Betty Adams's Blog, page 96

A Difference Between Good and Great Literature

A wise man once made this distinction between good literature and great literature. 
In good, well written literature the existential battle is fought between the good characters and the evil characters. The heroes and the villains.
In great literature the existential battle is fought within all of the main characters but most especially within the hero. 

Things Past

First the leaves died.
Then the goat died.
Then the computer died. (Gravity assisted demolition) 
Then the internet died. (There was a crash down the road)
Then I said enough and ran away from home. (ie was sent on a business trip for the farm to examine late harvest options) 

So that is why there was no post for the past several days. 

The End of a Goat

Stubborn as they are the grim reaper comes even for the goats. After a long life on the farm one of the Nanny goats is sleeping off what promises to be her last afternoon hopefully made as comfortable as possible.  

Fall Colors

Poplar trees turning color at 6000ft elevation in Southern Oregon. 
Hear the yellow!

Time Travel Time is Come Again

Only one more week until is that time of year again for those of us in the States where we still follow the lead of old Benji Frank.
Remember on the night of November 4th to turn your clocks back one hour to save on that candle wax. 

International Recognition

 A friend sent this picture of "Dying Embers" setting pretty on the Science Fiction Shelf of a Welsh library!
It looks like it is in good company. 

Cuddle Buddies

Cuddling puppies is a great way to start or end the day. Little Snoopy here might not understand much yet but boy does he know when he has a good thing going. 

I Was Going to Write About Stargazing But

Well I *was* going to write a nice article on how to go out and view our sibling planet Uranus with your naked eye while it is close to earth. but, I could not find a single article that didn't include the obvious "joke".  So basically go outside after dark and look to the southeast. 
Have fun and get lots of pics for those of us who don't have good night sky cameras. 

Ominous Skies

Today was spent scrubbing and packing in preparation for a big move on Thrusday. Back to the farm for the winter. 

The Sums and the Fools - A George Elliot Quote

“Now, you see, you don’t do this thing a bit better than you did a fortnight ago, and I’ll tell you what’s the reason. You want to learn accounts—that’s well and good. But you think all you need do to learn accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You go whistling about, and take no more care what you’re thinking of than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in ‘em, it’s pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got cheap—you’ll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a-week, and he’ll make you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge isn’t to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you’re to know figures, you must turn ‘em over in your heads and keep your thoughts fixed on ‘em. There’s nothing you can’t turn into a sum, for there’s nothing but what’s got number in it—even a fool. You may say to yourselves, ‘I’m one fool, and Jack’s another; if my fool’s head weighed four pound, and Jack’s three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack’s?’ A man that had got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work ‘em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he’d count his stitches by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself how much money he’d get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that rate—and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the short of it is—I’ll have nobody in my night-school that doesn’t strive to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I’ll send no man away because he’s stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I’d not refuse to teach him. But I’ll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn’orth, and carry it away with ‘em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you can’t show that you’ve been working with your own heads, instead of thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That’s the last word I’ve got to say to you.”