Sunday Sundries, 246

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: A woman approached me at the coffee shop last week, apologized for interrupting (I was reading), and wanted to tell me how much she and her daughters had enjoyed speculating about the Peter Rabbit figure sitting on my table when they drove by every day to school. She wanted to know the story of the rabbit; I told her; she said her daughters would love to hear it--and off she went, after offering to buy me a coffee--or treat. My waistline declined the latter, and I already had the former. But ... what a kind thing to do ..

2. We didn't see a movie this week (almost went to the marathon movie--but didn't), but we were thrilled to see that one of our favorite series, Doc Martin, has another season to stream! We've finished the 1st episode (via Acorn TV) and are now going to slow down so that they don't go away so fast. LOVE that show ... (Link to some video.)

We got a special little thrill in the opening of Season 9, "To the Lighthouse": It had scenes filmed at the actual lighthouse that inspired that 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf--and Joyce wrote her master's thesis on Woolf.

3. I finished one book this week, the latest novel by Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me. It's narrated by a sort of anchor-less man named Charlie who uses his entire inheritance to purchase a life-like robot, one of the few in this early stage of life-like robots. Its/His name is Adam. (The Eves, apparently, sold very quickly for, uh, a variety of reasons.)

Charlie is also obsessed with Miranda, a young woman who lives upstairs in his building, and they ... ain't gonna tell you. (I liked the choice of the name Miranda: It's from The Tempest, and it is she who utters, when she sees the first young man she's ever seen, that now-famous line:

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't! (5.1)

(In the Bard's day, brave meant splendid, worthy, excellent, etc.)

Anyway, things quickly get complicated in their lives as Adam learns, learns, learns, ... and loves. (Guess the object of his affection?)

How it all works out is both satisfying (to some) and damning (to others).

One of the things I really liked about the novel: McEwan plays with time. We seem, almost, in an alternate kind of England, a kind of what-if? place. For example, that great innovator in computers, Alan Turing (1912-54) is somehow still alive and now a revered old man in the country; Charlie meets with Turing a couple of times about Adam's situation.

In the background we also see the sorts of fights and political divisions that characterize both the UK and the US--and any number of other places.

And, over all, the eternal questions: What is love? Are are we really capable of it?

4. Speaking of which ... on Real Time with Bill Maher this week his before-the-panel guest was Salman Rushdie, whose new book Quichotte (based on Don Quixote) I wrote about on this site a week ago.

During the conversation, Rushdie mentioned a poem by W. H. Auden, "September 1, 1939," about the beginning of WW II. Rushdie quoted a line from it--"We must love one another or die"--a line that, of course, continues to resonate. 

I looked up the poem in my "complete" edition of Auden; it's not there. But it is available online. It's a bit long to paste here, so here's a link to it.

Oh, and another coincidence: Today, Writer's Almanac reminds me, is the birthday of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), author, of course, of Don Quixote, 1605. Cervantes died the same year that Shakespeare did.

Somewhere, we have a reproduction of that famous image of Quixote and Sancho done by Picasso.

5. Last night we drove to Books-a-Million in the Falls and looked around--didn't buy anything (very unlike us). Trips-to-bookstores used to be something we did every weekend--sometimes more than once. Not so often these days ...

6. Friday night, we'd gone down to Szalay's Farm Market--great-looking corn ... not much of the season is left, I fear. Lots of pumpkins!

7. I got the results on my bone scan last week (via the UH patient portal): Things look stable, according to the report. But I'll wait and see what my oncologist says when I see him in a couple of weeks. Will then do an update here ...

8. Last Word: a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

downtoner, n.  An adverb or adverbial phrase that reduces the effect of the following adjective, adverb, noun, or verb (such as rather, fairly, sort of, etc.). Opposed to amplifier, intensifier.’]

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: down adv., tone v., -er suffix1.

?1900  C. Stoffel Intensives & Down-toners  ii. i. 129 Shading off in various directions, these ‘down-toners’ express a moderate, slight, or just perceptible degree of a quality.

1931  G. Stern Meaning & Change of Meaning  338 Intensifiers used ironically instead of down-toners. ‘A lot you know about that!’

1987  S. Adamson et al.  Papers 5th Intern. Conf. Eng. Hist. Ling.(1990) 502 The adverbial meanings [of just] may at first seem somewhat different... You just missed the bull's eye (downtoner).

2015  J. Butterfield New Fowler's Mod. Eng. Usage (ed. 4) at Kind n. She kind of wasn't listening (in which kind of is a ‘downtoner’).