A speculative mind

  It is nice to read a book that celebrates words. All books celebrate words in some sense, but Babel by RF Kuang celebrates words for word’s sake. Their origin, their interconnectedness, their power. Power. There is power in words, and power is what this story is about: Who has it, who lacks it, who doesn’t want to lose it. Set mostly in England, mostly in Oxford in the 1830’s, this is a fantasy and alternate history. There is magic in this world. The magic runs on silver and those who can find the right words in the right languages to use that silver. If you etch the right pair of words into a bar of silver, you can make it do amazing things, sometimes mundane things like making a carriage ride smoother, sometimes spectacular things like holding up a bridge. But finding the right words with similar meanings but in different languages requires translators. Our protagonist, an orphan from Canton given the anglicized name Robin Swift, is groomed by his guardian to join the famous tra

  Last week I said I would post my journal entry about the play we performed for the inmates at a prison. I hesitated to post this because it is rather long. But it is somewhat insightful about what can go wrong with any planned adventure and there are some amusing moments. So continue on . . .   if you dare. This trip was to Two Rivers Correctional Institute in Umatilla, Oregon to put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida for a select group of inmates. There were four vehicles going on the trip: the bus, Van’s car, John on his motorcycle, and Andrew and Terry in their car coming from Portland. We got on the bus which was a former airport shuttle (that had seen better days). The Myrmidon shields were already stacked and bungeed to the second door. Baggage was piled up against one wall. The bus had several bench seats and a large open floor area. There was a foam pad in the back for people to sit/lay on. We got started a little late which concerned me because I did

 I have never been incarcerated, not in a jail, or a prison, I never even got detention in school. But I have had a few opportunities to see the inside of a prison. There is a lot of gray in a prison: cinder block walls, gray paint on the bars, gray uniforms. Ironically there is nothing gray about the way society views prisons and prisoners. We all have our preconceptions of what the inside of a prison looks like. We have our preconceptions about prisoners. They are there for a reason, right? End of story, Black and white. No gray. Lock the door. Throw away the key, and never think about them again. The first time I went into a prison, it was not a pleasant experience. I was applying for a job in a lab that would be testing samples (mainly from parolees) for drugs. You walk in and the iron door clanks behind you. Then another iron door opens to let you through before clanking behind you again. There is something very final about that clanking sound. A tiny part of your brain worries