- The secret to walking to the South Pole is to put one foot in front of the other, and to do this enough times.
— Erling Kagge, Silence in the Age of Noise
Quote of the Day: Erling Kagge
September 9, 2019 at 12:31 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Explorers, Memoirs, Recommended)
Tags: advice, Mondays, nonfiction, reading lists, wisdom
Word of the Day, 3rd Sunday of August 2019
August 18, 2019 at 3:46 pm (Explorers, Philippine History, Sundays)
Tags: discoveries, The Philippines
KINAADMAN is a Visayan word signifying both knowledge and wisdom. The sailboat (vinta, a familiar sight in southern Philippines seas) carries on its sail the letter K in the old native syllabary.
In the olden days, Filipinos were sailors. Using only the stars for guidance, our fast-moving sailboats ranged far across the Pacific — to Guam, the Micronesian Islands, even Hawai’i.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Explorer Monday: National Geographic, April 1987
August 12, 2019 at 5:05 pm (Explorers)
Tags: advice, Mondays, natural history, wisdom
Robert Falcon Scott to his wife, last instructions (found on his body eight months later):
Make the boy interested in natural history, if you can; it is better than games; they encourage it at some schools. I know you will keep him in the open air.
Above all, he must guard and you must guard him against indolence. Make him a strenuous man. I had to force myself into being strenuous, as you know — had always an inclination to be idle.
Robert Falcon Scott “and two companions made it to within 11 miles of safety — a depot of supplies known as One Tom Camp some 150 miles from their base camp. They had walked more than 1,600 miles, to the Pole and almost back.”
— Sir Peter Scott, The Antarctic Challenge, National Geographic, April 1987
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Still Work-in-Progress
August 11, 2019 at 9:09 pm (Explorers, Filipino Writers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: fantasy, horror, short story, work-in-progress
- Pitt was the first to board. He was always the first. Whether that made him brave or foolhardy was hard to say.
— The Rorqual, p. 5
Philip II of Spain, Habsburg
June 16, 2019 at 5:03 am (Explorers, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Writing)
Tags: historical fiction, Saturday, The Philippines, Wordpress, writing process
The man after whom self’s native country is named is Philip II.
She’s been writing a story about him for the past couple of years. It begins with a physical description and all of a sudden, self itches to see actual portraits (You’d think she’d have done this first thing, but noooo, self always has to do things the hard way)
So, here he is, dear blog readers: Philip II, King of Spain and Portugal, King of Naples, Ruler of the Spanish Netherlands, and Duke of Milan:
Born in Valladolid, 16 January 1556, died in Madrid on 13 September 1598. He was 71.
Stay tuned.
Global Dickens
May 31, 2019 at 5:06 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Explorers, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: discoveries, English writers, exhibits, Fridays, history, inspiration, London, museums, novel
Self spent the morning at the Charles Dickens Museum on 48 Doughty Street, checking out the house where Dickens and his wife spent probably the two happiest years of their marriage. The house offers fascinating glimpses of the man’s domestic life, and the audio tour is highly recommended. She came away with a small fridge magnet showing her favorite painting of Dickens: he sits in his study, surrounded by a cloud of his inventions.
She saw a very distressed copy of David Copperfield and read that this copy “travelled with Robert Falcon Scott and his men to Antarctica in 1910. When half of Scott’s men were stranded in an ice cave for 7 months, they read to each other every night for comfort and entertainment. After 60 nights they finished David Copperfield and, as one of the men wrote, they were very sorry to part with him.”
Dickens also exists in manga form!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
The Admiral’s Dream
April 4, 2019 at 1:50 am (Books, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: dreams, nonfiction
From The Sea Is One, an Introduction to Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans by Admiral James Stavridis (Penguin Press, 2017):
The approaches to land are always difficult in my dreams, and the ship often finds herself running out of deep water and becomes rapidly in danger of foundering on a beach or up a river or upon a reef. I always wake up before the ship finally impales herself ashore, and I always wish I had stayed farther out to sea.
Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans
April 3, 2019 at 5:02 pm (Books, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: discoveries, history, Mendocino, nonfiction
Found this book in Gallery Bookshop, Mendocino, last year.
Love any book on Sea Power. Because oceans are life. And self loves reading about them.
The World’s Oceans: Shipping Lanes and Choke Points, from Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans, by Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.)
Stay tuned.
More From Gary Kamiya
March 18, 2019 at 4:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, essays, history, nonfiction, Salon.com, San Francisco
Love Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. Reading the essays in it painstakingly slowly.
Gary Kamiya was one of the founders of Salon.com (still going strong!). An ex-fellow Fellow from Stanford, Jim Paul, used to write for them. As did Chitra Divakaruni. As did Laura Miller. As did Heather Havrilesky.
Self is on Essay # 5, The Harbor at the End of the World:
A 1508 map by Johannes Ruysch depicts South America as the New World, with Asia in the place where North America actually is.
Private beach access for this homeowner along the Mendocino coast
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Sawyer: Record of a Spaceborn Few, p. 175
March 5, 2019 at 5:43 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Explorers, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: discoveries, novel, praise, reading lists, science fiction
Self loves Becky Chambers’ world-building. She first picked up on Chambers’s absolutely on-point world-building skills in the Sawyer sections (This novel uses one of those mutliple point-of-view structures, which normally self finds extremely annoying, but here actually likes). As a result, Sawyer quickly became one of self’s favorite characters.
In a recent chapter, he met the crew of a salvage ship. His observations about the crew, especially one with a “flip-eye”, and the way he’s asked to “break code” is completely beguiling. She almost quoted it in a blog post yesterday, but had to complete her week’s assignment for a memoir class she’s taking from UCLA Extension (a comp; after all these years of teaching, she’s entitled to at least a dozen of these!), so decided to forego the pleasure.
This morning, she happily begins to read a new Sawyer section (p. 175). Once again, the inventiveness of Chambers comes through!
A few pages earlier, Sawyer met Eyas, self’s second-favorite character.
Sent message
Encryption: 0
Translation: 0
From: Sawyer (path: 7466-314-23)
To: Eyas (path: 6635-448-80)
Hi Eyas,
I hope you don’t mind my sending you a note. I found your scrib path in the ship’s directory (you’re the only one with your name!). Anyway, I wanted to thank you again for your advice the other day. I’d just signed up for sanitation work when I met somebody outside the job office looking to hire workers for a salvage project. It’s just a gig right now, but it might be more. Plus, the crew’s been the only group of people other than yourself to offer to show me the ropes. They seem like fun folks. So I’m on board with them now, but don’t worry! My name’s still in the sanitation lottery. I took what you said seriously, and I’ll help out when I’m needed. Thanks for steering me in the right direction.
Sawyer
Oh, Sawyer. He’s good at reading code, but doesn’t bother encrypting his message to Eyas? What a neophyte! The message has self thinking: Danger! Danger! He is entirely too trusting of his new crewmates.
And now that Sawyer’s sent the message, he sits on his bed thinking: I should have bought new clothes.
lol
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
