“March” by Geraldine Brooks

This book was really sweetly recommended to me by a student in one of my classes, I had to take him up on it and read it after that! The idea is that it tells the story of what the father is experiencing throughout Little Women while he is off at the Civil War. There are also parts with the narration from Marmee’s point of view as well. I thought it was an amazing read!

The book opens with Pa March in the middle of a battle, trying to save other soldiers but being forced to flee. He in particular tries to save a boy who cannot swim, but he thrashes away. From there, it flashes back to him as a traveling salesman and staying on a cotton plantation for some time. He doesn’t like slavery, but he is enamored with all of the leisure time, and so stays a while. He ends up teaching one of the kids to read and is caught, then expelled from the place. Fast forward and he is back at the plantation as an army chaplain and meets one of the women there again. Eventually he is told to get off of the unit as his abolitionist talk is making the men uncomfortable so he transfers to a contraband farm to teach the former slaves.

He enjoys his position there for a while, he eventually gets along fine with the owner and they establish a nice farm for themselves. The army outpost though moves on and they are set upon by irregulars from the Confederate army who capture the slaves. Pa has a narrow escape but is determined to save the owner and as many as he can. This triggers fighting and shooting, everyone is either killed or captured save one former slave that drags Pa off to a hospital before disappearing. This is when Marmee comes to get him. She finds him being tended to by the nurse, who is the woman from the original plantation. When he comes to he is beset by grief and regret, he wants to go back out there and try to make things right, but then Beth gets sick. He heads home, seeing the ghosts of the people he couldn’t save in his daughters.

One of the strengths of this is that the book can be much more political with Pa’s narrative. He talks directly about the war and slavery to just about anyone. Marmee is also active politically, she helps with the Underground Railroad and gets them involved with financing Brown’s venture as well. Little Women is about life on the outskirts of war, Pa is in the middle of it.

I also really appreciated having Marmee’s point of view at times. She can seem too angelic and perfect in the original text. Here she is annoyed with her husband for going to war and being a dreamer instead of living with his family. It makes for a refreshing and realistic change.

The book ends with a note about the sources for all of this. Pa is heavily based on Louisa May Alcott’s father, turns out that he was quite the radical in his day. He wasn’t a preacher but a teacher, hence the teaching on a contraband farm. The timing of the war and that farm even was messed with a little, but it is based on real experiences during the war. Additionally the hospital Pa finds himself in is based on Alcott’s experiences as a Civil War nurse which I thought was a nice touch as well. Some passages are from the novel itself, such as some of the letters Pa writes home. It makes for a very compelling read as it feels like it fits with the original novel like a puzzle piece.

I thought this was an excellent read and a great suggestion from my student. I’ll have to tell him how much I enjoyed it.

This Is Beautiful: "Travesties" by Tom Stoppard

 Last weekend I saw a Tom Stoppard play that I'm not super familiar with, "Travesties." I really liked it, it made me want to check out a copy of the script or something to get in deeper. It was written in the 70s as a response to the Vietnam War, but it's about folks in Switzerland during WW1 and the Russian Revolution. It borrows from "The Importance of Being Earnest" heavily, and how people who were really there end up swapping and making up identities to flirt with women. 

The wordplay was classic Stoppard fast and furious, which is partially why I would want to see a script. I felt like I wasn't getting half of what was happening. There was a part lifted from "As You Like It" by Shakespeare and I was tickled by that, but I'm sure there's more to uncover. And I just enjoyed the combination of theater and writing and Dada art that gets highlighted on stage. Plus there was a whole segment where one of the characters is spinning in a lyra and yelling about the proletariat revolution in Russia which was so fun. 

Anyways, would highly recommend. I feel like there isn't a ton of Stoppard that gets highlighted beyond "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and maybe "Arcadia" but I'll have to add this one to the list.

Durham, North Carolina

Over Labor Day weekend I took a day trip to Durham! I wasn’t sure if there’d be enough to see since it was on a Sunday, but I was really pleased with the trip.

I started over at the science museum since that’s out of the way of the town for the most part. The inside portion is primarily for kids although there is a neat local wildlife exhibit. Outside is more interesting, there’s a butterfly room and farm animals that I liked a lot. Apparently past that are the dinosaurs but I couldn’t take much more of the kids so we moved on.

From there I went downtown, I really wanted to check out the food scene and the Museum of Durham History. I did get an excellent pizza, and the museum was small but a lot of fun. They have an exhibit up on Durham Pride marches which I always enjoy learning about.

After that I ended my day over at the Duke campus. The gardens were delightful to walk through, and I thought the chapel was so pretty. And finally the art museum on campus, also on the small side but with a fun collection.

So it was a quick visit, but I got to see a lot of the town by heading to 3 different stops. Parking was free except for on campus lots but those were $2 an hour so not that bad. I’d still love to head back sometime and see more of the place!

This Is Beautiful: Ten Thousand Hours

 Last weekend I got to see the Australian circus company's production of "Ten Thousand Hours" and it was really incredible. The acrobatics were amazing and they had a live drummer! Plus there was a fun screen behind them that would share numbers like a countdown or a clock. I thought it was such an interesting look at how to put a performance together since the theme was that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master or something. 

Anyways this gets a shoutout partially because this is an idea that I've thought about so much in my own performance as well, but they pulled it off much better than I did. There was a segment where one of the performers did her warm-up routine multiple times but with different feedback ("I want to feel it this time", "like a breakdancer", etc) and another segment where 2 acrobats tried a trick 10 times to see how often they'd get it. I also really liked a whole act that incorporated how you'd learn this, so they'd walk through movement and hit poses and then finally do the full movement. It was really cool to see something that I've also thought about executed so well and in such an entertaining way!

Raleigh, North Carolina

I almost forgot to write this, but I have been living in Raleigh for over a month now! No doubt part of this is that I really had to leave my old place, but I really like living here so far. There is public transportation, plenty of things to do, museums, and a lot of nature.

Now for practical reasons you really do need a car in Raleigh. There are buses but they don’t go everywhere, can take forever, and can be unreliable. I have learned to almost distrust the GoRaleigh buses, the GoTriangle ones seem to be much more dependable. Having said that I do have a bus option for getting to work and I take that practically everyday since I just don’t want to deal with parking and whatever. So having the option is a plus!

Just about every weekend has a free festival of some kind. The downtown area during the summer gets a lot of cultural festivals with vendors and food trucks and performances. I have yet to have a weekend in which there is nothing going on, which helps me immensely as I am living on my own. And not only that but there’s so much stuff within a short drive of here! There are multiple dance studios to pick from, which is a luxury I haven’t had in a while, and a circus facility, and a community band. Really just spoiled for choice here!

The museums deserve a special shoutout, there’s an art museum and a science museum and a few others as well. The art museum has a very fun collection plus a sculpture garden if you want to picnic. Beyond that even there are so many historical sites from taking a tour of the capitol building to seeing the founder of Raleigh’s house. There’s also the birthplace of Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s vice president and the first president to be impeached! Very cool things to see if you are into local history.

And final there are so many parks and beautiful trees nearby. Even smaller places have their own gardens as well! You are certainly in a city, but green escapes are nearby and hiking is around. There are also good places for kayaking and paddling but I haven’t done those yet.

So I’m really happy living in Raleigh so far, it’s been lovely to be in a city and have access to more things. I don’t know if I’ll stay here past my job appointment, but this is not a bad place to be for a few years.

This Is Beautiful: Free Weekend

 It's been a busy few weeks, I'm actually looking forward to not having much this weekend and getting a little lazy. Or bored even! That might be nice.

“Pythagoras's Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender War” by Margaret Wertheim

This book has been on my to read list for sooooo long, I almost forgot it was there. I was lucky and managed to get a copy at my new library. It’s such a fascinating book, it primarily gives a very accessible overview of the history of physics. Wertheim takes a very close look though at the relationship between physics and religion, and how that impacts the way female physicists work and are treated. As a result this spans everything from history and philosophy of science to feminism to religion.

Now the book itself was published in the 90s so it is a bit dated, I am willing to bet though that the argument Wertheim is making still holds water. Essentially, physics throughout history has been entwined with religion. This could be religious universities in the Middle Ages, or even more present day with talk of the God particle and whatnot. And that has inevitably led to scientists believing that only men can carry it out, like some sort of scientific priesthood. But the field could benefit greatly from more equitable inclusion of women, right now physicists are focused on this theory of everything that will not measurably change anyone’s day to day life (as admitted by the scientists themselves). One way the field would change with the inclusion of women is that it may shift its focus to topics more focused on benefitting society. But Wertheim is also careful to say that it isn’t a female physicists job to do this, it’s just that there will inevitably be changes and that is what she predicts would happen.

I really enjoyed reading this work, I thought the inclusion of all of these different topics and fields made for a really compelling read and argument. I am a biologist, not a physicist, so there was a lot of new scientific information in this work, in addition to everything else. I do see Wertheim’s project though as parallel to my interests in biology and adding to it, I really want to make science more equitable and inclusive as a teacher. And I want to teach myself more about the philosophy and history of science to fully understand it. These topics aren’t taught to you as a scientist, you have to go out of your way to get exposure to them.

I am so glad I was eventually able to find this book, it was a great read. The information is presented in a very friendly way, and it gives insightful commentary on the field itself. This book does it all!