has the table of contents. Four essays on Marlowe, four on Jonson and eight on Shakepseare. I'm enough of a geek that I recognize all the Marlowe essayists by name as having written significant works on kind Kit: Charles Nicholl ("'By my onely meanes sett downe': The Texts of Marlowe's Atheism"), Lisa Hopkins ("Was Marlowe Going to Scotland when He Died, and Does it Matter?"), Patrick Cheney and David Riggs.

One "problem" I have coming up with a booklist by scanning online listings (whether Amazon or my company's Books in Print) is that I chain. One item sparks an interest which leads to more books on that subject which branches into a related subject and so on ad infinitum. See if you can follow my train of thought through these titles:

• Limeys: the conquest of scurvy by David Harvie or
  Scurvy: how a surgeon, a mariner, and a gentlemen solved the greatest medical mystery of the Age of Sail by Stephen R. Bown
• The Technology of orgasm: "hysteria," the vibrator, and women's sexual satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines
• Solitary sex: a cultural history of masturbation by Thomas W. Laqueur
• Allergy: the history of a modern malady by Mark Jackson
• Separate theaters: Bethlem ("Bedlam") Hospital and the Shakespearean stage by Ken Jackson
• Mad Mary Lamb: lunacy and murder in literary London by Susan Tyler Hitchcock
• The Invisible plague: the rise of mental illness from 1750 to the present by E. Fuller Torrey, Judy Miller
• The Frozen-water trade: a true story by Gavin Weightman
• The Epidemic streets: infectious disease and the rise of preventive medicine, 1856-1900 by Anne Hardy
• The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the cleansing of the Victorian capital by Stephen Halliday
• Reading food: a culinary history from Shakespeare to Martha Stewart by Wendy Wall
• Shakespeare and Elizabethan popular culture by Gillespie Rhodes
• Shakespearean sexuality by Lloyd Davis
• The Shakespeare wars: the battle to explain the Bard by Ron Rosenbaum
• Shakespeares after Shakespeare: an encyclopedia of the Bard in mass media and popular culture by Richard Burt
• The Globe Theatre Project: Shakespeare and authenticity by Rob Conkie
• Roaring boys: Shakespeare's Rat Pack by Judith Cook (I'll probably skip since previous books of hers didn't impress me overmuch, but some folks might be interested)
• Selling Shakespeare to Hollywood: the marketing of filmed Shakespeare adaptations from 1989 into the new millennium by Emma French
• Shakespeare and youth culture by Kevin Wetmore
• Shakespeare's face: a biography of the man and his portrait by Stephanie Nolen
• The Jewel house of art and nature: Elizabethan London and the social foundations of the scientific revolution by Deborah Harkness
• The book of the play: playwrights, stationers, and readers in early modern England by edited by Marta Straznicky
• Romance for sale in early modern England: the rise of prose fiction by Steve Mentz
• The English Renaissance stage: geometry, poetics, and the practical spatial arts 1580-1630 by Henry S. Turner
• The Confident hope of a miracle: the true history of the Spanish Armada by Neil Hanson
• The Elizabethan underworld by Gamini Salgado
• After Elizabeth: the rise of James of Scotland and the struggle for the throne of England by Leanda de Lisle
• Helen of Troy: goddess, princess, whore by Bettany Hughes
• Elizabethan rhetoric: theory and practice by Isabel Rivers

Mind you, many of the latter titles (once I started looking specifically for Shakespeare or Elizabethans, rather than having them turn up in other topics) aren't due to be published until the latter-half of 2006. So, really not helpful when trying to find something to read now. [And by the time they are out in print, this post will have been buried in my archives. Alas, so it goes.]

So, between this and my earlier post, I've listed fifty books I haven't read. Even conceding that many of them are months away from publication, anybody care to place any bets whether the next book I read (after I finish the current biography of Dee) comes from this list? Any bets on how many of these I read within the next year?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:30 PM

Continuing with the overdue OED etymology and updating this post from last month, the earliest use of the term superhero comes from 1917 in Contact: An Airman's Outings by Alan John Bott, which refers to "The super-heroes of the war."

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:00 PM

Ages ago I used the OED to find etymologies for "nerd", "geek", "wonk" and several other synonyms

But last month, when I took "The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test", I realized I didn't know the origins of "dork"

Now, with temporary free OED access, I thought I should rectify that:

     dork:

[Of uncertain origin: perh. var. of DIRK n., infl. by DICK n.¹ 3b.]

1. The penis.
     • Earliest cite: 1964

2. A foolish or stupid person; also as a general term of contempt.
     • Earliest cite: 1972

Oddly enough, the adjective dorky is dated somewhere between those two:

     dorky:

[ < DORK n. + -Y suffix¹.]

Contemptible or pathetic; spec. socially awkward, unfashionable. Cf. DORK n. 2.
     • Earliest cite: 1970

Needless to say, I still prefer "geek"

But, as long as I'm on this topic, a couple quizzes picked up from Keith DeCandido^{1 & 2}:

What kind of 'Smart' are you?	What highschool stereotype do you fit into?
"Intellectually" Intelligent You're 'Intellectually Intelligent.' That pretty much means that you're good with theoretical ideas and concepts - but this comes to you naturally. More or less, you're a natural brainiac. Good for you. 80% theoretical intelligence 60% natural intelligence	You fit in with: Nerd You fit into the nerd stereotype! Oh noes! While you float in the middle of the conformity continuum, you're not quite the most popular duck in the pond. That is, you may be a little socially rejected on account of your nerdiness. But don't let that get you down - you can always play with your gadget(s).

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:02 PM

Via bibliotrope:

Language Hat mentioned that because the BBC recently did a programme (as the Brits spell it) on language, the Oxford English Dictionary, as a tie-in, is providing free access. The freebie site includes pre-programmed links to words related to the programme, but you can look up anything that comes to mind.

But it's only for a few more days.

Enjoy!

Damn, now I've got to remember all the etymologies I've been wanting to look up for the last who-knows-how-long...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:00 PM

This morning, Bitch|Lab posted the following:

Internets ™ on the move

Lis Riba ought to love this one. It’s for real: Web browsers embedded in the floor of restrooms for conference guests to get a load of vendors’ wares:

Followed by a link to this YouTube video (for some reason, embedded YouTube videos don't work for me)

Just because I linked favorably to the RSStroom reader... I knew it was a joke!

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:55 PM

Hope to hit the libraries tonight or tomorrow, so I thought I'd share some of the books catching my eye at the present.

If you're familiar with any of these and can advise pro or con, or have read something like these that you'd recommend, please share any comments:

• The Book of story beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup -- blurbed in last month's Boston Magazine
• Flapper: a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern by Joshua Zeitz -- intruigued after Sunday's NYTimes book review
• The Book nobody read: chasing the revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich
• Heal thyself: Nicholas Culpeper and the seventeenth-century struggle to bring medicine to the people by Benjamin Woolley -- another book by the author of my current read. If anyone's interested, you can find Culpeper's herbal online here or here.
• Shakespeare and the Jews by James Shapiro -- after a footnoted reference in the Honan
• Oberammergau: the troubling story of the world's most famous passion play by James Shapiro -- found while I was looking up the previous title
• Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time by Dava Sobel
• The queen's slave trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the trafficking in human souls by Nick Hazlewood or
  Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's slave trader by Harry Kelsey -- I can't remember which one I saw in the bookstore
• Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi
• Trickster travels: a sixteenth-century Muslim between worlds by Natalie Zemon Davis -- found in Amazon's suggestions when looking up Tamerlane
• The Life and many deaths of Harry Houdini by Ruth Brandon
• The "improper" feminine: the women's sensation novel and the new woman writing by Lyn Pykett -- this harkens back to some thoughts I had a few months ago about women's writings
• Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who changed the Bible and why by Bart D. Ehrman
• God's secretaries: the making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson
• Constructing a world: Shakespeare's England and the new historical fiction by Martha Tuck Rozett
• England's Elizabeth: an afterlife in fame and fantasy by Michael Dobson & Nicola J. Watson
  Also by Dobson, The making of the national poet: Shakespeare, adaptation and authorship, 1660-1769
• Oh, and I'd love to find a good biography of Thomas Hariot, if anyone knows one to recommend.

Also, having enjoyed the first three books in the Lady Grace Cavendish series (Assassin, Betrayal & Conspiracy), I'm trying to decide whether to read the next two: Deception and Exile. My primary hesitation is that the first three books were written by Patricia Finney, while four and five are by Jan Burchett and Sara Vogler. Then again, Finney will be returning to the series for the forthcoming sixth book, Feud.

Incidentally, Finney has quite the reputation for Elizabethan fiction. The Lady Grace Cavendish juvies, another three adult books, plus (I did not know) she writes the Robert Carey mysteries under the pseudonym P. F. Chisholm. Here's her complete book list from her site.

And that's probably more than enough for my next library trip. Most of these are too specialized, I suspect, but looking in those sections of the shelves usually turns up something related of interest...

Speaking of books, forgot to mention that reading the Honan revealed further historical errors in The Secret of the Rose: not only was Marlowe definitely not in London during the story's opener, but the theaters were closed during most of the narrative... Again, something only an obsessive like me would notice, and even I didn't spot it until now. Still, just points out how difficult historical fiction can be.

PPS: Also meant to note at the second seder I had a chance to flip through a replica Geneva Bible. The sidebar comments are so enlightening. Yes, Miriam may have danced with a timbrel at the Red Sea, but that should not be considered justification for mundane dances...
At any rate, if that kind of thing intrigues you, GreatSite.com sells rare, antique, and facsimile bibles. Cool stuff!

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:45 PM

...but actions remain the same: an excerpt from The Queen's conjurer:

Isabel Lister had tried to mutilate herself with knives, and found herself to be "sore afflicted long with dangerous temptations" to commit suicide. She had come to Dee in the desperate hope that he could help save her from what she thought to be diabolical possession.

In other words, she was a cutter. Nowadays, we'd dismiss her as an emo goth.

BTW, a great turn of phrase:

Prague gave the world Kafka and the robot.

On the whole, the book presents a fascinating worldview -- one in which everything is interconnected and everything makes sense, if only one can decipher it.

Imagine a world where there are no coincidences, where everything happens for a reason. Astrology is just another form of intelligence gathering. And rather than science trying to surpass one's predecessors, instead there's a constant search for ancient wisdom -- whether it be the quest for the Enochian language of Adam and the angels, or a justification for more earthly explorers' routes:

In the late 1560s, Humphrey Gilbert, an MP and soldier knighted in 1570 by the queen for his military service in Ireland and the Low Countries, had started work on a treatise that examined whether or not the Northwest Passage [the sea route supposed to pass along the northern coast of America to Cathay] existed. His argument was, in the manner of the time, based not just on current geographical information, which was still scanty, but on ancient authority.

The most important authority of all on geography (as on many subjects) was Ptolemy, whose map of the world divided the globe into three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, all joined together by land. However, this view had been challenged by Plato, who wrote of the existence of another landmass, a huge island larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined. According to Egyptian priests, it was situated beyong the Pillars of Hercules, the ancient name for the Straits of Gibraltar, which was then taken to be a gateway into the immeasurable unknown. That island was called Atlantis.

In brief, Gilbert thought America, the "New World", was Atlantis. Since Atlantis was an island, then "obviously it was surrounded by water, which meant there must be a way around its northern shore."

Of course, they didn't expect to find much gold in those parts, because of correspondences between celestial and terrestrial elements, such as the planet and metal Mercury, or the Sun and gold: "and it was believed that where one was most plentiful, so would be the other, as the heat of the Sun promoted the formation of gold seams in the soil. For this reason, the biggest concentrations of gold ore were assumed to lie in the tropics..." which isn't that far from the truth, when you think about it.

At any rate, it's a fascinating mindset. Has anybody created an RPG where magic (and the world) works the way Elizabethans thought it did?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 PM

Since finishing the Park Honan, I've felt stuck for what to read next.

Right now, I'm in the middle of The Queen's Conjurer, a biography of Doctor Dee which I bought and began many years ago and then abandoned. So I'm giving it another try...

BTW, story seed for writing or RPGs:

In 1549, in [the precincts of St. Paul's Cathedral], an ornate chapel and charnel house filled with elaborate marble monuments to the dead had been torn down by Protestant fanatics. The bones found beneath, apparently amounting to more than a thousand cartloads, had been taken out to marshlands north of the city, where they were dumped and landscaped over, creating a hill high enough to support three windmills.¹

¹ Survey of London, Stow, p.312. The mound, called Mount Calvery, is just south of Islington and shown on the Agas map of London.

Is anybody else now considering the potential for period zombie flicks. Saints walk among us! It's a Catholic plot to undermine Protestant London!

Inspired, no? Of course, I can't help picturing isolated fingers crawling along the ground like Muppet inchworms...

Speaking of books, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to March by Geraldine Brooks, a novel focusing on the father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

As Keith deCandido puts it, "[i]t's a novel starring characters not created by Brooks set in a universe not originally envisioned by Brooks." Sounds like fanfic to me!

At any rate, back to my original comment, I'm looking for something to read. I suspect I'll trawl the local libraries tomorrow, during lunch and after work, but I'm open to suggestions.

I was thinking of listing some of the books which have caught my eye, but that'll take more time than I really feel like blogging at the moment.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:55 PM

Because I know people are always looking for it, the Malden Stop & Shop still has massive amounts of Kosher L'Pesach Coca Cola, which is made from cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

As Ian writes, "Many people who aren't Jewish also tend to buy it, because it tastes better. Speaking as a Jew who does keep kosher for Passover -- if you're not Jewish, please DO buy the stuff. Remember, if the Stop and Shop sells out of the stuff, they'll order more next year. If they don't, they'll order less. Make sure that the stuff all gets sold so they'll make sure to get LOTS of it."

Oh, and most of their other KLP products are half-priced, which makes sense because the holiday is half-over. Chance for some good bargains, though, if you're looking for kosher products. [Even non-Pesach goods, like boxes of shabbos candles, are on sale...]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:20 PM

I don't watch American Idol, but I am a Queen fan.

So, since I heard about last week's episode where contestants had to perform a Queen song, it got me thinking: what song would I choose?

Now I know I can't sing worth a damn, so tried to think of something appropriate that was also within my (limited) range. And (in my g