I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NATHAN SALSBURG-Tiny Desk Concert #213 (May 3, 2012).

I had never heard of Nathan Salsburg until the Joan Shelley Tiny Desk Concert (posted about yesterday).  Salsburg in a fingerpicking guitarist and his accents and trills sounded wonderful in Shelley’s folk songs.  Well, this show from three years earlier has Salsburg playing two gorgeous instrumentals (which maybe explains why he didn’t sing backup with Shelley).  The blurb notes that “he’s been playing guitar for 22 years, yet he’s only played out publicly for a few months.”

Were it not for the blurb, I never would have guessed that the first song, “Affirmed” celebrates the Triple Crown-winning horse Affirmed. It has a slow easy pace (not racehorse-like at all) but it is full of lovely riffs and lines and sweet melodies.

The blurb continues, “when Salsburg picks up the guitar, what comes out is a mix of blues and ragtime, but these are 21st-century rags from an old soul with new energy.”  And that’s quite apt.

The second, song “Eight Belles Dreamt the Devil Was Dead,” tells the tragic story of Eight Belles, who in 2008’s Kentucky Derby tripped across the finish line, coming in second place, and tragically broke both her front ankles. The horse had to be euthanized on the field.”  Despite this horribly sad tale, this song is not sad, it is also pretty, measured and upbeat–a celebration rather than a dirge.

I feel like there aren’t many people making music like this anymore–delicate acoustic guitar instrumentals with complex phrasings and lengthy passages.  It’s quite beautiful, all of it.

[READ: June 1, 2016] Science Comics: Dinosaurs

The first Second non-fiction comics are some of my favorite books that they have put out.  And this new series called Science Comics proves to be just as outstanding as I could have hoped.

I started with this dinosaurs book first.  It opens with a testimonial from Leonard Finkelman a professor of philosophy at Linfield College.  He talks about how he used to draw dinosaurs as a kid and he thought he was being so outrageous because he gave them stripes!  No one knew any better back then, but now we think that many dinosaurs had all kinds of marking and some even had feathers!

Okay so my son is 11 and when he was 5 or so he went through a dinosaur phase. I thought I knew everything there was to know about them back then.  I learned the ones he liked but never really went any further in my knowledge (despite all of the books in the house).  Well, this book showed me just how dumb and ignorant I was about dinosaurs (in a really fun way).

I enjoyed how in the beginning of the book they explain how ancient people thought monsters came about–cyclops from the skull of an elephant (a hole in the middle of the head–why would anyone think of a trunk there?  Or a gryphon based on a Protoceratops (whose beak looks like an eagle).

We meet some of the first excavators and fossil finders.  William Amith in England.   Then Mary Anning who is responsive for finding dozens and dozens of species, including the first whole skeleton, an Ichthyosaurus.  Professor William Buckland assisted her in her endeavors and gave credibility to her discoveries.  And yet he never gave her proper credit later on.  This kind of nasty behavior seems rampant in archaeology.

In 1809 Georges Cuvier named the pterodactyl.  He was instrumental in showing how creatures worked and how certain parts simply could not go with other parts.

Gideon Mantell found a fossil–Cuvier thought it was the horn of a dino but it was actually a thumb.

In 1842 Richard Owen came up with the name “dinosaurs” from the Greek deinos (terrible) and sauros (lizard).  The best line in the book is that “Owen began to lose face for his plagiarism but continued to be a butthead.”  So yes, the scholarship is there but there’s plenty of humor too.  Indeed Owen is the villain in this story as he seemed to use only his own theories, never changed his mind and actually undermined a lot of serious research and scholarship over the years. Owen fought to keep Mantell’s discoveries from being seen.  In fact Mantell assembled a (mostly correct) Iguanodon, but Owen made it look absurd–fat and four-legged with a “rhino horn” fashioned from a toe bone.  When Mantell died Owen wrote an obituary discrediting him and praising himself.

Move on to Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel–Owen was critical of them both for not citing his own work in their work

There’s a very great scene where the Hadrosaurus found in Haddonfield, NJ is the first fossil discovery in the United States.

Thus began the Bone wars between Othniel Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope.   These two both found dozens of species but they also fought with each other and even destroyed each other’s research–losing some species forever.  They were the ones to rush to name Brontosaurus erroneously (how is it that it was officially made “false” in 1905 if we all think it was real until the 1970’s?)  They found nearly every dinosaur you’ve ever heard of except for Tyrannosaurus Rex which was found by Barnum Brown in 1905.

In 1911 Professor Mignon Talbot was first woman to write a scientific paper about dinosaurs.

The 20th century found more discoveries; however, there were also more pressing needs (wars and nuclear bombs) which took time away from paleontology.

There were always theories about why the dinosaurs went extinct. In 1980 the idea of a meteorite was put forth.  It is possible that if the meteor had hit at a more peaceful time in Earth’s history (at the time there were low water levels and high volcanic activity) some dinosaur species might have survived the blast.

In 1996 paleontologists started seeing feathered remained in fossils.  Was T-Rex covered in feathers? (a very funny picture shows what that might look like).

There’s this final note: “paleontologists are averaging a new dinosaur discovery every week.”  Who knew?

This book was great.  Wicks has a great sense of pacing and humor in her science books.  And they really get the reader involved in the science.  I’m really excited to read more Science Comics.

There are so many wonderful things in this book, but I think my favorites were the “updates.” Throughout the book they put little markers updating what scientists thought about the world and about dinosaurs.

In the year 1800 they believed:

• The Earth is 6,006 years old.
• Dinosaurs are known as monsters.
• They lived a few thousand years ago.
• They disappeared because of Noah’s flood.
• There are no examples of dinosaurs living at this time.
• We are certain about all of this.

In the year 1854 they believed:

• The Earth is 400,000 years old.
• Dinosaurs are known as extinct reptiles.
• They lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.
• They disappeared because of unknown reasons.
• There are no examples of dinosaurs living at this time.
• We are certain about all of this.

In the year 1920 they believed:

• The Earth is 400 million years old.
• Dinosaurs are known as extinct reptiles.
• They lived 3 million tears ago.
• They disappeared because they lost the survival of fittest.
• There are no examples of dinosaurs living at this time.
• We are certain about all of this.

In the year 1920 they believed: 2000

• The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
• Dinosaurs are extinct reptilian ancestors of birds.
• They lived 26,065 million years ago.
• They disappeared because an asteroid impact devastated their ecology.
• There are descendants of dinosaur living today.
• We are pretty sure about all of this.

Actually my favorite part of the book is page 112 where the creators learn that “Brontosaurus” has been reinstated as of 2015–weeks before the book was due at the printer.  And we see out artist Joe Flood and our steadfast author MK Reed feeling really awkward and ending with

FACT: Brontosaurus is now MK and Joe’s least favorite dinosaur.