Update on "Worlds in Collision" post

A Science.com article says Earth was hit by "a Mars-sized object ... about 4 billion years ago ... The theory goes back to the 1970s and is well established..." Velikovsky was vilified in the 1950s for theorizing about a planetary collision within historical memory (see my Worlds in Collision post), but this article indicates such a thing is at least possible. Read the article HERE.

Lagrangian points
I am fascinated by Lagrangian points, mentioned in the article. This is something new to me, but it makes perfect sense. Click on "View It" below the diagram and see the easy-to-understand explanation.

Lagrangian points exist in any two-body system. This presentation shows how it works with the Earth-Moon system. View It.

Dancing at the Harvest Moon ~ by K. C. McKinnon

Dancing at the Harvest Moon ~ by K. C. McKinnon, pseudonym for a respected literary novelist, 1997, fiction

The dust jacket says, "Maggie struggles with her feelings for a younger man whose age stands in the way of her growing affection for him. But their passion is undeniable, and soon she will have to decide which is more important to her: what other people think, or what she feels in her heart." We have all heard of May-December marriages, but usually it's a much younger woman and an older man, such as Maggie's husband of many years, who left her for a woman around the age of their daughters. A year later Maggie leaves Kansas City to return to the lakeside Harvest Moon in Canada where she had met her first love. What she finds is an attraction to a young man who is only two months older than her daughter.

What if this happened to you? How would you react? Would you worry about what people think, or even worse, what your children think? Maggie did. She also worried about what Robbie, her first love, would think. Hey, she was even concerned about what her ex-husband would think! I wouldn't have picked up the book if I'd known it was a sentimental romance novel with an absurd number of coincidences. However, it's very well written and kept my attention. It is also short and didn't take long to read, so I'll give it 7/10.

By the way, if you want to know what else the author has written, her real name is Cathie Pelletier.

Korean student on a Southern campus

Some of you may want to re-read my review of The Foreign Student by Susan Choi. The novel's protagonist, Chang Ahn, is a South Korean student studying in a college in the Southern part of the United States, but his campus life is vastly different from that of Monday's Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui. Chang Ahn's experiences in war-torn Korea could have made him violent and hostile ... or withdrawn and fearful ... but they didn't. This would be a good book to discuss right now, and I'm glad I read it last week.

The Princess of Black Poetry

Professor Nikki Giovanni stood before the students and faculty of Virginia Tech during a memorial service for those slain during Monday's massacre. The 63-year-old poet with the close-cropped hair is a University Distinguished Professor at VT and has been on the faculty since 1987, teaching English. Have you ever heard of her?

Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Over the past thirty years, her outspokenness, in her writing and in lectures, has brought the eyes of the world upon her. One of the most widely-read American poets, she prides herself on being "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English." Early in her career she was dubbed the "Princess of Black Poetry," and over the course of more than three decades of publishing and lecturing she has come to be called both a "National Treasure" and, most recently, one of Oprah Winfrey's twenty-five "Living Legends."

Her bio goes on to say that her book Blues: For All the Changes reached #4 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list, a rare achievement for a book of poems. Most recently, her children's picture book Rosa, about the civil rights legend Rosa Parks, became a Caldecott Honors Book, and Bryan Collier, the illustrator, was given the Coretta Scott King award for best illustration. Rosa also reached #3 on The New York Times Bestseller list.

Let me share one of her poems that I like:

CHOICES

if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

it's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do

if i can't have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want

since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

when i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry

Something about me

Well, I've done it ... joined my first challenge. Something About Me involves choosing five books that say something about me. Then during August-September-October-November, we'll read some of the books. How many is up to each person. In other words, if you read my books, you'll know me a little better. I've (tentatively) chosen five books, which should be posted on the site in a day or two. Lisa at Breaking the Fourth Wall came up with this great idea. Click HERE or on the picture to check out the challenge and consider joining us. It sounds like fun!

Here are five good books that say "something about me":

1. Evensong ~ by Gail Godwin ~ This novel's main character is the church's first woman pastor. She's Episcopalian and I'm not, but some of her experiences are like mine when I was ordained and went into a field where I was often the first woman churches had ever had in their pulpits. Rated 10/10.

2. On Tap ~ by J. Frances Alexander ~ Chattanooga, my hometown, is the setting for this novel about the vulnerability of America's supply of safe drinking water to the attack of terrorists. Can you tell I'm also interested in environmental issues? Rated 8/10.

3. Booked to Die ~ by John Dunning ~ A mystery involving bookstores that deal with rare and out-of-print books, this book was a learning experience for me when, after retirement, I worked for such a store. Later I was bookstore manager at a store in a small town south of Chattanooga, before opening my own bookstore. In none of these situations was there a bookstore murder to solve as in this book of fiction! Rated 9/10.

4. Go Out in Joy! ~ by Nina Hermann Donnelley ~ The author shares what it's like to work as a hospital chaplain. I first read this book while in seminary, when I too was struggling to learn how to deal with patients and their relatives, especially when parents were fearful for the health of their small children. My group of intern chaplains was assigned to a large hospital in Atlanta, and I prayed I would not get the pediatric ward. You did notice the word "children" above, right? Rated 10/10.

5. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter ~ by Sue Monk Kidd ~ This nonfiction book chronicles Kidd's religious awakening and transformation. Although we have arrived at somewhat different places, we both had to work through the patriarchy in our religious traditions. "Awakening" is a great word for what I felt when I reached a point in my life when I could articulate what I believed and why. Rated 10/10.

The Foreign Student ~ by Susan Choi

The Foreign Student ~ by Susan Choi, 1998, fiction

Have you ever heard of Sewanee, Tennessee? Did you know there's a college there? Um-hmm, that's what I thought. I chose to read this book because its setting is about 45 minutes from here, at Sewanee, near Monteagle, Tennessee. If you've ever driven I-24 from Nashville to Chattanooga, you crossed a steep mountain, at the top of which is the Monteagle exit. For those of you who read what I wrote about Madeleine L'Engle, Sewanee is where I heard her speak and got to shake her hand.

Choi's novel takes place in the mid-1950's, a time I was in my teens. I think there was only one occasion when a character traveled to Chattanooga, and it was NOT a significant scene. The premise is that Chang Ahn, promptly renamed "Chuck" by an American, comes to Tennessee to attend college. He suffered during the war (what we in the United States call the Korean War or Korean conflict) and refuses to talk about it, though we readers enter his thoughts and know some of what he went through. At Sewanee he meets Katherine Monroe, a naive Southern girl in spite of her "affair" with professor Charles Addison. I put "affair" in quotations because she was only 14 at the time. Ooooo, how times have changed. That professor would be in BIG trouble today ... and should have been then.

Okay, so you're thinking, "Boy meets girl, they fall in love, slight complications ensue, but they live happily ever after at the end." Well, no, it doesn't work that way in this novel. Right away you should see major complications from his war-scarred psyche and her uncertain sexuality. Throw in Crane, a self-absorbed dorm "friend" of Chuck's, whose father is a racist and a member of the Klan. And then there's that older professor, who seemed to me the least mature character in the book. Toss lightly and savor, but don't expect wild action. Did I like the book? Yes, I did ... and rated it 8/10.

Worlds in Collision ~ by Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds in Collision ~ by Immanuel Velikovsky, 1950, nonfiction

The author, shown at right about 1974, was vilified by the scientific community for publishing this book on planetary theory. Velikovsky was a scientist who also knew a lot about history and mythology. The outpouring of scorn and abuse seems far out of line if his theories are really so impossible to believe. The book is out of print and Velikovsky died years ago, yet the controversy lives on. (Yes, you can read all about it in Wikipedia.)

People familiar with the book of Joshua in the Bible probably have heard about the day that the sun stood still in the sky. With that extra long day, Joshua was able to defeat the people he was fighting. The Israelites therefore saw that "wonder" as help from God. Velikovsky found that other peoples around the world also report an extended day or, on the opposite side of the world, an extended night. Happenstance? He didn't think so.

Venus, the planet we know as the morning star and also the evening star, was for some reason worshiped by many different people. He wanted to know why. Velikovsky found evidence to show that Venus "did battle" in the sky, frightening people all around the earth. Using descriptions from numerous ancient manuscripts, the author shows that the earth once had only 360 days, meaning it was in a slightly different orbit. Venus changed that, Velikovsky says. According to his theory, Venus was once a comet, expelled from Jupiter, and had a comet's tail which whipped the earth.

Even more interesting is the "fight" between Venus and Mars. Recently, I ran across a theory about our "electric universe," which says the planets have charges. Without calling it that, Velikovsky (in the 1940s) wrote that Venus and Mars shot off sparks (my words) when they came into close proximity. Earth got in the way of their "fight" and was bumped out of its orbit, but only slightly. The poles flipped and after that the sun "came up" from the wrong direction. That extended day mentioned above happened when the earth changed its position as well as its orbit.

Velikovsky's theory makes sense to me. This book was as much fun to read this second time as when I read it before, and I rate it 9/10.



Electric universe

"Gravity can only attract, but the electric force can also repulse. ... The Electric Universe is fantastical beautiful in its elegant simplicity, already in its first description. However, the 20th century remains for ever the century of astronomical mysteries because of the unleveled effects of the electric force."

Author of this article is Dr. László Körtvélyessy, physicist and engineer of high temperature process technics and a candidate of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Most of this article is WAY over my head, but I pulled out a small bit that sounds like English to me. I found the article and photo about the electric universe here: http://www.the-electric-universe.info/The_idea.html and here: http://www.kronia.com/home.html
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UPDATE:
http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2007/04/update-on-worlds-in-collision-post.html