Goat Love

Today after a normal feeding time, Columbia walked outside and just stood in the pasture, staring at the road, as you see here.

Zowie (foreground, turning to look at me) followed shortly thereafter. She stood a ways back and stopped, just looking at her mom from a short distance. Just keeping an eye. Just making sure she was OK. Because it was kind of unusual. And Zowie would surely rather be eating hay or drinking water or licking salt or grazing a bit, rather than doing nothing, but mom was acting strange, so maybe best to just keep an eye in case she needed anything.

They love each other so much.

I hope Columbia’s OK and was just enjoying the rare sunshine on her back.

Wolf Hall

I wanted to save a couple of quotes from Wolf Hall before I return the book.

“How can he explain to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the and the powder and the shot.”

“And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marches of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and the bogarts who live in the hedges and in the hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priests and friar who feed on living England, and such the substance from the future.”

Booker.

Book Corner 2024.42

by Lionel Shriver

This is a mash-up of three of Shriver’s other books – THE POST-BIRTHDAY WORLD; SO MUCH FOR ALL THAT; and a dash of THE MANDIBLES. A couple decide in their 50s that they will commit joint suicide when the younger of them turns 80. All the permutations of what might happen ensue, in different chapters. To wit:

  • She chickens out, he goes through with it
  • She goes through with it, he chickens out
  • The kids discover what’s going on and have them committed
  • Instead, they just plan ahead and enjoy a boring old age in a retirement home
  • They chuck the idea, live long & prosper
  • They chuck the idea, & get cryogenically frozen
  • They chuck the idea, & humanity discovers the means to live forever
  • They chuck the idea, & live long enough to see the world disintegrate

I’m sure I’m leaving some out. It differs a bit from POST-BIRTHDAY in that there are multiple paths, not just two; and the paths diverge at different points. It echoes POST-BIRTHDAY in the fact that most of the stories echo each other with little details (a stain that looks like the shape of Norway, wild mushroom fajitas, etc.). Oh, I forgot to mention that Shriver even playfully throws in a reference to herself during the MANDIBLES alterna-plotline. Definitely fun. I am kind of glad it’s over, though; I didn’t much like either him or her.