apod

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap120519.html

Annular Solar Eclipse

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/BUnZ1oGuNKk/120519213236.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120519213236.htm

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/3cjQypcmS2s/120519202816.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120519202816.htm

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/g0irA6XC5Ik/120518132814.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120518132814.htm

bookviewcafe

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/05/20/history-fiction-and-time/

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=24083

I thought I might commence a series of posts about the intersection of history and fiction. I realize that some readers like their historical fiction to read like modern people dressed up in period clothes. Language, attitudes, all serve modern sensibilities—the good guys all have present day values, and oftentimes the bad guys have period prejudices. Modern language and attitudes are sprinkled among the pretty (or entertainingly peculiar) historical bits.

Hey, if that’s what somebody wants to write and somebody else likes to read, writer meet audience.

My target is the readers who like their historical fiction to feel like history, though I know that few fictions get it all right.

Some readers accept historical inaccuracies because they don’t know any better. When I look back over my lifetime of reading, I recollect assuming veritas in novels which later turned out to be suspicious at best. But I remember the book fondly because the story pulled me in and extended my interest to the time.

When people ask, “Why are there so many books set in Shakespeare’s era? Why not, say, in Lithuania of the 1350s?” well, first I’d think that some writer could carry off a novel about the spread of the plague but I’m probably not going to read it, second, there might be a truly great novel but it hasn’t been translated into English so I’m unaware of it, which leads to third, popular periods for fictions usually have either a charismatic set of people behind them—or popular fiction. And who has more endurance for English-speaking readers than Shakespeare?

I’m surely not the only person who has been inspired to learn more because I loved some novel or play set in that time and place.

When I travel, I love to visit period houses, and envision life there. I like to look out windows and try to see what people once saw. Writers can’t be truly authentic without a time machine (and there is also the accessibility factor, like, a novel successfully written in Chaucerian English might be hailed as brilliant and daring, but the audience is probably going to be small) but I appreciate something that shifts my imagination to a historical (or fantastical) setting.

The art comes in when writers blend modern accessibility with historical fact. This is dramatically illustrated in the Chaucerian novel example, but it can work not only for historical novels, but for fantasy and science fiction. Writers who most successfully evoke another time and place begin with the deceptively simple things, the fundamentals, such as how people view time.

For example, some readers can’t settle into a novel in a pre-industrial setting that measures time in seconds. “A few seconds later, they ran . . .” “They agreed to meet an hour later . . .” The visual reader is poked out of the story, wondering if these characters in their homespun and leathers all have watches? How does this world keep time? Is urban time-keeping the same as rural, which historically functioned according to season and to sun’s travel?

Farmers didn’t need clocks, because their crops and animals didn’t need clocks. In cities, time keeping used to be a public issue, everyone in earshot of bells. And later, huge clock faces oriented the city dweller.

This program does a lovely job of giving modern people a glimpse into the history of time keeping.   And here’s another article that, in exploring the subject of walking, raises a lot of questions not only about how Romans regarded walking, but how difficult it can be to pin down period attitudes even when we specifically go investigating.

 Sherwood Smith’s e-books (some of which deal with time) at Book View Cafe

poiseandpen
nanoljers

Originally published at Poise and Pen. You can comment here or there.

Did anyone else have a Writo de Mayo carnival last night? Or did you find another way to celebrate?
~Amber

oursin

Hedgehog jonesing for cilantro: simulataneously cute and disturbing:


This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1651870.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View comments.

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/DiNxqYhbrPE/120519071454.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120519071454.htm

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/mJI3durptyE/120518132416.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120518132416.htm

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/5GflEXByFXk/120518132250.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120518132250.htm

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/3MXE0HQIous/120518132244.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120518132244.htm

oursin

Given to think, by an exchange yesterday, of how far it's reasonable to go in combatting some prevalent error in understanding, in my particular instance, of certain facets of Victorian medical practice.

I can see writing an article or book which is on some topic one already perceives as worth writing about in which one engages with some other person's deluded somewhat mistaken take on it (and beats it to death with a rotten codfish). But not picking apart something that is, or ought to be, a non-topic to begin with.

The trouble with prevalent delusions is that they are usually, at bottom, nice and simple and soundbitey, whatever the structure of elaborating some particular bee in the bonnet thesis might be.

The basic tenet of all the 'Mr S of Stratford did not write Shakespeare' pretty much comes down to 'William S was a yob from the provinces without the benefits of education and moving in high society, with a record for poaching deer and a c.v. that included holding horses outside inns, working in the degraded profession of actor'. Once you have assumed that this person could not possibly have written the plays attributed to him, you are free to set up your own candidate and torture the evidence until it gives in.

Similarly, I don't think anyone is even going to get published writing a book on The Identity of Jack the Ripper: something we are never going to know, have you considered how many people there were living in London at that date, plus, major port city with teeming numbers of transients? rather than putting up their particular candidate and knocking down everyone else's.

Therefore, I am not really enthused by the thought of a project which would involve going through the footnotes in a work which I will not name, quoting what the texts in question actually say and how this does not actually support the arguments being made, and adducing contrary evidence.

It is, among other things, a wholly negative enterprise. I can't see any positive gains beyond the correcting error, and blowed if I can think of a sexy USP to put over the end product ('Victorians, sex, doctors, and the rise of electrical appliances: a much more complex story, with massive degrees of nuancing', is just not going to get the media coverage, even if it got published).

This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1651640.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View comments.

bookviewcafe

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/05/19/the-roof-part-two-or-how-to-re-roof-a-house-in-between-showers/

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=24124

You may remember how our first attempt to re-roof our house ended Western Europe’s biggest drought for 35 years – making it the wettest drought in history, not to mention having the bizarre situation where parts of the UK were simultaneously flooded and under a hosepipe restriction.

So, with half a roof re-slated, we waited – and waited – for the next window in the deluge. Days passed. Weeks passed. One of our neighbours started work on an ark.

Then the forecasts changed. Everyone agreed there was at least four days – maybe even six – of dry sunny days. Yay!

The first dry sunny day arrived cloudy and threatening. We were geared up to strip the roof but there was drizzle in the air and low black clouds. We paced, we consulted weather forecasts, we blamed the dog.

The next day arrived sunny and bright. An Atlantic High – which had been held up off the UK due to budget cuts in the immigration service – had finally been allowed in and would sit over our house for at least the next four days.

Yeah. Like we believed that.

We decided to work quickly and get as much done as we could. The first day went well. We stripped the remaining old slates (see pic 1) and nailed in the extra battens required for the smaller slates. The helpful dog (Asta, the roofer’s mate) was on hand to tidy up. Unfortunately Asta’s idea of tidying up was to eat anything that fell off the roof – slates, battens, nails, me. How Asta’s family survived to breeding age is beyond me. He has an omnivorous gene that sees anything that can fit into his mouth – and half of creation that doesn’t – as fair game. Every time a cracked slate slid off the roof it was a rush to get to it first. Then a wrestling match to prise it out of his jaws. He even stole slates from a stacked pile. And chunks of old batten would be taken away for a long chew in the horse’s field.

Our other roofer’s mate was equally annoying. When you’re stripping a roof that you know – by being woken up at night by the skittering and galloping sounds from the ceiling – is inhabited, and you don’t know how large (or aggressive) that noisy tenant might be, you tend to take things slowly when removing those particular slates. And when you suddenly hear a noise … and see something fast and hairy racing towards you as you reach out to remove a slate…

You tend to get annoyed when you discover it’s one of your kittens who’s climbed into the roof space to help out.

Helpful kitten can be seen in the next picture (by the chimney) fulfilling his role as building inspector, a role he carried out for most of Day Two. Taking his job very seriously, he’d like to either sit in front of me, to check the slates were being laid correctly, or waft his tail in front of my face – to remove any build up of slate dust.

On Day Three we had the most challenging part of the job – slating around the chimney. Being an old stone chimney there wasn’t a straight line or a right angle anywhere to be seen, so we had to cobble together some metal flashing to butt up against the stone and interleave that with the slates. This was made more difficult by the fact that we didn’t have a ladder long enough to reach the right hand edge of the chimney. So (picture three) we put a ladder on the slope of the red tiled chicken roof and I stood on the top of it.

Health and Safety would have had kittens who, in turn, would have climbed up my body to sit on my head for a better view.

I diced with death and kittens until about six when we stopped for the day. After all there was one more day of dry weather to come and the only job left was to put on the faitage (strips of metal along the ridge) and to seal the flashing to the chimney.

Just before bedtime the weather forecast changed. The High’s visa had expired and showers were building up over Normandy. We raced outside and carried the 2 metre strips of faitage up onto the roof. I straddled the ridge in the gloom trying to arrange the metal strips as best as I could. I didn’t have time to fix them properly as we had to cut them to shape around the chimney, but at least I could pose them. And it wasn’t windy.

Until the next day. The showers not only arrived they brought unexpected gusts of wind with them. And our faitage was balanced on the ridge by gravity and goodwill. Back I went up the roof ladder and, in the rain and the wind, started shuffling the faitage and roof ladder around. This is not easy, as it involved one person (me) getting on and off the roof ladder – alternately swinging onto the ridge, straddling it, sliding along it etc – and one person at the bottom of the roof ladder helping move it over windows into its new position in the middle of the roof. Our new plan was to use the weight of the roof ladder to hold the central section of faitage to the ridge and tuck the other 2 metre strips under the central faitage. It wasn’t a permanent solution but it was enough to keep the rain out.

Then came another wait for a dry day when we could cut the end faitage to size, butt it flush against the chimney, nail them all down then seal the chimney flashing.

Job done (final pic)

We still have the dormer roof and sides to do, but that can wait.

Chris Dolley is an English author living in France with a frightening number of animals. More information about his other work can be found on his BVC bookshelf .

apod

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap120518.html

A mere 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy really is

sciencedaily

http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/pnhQGmjpSy8/120518132549.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120518132549.htm