Another Green World

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, by Zoë Schlanger. I’ve now read several books about the surprising capabilities of plants, and this one – carefully researched and informed by credible scientists doing cutting-edge research – is by far the best. I made a point to read only one chapter at a time, because I wanted to take time to assimilate what I was reading. If we were to consider a simple animal that had a long list of abilities – it can communicate, possibly hear, and even possibly see; it can recognize its kin, its neighbors, its allies, and its enemies and treat them as such; it can remember its experiences, form preferences, and make future decisions accordingly – we would recognize that such an animal has awareness and at least a rudimentary form of intelligence. However, suppose the living being is different from animals in three main ways: It’s anchored to the ground, its perception-and-response system is distributed throughout its body (no brain, but as if the entire body were a brain), and its food source is neither plants nor animals but light. Suddenly we no longer see awareness and an appropriate level of intelligence; we’re more likely to think it’s basically a living machine. This is a major bias on our part! But note that it hasn’t been all that long since animals, even familiar ones like dogs, were seen as living machines too. It’s absolutely fascinating that so many surprising things have been discovered about our plant neighbors, and I encourage everyone to read this book.

A Drop of Corruption (Ana & Din #2), by Robert Jackson Bennett. This is the second fantasy mystery set on a world where there’s a vast “science” of human enhancement and biological engineering fueled by strange chemicals from undersea leviathans. It starts as a locked room mystery set in a strange building in a land that the empire plans to annex, and we get more character development both for young investigator Din and his exceedingly quirky and brilliant boss, Ana. So many extraordinary things to learn about! I appreciated the brief afterword of real-world political commentary too.

As I’ve probably mentioned many times, I’m supporting not only my own cats but the ones who used to eat at my late neighbor Hiram’s house, many of whom were born there. One of the cats has been especially troublesome, as he’s not part of Samantha’s family (despite probably fathering many of its members) – rather, it turns out, he was an early kitten of Bella’s, making him a much older brother of Ambrose and Azalyn. I named him Derwood, as Samantha made it clear from the start that she cannot stand him. He’s made it hard to feed the others, being more feral than the rest of them, and hostile – at every meal he’d be more interested in attacking them than settling down to eat. I’d always have to serve him extra food, very carefully, and first, on one side of the porch, and then all the others would huddle on the other side and try to eat as much as they could before he tired of his own plate and went to see what they had. All this is by way of explaining that when we discovered today that the poor fellow had passed away (in his favorite cardboard box, on J’s porch), my sadness that his life wasn’t better than it was is offset by my relief that the other cats’ quality of life will be much improved. (We hope whatever was wrong with him wasn’t contagious.) So now I have six porch cats, plus Ambrose and Azalyn (who spend most of their days inside J’s house though they do come out to socialize), plus the three “kittens” who live in my extra bedroom, plus of course Ajani.

Derwood was so much more aggressive than usual this spring that I was wondering if there would be any point to going out and buying a trap, to get him neutered, or if he was so old (8-9) and set in his ways that it wouldn’t help. (The others are all spayed/neutered except for Twobacca, but I was able to get them each into a cat carrier, although it did take two hours with Blitzen.) Thankfully he never attacked me, but he certainly could swipe at me when I was putting the food out for them. He sure made Parker and Blitzen miserable, and was even more aggressive toward Oberon, who is the biggest, and sometimes Theo and Twobacca wouldn’t even try to eat; they’d just watch from afar. Only Samantha, who knows she’s entitled to food, would go ahead and eat regardless, and she wasn’t thrilled that he was always hanging around. Now they can relax.

By the Book, by Jasmine Guillory. Yes, I read it again. It's even more fun the second time through, because the allusions to the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast are even more obvious. Great bedtime reading.

Tonight I attended the opening concert for the annual Oregon Bach Festival; this time the theme was Beethoven's first “Akademie” with music taken from a 1800 concert he promoted where he showcased some of his early work and introduced his first symphony. He put posters up around Vienna, and interested people had to go to his apartment to buy tickets from him! His actual concert lasted about four hours, whereas our event was two-plus hours of music from his event and an intermission. I went with my new friend CH, who had an extra ticket as her other friend wasn't able to go. I hadn't sat up in the balcony at the university concert hall before, and other than the excessive heat it was a pretty nice place to be; I saw several other people I knew up there too. Meanwhile, J took our friends to the sword school's "fight night" and then out to dinner at a restaurant in Springfield.

After all the rushing about for the last several days, it was good to “not do” anything today. I did visit the bookstore and the library, and I worked a bunch on my paper, but I also relaxed and read. J took our friends to the coast, where they visited the sea lion caves and the tidepools and had dinner. I think he’s taking them to a beginning sword class tomorrow. I hope Ajani feels slightly better?

Emilie and the Sky World, by Martha Wells. This second (and final?) Emilie adventure was also lots of fun, and quite different from the first, although many of the characters continued. This time Emilie, her new friends, and her younger brother Efrain find themselves traveling upwards to visit a strange ship that appears to be caught above them in the aether current. The chapters resolving the plot were a tad confusing, but that’s probably because so much was happening at once, in several places.

Fairhaven Rising, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Recluce #22. The first time I read this book, I was picturing something quite different: the origins of the magic education program in Fairhaven, controlled by its white (chaos) wizards. Instead, it was yet more military fantasy, this time with a female protagonist, Taelya, the protegee of Beltur, who continues in an important background role. The goals of the book are more modest – Fairhaven needs to become fully independent and given the room to establish itself. This time I knew what to expect, and it was just fine. Minor spoiler for myself, the next time I read it: I kept expecting one of the two male mages to die, but they survive and end up paired with our two leads. And by the end, they do have two more mages to train, so it does start the magic education program in a sense as well.

Let’s see. D made it safely to Vegas and presumably spent the day practicing for his big event this weekend. Meanwhile, J got a new water heater ($2200, but they came very promptly), and J’s mom got her stolen car and phone back, although she’s missing a few pieces of ID. J and I did a bunch of cleaning for next week’s guests, and we also went to play trivia at the Drop Bear with some of my coworkers. There were categories this time that J could help with, so he got more involved than before. Fun! We got everything correct in the mystery category (computer languages) and the turtle-themed category (in part because I knew Donatello was a sculptor). The very amusing thing in the computer languages category is that once I recognized what the category was and told my teammates, my colleague Keith started listing other computer languages, such that as they would ask a new question, I could point to the answer (e.g., “What’s the most populous island in Indonesia?”). Oh, also, we got a correct answer because our Belgian teammate knew that in France, they have what are called “blue steaks”! There were tasty snacks too.

Emilie and the Hollow World, by Martha Wells. The two Emilie adventures for young adults have just been reissued, and I’m having fun reading them – it’s very much like reading Jules Verne, but our point-of-view character is a 16-year-old girl, and the strange science of this world is powered by magical aether. In this first adventure, Emilie runs away from home and ends up stowing away on a ship that’s on a rescue mission to a newly discovered land beneath the world’s surface. She’s helpful and brave and wins new friends.