not to post too often or anything, but:

[pastwatcher]

After reading one of the books silkspinner's sister was kind enough to lend me, I read the biographical note on Patricia Wrede, and found this very amusing (it shows the kind of humor that makes her books so good):
"Though she is one of the few writers of fantasy who has no cat, she likes other people's pets, and they like her--without even knowing she's a vegetarian."

Also, random trivia from my father lecturing his parents (whom we are visiting) on the history of astronomy (much of which I already knew): Halley, who was president of the not-so-rich Royal Society but a gentleman who didn't need more money, paid himself a salary entirely in the form of surplus copies of a book on the history of fishes, which had been not-so-successfully published by the Royal Society earlier. (This came up because he paid for the publication of Newton's Principia, after convincing him to write it.)

Comments

[timmypowg.livejournal.com]

I was paid for fall semester of working in lab with copies of A Brief History of the Harvard University Cyclotrons. Well, part of the summer. Very useful books, those were. Held up our couch.

For all your HRSFA library work, perhaps you should pay yourself with copies of Civil War 2061. Great game, that is. Makes you a necklace.

[apley33.livejournal.com]

That's such a cool factoid about Halley!! I actually just bought a book on him yesterday at the coop called Halley's Quest by Julie Wakefield. There is brief part of Dava Sobel's The Planets that discusses his work (in the chapter on Earth which I'm reading right now) and I was so intrigued I had to find out more! And now I know where his salary came from :)

[(Anonymous)]

Not exactly relevant, but a good poem anyway, so I thought I'd post it.
-skh

Halley’s Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there’d be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground’s edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
“Repent, ye sinners!” he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I’d share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So my mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family’s asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street –
that’s where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I’m the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.

Stanley Kunitz

[pastwatcher]

You had that up on your door in April...I thought it was cute. :)