January 2026
Books read:
- The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny By Kirin Desai
- Heartwood by Amity Gaige
- Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- 1984 by George Orwell
Trails walked:
- North Sky Trail from Joder Ranch near Lyons (Jan 7th)
- Emerald Lake and Bear Lake in Rocky Mt. National Park near Estes Park (Jan 14th)
- Prairie Ridge trail near Loveland (Jan 20th)
- Union Lake walk in Longmont (Jan 27th)
Song(s) of the month: The Grateful Dead – Truckin’
January Summary:
I generally avoid political commentary on this blog unless it’s related to climate change. The reason for this is that there is already a plethora of opinions on the news* and on social media about every political topic you can choose. As I’m sure you are aware, much of the news and social media tend to pick a side, allowing you to proceed down an echo chamber of your own beliefs. All of this has conspired to create the political division we have in our country. Everyone can pick their favorite URL and point it to their friend or family member that may share a differing opinion. Then they’ll receive a different set of URLs, and on and on it goes, with no resolution or understanding, just more hatred and division.
But two things occurred this month that caught my attention and continued to nag at me and even caused a lack of sleep. One, of course, is the ICE shootings in Minneapolis. It wasn’t “just” the fact that American citizens were killed, but more menacingly was the response from the federal government before any investigation had taken place. The response was to demonize the deceased citizens and present a set of “facts” that seemed to dispute what we saw on the many video clips of both shootings. I wouldn’t say that either of the victims were engaged in “peacefully” protesting, but rather they were engaged in “angrily” protesting. There is a lot of anger, not only in Minneapolis, but in our entire country. Much of it is justified. Regardless of your stance on immigration control, the shootings and the federal government’s response should cause every American citizen to take pause and take action. The second thing that bothered me this month is the ramped up effort from the Trump administration to purge National Parks and Monuments of signs that depict historical context that make America seem imperfect (mainly around past exploitation of women and people of color). I’ve read LOTS of history books, and America and its founders are still an incredible story but are also filled with imperfections. For years, these imperfections were hidden, or unknown. But now we know, so we should let everyone know. You can hold two truths at one time: The founders were brilliant AND they mistreated their slaves. American textile companies helped create wealth AND mistreated women workers. The pioneers were brave and hearty AND killed and displaced many Native Americans. What reason do we have to hide these things? I can think of a few, but I leave it up to you to form your own opinion.
So, in one case, the federal government is telling you not to believe what you see, in the other case the federal government is telling you not to believe what the historians have discovered in the last 50 years. Combine that with the federal government telling you not to believe what climate scientists say about climate change and not to believe what medical professionals say about vaccines, and it all starts to sound a bit dystopian. Hence the lack of sleep. As a result of these events, I decided to re-read George Orwell’s great novel 1984. I read it for the first time in college, then again in my 40s, and now I’ve read it for the third time. It’s first and foremost a great book with a harrowing tale. But it’s also a social commentary written in 1949 after the atrocities of WWII and just as the Cold War began. There are lessons for today. See my review at the end of this post. Other books this month include two very recent novels that have received a lot of attention, one about two lonely Indian people being educated in the US and the other about a woman lost on the Appalachian Trail. I also read another fascinating book about the brain and Annie Dillard’s classic book about nature and the meaning of life. My rambling took me on a couple of foothill hikes, a classic winter hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, and I describe one of my local exercise walks near my home. Enjoy!
* Ad Fontes analyzes news sites and podcasts and rates them on a left/right bias scale on the x-axis and on a truthfulness scale on the y-axis. They have a left-leaning, right-leaning, and center-leaning analyst review each site. Recently a high school student asked them for advice on how to find truthful information about the Minneapolis ICE shootings among all the variations out there. Vanessa Otero, CEO and founder of Ad Fontes made a video of how she analyzed one specific article about the shooting. Check it out here.
Things My Grandkids Say: When my almost-3-year-old grandson was asked where he learned how to dance, he said, "In college."
Bob Weir died this past month. He was one of the original members of the Grateful Dead and stayed with them until they disbanded in 1995 upon the death of Jerry Garcia. I was never a deadhead, but I certainly appreciate their role in creating the counterculture musical scene of the 60s. They stayed relevant for most of their 30 years together and even had a 50th reunion concert in 2015 with the remaining members. Today there are several tribute bands associated with their music. I also appreciate the fact that their album covers were possibly consistently the coolest covers ever. One story I remember was that the band supported the 1992 Lithuanian basketball team in the Summer Olympics. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country didn’t have enough money to send their basketball team to the Olympics. The Grateful Dead funded their trip and even created warm-up jerseys that are still popular today (I’d like one):
They were an anomaly for me, musically. I thought that each singer was not too great on his own, but collectively they sounded perfect. In addition to the song I highlight here, I also liked Uncle John’s Band, Ripple, and Friend of the Devil. Truckin’ was one of the first songs I remember liking as a teen, trying to figure out my musical likes and dislikes. It’s a great road song. It’s got a boogie beat and has a line in it that probably describes life as well as any song lyric could:
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been
About this novel, Desai has said: "I wrote about the rifts between nations, between races, genders, religions, all as a kind of loneliness [...] But I was also interested in loneliness shifting shape into a quiet that is peace after the war is over. A sought-out solitude during a time of transformation. An exquisite artistic loneliness. A discovery of the dignity and privacy of one’s individual being." That’s a pretty apt summary of the book.
Maybe it’s the mystery of India, or maybe it’s just that with a billion people, a country is bound to produce incredible authors. But I’ve now found that this novel, along with Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, must be included in epic stories that I love spending several days with. All are filled with fascinating characters navigating life, love, religion and history.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is an epic story of two Indian families who both send their young prodigies to the US to study and to succeed. However, as the title suggests, they didn’t necessarily thrive. Their loneliness in the US pulls them back to India, to family chaos, to broken infrastructure. However, their loneliness follows them. After a brief romance, Sonia and Sunny go their separate ways. Sunny breaks away from all of this and settles in a small Mexican beach town where he seems to embrace his loneliness while Sonia stays in India to help her ailing father and try to understand her absent mother. Of all things, a mentally unstable artist brings them back together in a most mysterious way, involving a magical amulet passed down to Sonia from her German grandfather. I miss the days I spent reading about these families and the complicated history of India.
Another bonus from reading this great book are the philosophical quotes. The book is full of them, embedded in a great story. No wonder it took her 20 years to write. Here are some:
An ordinary evening in a house full of people is what a child loves best.
Terrible things happen in the heat of an argument between a married couple. Mama ventured into the icy bathroom to take a shower so as to force herself to disengage and bring down the register of rage between them.
a long marriage had taught husband and wife that sleeping is better than fighting, so they closed their eyes as tightly as their mouths and turned to face away from each other.
Secretly he was thinking that this woman had some nerve to go from her New York City apartment—no doubt equipped with a stove, microwave, toaster, fridge, blender, coffee maker, hair dryer, vacuum cleaner, television, computer, music system, heater, fan, air conditioner, boiler, furnace, if not also a bicycle or car—to tell women in India to cook their rice in a cardboard box covered with silver reflective paper so as to prevent deforestation and climate change.
Sonia could barely read Anna Karenina because when she read, a tingling overcame her, she so wished to be writing it herself. What a tingle, an almost unbearable, sublime tingle, from head to toe. How many millions of observations and moments it had taken to compose this book!
there is no worse fright than to hear your father despair.
the birds made a shrieking noise as if to tell one another about a murder
Sunny knew that it was inevitable that Kapuściński would be labeled a racist, as was the fate of Forster, Orwell, and Conrad. Were writers who embodied and illuminated their times eventually condemned by the more enlightened future they themselves helped bring into being?
They examined him for further Americanisms and questioned him about any American habits they should be aware of. Would he insist upon cornflakes for breakfast? Had he become allergic to everything?
Finding it unbearable to be without her son, yet bringing him up to successfully leave for America, meant they’d always live within the strain of her martyrdom.
she was as lonesome as a book nobody has read for three hundred years,
If I were to tell you the truth, you’d be furious. That only leaves lies.
The owner was Irish Canadian, one in the small community of year-round gringos, friendly to Sunny because if you unraveled connections back to their grandparents’ time, they had a mutual history of being abused by the English.
Mexico: It is just like India, except there are fewer people and it is so much cleaner! I said to the customs official, ‘Where is your famous pollution? Come to India and see pollution!’
Mexico – India comparison: You have tortillas, we have makki ki roti. We have curry, you have mole. We have rice, you have rice. You have chilies, we have chilies. We have beans, you have beans. You have cilantro, we have cilantro. You have tamarind? We have tamarind! The Mayas had zero? We had zero! When white people had less than zero and lived in filth, we donned gold and knew astronomy. You were robbed by the Spanish, we were robbed by the British. You are cursed, we are cursed. You are big family people, we are big family people. Indian women with long, black hair can be mistaken for Mexican women with long, black hair.
Papa, the sea calms me. It is the only thing large enough to soothe my sadness.
Loveless men may be the driving force of ruthless history.
He was not stopped in Frankfurt, nor in Dubai, where he boarded along with a planeload of laborers returning home—anonymous brown men of no importance, who kept entire nations afloat, the countries they labored in and their homelands.
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| Sweeping views along the front range |
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| Artsy shot |
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| Winding trail |
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| Left Hand Lake in the background |
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| Boulder Flatirons in the background |
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| Private lake near the trailhead |
There was so much more to this novel than just those three amazing women. So many of the minor characters are fascinating in their own ways; one of my favorites was Santo, a hiker that hung out with Valerie for part of the trail. He’s a black Dominican American who is overweight but tackles the big through-hike in order to deal with his past. He has some of the funniest lines in the book. The topics of family (especially mother-daughter relationships), the outdoors, and doing what you love all intertwine beautifully in this thrilling and moving story (yes I cried).
Here are some lines. You will probably go and get the book after reading these lines:
Sometimes, in your lap, I would press my hand against your chest so that I could feel the center of you— your heartwood, your innermost substance, like the core of a tree that keeps it standing
Eventually, I understood that motherhood, as the child imagines it, is unperformable. No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was.
Ninety-two percent of the time, we find lost people within twelve hours of being notified. Ninety-seven percent of the time, we find lost people within twenty-four hours. The other 3 percent, we know those stories like scripture.
Man, do you have to be friendly when you are a Black man hiking. You have to start waving, like, a mile away. “Hey, y’all! Beautiful morning, innit?"
You know how much money some beautiful Gore-Tex hiking boots cost? They don’t want fat people to hike, but they also don’t want poor people to hike.
The first two floors are independent living. The third floor is for assisted living. And on the fourth floor? Hospice. The moment you move to Cedarfield, you’ve begun your ascension.
Her fingers grip mine. She leans toward me with a craving expression, her eyes welling. The woman is ablaze, her grief one of the brightest things I’ve ever seen.
She wasn’t lonely in the way old people are lonely. A reader is never lonely.
I realized that the feeling I had standing atop a mountain, face-to-face with the horizon, or wading in remote rivers, was a satisfaction and a peace beyond explanation.
"I didn’t always have the patience with little Val. Did I, Wayne?” “No mother in the history of the world has been perfect,” I say. “And no daughter either.”
Thank you also for playing make believe. For allowing me to think that the universe was hospitable, and people decent, and death distant, even when you knew that someday I would consider these ridiculous illusions.
Nurses during Covid: Exhaustion became our identity. The mindless way we put our scrubs in the wash and scrubbed our skin with soap to spare those we lived with. We were called heroes. But we were only given two options—being a hero or falling apart.
The world and its people are too much for me. I am crushed between empathy and impotence.
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| View from Beaver Meadows where there was no snow |
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| Dream Lake frozen over |
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| Me too |
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| Dream Lake ice |
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| Emerald Lake |
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| Ice blocks |
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| Twisted sisters |
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| Don't lose your footing... |
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| Bear Lake |
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| Frozen waterfall |
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| View from Moraine Park where there was also no snow |
ONCE UPON A TIME, the Earth was ruled by creatures without brains. This is not a political statement, just a biological one.
Your brain’s most important job is to control your body…by predicting energy needs before they arise so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive.
The triune brain idea and its epic battle between emotion, instinct, and rationality is a modern myth… Sometimes emotion is rational, like when you feel afraid because you’re in imminent danger. And sometimes thinking isn’t rational, like when you scroll through social media for hours, telling yourself you’re bound to come across something important.
When a neuron fires, an electrical signal races down its trunk to its roots. This signal causes the roots to release chemicals into the gaps between neurons, called synapses.
Your brain wiring is bathed in chemicals that complete the local connections between neurons. These chemicals, such as glutamate, serotonin, and dopamine, are called neurotransmitters, and they make it easier or harder for signals to pass across synapses
A brain doesn’t store memories like files in a computer—it reconstructs them on demand with electricity and swirling chemicals. We call this process remembering but it’s really assembling...each time you have the same memory, your brain may have assembled it with a different collection of neurons.
Your brain network may even extend, surprisingly, into your gut and intestines, where scientists have found microbes that communicate with your brain via neurotransmitters.
When you’re hungry, you can open the fridge. When you’re tired, you can go to bed. When you’re cold, you can put on a coat. When you’re agitated, you can take deep breaths to calm your nerves. Babies can’t do any of these things by themselves. They can’t even burp without help. That’s where caregivers come in. They regulate the baby’s physical environment and therefore her body budget by feeding her, setting sleep times (or trying to!), and wrapping her in blankets and cuddles. These actions help the baby’s brain maintain its body budget, so her internal systems operate efficiently and she stays alive and healthy.
Research shows that early and long exposure to poverty is bad for the developing brain. Inadequate nutrition, interrupted sleep due to street noise, poor temperature regulation due to lack of heat or ventilation, and other circumstances of poverty may alter the development of the front of the cerebral cortex, namely the prefrontal cortex…Society is quick to blame genes when poverty endures across generations for a group of people. But it’s plausible that those little brains are being molded by poverty.
when you try, really try, to embody someone else’s point of view, you can change your future predictions about the people who hold those different views. If you can honestly say, “I absolutely disagree with those people, but I can understand why they believe what they do,” you’re one step closer to a less polarized world. This is not magical liberal academic rubbish. It’s a strategy that comes from basic science about your predicting brain.
When you’re with someone you care about, your breathing can synchronize, as can the beating of your hearts, whether you’re in casual conversation or a heated argument.
If you raise your voice, or even your eyebrow, you can affect what goes on inside other people’s bodies, such as their heart rate or the chemicals carried in their bloodstream. If your loved one is in pain, you can lessen her suffering merely by holding her hand.
Have you ever lost someone close to you through a breakup or a death and felt like you’d lost a part of yourself? That’s because you did. You lost a source of keeping your bodily systems in balance.
No wonder people create so-called echo chambers, surrounding themselves with news and views that reinforce what they already believe—it reduces the metabolic cost and unpleasantness of learning something new. Unfortunately, it also reduces the odds of learning something that might change a person’s mind.
If your body budget is already depleted by the circumstances of life—like physical illness, financial hardship, hormone surges, or simply not sleeping or exercising enough—your brain becomes more vulnerable to stress of all kinds. This includes the biological effects of words designed to threaten, bully, or torment you or people you care about.
If people insult you, their words won’t hurt your brain the first time, or the second, or maybe even the twentieth. But if you’re exposed to verbal nastiness continually for months and months or if you live in an environment that persistently and relentlessly taxes your body budget, words can indeed physically injure your brain. Not because you’re weak or a so-called snowflake, but because you’re a human.
When debating gun ownership in the United States, conservatives tend to support personal freedom and liberals tend to advocate for control. When debating abortion, it’s the other way around; conservatives tend to advocate control while liberals tend to support personal freedom.
Studies show that wine tastes better when people believe it’s expensive. Coffee labeled ecofriendly tastes better to people than identical, unlabeled coffee. Your brain’s predictions, steeped in social reality, change the way you perceive what you eat and drink
The concept of “race” often includes physical characteristics such as skin tone. But skin tone is on a continuum, and boundaries between one set of shades and another are placed and maintained by people in a society. Some try to justify the boundaries by appealing to genetics, but while it’s true that skin tone might be heavily influenced by genes, so are eye color, ear size, and the curvature of toenails.
social reality is more malleable than you might think. People could agree that dinosaurs never existed, ignore all evidence to the contrary, and build a museum about a dinosaur-free past. We could have a leader who says terrible things, all captured on video, and then news outlets could agree that the words were never said. That’s what happens in a totalitarian society. Social reality may be one of our greatest achievements but it’s also a weapon we can wield against each other. It is vulnerable to being manipulated. Democracy itself is social reality.
Near this junction with the Coyote Ridge trail is an old cabin that is closed up, a couple of restrooms, and a nice little nature trail with informative signs that I wandered around for a bit while learning about the area’s plant and animal life, along with some history. Although not spectacular in any way, it was a nice day on the prairie where I saw so many prairie dogs and quite a few deer. I stopped at one point to watch one of the prairie dogs feeding on grass seeds. He/she just kept munching away, squeaking at me every now and then. Most of them were pretty stout since the winter has been warm and they’ve had lots of time on their hands to eat food that isn’t buried in the snow. I headed back to the car after a fairly easy 7 plus mile hike along the prairie below the foothills. I will definitely head up the Coyote Ridge trail next time I’m in this area.
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| Perfect rows |
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| Pretty sky |
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| Old cabin |
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| Lone Tree #1 |
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| Lone tree #2 |
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| Lone tree #3 |
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| Mountain bike art? |
For me, the thing that I took away from this beautifully written text was her ability to sit still in nature and record its daily world of beauty (birds) and horror (insects). She has educated herself in much of the science of nature so knows what to look for. She knows what various insect egg sacs look like and where they are normally to be found. She knows where muskrats may be nesting and parks herself perfectly still for hours in order to see them. She knows that if you keep a praying mantis egg sac in a jar that the newborns will eventually all eat each other until only one is left, but if you let them loose in your garden, they will eat all the aphids. And for me, this paragraph on the mating habits of the female praying mantis made the whole thing worth it: The mating rites of mantises are well known: a chemical produced in the head of the male insect says, in effect, “No, don’t go near her, you fool, she’ll eat you alive.” At the same time a chemical in his abdomen says, “Yes, by all means, now and forever yes.” While the male is making up what passes for his mind, the female tips the balance in her favor by eating his head. He mounts her. Fabre describes the mating, which sometimes lasts six hours, as follows: “The male, absorbed in the performance of his vital functions, holds the female in a tight embrace. But the wretch has no head; he has no neck; he has hardly a body. The other, with her muzzle turned over her shoulder continues very placidly to gnaw what remains of the gentle swain. And, all the time, that masculine stump, holding on firmly, goes on with the business! . . . I have seen it done with my own eyes and have not yet recovered from my astonishment.”
There was one chapter that I would skip if I read this again. The chapter on Intricacy seems like it was written either by someone else, or maybe she was experimenting with LSD for that section. I’m not sure I understood a word of that chapter. Otherwise, I loved all her stories of her year on Tinker Creek. The stories are fascinating and the writing is beautiful. Here are some lines:
People have seen frogs with their wide jaws so full of live dragonflies they couldn’t close them. Ants don’ t even have to catch their prey: in the spring they swarm over newly hatched, featherless birds in the nest and eat them tiny bite by bite.
All that summer conceals, winter reveals.
I’m getting used to this planet and to this curious human culture which is as cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully cruel.
Adult mantises eat more or less everything that breathes and is small enough to capture. They eat honeybees and butterflies, including monarch butterflies. People have actually seen them seize and devour garter snakes, mice, and even hummingbirds.
Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another. I never ask why of a vulture or shark, but I ask why of almost every insect I see.
Matt Spireng has collected thousands of arrowheads and spearheads; he says that if you really want to find arrowheads, you must walk with a child—a child will pick up everything.
What if I fell in a forest: Would a tree hear?
Birdsong catches in the mountains’ rim and pools in the valley; it threads through forests, it slides down creeks.
an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”
“Acres and acres of rats” has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, “acres and acres of tulips."
There is not a people in the world who behaves as badly as praying mantises. But wait, you say, there is no right and wrong in nature; right and wrong is a human concept. Precisely: we are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world.
To travel from camp to camp in summer, coastal Eskimos ply the open seas in big umiaks paddled by women. They eat fish, goose or duck eggs, fresh meat, and anything else they can get, including fresh “salad” of greens still raw in a killed caribou’s stomach and dressed with the delicate acids of digestion.
The great hurrah about wild animals is that they exist at all, and the greater hurrah is the actual moment of seeing them.
I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place at this moment, with the air so light and wild?
All right then, copperhead. I know you’re here, you know I’m here. This is a big night. I dug my elbows into rough rock and dry soil and settled back on the hillside to begin the long business of waiting out a snake
“We are all of us clocks,” says Eddington, “whose faces tell the passing years.
A chipmunk was streaking around with the usual calamitous air. When he saw me he stood to investigate, tucking his front legs tightly against his breast, so that only his paws were visible, and he looked like a supplicant modestly holding his hat.
Ditches were a big deal in Colorado after the 1858 gold rush. To feed the miners, and all the other folks associated with a gold rush, farmers started growing crops along the fertile front range but had to dig ditches to divert water from the mountain streams to the farms. Union Lake (originally called Calkins Lake) was a natural depression that stored water year-round. Local bison would wallow and feed in this area which eventually created an even large depression. As larger agricultural farms moved in, Union Ditch Company was called upon to divert more water to create an even bigger reservoir for the bigger farms; more ditches were built. The lake’s name was changed to Union (to the continued disgruntlement of the Calkins family – understandably so). There are signs along the path telling the history of the ditches.
Nearly every time I take this walk, I seem to see something interesting (I thought a lot about Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek on today’s walk – see review above). One day I saw a heron fishing under the 17th Ave bridge. I’ve seen fox, coyotes, hawks, eagles, cormorants, geese, and so many smaller birds. Today there were thousands of Canada geese munching left-over agricultural leavings near the lake, and among the throngs I spotted a very white bird. At first, I thought it was a gull just hangin’ with his geese buddies, but it turned out to be another goose. A snow goose? An albino Canada goose? I’ve read that both are possible, although the correct term is a leucistic Canada goose which means their feathers are white, but their eyes are normal colored, not white. I’ve read that it’s not uncommon for snow geese to hang out with Canada geese. So, it was either a snow goose (cool) or a leucistic Canada goose (1 in 30,000 chance…so also cool). I took a photo but it’s pretty blurry as they were across the ditch on private farmland.
I left the lake after spending a few moments on a bench taking in the arctic-looking scene (the big polar vortex storm had just passed) and I headed home. I saw some ducks in the creek, kids laughing and playing in the school playground, and lots of squirrels. Another nice day on one of my exercise walks in Longmont.
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| Ducks in the creek |
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| Tunnel under East County Line Road |
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| So many Canada geese |
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| One very white one...Snow Goose? |
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| Union Ditch with mountains in the background |
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| I'm guessing this old cottonwood was around when they dug this ditch in 1892 |
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| Union Lake frozen over after the Polar Vortex |
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| Wide angle shot |
The story is focused on Winston Smith, an Outer Party worker whose job it is to edit old newspaper articles so that they don't dispute what the current Party thinking is. The Party is led by Big Brother who is "always watching you!" There are telescreens in all homes, workplaces, and on the street which are watching people at all times for evidence of being a traitor to the country (Oceania) and the Party. They are also searching for evidence of any other crimes, especially thought crimes like lust or greed or anything remotely revolutionary. The Inner Party and Outer Party make up only 15% of the population of Oceania. The other 85% are the proletariats (proles). These are the laborers and unemployed people whose only interests are the lottery, sports, and porn. They only commit crime amongst themselves and rarely mix with people of the Inner or Outer Party. Most Outer Party members are what we'd call lower-middle class today. They have enough to live on, but not enough to enjoy a comfortable life. They work, go home, and sleep, and sometimes attend Party community events like Hate Week which is dedicated to hating all enemies of the party or to watch public hangings of traitors. It's a pretty grim existence. Only the Inner Party members seem to have a good life (the 1%).
Winston begins to doubt the Party, based a lot on the work he does erasing the past. He starts to write a diary (strictly forbidden), hiding it from the telescreen. He meets a woman he likes and rendezvous with her in secret places (also forbidden). They know that it's only a matter of time before they are caught; everyone is eventually caught. But they are enjoying life while they can. They meet someone who claims to be part of The Brotherhood, a revolutionary group that wants to topple The Party. They want in. Well, it's a dystopian novel, so of course they get caught. And the last section of the book is tough to read. Lots of physical and emotional torture. What happens to Winston in the end? Do they kill him? Does he live? Well, both in a way. The book makes me sad every time I read it. It's deservedly one of the best novels ever written. It's likely on most lists of this kind. Is our political situation approaching the world of 1984? Not yet, but you be the judge by reading some of the lines from the book:
'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the
past.'
The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you
establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory?
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought
up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to
have been correct
One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too
intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential
command.
The preparations for Hate Week were in full swing, and the staffs of all the Ministries were working
overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows, telescreen
programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs
written, rumours circulated, photographs faked.
an old couple who were suspected of being of foreign extraction had their house set on fire and perished
of suffocation.
scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in
a strictly regimented society.
practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years--imprisonment without
trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of
hostages, and the deportation of whole populations--not only became common again, but were
tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.
Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth.
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are
interested solely in power.
no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One
does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to
establish the dictatorship.
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In
our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.
There will be no
art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.
the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PЄACЄ
FRЄЄDOM IS SLAVЄRY
IGNORANCЄ IS STRЄNGTH
Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual
intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.
The Proles: They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief
blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty,
they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels
with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To
keep them in control was not difficult.
to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by
yourself, was always slightly dangerous
The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument
known as a versificator. (AI in 1949 for 1984...)
If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself
and that most of what he has been told about them is lies.
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds
of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways,
they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards
one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered... The aim of the High is to remain where they
are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an
aim...is to abolish all distinctions
and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
Until next time, happy reading and rambling!