A speculative mind

  I have finished reading Patrick Stewart’s autobiography, Making it So. I have long been an admirer of Stewart. Being a fan of Star Trek, I was thrilled in 1986 when it was announced that the new Star Trek series which was to be called Star trek; The Next Generation , was to feature him as the captain of the Enterprise: Jean-Luc Picard. It had been a long time since the end of the original series, and us Trekkies eagerly awaited the new one. I had seen Patrick Stewart a number of times before this. The first time I had seen him (though I didn’t realize it until years later) was in the wonderful miniseries I Claudius . I saw him in Dune and A few other things. It was enough for me to start noticing him. He had a great voice and spoke with conviction. Until reading his book I had no idea that he grew up in a poor household in Yorkshire and had a thick Yorkshire accent. His accent would have sounded something like the scullery maid Daisy or some of the other lower servants in Down...

  It is a staple of science fiction: the mirror world or mirror universe, or parallel universe. Star Trek has used it any number of times, as have some of the Marvel movies. You know, the characters you are following somehow transition to an alternate universe where there are copies of themselves, but the alternate universe selves are altered. Perhaps if the originals are good, the alternates are bad. Or, perhaps the captain in one universe is a bricklayer in the other. It is a fun concept to play around with in a fictional setting, but like the concept of travel, it doesn’t really work if you think about it too hard. There could certainly be other universes that were belched out of the Big Bang at the same time ours was. They might even start out with the same materials in the same quantities. But a parallel universe? One that has another version of you and me in it? That doesn’t work. The two universes would have to be absolutely identical and our doppelgangers doing the same ...

  I have heard it said that the difference between being a professional musician and an amateur musician is this: An amateur musician practices until they get it right. A professional musician practices until they cannot get it wrong . That makes some kind of sense to me. They were talking about classical musicians, but I wondered about other kinds of musicians and for that matter other kinds of artists. I, myself am an amateur actor. The idea of practicing a scene until you could not get it wrong, just doesn’t work. You can practice memorizing your lines until you can’t get them wrong, but you don’t have to be a professional to do that. And memorizing lines is only about ten percent of what it takes to be an actor. To be a professional actor does take training. There are not many professional actors who simply lucked into a career. It takes work. It takes practice too, but not the kind of practice that a musician engages in. You don’t go over and over a particular part or scene ...

  Confession: I was a bed wetter. I wet the bed on most nights up until I was at least five-years-old. My mom tried various things to deal with this: a rubberized sheet under my sheet, no water late at night; I even remember maybe taking some medication. The doctor said it was a combination of being a heavy sleeper with a small bladder. In retrospect, the doctor seems like he was a sensible man (though if I did take pills for it, I have to wonder what was in those pills). What my mom and dad absolutely did not do, was to make me feel shame about this. I didn’t think too much about this at the time. I was blissfully unaware that many children were traumatized by bed wetting and by their family’s reaction to it. This is yet another reason for me to be very grateful for the parents I had. They did not punish me for wetting the bed. I seem to remember getting a nickel for every night I managed not to wet the bed. Logically, as a tool, this is no more effective than punishment. Neithe...

  I have been listening to a lot of radio interviews lately. There is one phrase that I have been hearing a lot. The interviewer will ask a question and then the interviewee will say “That’s a great question,” or some variant of “ that’s a good,” “great,” or “interesting question.” Are they trying to suck up to the person doing the interview? The subsequent answer usually shows me that in was not in fact a “great question.” It is usually a very average or obvious question. It seems to me the interviewee is just stalling for time while they think up a response. I think it is sort of the equivalent of saying “uh” or “um” as your brain is stalling to catch up. One time my friends and I played a game where someone starts a story and then you are supposed to continue it as long as you can, but as soon as you say “uh” or “um,” you are done. Most of us only lasted about thirty or forty-five seconds or so (me worst of all). But my wife got on a roll and just kept going. I think we had to...

  Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie is a remarkable book. The narrator tells us he was born in Bombay on the stroke of midnight on August 15 th , 1947, the very moment of India’s independence from Britain. The kid’s name is Saleem, but we don’t find that out for a long while. He is one of a thousand or so children born in India on that date, birthed in the first couple of hours of Independence Day.   These children, Midnight’s Children, all seem to have a connection with one another. This book is a kids-eye-view of the history of India and Pakistan from independence through the late 1970’s. But it actually starts earlier with the story of his grandparents and parents. Their turbulent relationships amid the turbulence their country is going through. After Saleem’s birth, the turbulence continues on both counts. The story is also a fantasy because there are things that happen that we would call supernatural. But, is it fantasy? Do those fantastical things really happen,...

  Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree is a cozy fantasy. We follow a very large female orc named Viv who has decided to make a career change. She has hung up her sword-for-hire and decided to open a coffee shop. She had tasted coffee in a far-off land while she had been busy doing her sword work. It was a life-changing moment. One final job, whose purpose was to retrieve a magic stone that would bring luck (which she suspected she would need. I mean, who doesn’t need luck when starting a small business?) and she was off across the country to find the perfect place for her shop, and to reinvent her life.   The town where she has decided to set up shop, Thune, has all sorts of magical and mythical creatures in residence: ratkins, gnomes, hobs, succubae, and a variety of humans from every walk of life. But none of them had ever heard of coffee. This was not surprising. Viv had never heard of it until she stumbled across it in that far-away land. With her life savings, she pur...