MI’KMAQ

 Not Mic Mac

Mig Ma

BOOK REPORT: MESSY BY TIM HARFORD

INTRODUCTION

How German teen’s failure to get the right piano for a jazz concert turns into magic in a bottle thanks to the willingness and skill of Keith Jarrett to play within the limits of the instrument, recorded for posterity as the Köln Concert of 1975

Argument: sometimes we are better served by embracing a degree of mess instead of a tidy-minded approach 

“I will stand up for messiness not because I think messiness is the answer to all life’s problems, but because I think messiness has too few defenders. I want to convince you that there can sometimes be a certain magic in mess.”

CREATIVITY

Brian Eno, West Berlin music studio 1976

Oblique Strategy Cards 

Shuffle and deal (don’t pick and choose)

Takes you out of your comfort zone

eg Be the first not to do what has never not been done before, Emphasize the flaws, Only a part not the whole, twist the spine, look at the order in which you do things, change instrument roles, Water, Honor thy error as a hidden intention, think like a gardener

NP-hard problem in mathematics

Like a combination lock: given a solution, it’s easy to check if it works. Finding the solution is near impossible because you have to try every possible combination

Algorithms serve as recipes to work through possibilities

Randomness “simulated annealing”

Graeme Obree “The Flying Scotsman”, 1990s

Cyclist with random experimentations

Big gains until Union Cycliste Internationale banned this new ideass. Since then, only “marginal gains” have been possible

2014 London commuter strike

1/20 did not return to their habitual route. The unexpected forced them to a better route

Harvard test, Shelley Carson

Distractable brains have an innate tendency to allow creativity

Bernice Eiduson, 1958, scientists who switched topics frequently were more highly productive

Alexander Fleming/Louis Pasteur vs James Watson/Jonas Salk

Michael Crichton 1994

most successful novel (Disclosure), TV show (ER), movie (Jurassic Park)

Creativity researchers 

Keith Sawyer/Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Flow”

Howard Gruber and Sara Davis

Pattern of different projects at different stages of fruition - “network of enterprises”

Four clear benefits:

Knowledge cross-fertilization amongst projects

Fresh content is exciting

Subconscious processing of other projects while paying close attention to another

Escape from the others (Soren Kierkegaard refers to this as “crop rotation”)

Twyla Tharp choreographer

Keeps a box for each project

“One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place” I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box.”

MOVIE REVIEW: DUNE

 I finally read this sci-fi novel last year, and I was surprised that I didn’t know it more. It had a lot of similar elements to Star Wars, with Arabic sounding names and desert worms. The pace of the book was very laconic, and I looked forward to seeing the modern movie, even though I hadn’t seen the first one.

Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya were predicable great on screen, and the grandeur of the desert and the interior shots were amazing. I really loved the presence of Oscar Isaac, and Jason Mamoa, but the scene with the Bene Gesserit testing Paul was the most terrifying.

It was an impressive adaptation, and I highly recommend seeing the movie after reading the book! 

Next is Dune Part II. I think we are due for more water, if memory serves!

RHUBARB MUFFINS

 Talking to my friend, married to a farmer, she was making rhubarb muffins. Turns out she uses a recipe from a book I have, The Best of Bridge! 

I learned a lot about harvesting rhubarb differently than I had been. It's hard to kill a rhubarb plant, but neglect doesn't get the best outcome either. I had been cutting them, but when my friend said she pulls hers from the outside, I remember seeing the rhubarb in markets looking like that. 

MOVIE REVIEW: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

 This was the second of the Jordan movies, and a friend came over to watch it with me, even though it was the longest one. Although it did include a short intermission and a black screen to start, the movie was listed as 3 hours and 47 minutes! 

Lawrence of Arabia was the best picture Oscar of 1962. Based on a true story, I had only known T.E. Lawrence from the translation work of The Odyssey. Indeed, it was the story of his military life that was spent rallying a group of disparate Arabs, from the Bedouin desert to conquer Aquaba and move towards Damascus. 

Set as a heroic story for an antihero, it was good at very prolonged suspense. It avoided all exposition, but I didn’t know what was going on sometimes. It needed editing, and a little more explanation. However, the story of the Arab uprising against the Turks as part of Britain’s WWI campaign was interesting. 

While Lawrence was changing from his uniform to a desert costume, the main Arabic characters were played by western actors like Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif. 

One highlight was when they rode by a rock I had stood on, with a photo to prove it!

Classic, interesting, strange dislikable character finding a way to belong.

MOVIE REVIEW: THE MARTIAN

 This was the shortest of a trilogy of movies that I wanted to watch on returning from a trip to Jordan.

The Martian is one of the three films

Comparisons

Contrasts 

That desert, full of satellites, rovers, and solar panels, was last full of litter and bedouins in headscarves and camels in my memory

As much as the stars fill the sky on film, there were not so many in the light haze of camp see you 

Criticisms: 

Why did they go out again in the storm? Without cinching themselves together in case electronics fail?

Where did he get all that plastic and tape?

How did we solve the problem of oxygen? Especially since H2O molecules take two each

Potatoes are far from enough nutrition

Why is he adding up meals, not calories? protein ability? Weight of the potatoes?

Plutonium : radiation poisoning?

NASA rooms: too many men

So many British actors for an American movie

A ribbon, not a knot? Really?! They were doing so well being realisticky!

The thing about space travel stories that I have read(The bio of Yuri Garagan, the autobiographies of Chris Hadfield and Dave Williams) is that they all return to earth firmly convinced that we much defend what we have more than pursue more desolate places to colonized. In this movie (I didn’t yet read the book, and I may not), there is a nod to a plant growing in pebbles, but then they are on to space travel again. I think we need to apply our energies to world cooperation in climate control, and less on dreaming of spitballing for aerospace disasters.

TREASURE HUNT IDEAS

 Darkest day of the year (December 21st)

ALLAN CARR'S AGATHA CHRISTIE

Greenway manor National Trust (Dead Man’s Folly - boathouse)
James Pritchard - grandson
Torquay, Torbay (born, bought 1938 her summer home, to her death)
English Riviera
Beach where she swam (ABC murder)
Beacon cove beach, microclimate allowed all year round
Rollerskating on the pier
Horse riding to cockington
Honeymoon hotel
Burgh (BURR) Island Hotel  (And Then There Were None, Evil under the sun)
Palm Court
Art deco
Black Tie
Sea Tractor
Mousetrap 
St. Marten’s theater
Harrowsgate Spa
Mystery

WATERCOLOUR

Paper brought from China by Marco Polo to Amalfi coast

90lb

Soak soft brush first, to prevent pain to get in brush, making it easier to clean later

Keep paper from curling by using four sides with butcher tape

Masking-cut tape, friscate, rubber cement- leaves white

Leave white between colours, or they will blend

PLAN!!!!!

Light to dark colours

Put drop in each cake colour to start

Use cheap brush to mix colour, expensive to paint

Bleeds

Try watercolour pencils

Toothbrush splatter à la Andrew Wyeth

Transfer paper- add in colour after the fact

Frank Hyde

Koy 

Acrylic gel medium, with comb, then silver leaf into dried gel, then topped with acrylic resin, then painted 

ZERO, A GIFT FROM INDIA

Naught (naughty meaning coming from nothing, now wicked)

"The concept of zero as a written digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India." 

"The word zero came into the English language via French zéro from the Italian zero...first known English use of zero was in 1598."

"The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c. 1170 – c. 1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system to Europe, used the term zephyrum."

0 Wikipedia

Zero Marks the Spot: Stuff the British Stole 

Other gifts from India:

Chess (7th century, Chaturanga)

Buttons (Indus Valley, Kot Diji era, used as ornaments or seals rather than fasteners (circa 2800-2600 BC)

Shampoo (boiling a lychee with dried Indian gooseberry (amla)

Ayurveda (alternative medicine with eight components: general medicine, perinatal care of mother/pediatrics, surgery, upper cavities including eyes and ENT, pacification of possession spirits, toxicology, rejuvenation/anti-aging, aphrodisiacs )

Cashmere (goat hair from Kashmir in NW Indai)

USB (Did you know it stood for Universal Serial Bus?) This is a stretch since Indian born Ajay Bhatt was working for Intel in the US as a computer architect when he did it. We'll call him a "global Indian". I get it. As a Canadian, we do like to keep our global exports near and dear.

SEMAPHORE

 What is a semaphore?

An apparatus for signaling, usually within visual distance, dating back to the signalling systems of the Greeks with fires on fixed towers along the coast that would be lit one at a time in sequence with preset codes. 

Modern examples are flags, lights, traffic lights, railway signals, telegraphs, and morse code.

MOSHE SAFDIE HAIKU

Communal Projects

Modular Exposition

Jewish Prodigy

ALPEN ROSES AND EDUCATING WOMEN

Bavarian's Kings' museum in Füssen near the Alpensee (with swans!)

Queen Marie (Ludwig's mom) - an avid hiker and club leader gave the Alpenrose with a pink bow to ladies who hiked a local mountain with her
Queen Theresia - given an unusual life of travel and science  and was awarded an honorary degree at two Universities, one being Munich. The audioguide state that she was embarrassed by the attention.
Maximillian - given swan gifts

THE SPECTRUM OF PSYCHOLOGY

 According to the overview given to me by Princess Pirate’s first year college friends, there are two themes. On one end is Freud’s psychoanalysis (evaluate personality from our unconscious mind) and Skinner’s Behaviourism (Measure what we do, no matter what we say and think). On the other is Carl Rogers’ Humanism (growth potential, and self-actualization).

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S TOP TEN PICKS

I am on a mailing list for Agatha Christie newsletter, and they supplied a list I have folded up in my copy of her autobiography. It’s the list of all her books, with short stories and plays, in order, and it’s so long that I am pretty sure I will never make my way through it. The letter started with a self-selected top ten list, and I think that’s a great place to start!

I am in the middle of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, and I have only read one of those above (and watched the play AND the movie). I will work towards expanding to the titles above!

EIGHTEEN

Princess Pirate had a birthday today. I spent it with her and three of her closest friends, with red velvet multilayer cake with cream cheese icing, and fluorescent mini-golf at the Spheretech Putting Edge . She is not what I was like at eighteen, and she is not entirely independent, but she is an adult, and I am glad to know her. 

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

I am sitting on my bed in a snowstorm, reflecting on the brilliant writing of the pilot for Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV, and how it only begins to show the arc of complexity that a singular life can have.

I am thinking how it’s hard to write without getting lost in the character, but that that writing a screen play forces dialogue and pacing of interwoven characters and plot.

I am thinking about how incredibly strong the themes spoke to me, moving me to tears when the protagonist in a more patriarchial gender disqualification role is validated in her colleague.

She walks in at the pinnacle of her tv show fame, confident, decisive, and obviously in charge. 

We see her next, in her past, working as an overqualified lab assistant who also serves as 50s housewife, making coffee and cleaning up, while being excluded by her male peers and only able to work

She exists in the best version of her self within her limits until she intersects with a valuable but difficult colleague, and together they offer a better world than on their own. 

There are flashbacks, though, and the show ends in her fleeing this new arrangement based on fear propagated from a previous yet to be defined, but clearly traumatic event.

In between there is a meeting of the minds, and the chemistry of a man and a woman seeing and valuing each other in a beautiful relationship that makes me crave more. There are sweet endings (how does she get out of an obligatory beauty contest at work that only objectifies the women further) and gorgeous food, and a burgeoning relationship that is bound to get beautiful and messy. The themes run deep and the chemistry is gripping. What happens next is the brainchild of talented writing, and I am hooked! How do I take my ideas, and transform them into something resembling that?

I can’t quite get the pacing and the tension, but I was sitting here on my bed, singing The First Noel from the pages of a Christmas magazine where I made notes about the epiphany cake that I just made last night. We have visitors, and Rebecca is being a good sport in a curtainless living room on a pullout couch. Meanwhile our guests came, and realized that one is highly allergic to our cat, despite us living in an apartment within our house, with the litter underfoot in the bathroom, and the living room and dining room off limits. In my head, and some of my correspondence, I carry the impending death of a woman I spend 4 hours trying to save the day before yesterday, and the myriad complicated patients that I left behind. 

Surely that story could be just as interesting, if I could just write it! 

IDEAS: 

Write as a screen play (simplified but strong dialogue, scenes present but not written advancing plot)

State the obvious, brilliantly

Find an object to carry through (pencil)

Create a cast for my favourite characters

Don’t be limited by typical life. Write an extraordinary

Create chemistry

Think sound, visual, (smell)