non fiction week

in a rare concurrence of some free time on my part, a spontaneous lust for edification and the foresight of our friend dawn from lethbridge, both kylie and i are devouring some informative non fiction this week.



kylie is reading a history of god by karen armstrong which examines the course of monotheism throughout history and its branching into modern judaism, islam and christianity. she picked it up after reading the spiral staircase while we were in princeton. an excerpt from her introduction (which, along with a series of maps detailing the migration of religious thought over time, sucked me in for an afternoon even though kylie is reading this book right now and is very protective of it):

Despite my years as a nun, I do not believe that my experience of God is unusual. My ideas about God were formed in childhood and did not keep abreast of my growing knowledge in other disciplines. I had revised simplistic childhood views of Father Christmas. I had come to a more mature understanding of the complexities of the human predicament than had been possible in kindergarten. Yet my early, confused ideas about God had not been modified or developed. People without my peculiarly religious background may also find that their notion of God was formed in infancy.

this book is certainly not for everyone so dont rush out and buy a bunch of copies for your bible study group or you may just be banned as a heretic. on a related note, our bible study just finished a particularly cheesy book (luckily short) of the sort that occasionally sweeps the evangelical church and have decided to stick to actual books of the bible for a while (my vote was for song of solomon).




on dawn's advice and generous loan i am reading king leopold's ghost by adam hochschild, the story of how king leopold of tiny belgium subtley appropriated a HUGE chunk of central africa from the africans right under the noses of the more powerful british, french, germans and dutch and proceeded to shape it into a giant ivory and rubber farm fueled by slave labour and gunpowder. it is one of the most engrossing nonfiction books i have ever read and incorporates the life stories of various players including the explorer henry morton stanley, the politicians and royalty of the time and the first dissenters. i have made it half way through in 2.5 days and while it is a fairly light read relative to dennet's "conciousness explained" or dawkin's "selfish gene" (2 other recent nonfiction forays) it is a well referenced history book containing a lot of information and provocation to thought, which speaks to how much time i have put into it, which further speaks to how engrossing it is. another highlight is the book's window into a time when information did not travel as quickly as it now can and state sponsored misinformation was able to steamroll over any whispers of the truth escaping from the dark continent. the lessons of history in this book resonate clearly in today's global political situation.



one other piece of unrelated nonfiction is that kylie and i were surrounded by more than 15 adult bald eagles this week while walking niko by the fraser river. they were perched in trees all around us and swooping over our heads to the river and back while calling to each other. now i am not well versed in eaglish but even i clearly understood one repeated call as denoting "here come the stupid geese" i heard last year that chilliwack is one stop from squamish on the bald eagle migration run. apparently they follow the salmon runs right up to alaska. nice of the salmon to sequentially spawn like that.


lastly, in the spirit of nonfiction week and in the interest of full disclosure i am telling a story that kylie plans to tell my parents this weekend if i dont beat her to it:



one summer when i was around 10 or 11 years old i was playing with gasoline and other incendiary materials in a corner of our family's backyard sheltered by the juxtaposition of the playhouse and a canoe hanging from the fence. one of my experiments exploded with greater than expected vigour and spattered a burning gasoline mixture up the side of the cedar playhouse. the rough wood quickly caught and the entire outside wall erupted in flames. fortunately i was an extremely safety concious child and had prepared for just such an eventuality. i quickly and efficiently beat out the flames with a thick blanket kept on hand for just such an occasion. unfortunately i was not fast enough and the playhouse was left with a large charcoal scar besmirching much of its eastern exposure. fortunately this spot had been chosen as much for its lack of direct visual lines from our house as for the protected and still air required for my experiments (and difficult to procure in windy lethbridge). i quickly ran downstairs, gathered my supplies and proceeded to sand down the entire outside wall of the playhouse, clean it and revarnish it. it didn't look perfect, but it looked pretty good and i have never been disciplined for this particular bout of youthful pyroexuberance so i can only assume that my parents (and sisters) never found out.

did you know? if not you would have found out in 2 days anyways so i thought i should reveal this particular burning secret myself.