--Thoreau
I suspect that some might disagree with Thoreau's statement above, but I won't. Steling W. Sill referred in a talk to Nicolas Appert and likened his development of food preservation, or canning, to the written word and books as the method for preserving ideas.
The following shaded text is an excerpt from that talk:
Someone has said that “books are among life’s most precious possessions. They are the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that man builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, civilizations perish, but books continue. The perusal of a great book is, as it were, an interview with the noblest men of past ages who have written it.”
Charles Kingsley said,
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead, from human souls we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away. And yet these [little sheets of paper speak to us,] arouse us, . . . teach us, . . . open their hearts to us as brothers.
Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, philosophy lame.
John Milton said,
Books are not . . . dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy . . . of that living intellect that bred them [Areopagitica]
Speaking of great books, I'm at 27K words on Power to Hurt--that's roughly a third of the way done. I finished the writing of an interesting aerial duel and a crucial attempt at purloining a powerful pebble. There are still problems for a couple characters at sea and Cartier's cache is still the main Macguffin for the rest of the cast--which continues to grow.
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I helped with dinner tonight. Admittedly, "helped" is a subjective term. I didn't go into the kitchen to help; I was merely curious. I had heard a new sound coming from that part of the house. It was the air fryer or air cooker or something like that (why we need to cook or fry air is beyond me) that I've been trying to persuade my wife is the perfect mother's day gift from me--even though I had nothing to do with getting it. The heretofore-unused-machine was making a noise like a blow dryer caught in the garbage disposal. I wanted to see how she worked the new gadget. Before I knew, it she had me putting chicken wings into the thing. The contraption looks like the love child of R2-D2 and Nomad in gray and chrome with a drawer that cooks (or sterilizes). The experience ended like the picture** below.
Everything went well until my wife had me administer a dose of olive oil to the viands. The administering (or is it administration?) went fine; the aftermath went otherwise. While putting away the large (and mostly full) plastic bottle, it wriggled from my fingers. I had already opened the door to the lower cabinet when the bottle made its escape. The bottle fell tilted at an angle as I tried in vain to maintain my grip upon it. It struck the base of the open cabinet at about 60 degrees, taking the impact in the side. The plastic compressed enough to blow the lid from the bottle. Behind the lid came a great splorting warhead of oil which burst at the altitude for best possible dispersal to include me, the cabinet, the cabinet door, the contents of the cabinet, and the floor in its kill-zone. I may not be invited back; so I got that going for me. No, really. It slipped.
The wings were excellent. I approve of the R2-D2/Nomad heated atmospheric food prep apparatus.
*The picture (I think) comes from Lileks.com.
**This picture comes from the bleat comments of Lileks.com by a commentor whose handle is Flangepart.
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