A Private Affair

Following John P.'s recommendation, I just read this short novel by Beppe Fenoglio. The subject is similar to Italo Calvino's in The Path to the Spiders' Nests, though the style is completely different. The setting is rural Italy in the vicinity of the town of Alba during World War II, and the protagonist, who goes by the name "Milton," is a Partisan fighter opposing the Fascist fighters in the region. In the opening scene, Milton attempts to see Fulvia at her family's villa, but she had fled to Turin for safety. He is in love with her but is shocked when the housekeeper mentions offhandedly that she is involved with Georgio, his best friend. The three of them are well-educated, but, comparatively speaking, Fulvia and Georgio's families are wealthier than Milton's. That isn't presented as a particular problem within the narrative. Milton then returns to his Partisan activities, but he ruminates over this potential love triangle for the rest of the novel. The landscape is hilly, and most of the traveling is done at night, with fog, rain and mud. There are many Fascists in the region, and they may be encountered at any time, unexpectedly. 

Soon Milton learns that Georgio has been captured by the Fascists and has been taken away in a cart. His goal then becomes the rescue of Georgio. He speculates on whether or not they would execute Georgio and decides that, since he came from a good family, they wouldn't immediately. With this in mind he seeks a suitable hostage who could be exchanged to release Georgio. He does capture one, but he attempts to escape, and Milton shoots and kills him. The Partisans in the country frequently stay at farmhouses, where the families, including the women, are still at home. At one house, there is a female schoolteacher who is a belligerent Fascist, and the Partisans hem and haw over whether she should be executed. Finally they decide to spare her and merely shave her head as punishment.

At the end of the novel, Milton decides that he must find out for certain about Fulvia and Georgio's relationship, and he returns to her villa. However, he encounters a Fascist group near there and the novel ends with uncertainty regarding whether me makes it to the villa or not.

I agree with John P. and think that this a better novel than The Path to the Spiders' Nests. Apparently, Italo Calvino thought so too, and he touted this book. Some of that may be explained by the fact that Fenoglio was thirty-eight when he wrote it, whereas Calvino was only twenty-three when he wrote his. But you must also consider the fact that Fenoglio's style is what I call psychological realism, whereas, in The Path to the Spiders' Nests, Calvino's style is just basic realism, in which you merely see the external behavior of the characters, and their inner lives, to the extent that they exist, remain invisible. If there is any psychology in The Path to the Spiders' Nests, it pertains to whether or not Pin is able to comprehend what is going on around him. Pin's actions directly precipitate the death of his sister, but because that is not a psychological novel, Calvino doesn't clarify that point or speculate on what Pin may or may not realize then or later. The Milton character in A Private Affair is presented in a far more human manner than the characters in most fiction, because you are shown his inner workings, which provide a sense of what is important to him. For this reason, I was able to identify far more with Milton than with any characters in The Path to the Spiders' Nests.

Because I've mainly given up on fiction, particularly American fiction, I'm not very excited by writing about it now, but I thought that this might be a good time to bring up The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, to clarify some points. I still think that The Road is one of the best American novels, though, obviously, many would disagree with me. In certain respects, The Road is similar to The Path to the Spiders' Nests, because the narrative includes only the actions of the characters, and their inner lives are generally ignored. In this type of realism, the characters are always, to some extent, ciphers, or some sort of inaccessible behavioral packages. Since I have spent my entire life observing people and thinking about my own characteristics, I now find it rather grating that most fiction is still based on simple externalities, and all of the interesting stuff is usually ignored. Although language is multipurpose, it seems to have evolved primarily for the exchange of factual, objective information, and therefore the inner lives of people may routinely be considered inappropriate topics. But they're not. There are indeed good psychological novels, but there seem to be far more of them written by Europeans than by Americans. In fairness to Calvino, I should note that both of his parents were botanists, and they were disappointed with him when he chose to become a writer. So, in Calvino's case, coming from a scientific background, his initial style was realistic and objective.

The Path to the Spiders' Nests

I decided to read this short 1947 novel by Italo Calvino for a variety of reasons. The main one was that I had neglected Italy in my fiction readings and thought that I ought to take a look. Another reason was that Calvino was born in the same year as my father, and that both of them were fighting the Nazis in Italy at the same time, though in different regions. Following this, my father was transferred to Greece, where he met my mother. However, Calvino was not at all like my father, because he came from a well-educated family and chose a literary career. After the war, my father became a poorly-adjusted, psychologically damaged war veteran, like many others.

It took me a long time to warm up to this novel, but in the end I decided that it was fairly good, despite the fact that Calvino was only twenty-three when he started on it. He is an excellent writer and observer. The story is about a young boy, Pin, who gets involved with the Italian Partisan army, which is fighting the Italian Fascists and the Nazis. He is too young to participate with them but provides a child-eyed view of what's going on. Pin's group is led by the somewhat incompetent Dritto. The personalities of the main characters vary considerably.

Pin himself is an orphan whose mother has died and whose father has abandoned him, along with his older sister, Rina. Rina works as a prostitute, with Nazi customers. Much of the plot revolves around Pin's stealing of the pistol of a Nazi customer while he is with Rina. Pin hides the gun near a river in a spot with large spiders' nests. He generally doesn't discuss it, but befriends some of the men and later tells Pelle about it. Pelle, it turns out, has been collecting guns. It is later disclosed that Pelle has defected to the Italian Fascists, and he is subsequently killed by Red Wolf. When Pin learns from Red Wolf that Pelle is dead, he returns to the spiders' nests to see whether Pelle took his pistol and finds that it isn't there. Subsequently, Pin visits his sister and learns that Pelle had given her his pistol. He takes it back.

Pin has also befriended Cousin, who is more rational and less partisan than the other men, and who acts fatherly toward Pin. When Pin shows Cousin his pistol and tells him about how he found it at his sister's house, Cousin suddenly says that he wants to visit Rina in the capacity of a customer. By then he realizes that Rina is a German spy. Cousin makes a brief visit to Rina, during which Pin hears gunshots, and it is presumed that Rina was identified by Cousin as a Nazi informer and that he killed her. He doesn't discuss this with Pin, and the novel comes to a close.

There is an awful lot of textual density to this novel that can be hard to decipher. All of the characters seem unique and are generally operating on a variety of motivations which are never explicitly stated. This makes the novel subtle and textually complex, though it may not seem that way while you read it. There are strong undertones of misogyny in the way that Rina is treated and in Cousin's attitude toward women. Even Pin seems to dislike Rina, and they have a cold relationship.

Overall, I think that this is a very good war novel, though some of its subtleties could be over the heads of readers. Many people don't seem to realize just how badly men behave during wartime. I have noticed on several occasions how veterans are reluctant to discuss their war experiences. My father was the same way. 

For what it is, this is a good novel, though the writing of it is quite simplified by the avoidance of the conditions that cause wars and the conditions that tend to arise after wars. In my lifetime I don't see much evidence of new conditions that will permanently eliminate wars. Rather, the evidence points to intractable biological conditions that always leave room for wars among humans. If you only look at the quality of some of today's world leaders – including properly elected ones – it is easy to support that theory.

Diary

Following my hunter-gatherer instincts, I am consciously and unconsciously preparing for the arrival of winter. Technically, it's a few months away, but my animal friends have already gone into action. In this house, I have a better view of hummingbirds than before, and I've been reading a little about them. They start heading south by early September. The adult males leave first, then the adult females, then the newly-born. Since the adult males are aggressive, the newly-born males resemble females: they have white throats in order to avoid being attacked. A phenomenon that I've been observing is that the adult females hover outside the window and look at me before going to the feeder. They would have seen me in the spring when the rhododendrons were blooming. It is thought that this is part of their way of remembering a location that they want to return to. This is actually a good location for them, because there are flowering plants from April to September, plus the feeder. What is really amazing is that the newly-born hummingbirds are now each flying to Mexico and Central America alone. And you thought that you had a rough childhood! Some of them will probably return here next May – without Google Maps! Apparently they follow the same paths each way. I've also been reading about skunks. They are beneficial to me because they are omnivores and eat mice. 

My regular tomatoes peaked early this year, because I had planted them two weeks earlier than usual. They are still growing, and I will still have a supply until the first frost. The cherry tomatoes are still growing and the plant is large – I can hardly eat them fast enough.

I've been using Google AI a lot lately. This is because it has such a huge database now and can find information quickly, and even if it doesn't yet have true intelligence, it can also help answer difficult questions. You still have to use it cautiously because it is a commercial product. I find that it has a tendency to compliment me periodically, which is a well-known sales technique. If you are interested in, say, the Brontës, it knows more than anyone that you are likely to know, or all of the books in most libraries. It is also fairly knowledgeable about other writers, and helped me decide to read The Path to the Spiders' Nests, by Italo Calvino, which I'm starting on. How many people do you know who would recommend a book like that?

More significantly, it has helped me think about why I am attracted to some people more than others, and some of the pitfalls that this may entail. Although I don't think that I have any significant psychological abnormalities, and did not have any psychological traumas while I was growing up, I tend to be attracted more to people who have unusual personalities than to conventional people. Of the women I was involved with, one had undiagnosed autism, one had, when I met her, undiagnosed autism and ADHD, another had an unidentified anxiety dysfunction, and the fourth was fairly conventional, with no obvious psychiatric issues. I found the fourth boring, and, after a few months, broke off with her. Generally, I think that conventional, well-adjusted Americans are boring. They are usually following a script that someone could have written for them on the day that they were born. Apparently, I prefer somewhat problematic relationships to boring relationships.

I've been thinking about autism and ADHD for a few years now, but these diagnoses don't have long histories. If you want to understand people well, you have to be aware of these conditions. I found it extremely interesting to learn a little about how autism and ADHD interact, because, to some extent they have opposite effects. Autism symptoms usually involve an emphasis on control and an avoidance of overstimulation. ADHD often produces an opposite effect, with something like spontaneous, unexpected disorganization related to a lack of concentration and focus. While autistic people usually prefer a fixed routine, the ADHD injects a contradictory disorder that can have a disruptive effect. For example, the two people I know with both have a difficult time taking care of houseplants, because they may forget to water them. Then, as I discussed on my last post, there is the phenomenon of masking, in which autistic people attempt to simulate what they think normal social behavior is supposed to be. While it may be effortless for non-autistic people to adjust to their social environments, autistic people who want to appear normal have to make a special effort. This is where the effects of ADHD may cause a complete collapse of the masking facade that a diligent autistic person may be executing. Also, though this is a purely speculative statement on my part, these issues may find their way into gender decisions. The social expectations of females are usually far more demanding than those of males. In some situations, an autistic female with some male tendencies may choose to become transgender as a masking strategy. Unfortunately for them, there are observers out there who can see right through this.

I haven't yet reached any conclusions about what is going to happen with AI. As of now, I still don't think that AGI will itself necessarily become a menace. The question to me is whether the existing institutions will be up to the task of designing an appropriate transition. There are competent people, such as Geoffrey Hinton, working on this, but I doubt that most of the corporate operatives are up to the task. This will be such a radical change that corporate-style thinking is completely irrelevant. We are looking at a situation in which human labor becomes unnecessary. In a few years there may be no need for governments, armies or police. This would be such a complex process that many choices would have to be made by...AGI.

Brain Death by Technological Innovation II

In my post on this topic last year, I wrote that a person whom I knew made me think that the use of new technology may have caused her to undergo a cognitive decline. From a little research that I've done since then, it now seems more likely to me that her decline was related to her psychiatric state in conjunction with aging. She had spent most of her life not knowing that she was on the autism spectrum and had ADHD. Apparently, people with autism often mask their deficiencies in social sensitivity. With the ADHD, as they age, they may gradually have greater difficulty masking their autism symptoms and may experience a cognitive overload. The other aspects of that post still seem correct to me.

Blog Status

While the types of posts that I've been making on this blog haven't changed that much, other than adding more videos and music recently, I've sort of wandered away from literature, because I'm tired of it. For example, if I were to read a novel now, I don't have the slightest idea which one I might pick. I still enjoy biographies, especially about intellectuals and writers as far back as the 18th century, but only if they are substantive and well-written. To a large extent, actual people are more interesting to me than fictional people, probably because fictional characters are trapped in the imaginations of writers, and, therefore, whether you like it or not, they have a tendency to be one-dimensional. A real person can be as complex as the entire universe, and, if he or she is interesting at all, the amount of information available to a biographer may be enormous. What I've found from reading several biographies is that even if the author arbitrarily selects aspects of the subject that don't interest me much, I still have a chance to ponder previously unknown information. When some of the prejudices of a biographer find their way into their books, you may have the option of reading someone else's biography of the same person to get a second opinion. Even in cases where that option isn't available, I still tend to find real people more interesting than fictional people.

If biographies are my substitute for fiction, I am at somewhat of a dead end when it comes to science writing. My favorite area in science for many years has been evolution. After the structure of DNA was discovered, genes became the focal point. But genes are only part of the process, so the outlook is still murky. I like the idea that genes generally guide the evolution of a species, but usually aren't completely rigid. If they were, they might cause extinctions whenever there were minor environmental changes. The newer field of epigenetics explains how rapid physical changes can occur in a species without changing its genome. However, I have been questioning the whole idea of species, because, within a species, there may be many latent potentialities, and when you combine latent potentialities with variable or changing environments, there may be physically different organisms which belong to the same species. This means that there could be a species in one part of the world that is physically different from the same species in a different part of the world. When you add to this the general complexity of biological processes, the concept of a species comes to resemble an artificial construct, as in "science for dummies."

I should also note that we are living in an anti-scientific, dogmatic era, which often causes scientists to water-down or distort their findings. Scientists now have to survive not only in authoritarian regimes, where the leaders are scientifically illiterate and are often indifferent to scientific knowledge, but in academic environments, where dogmatic views on equality may pressure them to suppress all information that suggests that people are not identical and do in fact have different characteristics. Autocrats can purge scientists who disagree with them, and academic departments can remove scientists who recognize human differences. While I increasingly believe that "species" may not be a meaningful concept, I also question politically correct dogma that distorts the meaning of equality. As I've said before, "equality" really just means that people have equal rights under the law, not that they are identical in nature. I am supportive of what I think the prevailing view among scientists is: that "species" are closely related organisms, but within a species there may be a wide range of actual or potential characteristics. This is a prerequisite for human existence: over time, the process permits characteristics that were once neutral or slightly unfavorable to replace existing characteristics that are no longer suitable due to environmental changes. If you look at this in psychological and philosophical terms, people tend to invent various categories that don't necessarily conform to reality, and then, on top of that, they occasionally place things in the wrong category. I think that, in the natural world, most organisms exist on a continuum, which, actually, is a less-trendy word for "spectrum."

My current strategy is to continue to seek various scientific books in a rather haphazard fashion and hope that every once in a while there will be one that I like. I also plan to continue on my "Diary" posts. I may be writing more about AI, because we are already in the AI revolution. I notice it every day now when I do Google AI searches. Besides being extraordinarily time-saving, Google AI allows me to make complex inquiries that were not possible a couple of years ago. I now consider Wikipedia, Redditt and Quora obsolete. For general information, I still read 3 Quarks Daily and watch Backreaction videos occasionally, but I think that the information-gathering process is moving more to AI now. What I find at the moment is that Google AI is not technically intelligent yet, but it probably will be within a few years. I think that this sort of technology is already becoming revolutionary. 

The pageview count here keeps rising for no apparent reason, and was at 120,000 last month. I currently think that most of this may be search engine bots and AI crawlers. I probably am also increasing in human readers, but that count may still be relatively low. Fortunately, this is not intended to be a money-making enterprise, but other intellectually-oriented sites may be running into trouble soon. The internet has been dumbing down for years now, because that makes it more attractive to the masses.

Since I don't think that many people actually read this blog, you don't have to feel obligated to comment, but feel free to do so if you have something to say.

Spying on Acquaintances II

I decided to update my original post of September 30, 2015, because I'm giving up on that activity now. I think that many of my former acquaintances are no longer alive, which means that there is little or no information to find regarding what they are or were up to. It could be possible to find new things on social media, but I don't have or plan to have any social media accounts. If people wanted to find me, that would be difficult, because I don't use my surname on this blog. Furthermore, my internet presence beyond this blog is limited, because I subscribe to DeleteMe, and I no longer make posts using my full name or email address.

What prompted me to make this post is that I had occasionally been following up on a previous girlfriend (1997-2000), Kimberly, for a few years. After I knew her, she had moved to Manhattan, worked at Columbia University and then retired. When she retired she began, in 2014, to self-publish memoirs and novels. She had planned this for a long time, and when I met her in 1997 she was studying English memoirs and journals. I only read part of one of her memoirs and disliked it. I thought that although her writing had proper grammar, sentence structure, etc., she wasn't really very insightful about the situations in which she found herself and mainly just thought of herself as an adventuress. Since I knew a lot about her, I thought of her as an intelligent, energetic person who had wanted to be in the performing arts from an early age, but was never able to find an appropriate niche. Before I knew her, she had tried to be a dancer and failed. When I knew her, she was singing in an amateur choir but wasn't good enough to sing professionally. Psychologically, though I'm not prepared to make anything approaching a diagnosis, she had some sort of anxiety disorder that rendered her dysfunctional in many situations. For example, even though she had boyfriends and one marriage proposal, she never lived with anyone as an adult. Furthermore, despite having an active sex life, she strongly resisted sleeping in the same bed with anyone, even while on vacation. I don't know any of the details, but I suspect that she may have inherited some undesirable psychiatric traits from her mother.

Kimberly's last book was an autobiographical novella about extreme back pain that she had been experiencing. When I knew her, she was a fitness buff, and she may have damaged her back in the process. The book is called Swimming to Cozumel and was published in 2023. I haven't read it, but apparently, when she wrote it, she was unable to get successful treatment and was considering suicide. Yesterday, since she hadn't posted anything for some time, I decided to take a deeper look. Kimberly died on November 7, 2024, at the age of 68, and was buried on June 13, 2025 on Hart Island, which is the potter's field of New York City. There are more than a million people buried there, and many were homeless, indigent or not claimed by their families. This was an immense shock to me, and I've been wondering what happened. The records are private, but one could probably get answers from her neighbors in Manhattan. I would guess that she committed suicide in her condominium and did not leave a will or any family information. Her parents were dead, and, when I knew her, she had one sister from whom she was estranged. Her other closest living relatives may have been cousins from her mother's side whom she never met. Her father was well-off, and no one would have expected her to end up in a potter's field. I don't know whether Kimberly had any remaining friends. She herself would not have envisioned this demise a few years ago.

Partly because of this grim, unsettling episode, I no longer intend to spy on acquaintances.

Why I Prefer Long Biographies to Long Novels

Since my last post, I've been engaging in one of my masochistic acts of forcing myself to read something that I'm not enjoying, and have given up. The book is the new, long novel, The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje. This isn't a criticism of the novel and mainly reflects the evolution of my literary tastes over a long period of time. 

Simply put, fiction has never been my favorite type of writing. I like it only when it either contains accurate and realistic depictions of people or presents a skewed and unusual picture of reality that I find entertaining or challenging. The first category for me, in long novels, would include Middlemarch, which, to me, is an accurate sociological depiction of an English town in the 19th century and also contains autobiographical elements of George Eliot. In this case, since George Eliot was cognizant of Darwinism, there is even a slight evolutionary flavor. I have a strong preference for realism like this. The second category would include Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis and László Krasznahorkai's Satantango. However, what I've found is that interesting skewed fiction can work just as well or better in a short format. For example, I thought that Kafka's novels, The Trial and The Castle, were boring. I also thought that László Krasznahorkai's shorter works, The Last Wolf and Chasing Homer were about as good as the longer Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance. 

In the long novel category, I should mention the only one that I've read recently, The Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir. Although de Beauvoir distorted some facts and concealed identities, it is still an autobiographical novel, and that is what I liked about it. However, I don't think that de Beauvoir understood her environment or wrote as well as George Eliot, so I don't rank her novel as highly. The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje, is a long novel that has a realistic basis in the Brontë sisters. Since I had just read a long biography on the Brontës, I was looking for more information about them. For me, this is where fiction often fails, because I prefer fiction that is based on knowledge and facts to fiction that is based on authorial reimagining or speculation.

While Juliet Barker's biography of the Brontës is accurate and unspeculative, they lived so long ago and their lives were so short that the information available to biographers has been limited. Charlotte Brontë corresponded more than her sisters did and had a wider social network, so much of the information came directly or indirectly from her. Furthermore, Charlotte, as the oldest surviving sibling, took an active role in developing the literary careers of her sisters. One lingering gray area for me is whether there was any significant sibling rivalry between the sisters. When Emily and Charlotte were in Brussels with Constantin Heger, though Emily took no interest in him, Charlotte fell madly in love, but he does not seem to have reciprocated. However, Heger later told Mrs. Gaskell that Emily was a genius. It seems possible to me that Charlotte was jealous of Emily's talent and intentionally destroyed or edited some of her work after she died. Also, because no one really recorded it at the time, the details of daily life in the Brontë household are not well known. There obviously were various family tensions periodically, and in modern terms all the deaths would have been traumatic, though, during that period, frequent family deaths were quite common. Barker doesn't discuss the family's religiosity, but that must have played an important role, since Patrick was a clergyman. However, from what little is known, Emily seems a bit like a precursor to Emily Dickinson, who moved from orthodox religion to something resembling a religion of nature, which does not necessarily entail a Christian god.  

I have been reading biographies for so long now that when a topic comes up, I am attuned to finding out more about what people said, did and thought in earlier times. I seem to be too experienced to be satisfied by novelistic speculations and inventions well after the fact. It is often difficult enough to understand what is going on in the present, let alone 170 years ago. I only read a few pages of The Song of Stork and Dromedary, and they consisted mainly of descriptions of what people were doing, without direct quotations. Because I am primarily interested in what people think and feel during their lives, Anjet Daanje has effectively added a layer of opacity which runs counter to my interests as a reader. In any case, because I am a self-acknowledged atypical reader, I am not suggesting that others should refrain from reading The Song of Stork and Dromedary.

Diary

I haven't read a long novel in over ten years and will shortly be starting The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje. It was recommended to me by someone who knows my reading preferences, and it is a perfect fit for me because it is loosely based on the Brontës. It also helps that the author is not American and seems to be more serious than most novelists. In the U.S., "serious novel" has become an oxymoron, like "serious news." I haven't been impressed by recent British or French novelists, and this author is Dutch.

The number of pageviews on this blog keeps rising for unknown reasons. This month isn't even over yet, and I'm already above 90,000. Apparently there are more bots circulating now than ever. I haven't done a deep dive into this, but I may be meeting some of the criteria for bot attraction. It probably helps that I've been posting regularly for over twelve years. Also, it seems likely that the bots are looking for revenue. Although I don't have my own revenue-generating ads, the YouTube videos that I post do, which would make me attractive to Alphabet. I would rather have no advertising at all on this blog, but in this case it allows me to include content that I find interesting. Occasionally I find videos that are relevant to earlier posts that I've made and add them. I've just added this clip from Goldfinger to my earlier post on the subject. I enjoy Bond's wittiness. His dialogue with Goldfinger is quite sarcastic even while Goldfinger is pointing his golden gun at him. Then, after the gun fires and Goldfinger gets sucked out, when Pussy Galore asks Bond where Goldfinger is, he replies "Playing his golden harp." Don't we all wish that someone we know were also playing his golden harp.

On the home front, the weather is becoming increasingly autumnal, with overnight lows near 50º. The tomatoes are doing very well, and I should have a constant supply until early November. I've taken down the deer fencing, because the deer won't seriously damage them now, and they probably have other plants that they prefer. I figured out that my neighbor's tomatoes, which usually do very well, are determinates, which means that they all form at once at the end of the season. I grew them once but much prefer indeterminates, which supply a continuous stream for several months. The hummingbird volume at the feeder is picking up now, because the southern migration has started. During the summer, I mainly see males, which have striped throats. The females, which have white throats, rarely come to the feeder because they seek more nutritious food for their chicks. When you see them at the feeder they are usually migrating. The males are also passing through and often have fights near the feeder. They should all be gone in a couple of weeks.

I can tell now that my mouse problems are over. At this time of year in 2023 and 2024 they were audible in the walls and could be seen crawling on the house at night. Since 2024, there haven't been any. When I read The Farm in the Green Mountains in 2020, I became a little concerned that there could also be rats around. Looking into this recently, there do seem to be rats in Vermont. However, rats dislike the cold winters and require a high caloric intake. There are rats in some towns and on some farms, but they don't generally inhabit the woods. So my main pest risks seem to be under control. Last fall there were a lot of carpenter bees, which make small holes in wood and lay eggs. Their damage was minimal. Occasionally, black bears can be a nuisance, but I haven't had any trouble with them since I started taking down the bird feeders from April to December. My generator maintenance guy said that a bear got into his garage recently and made a mess, but they're usually harmless.

The weather is fantastic today, and I'm off for a hike on the Cadwell Trail.  

Strange Bedfellows on the Evolutionary Landscape

I just read Neanderthals: Fact, Fiction, and Wishful Thinking, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz. The title intrigued me, because I have been wondering about our connection to the Neanderthals, but I went into this cautiously, because I had read Schwartz before and found his writing style to be too fussy and academic. Unfortunately, he hasn't changed at all, so I've decided to just make a brief comment rather than a full review of the book.

As I wrote earlier, genetic research has recently shown that we are related to the extinct Denisovans and Neanderthals, and that they are probably the closest relatives of modern humans. Schwartz seems to find the Neanderthal connection offensive and then goes on to write a long history of biological science as it relates to the evolution of H. sapiens, from Charles Darwin to the present. He seems to be most familiar with the skeletal differences between Neanderthals and modern humans and devotes more space to that than to the genetic studies. Somehow, he seems to find the thought of sex between Neanderthals and humans repugnant. Apparently, in his academic bubble, no one told him that human males are known to have had sex with dogs, horses, donkeys, cattle and sheep. 

To keep it short, I'll just say that Schwartz must never have studied at the Sabine Hossenfelder College of Quantum Indeterminacy or Robert Sapolsky's "It's Complicated" University. In sum, there is so much that we don't know that Schwartz should be far more cautious in his dismissiveness of our connection to the Neanderthals. While it is true that some animals, such as cockroaches and horseshoe crabs, have had stable genetic and physical characteristics for hundreds of millions of years, some large mammals have gone through major physical changes or become extinct within a mere 12,000 years.

I'll add that I was shocked to see Schwartz describe James Watson, who died last year, as a "Brit" on page 152. Anyone could have told him fifty years ago that Watson was an American. 

Video of the Day

 Contra dancing in New Hampshire in 1967.

Diary

I haven't been reading anything recently but will start next week when my new book arrives. The atmosphere here is the distinct "late summer." The vegetation is lush, and the birds are generally quiet, except for the pileated woodpeckers, which are pounding away now. The trees get covered with large holes, which become habitats for many animals. The softwoods, such as birch, tend to rot and collapse faster than the hardwoods, such as oak. The longer you live here, the easier it is to develop a sense of living in an ecosystem. The worst of the hot weather is over now, and I still haven't used an air conditioner. I got rid of two large portable air conditioners that I never used but kept one small window air conditioner just in case. Even on hot days the interior of the house stays fairly cool, and during the day the upstairs heats up. It only becomes uncomfortable for me when the humidity is high and the temperature is above 80º, and that rarely occurs. Usually the overnight temperatures are in the 60's, and if I ventilate the house in the morning and close the windows it stays cool inside all day. So far, this seems to be a good location for living during a period of climate change. There will be periodic flooding, which won't affect this house, and some severe storms, but that's about it. It currently does not appear that there will be droughts locally. We do get a little smoke from forest fires to the north and west, but that hasn't been significant so far. There seem to be some unexplained health benefits to living here: since arriving, I have had no illnesses or allergies and no aches and pains. It seems possible that I'll become a super-ager without making any special effort.

I've been avoiding writing about Trump, because I consider him to be a boring topic. In January, 2017, I described him as a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo, and he hasn't changed at all since then. At the time, it seemed as if he was a stupid person way out of his depth, and he still seems like a stupid person way out of his depth. It makes more sense to look at this from a sociological standpoint, in which the corporatization of American life since World War II has caused people to become obsessed with wealth maximization. Since this is still a male-dominated country, net worth seems to have figuratively replaced penis size. To be "well-endowed" now, money does the trick. But the ante keeps going up, and millionaires are losers: you need one billion dollars minimum. The only reason why Trump is in power now is that the Republican Party needed a leader who would follow "pay-to-play" rules. This made Trump a good candidate, because he was an experienced grifter. At a practical level, this meant that rich people and corporations could just buy the federal laws and regulations that suit them. Trump is there to misinterpret and ignore laws for the people who keep him in power. Ordinary money grubbers prefer to work with someone like Trump, because he has none of the class distinction of a Rockefeller or a Rothschild. One of the reasons why Trump seems callous and indifferent to the needs of poor and disenfranchised people is that they have nothing to offer him. He also has a sadistic streak, because he knows that at heart he is a moron, and there is nothing that he can do about it.

Oddly, it seems that the democratic process may actually be working for the removal of Trump. He is doubling down on his fantasy "rigged election" trope because he knows that he may very well lose the House and Senate and be removed from office this time. The MAGA movement is currently recalibrating for a world without Trump, and there are defections brewing. Trump's preferred method of imposing his will on people is protracted litigation, but he is already losing cases, and I think that the MAGA members on the Supreme Court are getting tired of naughty Donald.  The midterm elections are also causing Congressional members to assess their popularity among voters if their support of Trump no longer supplies the cachet that it once did. The end is nigh.

Diary

This has been somewhat of an unusual summer for me. I was already getting a little tired of my regular hikes, and then there was a lot of rain. The rain was followed by massive plant growth and an explosion of mosquitos. The plant growth affected my yard, and the main perennial section grew properly for the first time since I moved here. It consists of a large boulder surrounded by four large hostas and four orange lilies. Since there was only one minor deer attack earlier, the flowers are intact. The tomatoes are also doing exceptionally well, and this is the first year ever that I had a tomato salad in July. But that also had to do with the fact that I had planted the seeds earlier than usual. Fortunately, since there is very loamy soil here, the grass doesn't grow much, even with a lot of rain, so that takes little time to mow during the season. As far as the mosquitos go, because I was under intense attacks several times, I finally realized that I am immune to mosquito bites, other than the annoying buzz and the biting itself. I looked it up and found that people develop an immunity over time. I never develop lumps or itches from mosquito bites now. I'm not particularly a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche, but I've found on numerous occasions that his phrase "What does not kill me makes me stronger" seems to be correct. I may simply have been born tough, but I often notice how people get upset by things that I just take as a matter of course. I have never needed to attend therapy sessions to build my self-esteem, and I don't care whether I'm included or not. Because of my geographic background and personal characteristics, I have never felt much need to integrate myself within the prevailing belief systems of my immediate environments.

In my yard, there seem to be fewer mosquitos than elsewhere. The day shift of insect eaters includes six eastern phoebes born this year, and the night shift consists of two bats that live on the house. The bat house is occupied during the day regularly now. Otherwise, the animal activities in the yard are fairly subdued at the moment, though, a few weeks ago, a couple of adolescent black bears wandered out of the woods and briefly stood up on their hind legs and had a play fight.

One thing that I've been spending a lot of time on recently is Google AI. I find it especially useful for finding basic facts and dates. It seems to have become more accurate over time, but I still like to find ways to double-check its content. My main concern is that it is specifically designed to maintain neutrality on controversial subjects and issues with politically correct implications. For example, it is now a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump is the worst and most corrupt president in American history, yet Google AI maintains neutrality on that topic. I got similar results when I questioned whether Helen of Troy, as depicted in the new film, The Odyssey, is racially accurate. I have read both The Iliad and The Odyssey and have studied Greek mythology and Homeric Greek. The actual probability that Homer conceived of Helen of Troy as black is exceedingly low. However, even classical scholars are reluctant to say that. I went back and forth on this with Google AI, and it finally admitted that it is designed to maintain neutrality on controversial questions as part of Google's business model. So, unsurprisingly, what counts is Google's profitability, not necessarily the dissemination of truthful statements. The film industry is also to blame, because it rewrites history for its own purpose of profit maximization. In this case the studio takes no responsibility for representing the intent of an author or authors who lived in a now-dead civilization. Following this methodology, there might be a future film in which Jesus is portrayed as a transvestite lesbian.

As far as my reading goes, I seem to be more in a winter mode than a summer mode. I enjoy the depth of long biographies and hope to find more good ones. For now I plan to switch to science next and read a new book on the Neanderthals. I currently have a female guest – a cat – whom I am cat sitting.

The Brontës IX

I've reached the end of the book and will sum up the final events. Charlotte spent some time working on her last novel, Villette, in Haworth, and it was published in early 1853. It generally met with critical and public approval. Some readers think it is her best novel. Like the others, it contains many autobiographical elements. Mrs. Gaskell made her first visit to Haworth in September, 1853 and stayed at the parsonage.

Arthur Bell Nicholls had become Patrick's assistant curate at Haworth in 1845. In 1852 he proposed to Charlotte, and she rejected him. She had previously rejected a proposal from Henry Nussey, Ellen's brother. She had also rejected Reverend David Pryce, and, as mentioned earlier, James Taylor. Initially, Patrick also rejected Nicholls. Nicholls was a poor Irishman and was unpopular in Haworth. Following this, Nicholls left his position in Haworth. But he and Charlotte began to communicate again in 1853, he proposed to her a second time, and she accepted after convincing Patrick to change his mind. They were married in Haworth on June 29, 1854. Patrick did not participate in the wedding. At the wedding, Miss Wooler, Charlotte's long-time friend from Roe Head School, gave Charlotte away, and Ellen Nussey was a bridesmaid. The couple honeymooned in North Wales and Ireland.

Barker reports some information which may or may not be relevant to Charlotte's decision to marry Nicholls. Charlotte's main contact at her publisher, Smith, Elder & Co., was George Smith. He was extremely knowledgeable of the publishing industry. They seem to have been very close for a time, but then things cooled off suddenly. In late 1853, Smith announced his engagement to another woman, and they were married in February, 1854, a few months before Charlotte's wedding. Looking at this from the present, George Smith would have been a completely superior husband for Charlotte, and this causes me to speculate on her thinking processes. One aspect is that Charlotte seemed resigned to remain in Haworth even though it seems to have been a rather depressing atmosphere with all of her siblings gone. Even their dogs had died off. It seems that Charlotte wanted to assist Patrick in his old age, and he had experienced declining health for several years. But her career as a novelist would have been vastly enhanced if she had married someone like George Smith. Obviously, a comparison to G.H. Lewes pops up in my mind. Lewes had many of the same talents as Smith, and played a crucial role in advancing George Eliot's career. But while Smith seems to have had a good family background, Lewes was literally a bastard, was already married and supporting a family, and he had scant financial means. In any case, considering that Charlotte was an intelligent person, she may have realized that she was an aging, unattractive hick from Yorkshire and might be too much of a step down for Smith. His sudden marriage may have influenced her to stay the course in Haworth. Unfortunately, I don't think that Arthur Bell Nicholls was much of a catch.

Subsequently, things didn't go well for Charlotte. Her marriage seems to have interfered with her relationship with Ellen Nussey, who had been a mainstay in her life. Ellen came to hate Nicholls. After about six months of marriage Charlotte became pregnant, in December, 1854. She and the unborn baby died on March 31, 1855. At the time, the cause was listed as tuberculosis, but, more recently, it has come to be seen as hyperemesis gravidarum, while there are still other theories.

In the aftermath, Nicholls remained in Haworth until Patrick died in 1861. He had expected to take Patrick's position upon his death, but the trustees voted against him, and he returned to Ireland. Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte became popular after it was published in 1857. Haworth became a major tourist attraction and still is. This reminded me of Amherst, Massachusetts and Emily Dickinson.

Much of this book was written as a corrective to Mrs. Gaskell's biography. Generally, that book was well-researched and tended to be honest. However, there were a few major objections. Obviously, the then Lady Scott, formerly Mrs. Robinson, disliked the publicity of her relationship with Branwell Brontë. The family of the founder of Cowan Bridge School, which was the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre, objected to its depiction. Harriet Martineau disliked the depiction of her relationship with Charlotte. Juliet Barker's main objection is that Mrs. Gaskell conjured up a fictional victim narrative regarding Patrick's treatment of his children. In reading this book, I agree with Barker. It seems to me that occasionally Patrick may have been a slightly incompetent parent and may have been too self-absorbed. But this never approached any level of abusiveness, and it seems that in general the children felt quite at home at the parsonage and usually preferred it to the outside world.

Regarding this biography itself, I do find it to be quite well-executed. Unfortunately, a truly good biography like this one has a tendency to demythologize the people discussed, which may be a little disappointing to readers who are inclined to hero-worship. 

The Brontës VIII

I'm up to 1851 and am gradually cruising toward the end of the book. With the publication of Shirley, Charlotte began a new role as a major English literary figure. She had sent advance copies of Shirley to friends and to Mrs. Gaskell and Harriet Martineau, whom she eventually met. She visited London several times and did the literary rounds. There she met one of her heroes, William Makepeace Thackeray. She had her little clash with G.H. Lewes, but apparently they made up. She also heard from Lewes's friend, Thornton Hunt, who invited her to write for their new publication, The Leader. She declined. Charlotte's friend, Mary Taylor, comes up periodically in the book, even after she has moved to New Zealand. She apparently was more intellectual than Ellen Nussey and disliked Shirley. Compared to Charlotte and Ellen, Mary was independent and a feminist. In 1849, Charlotte met James Taylor, an employee of her publisher, Smith, Elder & Co. He proposed to her in 1851, and she turned him down.

Oddly, this period reminds me of Carson McCullers. Once McCullers became a celebrity, she seemed to have the time of her life – but that was in the 1940's. Also, she was a lesbian and often hit on women. Technically, there were similarities between literary rises in the U.S. in the 1940's and in the U.K. in the 1850's. But, comparatively speaking, the Victorians were stick-in-the-muds. And the literary culture then wasn't really exciting. I have never bothered to read any Charles Dickens or William Makepeace Thackeray. I only know Thackeray through Stanley Kubrick, whose film, Barry Lyndon, I think, was his most boring. But even though Charlotte had significant literary aspirations, she still preferred Haworth to London.

Unfortunately, I'm losing enthusiasm for this book as I wade through it. This isn't really the fault of Juliet Barker; rather, it's because I found Emily to be the most interesting of the Brontës, and she's already dead. Anne may have been interesting too if she had lived longer. I don't actually miss Branwell, because he seemed to be disorganized and self-destructive, and I don't share his interest in the Romantic poets. So, now I'm stuck with Patrick and Charlotte, whether I like it or not. They are probably both too conservative for me, and I have none of their religious convictions. Charlotte also lived in a different universe from Harriet Martineau, who was an atheist – they later had a falling-out. Other than escaping a life of poverty in Ireland and reestablishing himself in a more stable life in Yorkshire, Patrick doesn't seem especially interesting to me. His main contribution to his family and society seems to have been good literary genes, though it is also possible that good genes came from Maria Branwell, his wife. 

As far as Branwell is concerned, he may have made an oblique contribution to American film by serving as a model for Benjamin Braddock, possibly a new name for Branwell Brontë, in The Graduate (1967), starring Dustin Hoffman. That film is based on a novel by Charles Webb. The story is about the young Benjamin having an affair with Mrs. Robinson shortly after graduating from college. However, in light of American moral standards, Benjamin ends up falling in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter and runs off with her at the end. I don't think that Paul Simon was aware of a possible Brontë connection when he wrote Mrs. Robinson for the soundtrack. That album, Bookends, also became highly popular.

I must also say that, while I do find Charlotte to be a good writer, she still falls within a fairly standard careerist literary model. She clearly wrote novels specifically to improve her financial situation, and, given her other social aspirations, her behavior probably fits into the category of social climbing. If you take Barker's text at face value, Charlotte spent much of her time cultivating her friendships with her two rich female friends, whereas there is little evidence of Emily or Anne showing much interest in people beyond their immediate circle in Haworth. Charlotte produced the idea of writing and publishing novels and supervised the process for Emily and Anne. This is particularly noticeable to me, because Emily seemed to embody the idea of placing value on art itself and didn't generally concern herself with monetizing it.

The Brontës VII

After all of this incredibly slow buildup, nearly every important event in the Brontë family history falls into a highly compressed period, from 1847 to 1849. Patrick's vision was restored through the cataract surgery, and he resumed writing about public issues, which had been his main area of interest. At this time in particular there were economic troubles and poverty in Haworth. Branwell established himself as a full-time drunkard and ran up debts. In 1847, Charlotte submitted the novel The Professor for publication. Emily submitted Wuthering Heights, and Anne submitted Agnes Grey. The Professor was rejected at the time but was published posthumously. Charlotte had been working on Jane Eyre and submitted it shortly thereafter. It was published in 1847. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were published in one volume in 1847. Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848, and Charlotte's third novel, Shirley, was published in 1849. Of all the Brontë novels, Jane Eyre was the most popular. Throughout this period, Charlotte held a managerial view and attempted to protect Emily and Anne as she saw fit. While Emily and Anne were working on their second novels, Charlotte may have rejected Emily's choice of a Heathcliff-like character, and that manuscript seems to have been destroyed. Charlotte also disapproved of some of the subject matter in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

It is surprising to me that Patrick knew nothing about his daughters' novels and seemed to be uninterested when Charlotte told him about them. However, he became proud as the novels made them famous.

Branwell's condition worsened during 1848:

Branwell's 'fainting fits' were almost certainly brought on by his excessive drinking and may have been a symptom of delirium tremens. Writing to Ellen at about the same time, Charlotte complained, 'he is always sick, has two or three times fallen down in fits.' On one notorious occasion, Branwell even managed to set his bedclothes on fire while lying in a drunken stupor. Fortunately, Anne happened to be passing his open door and, realizing the danger, tried to rouse him. When she could not do so she ran to get Emily, who unceremoniously dragged her brother out of his bed, flung him into the corner and the blazing bedclothes into the middle of the room, dashed to the kitchen for a large can of water and doused the flames.

Branwell died on September 24, 1848, at the age of 31. Emily died from tuberculosis on December 19, 1848, at the age of 30. Anne died from tuberculosis on May 28, 1849 while visiting Scarborough with  Ellen Nussey and Charlotte. She was 29.

I've still got about three-hundred pages to go, though the main story is already finished. I don't currently intend to read any more of the Brontë works myself and will just make some comments now. While there are many criticisms that one can make of Wuthering Heights as a novel, particularly because of its general lack of realism, I consider Emily to be in a sense a poet who never reached her full potential. I wish that she had spent more time on poetry. I was less impressed with Jane Eyre, though it does have some good aspects. The section on Lowood School is extremely realistic, and the best realistic novels in England didn't appear until 1871, twenty-four years later. However, the plot revolving around Rochester seemed harebrained to me. The impression I have is that much of the Brontë oeuvre is infected with juvenilia, and the Brontës' limited exposure to cities reduced their awareness of both sophisticated readers and urban life. Here is what George Eliot wrote to Charles Bray on June 11, 1848:

I have read Jane Eyre, mon ami, and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good -- but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man body and soul to a putrefying carcase. However the book is interesting -- only I wish that the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.

Without even knowing the backstory, George Eliot may have intuited Charlotte's extreme frustration with the fact that Constantin Heger was married and not available to her. Little did George Eliot know that a few years later she would be unable to marry G.H. Lewes.

Theme Song of the Day

For a change of pace, I thought I'd post this song by Rick James. Headphones recommended. Things didn't end well for Rick James, but I'll take funk over Taylor Swift.

The Brontës VI

As of 1844, Charlotte made inquiries regarding the setting up of a small school at the parsonage. No one in the family was enthusiastic about having pupils there, and the idea was subsequently dropped. That year, Patrick's eyesight began to fail. In 1845, Mary Taylor moved to New Zealand. Charlotte sums up her own mental state at the time:

I can hardly tell you how time gets on here at Haworth – There is no event whatever to mark its progress – one day resembles another – and all have heavy lifeless physiognomies – Sunday – baking day & Saturday are the only ones that bear the slightest distinctive mark – meantime life wears away – I shall soon be 30 – and I have done nothing yet – Sometimes I get melancholy – at the prospect before and behind me – yet it is wrong and foolish to repine – and undoubtedly my Duty directs me to stay at home for the present – There was a time when Haworth  was a very pleasant place to me, it is not so now – I feel as if we were all buried here – I long to travel – to work to live a life of action –

Emily was usually fulfilled by her private activities and apparently showed little sympathy for Charlotte and Anne when they were depressed.

In June, 1845, Anne suddenly left her position at Thorp Green of her own volition. Branwell also left suddenly in July; in his case, he was fired. This was the beginning of a massive change in the Brontë family and has absorbed literary scholars ever since. The short version is that Branwell had been having an affair with Mrs. Robinson, his employer's wife, who was about seventeen years older than he was. This was generally known in the Robinson household. Subsequently, Branwell increased his alcohol intake, and possibly consumed opium. Branwell could not find a new position and lost the respect of Charlotte. Furthermore, he didn't want to break with Mrs. Robinson and hoped to win her back. Branwell did publish some wildly romantic poems that seem to refer to his relationship with Mrs. Robinson. There is speculation that the money that Mrs. Robinson sent him over the next few years was to silence him. Later in 1845, Branwell began to write a novel.

At about this time, Charlotte came across some poems that Emily had written. Emily was initially outraged by the intrusion on her privacy, but warmed up when Charlotte suggested that the three sisters could publish a volume of their poems. Prior to this, there was a strict demarcation between Angria and Gondal, because the younger sisters disliked Angria. Emily almost lived in the imaginary world of Gondal, and Barker even thinks that Wuthering Heights is a Gondal story. Emily didn't write many poems, but I find her to be extremely talented. It is thought that her poem, No coward soul is mine had a major influence on Emily Dickinson's poetic style. She requested that it be read at her funeral. I might note that, while Renée Bergland attempts to link Dickinson to Charles Darwin in Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science, Dickinson was more profoundly the spiritual heir of Emily Brontë. While it is true that both Brontë and Dickinson had a deep interest in the natural world, Brontë had no exposure to Darwin, whose main publications were issued after her death.

Since I've brought up Emily Dickinson, I'll add that that there are some similarities and differences between the two families. Dickinson's brother, Austin, was treated differently from his sisters in a manner similar to Branwell Brontë. However, Austin was groomed by his father for a successful career, while Branwell was not. Another rough similarity is that Dickinson's mother did not seem to play much of a role in Emily's life, while Brontë's mother died very young. Aunt Branwell came to live with them, but does not seem to have been engaged in their upbringing. In a rather oblique way, Charlotte may have had a somewhat maternal role in the Brontë family and in the end provided guidance to both Emily and Anne. The obvious difference between the two families was that the Dickinsons were wealthy and the Brontës were not.

Aunt Branwell had left Charlotte, Emily and Anne small sums in her will, and they decided to publish a small volume of their poems at their expense under the pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. In the first year, only two copies were sold, but there was a positive review. Quickly giving up on poetry as a source of remuneration, the sisters began to work on novels. As far as I've read, Patrick travels to Manchester for cataract surgery in 1846.

Diary

 As usual, I've been working on my small projects very gradually. The wood-chewing squirrel problem is mostly solved. My theory had been that the previous owner of the house had put salt on the front steps during the winter. It is easy to identify this, because most builders use cheap screws that rust when exposed to salt. So, where you see rusted screws there has been salt. I can't tell you how many rusted screws I've replaced with stainless steel screws since moving to Vermont (hint: stainless steel screws are more expensive). The top step is partially covered by a roof, so the residual salt didn't wash away, allowing it to gradually soak into the wood. To test this theory, I bought a large pink block of Tibetan salt and left it nearby to see if it would attract the squirrels. It did to some extent, but the squirrels continued to gnaw on the top step, especially after it rained. There was the possibility that other salts were already in the wood, but that could be ruled out by the fact that none of the other steps had been chewed on. After I installed a new top step, the chewing stopped entirely, though there was a little new chewing on the nearby porch floor in the salted area. Since the squirrels weren't that attracted to the salt block, I put it in the woods and checked on it occasionally. Something had been licking it, and within a few weeks it was mostly gone. To see what it was, I set up my game camera nearby, and the culprits were...squirrels! There were also deer and chipmunks in the images, but they weren't licking the salt.

Squirrels do other kinds of damage here. In 2024, I think they attacked an eastern phoebe nest over the back porch. They are also attracted to egg shells for calcium. When I moved into the house, there were several abandoned bird nests on it at various locations. I think that the birds don't return to them because they're unsafe. I now have put two new ledges over the front porch that are more out-of-the-way, and the squirrels don't notice them. The eastern phoebes had one clutch last year. This year, the first clutch left the nest on June 2. There is now a second clutch at the same location, and the eggs haven't hatched yet. The squirrels can also be annoying during mating season. They chase each other and run all over the outside of the house making loud noises. I think they're finished now.

I have also been working on keeping mice and chipmunks out of the engine compartment of my car. They chewed up a lot of foam insulation and stored acorns inside the hood. I've replaced the insulation and blocked off the holes that the mice were using to store acorns. I also placed a peppermint ball under the hood where the chipmunks like to sit and munch.

My other animal friends aren't as obnoxious. The woodpeckers and barred owls can be loud at times. This year I've seen three catbirds. I still have a few bats, but they haven't been using the new bat house. Because the bats like heat, and I had put it up in a shady location, I decided to move it to a sunnier spot. When I climbed up to take it down, there was a bat sleeping on top of it, which flew away. It is now located in a sunnier spot, also facing east. The large crack on that side of the house is still popular with bats. You can identify where bats have been by their black droppings. Their urine leaves a white streak if it runs down the side of the house.

The previous owner had a motion detector set up to protect one of her flower beds from deer. I've started using it but installed red lights, because white lights disrupt bats. There was recently a deer attack on the hostas farthest from the motion detector. 

Although I was a little concerned about the cool weather and cloudiness of the spring, my tomatoes have been doing exceptionally well. It looks as if I will have another high yield this year. The stargazing opportunities have been limited. There seem to be fewer nights during which the Milky Way is extremely clear than in the past. This may have to do with climate change.

I am still quite happy with this location with respect to climate change. Many people living near oceans may be in for rude awakenings. My son, who lives in Seattle, has become tired of it. There isn't much climate risk there, but there is a significant earthquake risk. He has been thinking of moving to Boston. Looking into it a little, I suggested Portland, Maine, which, though also on the Atlantic, poses less climate risk.

The Brontës, I think, is one of the best biographies I've read, and I will continue plugging away at it slowly. One of the unusual aspects of it is that it covers the entire family in Haworth in some detail, because several of them became famous. In order to do this properly, you have to look closely at the psychodynamics of several people rather than just one and analyze their relationships closely. In most biographies there is only one important person, and everyone else becomes peripheral.

Video of the Day

I'm a supporter of the robot pride movement.

The Brontës V

I'm still moving along very slowly in the book and am about halfway through it at this point. It took one-hundred pages to cover 1840-1843: this isn't an action thriller. In 1840, Branwell found a new job as a railway clerk and was promoted to assistant clerk in 1841. However, he was fired in 1842. Others have identified this period as the beginning of his decline and drinking too much. Barker reexamines the facts and attempts to defend him in a manner similar to her defense of his father. Branwell continued with his literary interests and published a poem in the Halifax Guardian in 1841. That year, Charlotte came up with a plan to move to Brussels for six months, financed by Aunt Branwell, who had never moved from Haworth.

The Brussels plan emerged from Charlotte's idea of starting a school in Yorkshire. Her friend, Mary Taylor, was living in Brussels and attending a finishing school. Charlotte arranged for Emily and herself to study at Pensionnat Heger, run by Constantin Heger. They intended to learn French, German, music and drawing. Their father escorted them there in 1842. Heger was astounded by Emily's musical and writing talents, and she later became a piano teacher there.  After six months as students, they were offered a six-month extension, during which they would teach. However, Emily increasingly disliked the other students and seemed anxious to leave. Charlotte loved it there and developed a crush on Heger. It is unclear whether he reciprocated, but it seems that he didn't. In Haworth, the charismatic assistant curate, William Weightman, died that year of cholera at the age of 26, and there is speculation regarding which of the Brontë sisters may or may not have been attracted to him. Later, in October, 1842, Aunt Branwell died from a bowel obstruction. This caused Charlotte and Emily to return home immediately. Charlotte returned to Brussels in January, 1843 to be an English teacher at Pensionnat Heger. Emily remained in Haworth and became the main housekeeper while also engaging in writing. She never returned to Brussels. During this period, Anne was a governess at Thorp Green Hall, near York, and apparently liked the job. In 1843, Branwell became a tutor at Thorp Green Hall.

I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself in commenting on this book, but that doesn't stop me from having ideas. One of the thoughts I have is that the Brontë children had a somewhat belated infatuation with Romanticism. While Ralph Waldo Emerson was fourteen years older than Branwell, he seemed to have the same kind of dated enthusiasm for the Romantic poets when he met Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1833. The Brontë children idolized Napoleon and Wellington, so, like Emerson, they were enmeshed in the "great man" theory, which, as I wrote, I think is pure idiocy. To some extent, I am sympathetic with Emerson, because he was living in the U.S. at a time when it was conspicuously unsophisticated compared to Europe. But in the case of the Brontës, Patrick had chosen to live in a sub-optimal part of England, and his artistic children, were, in my opinion, artistically handicapped by living far from the cultural center in London. My frame of reference, George Eliot, may not be a fair comparison, but I find it useful. She was three years younger than Charlotte Brontë and, like Charlotte, loved Sir Walter Scott when she was growing up. However, just by living in Warwickshire, George Eliot was able to expand her intellectual horizons significantly compared to the Brontës. While it is possible that one of the Brontës might have written a Middlemarch equivalent if they had lived longer, my impression is that they got hooked on Romanticism and never completely broke away from it. They disliked Jane Austen, but George Eliot's later work emerged in part from the addition of an intellectual dimension not present in Austen's novels. That intellectual dimension does not seem to be readily apparent in any of the Brontë novels. Similarly, the entire Brontë family seemed to be unified in its religious beliefs, whereas George Eliot had a major rift with her father over her divergent religious views. For this reason, I think that the Brontës may have been even better writers if they had expanded their intellectual horizons at an earlier age.

I am also beginning to compare Emily Brontë to Emily Dickinson but will save that for later.

Trump Emulates Goldfinger

Since I hardly read any fiction now but have still been watching films, I decided to write about films today. When I was growing up, I regularly watched films and often walked to the RKO or Loew's theaters in nearby New Rochelle on Saturdays to see them. Since I haven't been able to find new ones that I like, I am continuing to watch old ones. When Dr. No was released in 1962, I went with my family to the Pelham Picture House to see it. I liked it at the time and still liked it when I watched it recently. I particularly like Sean Connery as James Bond compared to the others who have played that part. Ian Fleming was not a great writer, but he had an upper-class English background, and Bond, as played by Connery, is one of the classiest people I've ever seen in a film. In that film, Ursula Andress isn't bad either as Honey Rider. I also rewatched Goldfinger, which was released in 1964. I didn't enjoy that as much but still thought it was good. I realized that Donald Trump must also have seen that film, and I just read that it made an immense impression on him. Auric Goldfinger in the film is a fat, Germanic millionaire with Nazi connections who loves gold and being wealthy. He also likes to play golf and cheats in order to win. And he places little value on human lives. Sound familiar?

I know that this isn't a favorite topic of my readers, but I have to say that, based on my readings, human behavior is generally quite predictable over a lifetime once you understand a person's childhood and upbringing. As I wrote earlier, many people my age or older are climate change deniers. That even includes otherwise intelligent people like Freeman Dyson. Since I have been forced to pay attention to Trump for ten years now, and also grew up in the New York City area, it is very easy for me to see where most of Trump's ideas came from. Because of his narcissism, he has always wanted to be a public celebrity. The underlying problem is that he has no real talent in anything. He would have loved to hang out with Rat Pack members like Frank Sinatra, but Sinatra hated him. Over time, he could only attract B-Team people like Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. Many people, such as Jeffrey Epstein, and current members of his cabinet, such as Steve Witkoff, are primarily second-tier financial opportunists. I don't think that he could be close to the tech bros, and they are mainly interested in manipulating him for their personal benefit. But Trump's worldview is obsolete across the board. Because he has little knowledge of world history or science, he can't grasp that the 1960's are over: there will never be a resurgence in the oil industry, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are ancient history, and corruption and stupidity lead to unstable world economies. I suspect that his "grand strategy" may have been to steal oil from Venezuela in order to create a new supply so that he could bomb Iran. That's how stupid he is. My favorite scene in Goldfinger occurs near the end when, as Bond and Goldfinger scuffle over a gun while being flown in a jet piloted by Pussy Galore, a window is shot out and Goldfinger is sucked out by the pressure drop.  

Another thing I've noticed from watching old films is how certain aspects of sexuality were altered because of the status quo. Apparently Ian Fleming's Pussy Galore character in Goldfinger was a lesbian. Fleming thought that lesbianism was the result childhood experiences and could be "cured." So, in the novel, Bond "cures" her with his manliness. In the film, Bond does succeed, as always, but the lesbianism is ignored. This cleaning up of scripts was even more conspicuous in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) if you compare it to the stage version (1955). From watching only the film, you would think that it was mainly about family succession, with Big Daddy approaching death, and Brick's depression about the death of his friend, Skipper. It helps to know that Tennessee Williams was gay, and that the main undercurrent was the sexuality of the men. Apparently Brick and Skipper had a sexual relationship and were either gay or bisexual. There are also suggestions that Big Daddy had been bisexual earlier in his life. Homosexuality was so suppressed when I was growing up that I rarely ever heard about it. A better understanding of Tennessee Williams is now making me think that some of my high school friends may have been gay or bisexual (I'm not).

The Brontës IV

I'm only up to 1840, when the Brontë children were in their twenties. There is too much information to sum everything up neatly. Charlotte didn't teach for long at the Roe Head School, but Emily and Anne attended briefly while she was there. In 1838, Emily became a teacher in Halifax. Charlotte became a governess in 1839. Anne attended Roe Head when Emily left, but herself left in 1837 following an illness and was briefly a governess. At times, the three sisters were all at Haworth, a situation to which they did not object. In Branwell's case, he wrote to Wordsworth but was ignored. He later wrote to Coleridge, who did respond and liked the samples of his writing that he had sent. They met. Charlotte also corresponded with Coleridge successfully. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the Brontë family was the way that the children collaborated on writing projects. Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the imaginary world of Angria and Emily and Anne wrote about the imaginary world of Gondal. Branwell liked to think of himself as a heroic, Byronic figure, and Charlotte initially went along with him. Gondal was a less violent and more fantastical world, which Emily and Anne preferred. Eventually Charlotte distanced herself from Branwell's style. The four of them preferred being at home to teaching or working as governesses. The household was like an MFA program for teenagers, with courses in heroic fiction and Gothic fiction. I have noticed that children with a particular talent can become extremely proficient if they are able to pursue it in an unfettered manner.  Over time, it seems that Charlotte and Anne moved closer to realist fiction with elements of social criticism. I've only read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, so my perspective is somewhat limited. While there does not seem to be any clear evidence, it seems likely that Charlotte read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft, and though her novel contains some of the whimsical elements of Angria, it can also be read as the comeuppance of a male chauvinist pig, Edward Rochester. Of the four surviving Brontë children, Charlotte had the most exposure to the outside world and was probably more attuned to the inequities of society. Some of this had to do with wealth. She was acutely aware that her friend, Ellen Nussey, came from a wealthier family and didn't have to work: she was happily traveling about while Charlotte was toiling away in unpleasant jobs. Then it would have been impossible for Charlotte not to notice that Branwell received preferential treatment from their father: she had to work in order to pay for his training as a painter.

Branwell did become a portraitist in Bradford, but judging from the portraits I've seen, they weren't very good, and he soon gave up due to insufficient income.  Charlotte did eventually have a vacation with Ellen Nussey, during which they traveled to Bridlington, and she saw the North Sea for the first time. Branwell got a job as a tutor in the Lake District, a suitable location for a Romantic poet. However, he was dismissed in a few months, and it is thought that he had impregnated a girl and caused a scandal.

As in most of the biographies that I read, Barker is maintaining a psychologically and sociologically neutral description of the Brontë family. That may be appropriate in this case, because she is consciously attempting to remove the misunderstandings attributed to Mrs. Gaskell. So far, Patrick Brontë does seem like a conscientious and respectable father and citizen, though, consistent with his generation, he had traditional patriarchal ideas. However, when I compare him to my British ancestors, it seems possible that his judgment may not have been optimal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, people were streaming away from farming and rural areas and moving to cities. My ancestors from Scotland, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire all moved to London. They didn't go to college and learned trades instead. Some were tailors, some were furriers and one was a builder. To me, Patrick Brontë's decision to pursue a low-paying job in a rural area seems out of step with the time, though perhaps it can be justified by his lack of knowledge, having grown up in Ireland. There is also the possibility that Brontë's decision-making process was faith-based, but so far in this book Barker has not explored that angle, and she is being steadfastly neutral on the behavior of the Brontës.

Diary

I've been enjoying The Brontës and will read it intermittently until I finish it. At the moment, biographies are my favorite reading, with a few scientific books added to the mix. In the real world, I've found that people don't generally have detailed discussions about other people. This is partly because that can be construed as gossiping, and I also think that in real time there is a noumenal quality to living people, because there may be many unknown elements while they are still alive. That is why I prefer biographies about people who have been dead for one hundred years or more. There are several advantages to this:

1. If anyone thinks about them after one hundred years, they are more likely to be significant.

2. The longer timespan allows more information to accrue.

3. There is a better chance that a future biographer will write a more competent description of a person than a current journalist.

4. Despite some of the advantages that we have living now rather than in the past, there were aspects of earlier lives that, to me, were qualitatively superior to modern life.

Regarding the modern world, practically anyone could provide a list of unpleasant situations that exist now and were not as evident earlier. I tend to break these down into two categories. One is biological. Especially now, many people are living in transient situations where they and their families have moved many times in recent years, which may cause them to live in heterogeneous towns and cities that are constantly undergoing cultural erosion. The existence of a place no longer implies that its residents have a unified culture. Then there are the effects of social media, which I think has mainly been a commercial operation that has been specifically designed to extract money from unsuspecting participants. In general, people are now thoughtlessly supporting organizations that mislead them about the usefulness of their products and may be causing them to go into cognitive decline without knowing it. The other main category for me pertains more to aesthetic conditions. Though there can always be exceptions, it is clear to me that the music, film, fiction and paintings produced now are of considerably lower quality than what was produced in the past. So, to me, while people may not have lived as long in the old days, they may still have had qualitatively better lives than many have now.

As far as my activities are concerned, I'm still living my simplified rural life. The eastern phoebe eggs above the front porch have hatched and the mother has been frantically feeding them insects. It looks as if there are three chicks. They are now very large and should leave the nest soon. There will probably be a second clutch later in the summer. After I planted my tomatoes, there were several cold days when the temperature fell to the low forties. Since tomatoes require at least 50º, I covered them with a tarp at night and put in an old 200W incandescent bulb that gets very hot. It kept the temperature above 50º. The plants are doing very well. I usually planted them later in the past. Since squirrels had been chewing on the top step to the front porch, I tried turning it over. Then they immediately started chewing that side. So, yesterday I bought a new step and installed it. One of the things I like about living here is the small-town atmosphere. The lumber yard also includes an Ace Hardware and a UPS pickup. Since I've been there several times, I know the owner. She is very friendly, in a way that city people aren't. When I arrived there, I was the only customer, and she was the only other person in the store. I went to the lumber yard first, and there were two men working. They had what I wanted and cut it in half. I now have an extra five-foot stair in case I need it later.

I'm getting really tired of the news and would rather not discuss it. On a positive note, Trump seems to be well into the bottom half of his death spiral. I would have preferred a nice, quick flush.

The Shaky Logic of Immortality

Because there has been a revival of the subject of human immortality recently, I thought I'd write a little about that today. I've discussed this in earlier posts. To recap, I said that it is possible that there have been aliens who became immortal, but got tired of being immortal and then decided to die. That was written in the context of never receiving any extraterrestrial communications. More recently, I said that if you made an electronic version of yourself and abandoned your body, you would effectively be dead. When your body died, all that would remain would be an electronic copy of you. I think that, in a physical sense, if you were able to remove your brain and integrate it with an artificial copy of your body, and then maintain your brain in much the same way that your body currently maintains it, you would not technically be dead, as long as your brain were operating in the same way that it was in your body. In this case, you would be immortal only as long as your brain was maintained in a manner similar to the way that it was maintained in your body. So, if everything went well, you would be immortal, but if your brain were irreparably damaged, then you would be dead. It would also be possible to become effectively immortal if advances in medical technology allowed your body to live indefinitely, but that would probably be more difficult than simply keeping your brain alive.

From reading about our place in the biosphere, I think there are other questions that come up. Whatever anyone thinks, we are all part of the Earth's biosphere. This raises the question of what it would mean to send part of the biosphere to a different solar system. In all likelihood, a biosphere on a planet in a different solar system would have different characteristics from ours, and by going there you might just die. How much fun would that be?

I would like to reiterate that even if a sustainable immortality for a human were achieved technologically, there is still the psychological problem of the potential of suicide. As organisms on Earth, all we are doing really is attempting to survive and have offspring who survive. This is built into our genes, and you can't make it go away through technology without altering your identity. We have this specific Earth-based motivation, which means that an immortal human may essentially be an engineered automaton with no inherent purpose. In effect, the more you remove biological characteristics from humans, the more they come to resemble stones or other inert objects. Compared to us, stones are immortal, and the tech bros may not have figured that out yet.

I think that a key distinction must be made between organisms and inert objects. At the moment, quite a few people are worried that H. sapiens may soon be superseded by a new species. In my view, because of my statements above, I think that there may actually not be a new species, and we may just end up with humans who have robotic bodies. Actual robots don't concern me that much, because they won't have the equivalent of survival instincts and would not have any reason to harm humans unless programmed to.

The Brontës III

In 1825, at the time of Maria and Elizabeth's illness at the Cowan Bridge School, besides Charlotte, Emily had just started. Patrick withdrew Charlotte and Emily, and they were homeschooled by Patrick and their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. In 1831, Charlotte left home at the age of 14 for Roe Head School and completed her formal education in 1832. At Roe Head, Charlotte had been a top student and developed lifelong friendships with Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. From 1832 to 1835, Charlotte tutored Emily and Anne at home. This was also a continuation of the period during which Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the fictional Glass Town, which eventually became Angria. Emily and Anne had been involved initially, but they started their own imaginary world of Gondal at about this time. The parsonage overlooked the moors, and the children went on walks there. 

When the four children were all at home, their behavior seemed insular. There seems to have been somewhat of a family trauma created by the deaths of the two eldest sisters. At the age of 16, Charlotte already stands out as being more worldly than her siblings. This is probably the result of having spent more time away from home than the others. Charlotte was short, nearsighted and not pretty, but she was quite intelligent and often privately thought that people were stupid. Judging from her behavior, she seems to have been far more ambitious in developing some sort of career plan for herself than her siblings. Not much has been said so far about Emily and Anne, perhaps because they are still quite young.

Branwell, who was a year younger than Charlotte, is a different story. Because he was male, he was educated entirely at home by Patrick in order to receive instruction in Latin and Greek. I am still a little perplexed by how Latin and Greek became core elements of the academic curriculum. I know that Latin is thought to be more precise than English and may be more suitable for certain documents. But Latin hardly seems essential now. My best guess is that this situation exists because of the Roman influence on England. It was part of the Roman Empire from 43 AD to 410 AD, and then the Roman Catholic Church swept in and controlled the religion from 597 AD to 1534 AD. Oxford and Cambridge were founded in 1096 and 1209, so it would appear that there is still a link between the Roman Catholic Church and education in the English-speaking world. Note that Charles Darwin was forced to learn Latin and Greek in order to enter Cambridge. It had little relation to his scientific career. Many scientists, such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Feynman, did perfectly well without it. The Roman Catholic Church made Latin the language of the church, and through much of its time in England services were entirely in Latin, making them unintelligible to those attending church. It was the language of the elite.

As far as I've read, Branwell is only 18, and is already showing signs of future failure. This was a very arts-intensive household. All of the children could write well; they could all draw or paint well; they could all play the piano. Branwell played the organ at the church and also the flute. Charlotte's poor eyesight caused her to give up the piano. Branwell's lack of early exposure to the outside world may possibly have interfered with his attempts to develop a career. Apparently he wanted to be an artist and wrote a letter to the Royal Academy of Arts but didn't send it. He was also considering being a poet and wrote to Blackwood's Magazine, which was very popular in the Brontë household, but that didn't lead anywhere. It may be that the girls were being directed by Patrick to become governesses or teachers, which had inexpensive preparations, whereas Branwell was underfunded for a loftier career. He did have an art teacher for a while, but the teacher wasn't very proficient, and, as a result, neither was Branwell. In 1835, Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher, at least in part to help fund Branwell's art education. Patrick was a Tory, and, in modern terms, a sexist. He encouraged Charlotte to write only for recreation and to enjoy her traditional female duties, which she often didn't.

The Brontës II

As you may have guessed, I'm not in reading mode and am moving through this book at a snail's pace. Actually, I don't want to rush through it, because it is not only interesting to me but also of extremely high quality. There is too much information in the book to provide a detailed summary, but I will make an effort to extract some of what I think are the important facts. The writing isn't entirely in exact chronological order but is still easy to follow.

The chronology skips ahead to the time of Charlotte's death in 1855. Her siblings had already died. Charlotte had published four novels, Emily one and Anne two. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had all been popular, but they were often considered "coarse" and were criticized accordingly. Charlotte admired reviews written by G.H. Lewes, probably because he was straightforward and unpretentious. She was relieved that his review of Jane Eyre was generally positive. They corresponded and eventually met, but had a falling out when he wrote a negative review of Shirley. Following Charlotte's death, Patrick asked Mrs. Gaskell, the novelist, to write a biography of her. She had been acquainted with Charlotte and had previously visited Haworth. That biography shaped public opinion of the Brontës for many years, and Barker goes to great lengths in this book to correct the errors promulgated by Gaskell. As a novelist, Gaskell was probably not the right person for a biography, and she apparently made several inaccurate descriptions. The one of most concern to Barker is her characterization of Patrick as stern, remote and volatile. To some extent, Barker's book is a corrective, indicating that Patrick was close to his children and sensitive to their needs. 

Haworth in 1820 had problems similar to those in other rural towns at the time, i.e., families were enormous, and people died young from tuberculosis or scarlet fever. In Haworth, the local sanitation was also poor, with untreated sewage accumulating in a ditch by the road. The Brontës apparently had a working privy. In those days, the population of Haworth was growing, but the people were poor. This all added up to a very high death rate. I am often amazed to read descriptions of the daily lives of people hundreds of years ago, and enjoyed the description of a church service in 1833 written by a friend of Charlotte:

The people assembled, but it was apparently to listen, any part beyond that was quite out of their reckoning. All through the Prayers a stolid look of apathy was fixed in the generality of their faces, then they sat or leaned in their pews; (some few perhaps were resting after a long walk over the moors). The children from the school pattered in after service had commenced, and pattered out again before the sermon. <began> The sexton with a long staff continually walked round in the aisles 'knobbing' sleepers when he dare, shaking his head at and threatening unruly children, but when the sermon began there was a change, attitudes took the listening form, eyes were turned on the speaker. It was curious now to note <to note> the expression, a rustic untaught intelligence gleamed in their faces, in some a daring doubting questioning look as if the lips would like to say something defiant.

Patrick had a fairly heavy workload, with baptisms, burials and marriages. In 1821, Maria became ill, and her health gradually declined. Elizabeth Firth, a friend from Thornton, came to help. Later, Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell, came from Penzance to help. Maria died on September 15, 1821; the cause was thought at the time to be uterine cancer. Maria's death meant that her inheritance from her parents, which was paid as an annuity, would cease. This put an immediate financial pressure on Patrick, and his subsequent behavior seems to indicate that he was in a panic. In December, Patrick proposed to Elizabeth Firth; she was deeply offended and temporarily broke off contact with the Brontës. Elizabeth Branwell did stay and help for a long period, but in those days it was illegal for a sister of a deceased woman to marry her husband. Barker speculates that Patrick also considered proposing to Isabella Drury, another wealthy local woman, but apparently he didn't. Just to show how desperate Patrick was, he also contacted Mary Burder, his former fiancée from Wethersfield, whom he hadn't seen in nearly fifteen years. She was still unmarried, but his overtures went nowhere.

Barker continues with Brontë family life in Haworth. The Brontë children were quite creative by any standard. Branwell went by his middle name and dropped "Patrick." Apparently he came up with various fictional ideas, and Charlotte, Emily and Anne followed suit. They wrote stories and made tiny books in which the print resembled that of a real book. Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte attended the Cowan Bridge School, which was fictionalized by Charlotte in Jane Eyre as Lowood School. The conditions were rather bleak there, and both Maria and Elizabeth died from the tuberculosis that they contracted. However, in Barker's account, the school was not particularly substandard for the time. There do seem to be special linguistic and storytelling abilities in the family.