Schrödinger’s war

I finished the novel Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller. I saw it during a recent visit to Barnes and Noble and it looked interesting. I pulled out my phone and looked it up on Goodreads and saw the rating was pretty good. So I bought it. The setting is Iceland. Orri is the narrator. He is in his first year at university in Reykjavik and misses the farm where he grew up and his father, his Pabbi, raises cows for beef. When Mamma calls to say maybe Pabbi is depressed Orri uses that as an excuse to leave school (though continues online) and return home. Before Orri left home for school Pabbi didn’t ask him to help around the farm because Pabbi didn’t want his son to realize how hard the life of an Icelandic farmer is. But back from the city Orri is ready to be educated in the difficulties. And much of the story is about how hard such a life is. This is a coming of age story. Orri is trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, though he sees he likes the life of a farmer. He also begins to experience love and learns about the tradeoffs love requires. The title comes from the dog Pabbi owns. It’s an Australian kelpie, a herding dog. And this one happens to have red fur. But a kelpie is not the best breed for the Icelandic climate. That sort of thing doesn’t stop Pabbi. There is an LGBTQ character in the book. One of Orri’s high school classmates has developed into a beautiful woman and Mamma tells Orri he should date her. But, the classmate confides she’s a lesbian and rural Iceland is not a good place to find a partner. She asks Orri to be her beard, though has to explain what that means. They remain good friends. The book does a good job describing what life in rural Iceland is like. One has to deal with constant wind, long winters, thin soil, and an occasional volcano that can upend life. That left me wondering how the author knows Iceland so well when the book’s jacket says he worked for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Montana, and currently lives in Vermont. Of course, there are lots of ways that could happen, the author just doesn’t say which. The Acknowledgments at the end do include several names that look Icelandic. I enjoyed the book. The author writes quite well and Orri’s situation is an interesting one. Instead of watching a movie this Sunday I watched and listened to a video of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I had written about this work when I discussed the book Time’s Echo by Jeremy Eichler several months ago. The work was part of the consecration of the new cathedral in Coventry, England, which was built beside the remains of the earlier cathedral bombed in WWII. The soprano soloist, large choir, and children’s choir sing the text of the Latin requiem mass. The tenor and bass soloists sing the English poems of Wilfred Owen, who was gay, wrote about the battles of WWI, and died in combat in 1918. The text is, of course, online. There is one of Owen’s poems that is quite meaningful. It tells the story of Abram told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. The Biblical story ends with an angel stopping the hand of Abram, offering a ram to be sacrificed instead. Owen’s poem ends differently:

But the old man would not so, but slew his son, – And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Reading through the text this time these lines caught my attention:

The scribes on all the people shove And bawl allegiance to the state, But they who love the greater love Lay down their life; they do not hate.

The premier of the work was in 1962. For that the tenor was English, the baritone was German, and the soprano was Russian. I attended a performance of the work when I lived in Germany in 1990. When I was working on my Master of Music degree the composition class featured a modern piece each week and this was one of them. And now I’ve watched it online. This performance was led by Marin Alsop and the choir and orchestra (except the children’s choir) looked to be made up of college students doing a fine job. Alas, the webpage to give more detail of them is no longer online. Schrödinger’s cat is the name of a thought experiment related to quantum physics. No, I’m not going to try to explain quantum physics. In this thought scenario a cat is placed in a box with a vial of poison. A quantum event may or may not break the vial. Is the cat alive or dead? Quantum physics says we can’t know until the box is opened. Put another way, until the box is opened the cat is both alive and dead. Yeah, it is hard to understand. And people wonder what Erwin Schrödinger has against cats and why he came up with such a cruel way to explain quantum physics. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote that what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz might be Schrödinger’s war – the statements by the nasty guy and his minions are so confusing and contradictory that one could conclude the war is both still going on and concluded. The nasty guy said the war was over so Congress isn’t required to follow the War Powers Act and its 60 day deadline to confirm that he can keep on fighting. The same day he told supporters that people saying we’re not winning the war is “treasonous.” He has said both he rejected the latest deal from Iran and that he knows nothing about it. While saying the war is over he is also saying 15,000 more troops to the region. He tried Project Freedom to escort ships out of the Persian Gulf, but that lasted only a day because he didn’t convince any ship insurance companies that the effort was safe. And the United Arab Emirates intercepted Iranian missiles during a ceasefire. Both concluded and in progress, both dead and alive, at the same time. Anastasia Tsioulcas of NPR reported:

A statue that was erected mysteriously in central London early Wednesday has been confirmed as the work of the mischievous, often politically oriented artist Banksy. The statue depicts a man in a suit hoisting a large flag. The flag's cloth covers the man's face, however, and his proud march appears to be courting disaster, as he steps off the plinth with no ground beneath him.

Banksy may not have gotten permission to erect the statue, but city officials say they welcome it. The NPR article has a photo of the statue from the front. Here’s another view of it from the side. I think it is cool political commentary.