93. Vintage Space

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Musicophilia

Reading Oliver Sacks' chapter about all the various forms of amusia, mostly caused by injuries to the brain from accidents or strokes, I couldn't help thinking about all the time Sacks spent roaring around on motorcycles when he was young. Would he have continued this later in his life after realizing all the damage head injuries could do? I think he had more physical reasons for stopping, from non-head injuries.

The next chapter is the one on absolute pitch that so struck me when I first read Musicophilia. Already we have had accounts of very musical people who make me very aware that we are not all dealt the same hand when it comes to appreciating music. Even laying my dear friend synesthesia aside for the moment, people are born with a facility for music that is as astonishing to me as the defects such as amusia. I had also missed, the first time, the note about a child's aptitude for rhythm narrowing -- to suit his culture -- between the ages of six and twelve months. As a parent, this is the sort of information that would have driven me nuts. You are crippling your child's possible future as a percussionist, for example, by not exposing her to a variety of rhythmical options during that first year.

Vintage Space

This is an interesting combination of my interests. Vintage Space is a YouTube channel about Space. A young woman of "today" interested in the space technology of my youth, and turning it into books and an online presence. 

Since my mother was interested in astronomy and, apparently, anything happening above the surface of the planet, I was roused to "see" Echo and then the Mercury launches -- that seemed to always take place around dawn our time in Boulder. (Why I recall watching these launches in our "family room," next to the garage, at the lower level of our trendy, split-level home, I can't recall. I know we usually watched TV in the living room a level up.) 

Like Natalie Tran (AKA CommunityChannel) Amy Teitel has turned an interest and a camera into a lifestyle and career. (I would be hard pressed to define what Nat's interest is, maybe humor.) But I think it is so cool that she can do this. That people with an odd (from a normative viewpoint) interest can share their enthusiasms and that people -- like me -- all around the world can benefit from this. I'm pretty familiar with the space program and remember a good deal from when it was happening, but I learn something new from most of her episodes.

(In an episode I just watched she referenced sounding rockets from the International Geophysical Year -- 1957-1958 -- which I followed with keen interest at the time.)

Absalom

Another novelty, a story told by a man who is guessing at the truth. Then again, no one seems to really know the truth. Quentin has a story from his father, who was told by his father, who got parts of it from Sutpen and witnessed certain episodes. Who better than Shreve, apparently only as well informed as we are ourselves, to try to make sense of all this.

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