Late at night I said to J., “I need to s-e-l-p-s,” then collapsed into incomprehension over such a brain typo—I wish I could say this was the endpoint of grading, but in fact the work is barely begun. “For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you’re taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”
Berkeley has an enlightened new policy where your kitchen scraps and yard clippings can decay peacefully together in big green bins; so taking out the new load of coffee grounds and tangelo peels this morning, we flipped open the lid and discovered a tiny glistening salamander inside, breathing through wee neck vents and taking in the world with alert black eyes. We dumped our refuse and closed the lid carefully; then I had an attack of worry over what might become of the salamander when the organic waste truck showed up, so I went back out and used a bit of Tupperware to transfer it to the temperate jungle growing alongside our house. It was quite cooperative about being moved and even helped matters out by clinging to the Tupperware with its tiny prehensile tail—who knew?! I believe it must have been a half-grown Aneides lugubrus. When we went back out to check up it had skedaddled, I hope to a more salamander-appropriate habitat.
Here’s the original Gerry-Mander from 1812.
And the surviving fragment of Anaximander—
Ἀναξίμανδρος [...] λέγει δ’ αὐτὴν μήτε ὕδωρ μήτε ἄλλο τι τῶν καλουμένων εἶναι στοιχείων, ἀλλ’ ἑτέραν τινὰ φύσιν ἄπειρον, ἐξ ἧς ἅπαντας γίνεσθαι τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς κόσμους? ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών? διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν.
Anaximander [...] says that the Non-limited is neither water nor any other one of the things called elements, but something of a different nature, from which came all the heavens and the worlds in them; the source from which things derive their existence and to which they return at their destruction, according to necessity; for they give justice and make reparation to one another for injustice, according to the arrangement of time.
