Beginning ~ before takeoff

"The plane had yet to take off, but Osgood, the photographer, was already snoring softly.  He was in the center seat, wedged between John Thigpen and a woman in coffee-colored stockings and sensible shoes."

Ape House ~ by Sara Gruen, 2010, fiction

Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn't understand people, but apes she gets — especially the bonobos

• Bonzi, the matriarch,
• Sam, the oldest male,
• Jelani, an adolescent male,
• Makena, the pregnant one,
• Lola, the infant, and
• Mbongo, the other adult male,

who are capable of reason and communication through American Sign Language.  Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than she's ever felt among humans — until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter writing a human interest feature.  But when an explosion rocks the lab, John's piece turns into the story of a lifetime — and Isabel must connect with her own kind to save her family of apes from a new form of human exploitation.

I've read almost a third of the book.  Yes, it's as interesting as I thought it would be.  I've learned that bonobos would rather make love rather than war, and that some people's idea of "helping" the bonobos is very cruel and destructive, indeed!

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Linky.

Thursday lunch at the Circle@Crown Café

It turned out the special for today was actually "Crab" Artichoke Quiche.  Notice the "crab" is in quotes; that's because crab is not kosher, and the Circle@Crown Café is kosher.  Someone around the two tables shoved together for our large group said pollock is used as fake crab.  By the time I ordered, the Café had run out of the special anyway.  They substituted spinach quiche with salad for me, and I was very happy with it.

Who joined us today for food and fun?  Melvin and Gail were meeting with another group, but they sat and talked with us until their group arrived.  Eating together were Donna, Sheila, Nancy, Susan, Sandy M., and me.  Joining us for shorter periods of visiting were Florence and Mary and Ezra.  At one point, we totally embarrassed Nancy by singing Happy Birthday to her!

Peace and hope ~ origami doves

This photo was on Facebook today with these words:

"Salisbury Cathedral, England, UK (photo by steffi_daydreamer)
Installation of around 2,500 origami doves to symbolise peace and hope."

This is very similar to my dream (that I posted sixteen days ago), but my monarch butterflies were not massed together with others.  I saw only a handful of butterflies fluttering above the center aisle from the high ceilings.  The rest of the Facebook post says:

"The impressive display of white birds has flown all around the world from Jerusalem to Berlin and the US, before arriving in Salisbury.  The paper origami birds by artist Michael Pendry have been suspended from the roof of Salisbury cathedral.  According to the creator of the piece named 'Les Colombes' their presence represents hope and positivity."

TWOsday ~ in the Circle@Crown Café

Yesterday, Tonya posted this week's specials for the Circle@Crown Café:

Monday:  Veggie Burger on Pretzel Roll
Tuesday:  Pasta Fagioli with Cheese Garlic Bread
Wednesday:  Baked Salmon Wrap
Thursday:  Artichoke Quiche
Friday:  Battered Fish and Mac and Cheese

After checking my calendar and deciding what appealed to my taste buds, I posted a comment, saying, "Looks like Tuesday and Thursday for me."  Then I invited friends to join me, some on Facebook, some around the dinner table last night.  I have friends lined up to eat with me today and Thursday.  In the meantime, here's a painting by Susan Dorothea White of a bunch of other women enjoying a meal together.

Image Source:  http://www.susandwhite.com.au/

UPDATE after lunch:

Donna, Sandy M., and Melvin were already in the Café when I arrived with Marie, having talked her into joining us for a few minutes.  Ezra sat and talked while waiting for his order to go, and Katie spoke to us while getting her drink.  Barbara arrived after most had finished eating, but we had a great chat anyway.

Post-Truth

As I promised yesterday, here's the word of the year for 2016, according to Oxford Dictionaries.  Do facts still matter?  I saw a cartoon showing two panels.  In the first, labeled Truth, was a drawing of René Descartes (1596-1650), who said,

TRUTH  =  "I think, therefore I am."

Actually, he said it in Latin:  "Cogito, ergo sum."  (Yes, I studied Latin back in high school.)  The second panel, labeled Post-Truth, showed a drawing of a man wearing a tee-shirt, who said,

POST-TRUTH  =  "I believe, therefore I'm right."

This does seem to me to be where we are today, or at least where many people seem to be.  Let's define "post-truth":

And here we are, alternative facts and all.  "Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."  And that's a fact, post-truth.

Update 11-28-18:
It took me two weeks to notice the wrong word in this bottom image (that I found online).  The word "donating" should be "denoting" in that sentence.  Post-truth denotes or indicates circumstances in which objective facts don't mean as much as appeals to emotion and belief.

Dreaming ~ and reading

I dozed off with my computer on my lap and awoke with a smile on my face and the dream still lingering.  I was sitting in a narrow chapel, looking up at a butterfly over the center aisle to my right.  I had just realized the butterfly was not real, but hanging down from the high ceiling on a long string.  And then I saw another and another hanging there along the aisle, fluttering a little, as a tall dark-skinned priest robed in regal-red started quietly saying something like "vroom-vroom-vroom" and backed up the aisle toward the front of the chapel.  I was smiling because I'd just realized those butterflies were to be part of the service, somehow.  They were monarch butterflies, but I have no idea what any of this means.

What I'd been reading before getting on the computer couldn't have been more different.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century ~ by Yuval Noah Harari, 2018

How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human?  How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news?  Are nations and religions still relevant?  What should we teach our children?  This is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future.  As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.  He does this by untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in:

• How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us?
• What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it?
• How should we deal with the threat of terrorism?
• Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

He invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty.  When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power.

From the back cover of the book (and the table of contents), here are the 21 lessons:

1. Disillusionment ~ The end of history has been postponed.
2. Work ~ When you grow up, you might not have a job.
3. Liberty ~ Big Data is watching you.
4. Equality ~ Those who own the data own the future.
5. Community ~ Humans have bodies.
6. Civilization ~ There is just one civilization in the world.
7. Nationalism ~ Global problems need global answers.
8. Religion ~ God now serves the nation.
9. Immigration ~ Some cultures might be better than others.
10. Terrorism ~ Don't panic.
11. War ~ Never underestimate human stupidity.
12. Humility ~ You are not the center of the world.
13. God ~ Don't take the name of God in vain.
14. Secularism ~ Acknowledge your shadow.
15. Ignorance ~ You know less than you think.
16. Justice ~ Our sense of justice might be out of date.
17. Post-Truth ~ Some fake news lasts forever.
18. Science Fiction ~ The future is not what you see in the movies.
19. Education ~ Change is the only constant.
20. Meaning ~ Life is not a story.
21. Meditation ~ Just observe.

Tune in tomorrow morning for the 2016 word of the year, thanks to Oxford Dictionaries.  Yes, the word is here in this blog post.  Yes, we live in what seems to me to be a very odd world.  Maybe I'm getting too old.

Update:  Word of the Year posted 11/14/2018.

Update:  11/29/18
This photo was on Facebook today with these words:

"Salisbury Cathedral, England, UK (photo by steffi_daydreamer)
Installation of around 2,500 origami doves to symbolise peace and hope."

This is very similar to my dream (above), but my monarch butterflies were not massed together with others.  I saw only a handful of butterflies fluttering above the center aisle from the high ceilings.

Beginning ~ with the clock striking thirteen

I just added George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (sometimes written 1984) to my Kindle the other day and was able to locate the sentence J. K. Rowling quoted yesterday to "bash White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and President Donald Trump’s administration."  It's from chapter 3.

"And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed ― if all records told the same tale ― then the lie passed into history and became truth" (loc. 458).

That sentence was immediately followed by this one, that I remember from reading the book decades ago.

"Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future:  who controls the present controls the past" (loc. 458).

I also looked up this quotation in my new Kindle copy and found it in Chapter 7 (loc. 1098).  This novel was "the best-selling book of any genre" on Amazon in January 2017.  Our current administration has made the book seem like a prediction, rather than fiction.  How in the world did Orwell,  almost seventy years ago, describe today's situation so well?

Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to give the opening lines of the novel in this "Book Beginnings" post.  Here 'tis:

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Click to enlarge poster

Surely everyone already knows that eye on the cover of the book represents its most famous saying, but just in case this is all new to you, here's the quote, which was used thrice:

"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" (loc. 12, 21, and 3988).

Yes, it's in three places, and all three have every word capitalized.  For what it's worth, 1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays. Click here for today's Linky.