Further Musings

Tonight, somewhere over the upper-Midwest, I finished A Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh.

Recommended many years ago by a student, it is the chilling tale of a few months of 1947 on the Indian side of the Pakistani border. Set in the village of Mano Majra, Singh’s paints the small village of uneducated Sikhs and Muslims as a community swept up in the currents of the partition of India and Pakistan into two separate countries.

My guess is that Singh wrote his story to capture something, some small glint, of the atrocities which occurred up and down the border which displaced over 12 million and killed at least 500,000. His writing captures swirling emotions and actions within the Sikh community. The helplessness of powerless people and it made me think again about the power of common criminals to use and manipulate ethnic tension for their own benefit.

It’s not book of beautiful flowing prose but it does look hard the emotions and thoughts of the villagers and authorities of Mano Majra as they consider the atrocities which arrive at their village from the larger world and its implications for them.

It’s a salient, sobering, and moving book to read, colored with the colors and flavor of an India which has just emerged from British rule. It’s a quick read. I recommend it.

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Here’s a makeup shot for Christmas Eve.

Bill Amend, creator of Foxtrot, has announced that on December 31 Foxtrot will become a Sunday only event.  Foxtrot has greeted me for every morning for the last 3+ years.  I loved the geeky Jason. I love the math puns.  I loved how in tune Amend has been with pop culture from a slightly geeky male perspective.

Foxtrot has made me smile many mornings and I’ll miss it.

Last night I tried to sit down and read a good novel . . . I skimmed our book shelves looking for just the right story to capture me. 

The Brothers K?  Still to present in my mind.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?  Good but read that last week.

I skimmed the library books I brought home . . .

Season of Migration to the North?   The online plot summary still looks interesting but doesn’t scratch the itch I’m looking for.

I ended up reading a nice short story from a collection by Alice Munro.   I enjoyed it but I am a novel reader at heart.  It’s the novel that captures me.
So . . . can anyone recommend any good novels that they’ve been enjoying?  I’m in need of some good fiction.

They didn’t get a renewal but they did get a laugh. It takes some guts to tell your customer how wrong they are.

I don’t know if this is actually within the rules of the December Photo Project but I’ll hope it’s within the spirit!

I always think it’s interesting to be able to see where people live who view Further Musings.

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(Colors show most recent visits at the time)

Earlier this week a friend who is professional photographer fed me a very tasty lunch. Afterwards I asked him to walk through some of his photographs from a recent project with me and talk out-loud about his thought processes about taking his photos.

Two themes he said when talking about his photos have stuck with me. The first is that photographers have a limited set of tools and choices. That made me want to learn a bit more about my camera to be able to expand my ability to see and capture pictures.

The second is that, for him, photography is about relationships and story. I think it is interesting to think about one frame being a story. Don’t expect that from the rest of the month’s photos but its something I’m thinking about.

So today’s December Photo Project shot is of a picture that captured me in September from the Economist.

The subject of the photo is the Egyptian writer holding the newspaper but it’s the setting of the shot, with the two policemen chatting on their motorcycles framing the writer, before a dense background which conjures the “bruising raucous, chaotic human anthill of Cairo” that makes me wonder about the story of this man, of these men, in this time.

I think its a pretty cool shot.

(Thanks to Tim for being the photographer for this pair of disc golf shots.)