Today is Zambia's National Independence Day. It received independence from the British in 1964.

Link to Map



[Edited 1/22/06 to remove image of map and provide link instead.]

A classic I learned about by reading last Sunday's LA Times Book Review: The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, translated from the Japanese by Royall Tyler. The reviewer, Liza Dalby, summarizes the book this way:

"The Tale of Genji" is the great classic of Japanese literature. It was written 1,000 years ago by a lady of lower aristocratic birth who was put into service to a young empress--some think in order to entice the emperor to a salon where interesting stories could be found. This period of Japanese history, the Heian era (794-1185), was an age of aristocratic indulgence quite unlike the succeeding centuries of shoguns, samurai and geisha, who give us a more swashbuckling version of old Japan. In Heian courtly society, where aesthetic considerations were paramount, men as well as women freely wept into their wide sleeves, and a person's skill in rendering his or her emotions into a 31-syllable poem garnered the highest regard. This lost world has remained vivid for a millennium largely because of Murasaki Shikibu's writings about the adventures of her hero, Prince Genji, and his many loves.

I think the two-volume, 1,200 page work would fit nicely next to my three-volume set of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, waiting to be read sometime....

Today at lunch I walked two blocks to a magazine shop to pick up a copy of Personal Journaling magazine, which features an article about Raspberry World. Congrats, Susie!

I'm going to miss our current office location within easy walking distance of bookstores, the magazine shop, Target, clothing consigment stores, banks, world-class restaurants, a grocery store, a post office, dry cleaners, etc.

If you like big orange cats, make sure you visit Punchy. Demented is right!

Susie's post about Batman movies reminded me of this picture of Leo auditioning for the role of the Joker:

I logged onto the computer to look up a bridal registration list for a co-worker who's getting married next month. I thought, since I'm online already, I might as well post something. Hmmmm. What to say? Well, it's been a morning of chores and desultory reading through today's mail: the alumni magazine from my MA program and next month's Lutheran Woman Today magazine. I went to the Famer's Market, in the fog, and then to Trader Joe's. I volunteered to provide the coffee and goodies after church tomorrow so was getting food for that.

Then I tackled a very overdue task: cleaning out my worm bin. When I moved here two years ago, I knew I wouldn't have enough food and yard waste for a compost bin, so I decided to start a worm bin instead to compost my fruit and vegetable peelings. I had an adventure learning about worm composting and contacted a worm supplier through LA County's Smart Gardening site. I drove out to Biological Home Grown Farms near Riverside, Calif., and Tom Bennington helped me set up my worm bin. We punched small holes in the bottom of an 18-gallon Rubbermaid bin, put screen over the bottom (which allows the water to drain but keeps the worms in), cut a rectangular hole in the lid and duct-taped screen over it for air, shredded newspaper and mixed in peat moss for bedding for the worms, dampened the bedding, slipped the bin into another bind of the same size but with no holes (to keep the ants, etc., out) and added two pounds of earthworms. The worms have lived quite happily for two years. Their favorite food is cantaloupe peelings with lots of cantaloupe flesh still attached. But I'm afraid I neglected them during the recent hot weather. So I cleaned out the castings (which is excellent fertilizer) and gave them new bedding. I also fed them some cantaloupe chunks. I feel guilty because, even though earthworms are lowly creatures, they still are creatures and play a vital role in producing fertile top soil. I hope mine survive.

I found a fascinating book on earthworms at the public library, which I later ordered through Powell's Books. It's called Harnessing the Earthworm:A practical inquiry into soil-building, soil conditioning, and plant nutrition through the action of earthworms, with instructions for intensive progagation and use of Domesticated Earthworms in biological soil-building by Thomas J. Barrett. He's convinced that earthworms can help reclaim marginal soil to be used as productive farmland.

Whoops, I'd better get back to the task at hand.

At work, we have one week left at our current office. Next Friday, we're being moved (kicking and screaming) to another office almost 50 miles away. Right now I leave home about 15 minutes (or less) before I have to be in my desk at work. Now I'll be leaving an hour earlier. (Before I moved houses, I used to walk to work....) And no one has given us a rational business reason for the move. So we're all rather dispirited about the whole thing.

This book from Sunday's LA Times Book Review looks intriguing: Sunday's Silence, by Gina B. Nahai. Here's a quote from the review by Marcos McPeek Villatoro:

The Kurds and the Appalachians meet just east of the Cumberland Plateau. It's 1975. Adam Watkins, a reporter, has returned from the wars of Beirut to his hometown of Knoxville. His father, Little Sam Watkins, moonshiner, gambler and snake-handling preacher, is dead, supposedly murdered by a woman who shoved a rattlesnake into his face. This final bite, after 446 bites that through the years have left him swollen and blackened with venom, does him in.

In Knoxville, Adam meets the woman: Blue was born "in an area divided among five countries, [where] live twenty-five million people who call themselves Kurds." She was taken from her family in Iraq by a Jewish-Arabic man called only the Professor, who taught linguistics at the University of Tennessee. Once settled in Knoxville, the Professor wants to study Watkins' church to record their speaking in tongues, hoping to find evidence of a genetic link that connects all humans to an original language. Little Sam doesn't trust the Professor, but the Professor uses his svelte new bride as bait: He brings Blue to Sunday meeting.

I'll put the book on my list of books to read someday.

Blogger is very slow on Monday nights. I think it's because there are others, like me, who want to get away from computers on the weekends, and then when Monday evening comes, want to record the weekend's events.

My weekend was pretty laid back. Saturday morning I did a load of laundry and hung it out to dry before going to the women's Bible study at church. Saturday afternoon I cleaned my very neglected house (see entries re: lecture below). On Sunday I went to a church in a nearby town where my dad's cousin was the guest preacher. It was good to see him again and have a short chat before he went with his hosts to lunch. I forgot when I first wrote this entry that on Sunday afternoon I also went to a concert of sacred choral music by Czech composers accompanied by organ. I'll write out the program when I get home and have my ASCII codes for all the accents on the Czech names.

Today, I did another couple loads of laundry. I tried to get back into writing a paper, which had been set aside for too long. (Again, see entries re: lecture.)

Last Thursday, I read through a few journal entries after work and saw that Viv of First Person Particular was going to be at the Huntington for a lecture by Linda Parry on William Morris interiors. I had considered going when I first read the newsletter announcing the lecture because I have a book by the lecturer, Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement, but then forgot about it. (Once more, see entries below re: [my] lecture.) I thought about going to see if I could figure out who Viv was, introducing myself, and then telling her she didn't have to let me know whether or not it really was she. But I had worked all day and, anyway, thought it might be kind of strange to approach someone in that manner.

Now I need to do some preparation for Wednesday's class, for which I do NOT have to lecture this week. Big sigh (of relief).