Saturday, February 03, 2024

What’s Happening? Not Much

Friday the sun came out for the first time in weeks!

The flag at the nearby elementary school looked bright in the sunlight.

The kids were enjoying themselves.

Mainly, it has been very quiet around here.


  • Snow by Viveca Sten is too perfect for our depressing January weather. As the police detective Hanna Ahlander tries and fails to find a missing girl, and then determinedly searches for her murderer, very heavy snow is falling constantly. Incredibly much snow! It’s a dark and stormy book, very sad. Hanna has lost her job with the Stockholm City Police, and joins a small police force in a ski resort near the Norwegian border. There’s a pleasing amount of local color — and there’s Swedish food: “they dig into homemade meatballs served with lingonberry preserve, mashed potatoes, and gravy ….” (p. 311)
  • The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton makes a pretty sweeping claim in the title. I found it pretty tough to read, somewhat tedious and digressive. The author covers not just the philosophy, science, and biographies of the three thinkers of the title, but also discusses many other great men: the ancient Greeks, the early Christian scholar Boethius, Moses Mendelssohn, Einstein, Nils Bohr, and many more. (He might also have mentioned one or two women.) As I read, I was overwhelmed by the complex and intertwined ideas from physics, literature, and history, and by constant jumping around among all the different writers, abstract presentations about how we know what we know, and different time frames. Consider this quote from  Heisenberg  “we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” (p. 114)
  • The Widow of Bath by Margot Bennett, a classic British mystery from the early 1950s, is a little too full of clever banter and class-oriented observations for my taste. It had a good ending, though. As in many English mysteries, the word I find myself thinking is “arch.” For example this: “The corridor was dark and odorous. The smell could be divided into five per cent furniture polish, fifteen per cent tomcat, and eighty per cent cooking. All the smells seemed to have been there for a long time. They had no way of escape.” (p. 183)


Dreaming of Paradise

The island of Moorea, as seen from the hotel in Tahiti on our trip in 2019.
 
Albatross nesting on the Galapagos, 2010. (I think the nesting area has been closed to humans now.)

Sunset in Maui, 2003.

Note: I seem to write a blog post with beautiful beach photos almost every winter and complain about how I wish I were there. Here it is again.

Blog post © 2024 mae e. sander.
Photos © 2003-2024.
Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.

31 comments:

  1. nice to plau outdoor under the sun...
    Albatross looks pretty....
    Thank you for sharing interesting photos.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lovely photos!

    Yeaaah, Margot Bennett hasn't been one of my favourite writers in the British Library Crime Classics series. Clever, sure, but I didn't care a lot. E.C.R. Lorac is my favourite, I think; looking forward to the new one for February!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is the time of year I am happy to be living on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Sunny, almost seventy degrees F, blue skies, people wading in the water in Galveston. I'm quite cheery.

    Of course I won't be quite so cheery in the furnace blast of August...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello,
    I am the same way, dreaming of a warm sunny beach for the entire winter.
    Love the Maui sunset, the Albatross and the view of Moorea. I would love to visit the Galapagos Islands. The books look interesting, I will see if my library has them available. Have a great weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The pictures are beautiful. I wish I was there too. It's gloomy here. Have a great weekend, Mae!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I like your idea of posting memories and wishes during a time when you're out of exciting things for new pictures. Everybody has those times I'm sure (and those of us with beautiful memories to post are the lucky ones for sure!) ... I wish I'd thought of doing that back in October or so when I took a blog holiday just because I couldn't think of anything good to post. (I kept meaning to come back and at least do a post to explain and then I procrastinated until it was too late. ) And wow, your real life doesn't look bad really for mid-winter!! (my laundry room doesn't look anywhere as photographable as yours does.) And I'm not reading such interesting books. Though I did get a lot of reading done while I wasn't blogging. Anyway, it's good to be back!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well, why wouldn't you miss such places?!
    I tend to perseverate on the bad times, and get stuck in regret.
    This is lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thursday was the first time we had seen the sun in weeks, it was glorious! Yesterday was dreary again, today the sun is back out. Have a great week!

    ReplyDelete
  9. We had bright sunshine today. We had almost forgotten what that looks like! I have never visited The Galapagos and doubt now that I ever will, but your picture of the albatross colony makes me realize what I have missed. And as a lifelong devotee of Darwin, and in recent years of Peter and Rosemary Grant, it would have an element of pilgrimage to it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. We had weeks without sunshine, too. I was so happy to see it again! I've been finding videos with beaches for small fantasy moments.

    ReplyDelete
  11. We finally had sun today. It was lovely. And I can relate to wanting to escape some of winter. Sometimes it's harder after visiting someplace lovely like when you went to Costa Rica a few weeks ago. That happens to me at least. Have a super and maybe not too boring weekend. hugs-Erika

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hope you enjoyed the sun. We are in for a week of rain, so I'm sure I'll be thrilled to see it when it returns.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'll enjoy for you (though... temps went down a bit! Buhuu).

    ReplyDelete
  14. I've never been to the Galapogos, but it's a place I'd love to see. That beach and the birds... good shots for mid-winter.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Great pics! The Widow of Bath sounds like a book I'd like.

    Have a great week!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Great pics! The Widow of Bath sounds like a book I'd like.

    Have a great week!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Dreaming of paradise. I wish I could go there. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  18. I'm glad the sun came out this past week. It's always lovely when it does in the winter. I'm glad the kids enjoyed themselves outside too.

    I hope you have a great week!

    ReplyDelete
  19. I’m glad you got some Sun, we have entirely too much of it here!

    Wishing you a lovely week

    ReplyDelete
  20. Yay for some sun! I love your beautiful photos. Well, maybe not of the washer and dryer. They remind me I need to do some laundry, lol! :)

    ReplyDelete
  21. A beautiful blue sky! The dark clouds have settled in here for the next several days or so. Snow does sound good and perfect for the season. I haven't read Viveca Sten before.

    My mom just got back from a trip to Hawaii. She enjoyed the pleasant weather and ocean views.

    Your laundry room picture reminded me I need to get up and move the clothes from the washer to the dryer . . . I hope you have a great week, Mae!

    ReplyDelete
  22. I’m all about a sunny destination right now! Tahiti looks beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Hi Everyone — Thanks so much for all the great comments. I hope your weather and ours do clear up this week and we all can enjoy some sunshine (or in a couple of case, enjoy some cooling off from a heat wave in the other hemisphere)!
    Have a good week and best wishes to you all… mae

    ReplyDelete
  24. The sun finally coming out WAS a big event, wasn't it?
    I felt like a kid at Christmas going for a walk in the 50s!
    Borges, Heisenberg, Kant: wow, all 3 in one book? heavy duty!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Yay for the sun!!

    It's always fun to dream of elsewhere!

    ReplyDelete
  26. It really has been a long January. I appreciate whenever the sun comes out. Love the paradise pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  27. I love the description from "The Widow of Bath." I collect those BLCC booksbut haven't read that one!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Each book seems to offer a unique reading experience, catering to different preferences and moods.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Wow Tahiti! Wouldn't that be something. Pretty photo. You might need to go back.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for commenting. Please include a link to your current blog so that I can read your blog and share more of what you are thinking. Your google-blog-ID may not link to a blog hosted at another site, so please let me know who you REALLY are!