New Year’s Day is more-or-less a known quantity here in Southern California. Without looking at the Weather Channel or checking the newspaper forecast, you can pretty well assume that it’s going to be a gorgeous sunny day with a bright blue sky. The temperature is likely in the 40s or 50s, but it’s going to be a sunny day. It might rain steadily for days beforehand, but on the first of the year in Pasadena it’s going to be a sunny day. In all the years that they’ve been holding the Rose Parade, you can count on one hand the number of times it has been rained. I once spent the night with two other people in a Chevy Chevette because it was pouring down rain and we couldn’t sleep on the sidewalk along the parade route as we’d intended. It was a four-door Chevette, granted, but it still took some doing. By eight o’clock, when the parade started, the rain was over, the clouds were gone, and the sun was shining to beat the band.

Christmas Day is considerably more variable. It’s often cold and gloomy (by Southern Californian standards) but it’s just as like warm and clear, and some years it’s been in the 80s. I can recall one year, shortly after my parents first got central air and heating installed, when my mom turned the thermostat down low so that she could light a Christmas fire in the fireplace; it would have been far too warm otherwise.

I’m not yet prepared to guess what Christmas will be like this year, as our weather has been changing from cold to warm and back again every few days, but if I had to make a choice I’d guess that it will be warm. We’ve been having frequent Santa Ana winds recently, warm dry winds that are shaking the last leaves from all the trees that drop them, and once the Santa Anas set in they often hang around for awhile. Why they are called Santa Anas I’m not sure, as they come from the north and the city of Santa Ana is an hour’s drive southeast of here. I’ve seen a number of theories; the most popular is that “Santa Ana” is a local corruption of “santana,” which means a hot dry wind. The trouble with that theory is that you’d expect the corruption to go the other way–it’s far more likely for “Santa Ana” to be shortened to “santana” than the other way around. More to the point, Southern Californians have been calling them Santa Ana winds for generations; the only people I’ve ever heard refer to them as “santana” winds are those who once called them “Santa Ana” winds like the rest of us, and then decided that that wasn’t right. The late lamented Jack Smith, an L.A. Times columnist from the days when the Times really was a Los Angeles newspaper investigated the topic in detail and concluded that “santana” was purely bogus, and that the winds had their name (if I recall correctly) because they blew from Santa Ana Canyon.

I have no idea where Santa Ana Canyon might be, or why anyone would choose to name a wind after it, but there you go.

Anyway, it’s been a warm lovely weekend, and we’ve finally begun our Christmas preparations. I don’t mean shopping for gifts; we started that ages ago, though mostly on-line. But after Thanksgiving comes the season of Advent, a penitential season similar to Lent, and I don’t like to get out the tree or the decorations or the Christmas music until Lent is pretty much over. Today was the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, so first thing yesterday morning we got the tree out of the back shed (yes, it’s artificial) and set it up in the living room. We had a bit of a milestone this year–the tree was decorated almost entirely (with more enthusiasm than skill) by our three older kids. Jane held the baby (who has taken to screaming like a banshee if Jane puts her down) and handed out ornaments, and I played Christmas carols on my recorder, and a good time was had by all.

Then this afternoon, after church, we got out the Christmas Train–an LGB train with an oval track, a locomotive, a flat car, a freight car with low sides, and a caboose. You’ll notice we got it out the day after the tree got decorated; last year we set it up before the tree got decorated, and on January 1st, while we were watching the Rose Parade on TV, my eldest son asked, “Mom, can we decorate the tree today?” Jane was just beginning her third trimester as Christmas approached, and neither of us were sleeping well in consequence, and what with the kids napping at various times and overall fatigue, we somehow never found a time to get the whole family together to decorate the tree. And after the kids were in bed, we were either too tired or occupied with other needful things. So we’re doing better this year–let’s hope it continues.

Update: I’ve just done a Google on “santana wind” and found a whole bunch of people who claim that they are named that because the Mexican inhabitants of Southern California call these hot dry winds the “devil winds”, “santana” being the Spanish word for Satan. Except that it isn’t; that would be “satana”. Quite a few of these folks talk about how when they first came to Southern California in the ’50’s or when they were growing up in the ’70’s everyone knew they were the “santana” winds, but then the network newscasters, idiots that they are, screwed it up by calling them the “Santa Ana” winds. The trouble with that argument is that my father, who was born here in Southern California in 1926, grew up calling them the Santa Ana winds. On another site I see this:

The origin and even the original spelling of the terms for these winds are unclear, and during the past century both Santa Ana and Santana winds have been used. The term “Santana winds” is said to have originated in Spanish California when the hot dry winds were called “devil winds.” Other sources credit the persistence and ferocity of these winds through the Santa Ana Canyon in Orange County as the reason for their being called Santa Anas. A third reasoning has an Associated Press correspondent mistakenly identifying Santana winds as Santa Ana winds in a 1901 dispatch.

Whatever the origin, native Angelenos have been calling them Santa Ana winds for at least a century; that’s good enough for me. 

This is the first in Modesitt’s long running Recluce series, and to my
mind it’s still the best. All of the others at best serve to either elaborate
themes or fill in details sketched in here.

The story takes place when the island nation of Recluce is at the height
of its power, and has most fully become itself. The country is peaceful,
productive, and stable; the master of Recluce have not only learned what
works to keep it so, but why it works. Where earlier generations of
leaders were simply doing their best, the current generation has it more
or less down to a science.

Now, Recluce as a society is based on order, in both the common sense of
orderliness and in the magical sense, order being the force that opposes
chaos. Chaos is rigidly excluded. Discontented folk breed chaos, so it
follows naturally that those who do not fit in cannot be suffered to
remain.

Enter our hero, Lerris. Lerris is a youth of good family, he’s been
given the best education available on Recluce, and he’s bored.
B-O-R-E-D, bored. Nothing ever changes in the small town in which he has
spent his entirely life, and he’s so incredibly bored he can hardly stand
it. Boredom is a form a discontent, so after a couple of years of
apprenticeship to his uncle, a master woodworker, he’s informed that he
has two choices: exile or the dangergeld.

The dangergeld is an interesting institution, and one that we see in
several stages of development in the later books in the series (as I’ve
noted in other reviews, the series order isn’t chronological, and tends to
go backwards as often as it goes forwards). It’s a form of limited
exile–after several months of intense survival training, dangergelders
are sent overseas to one of the planet’s several continents. Once away
from Recluce they may do as they like…but each dangergelder is given a
specific task to do. If they carry it out successfully, and they still
wish to do so, then they are allowed to return to Recluce. Invariably,
the task is one which will require them to deal with the root cause of
their discontent–and possibly one or two other matters.

In Lerris’ case, he’s commanded to travel by ship to the continent of
Candar. Once in Candar, he’s to travel past the Easthorns to the
Westhorns (two ranges of mountains). He’s to travel alone, i.e., apart
from the other dangergelders, and he’s not to return until he knows he’s
ready, whatever that means. Lerris leaves Recluce convinced that it’s
meant to be a one-way trip.

Now, it develops that Lerris isn’t your average rebellious teenager. At
least one of his parents is a powerful order-master (that is, a wizard).
Though he doesn’t know it, he has the potential to become a powerful
wizard himself, with the capacity to turn towards either order or chaos.
Should he choose the latter he’ll destroy himself in a short time, as he
hasn’t the temperament for chaos, but it will be exceedingly messy. As
for order, he needs to learn to value it in a more chaotic setting. And
thanks to the balance of order and chaos, Candar, the closest continent
to Recluce, is an extremely chaotic place. In short, Lerris is liable to
make mistakes, his mistakes are liable to be spectacular, and so the
masters of Recluce are sending him where he can make them without harm to
his countrymen.

But there’s more to it than that. The havoc a budding
order-master can leave in his wake is a potent force if it can be
channeled properly. Recluce has been sending young lads like Lerris out
into the world for centuries, and the masters of Recluce have a shrewd
notion of Lerris’ full potential. He’s not just a journeyman wizard,
seeking to find himself; he’s a guided missile, and a tool of Recluce’s
foreign policy. Just imagine how angry he’ll be when he finally figures
it all out….

I really do enjoy this book. There’s more than a hint of
wish-fulfillment in it, I’m sure; I’m not super-powerful myself, but it’s
fun to imagine. On top of that, parts of the book have the whole boot
camp dynamic working for them; I always like that. And then there’s the
emphasis on values, and on doing the right thing whether or not it’s
expedient (the proper use of power is a major theme in all of Modesitt’s
books). Finally, though, it’s an interesting tale well-told, and the
hero not only grows up, he also gets the girl–who, actually, is quite a
heroine in her own right. Her story is just as interesting as Lerris’
and would have made a fine novel, except there’d have been considerably
less magic in it.

If you like epic fantasy, and you haven’t read this book, you really
should, even if you never go on to read the rest of the series.

A few weeks ago I began to require TypeKey authentication from readers before they could leave comments here. The effect has been both good and bad. On the one hand, I’m no longer having to delete several hundred bogus (and occasionally obscene) comments every single day; instead, none are getting through. This is a big win. On the other hand, I’m getting many fewer real comments than I used to, which although unsurprising is a pity.

I’d been hoping that the problem would subside after a while, and that I could open up the comments section to everyone again; instead, some hosting services are receiving so many attempts to post comment spam that it’s slowing down their servers and causing serious problems. I got a notice from my own web hosting service a couple of days ago, asking all MovableType users to please disable comments or switch to full authentication ASAP–or they’d pull the plug on the site. And I can’t blame them.

So authentication won’t be going away any time soon, and it’s likely to become common on other blogs as well. It’s easy to use; if you’d like to comment, just click on the Sign-On link and create an identity for yourself at TypeKey.com. Thereafter you can use that username and password on any MovableType blog.

Fraser, best known for his books featuring Victorian soldier, lady’s man,
coward, and toady Harry Flashman, spent the Second World War as a British
foot soldier in Burma, an experience he describes delightfully in his
book Quartered Safe Out Here. At the end of the war he
applied for officer training, and much to his surprise spent the years
after the war as a lieutenant in a highland regiment, first in North
Africa and later on in Great Britain.

Fraser later turned his post war experiences into three volumes of short
stories, all told in the first person by one Lieutenant Dand MacNeill, of
which this is the first. And they are an unbridled joy, delight, and
wonderment–the sort of book I put off re-reading so that I’ll savor it
all the more later on. Also, the sort of book you end up reading half of
aloud to whoever might be in earshot.

The present volume begins with MacNeill’s examination for officer
training, and continues with his introduction to life as an officer in a
highland regiment. In it, there is much to be said about bagpipes,
soccer (only, of course, they don’t call it soccer), scotch
whisky–

A digression. The senior officers in some regiments are (or were) a
hard-drinking lot, and many lieutenants in such regiments felt they had
to do the same to be accepted. In MacNiell’s regiment, as in most
highland regiments (so says Fraser), the subalterns drank either beer or
orange juice–in highland regiments, the senior officers had no desire to
see their fine single-malt scotch swilled by lieutenants with no
appreciation for what they were drinking.

–scotch whisky, highland dancing, and personal cleanliness, or, rather,
the lack of it displayed by Private MacAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in
the world.

I should note that the Dand MacNeill stories completely lack the worldly,
cynical edge of Fraser’s Flashman books; if you’ve tried those and
disliked them, don’t let that put you off from enjoying these. If you
can find them; I wanted to get a copy of this book as a Christmas present
this year, until I found that it’s a available used at Amazon starting at
$58. Time to check the used bookstores!

I’ve got to hand it to Jaquandor; this is one of those ideas that’s obvious in retrospect, the kind that makes you jealous because once it’s been done, well, it’s been done. I won’t spoil it, but if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan you should check it out.

These are the sixth and seventh books in the authors’ Mageworlds
series, which I’ve been re-reading and reviewing over the last few months.

When The Stars Asunder was published in 1999, Jane and I were
excited; I’d read the previous books aloud to her to our mutual enjoyment,
and this one looked to be a doozy. Set in the far distant past, long
before the first Mage War, it promised to tell us of the first contact
between the Mage Worlds and the rest of the civilized galaxy, and also to
tell the story of Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s enigmatic helper, the
“Professor”. We snapped it up the moment it came out, in hardcover no
less, and I started reading it to Jane on the way home.

And, alas, we were greatly disappointed. I never finished reading it
aloud; instead, we each finished it separately. And unlike the others in
the series, it sat on the shelf, unread, until just recently when I
picked it up prior to reading its successor, A Working of Stars.
(It’s some measure of my disappointment that the latter book was published
in 2002, and I only just got around to it.)

Anyway, I approached The Stars Asunder with considerable
curiousity. Was it as bad as I remembered? Had I read it fairly the
first time? And I suppose the most honest answer is that it’s better, and
just as bad.

First, it’s a different sort of book than the others in the series; it’s
slower paced, and there are fewer action sequences. Jane and I had the
wrong expectations going into it, and so it’s not entirely surprising
that it didn’t work for us. And, I was surprised to note that some of the
amazingly stupid and awful scenes that I remember being so annoyed by
aren’t actually in the book at all. Apparently I dreamed them.

On the other hand, there are bad bits as well. There’s a whole espionage
and intrigue subplot that simply doesn’t work: it’s confusing, it slows
down the main story, and although motivations of the characters involved
seemed clear enough at the beginning I found them entirely mystifying by
the end. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying, and leaves lots of
loose-ends floating about–and there’s no indication that a sequel might
be forthcoming. And then there’s the centerpiece of the book, the first
contact between a Mage ship and a freighter from the Civilized Worlds,
which I still can’t bring myself to believe in. Though, to be fair the scene’s
not quite as absurd as I thought it the first time I read it.

A Working of Stars is much more satisfying. It follows
perhaps ten years after the finish of The Stars Asunder, and
ties up a fair number of that book’s loose ends (though by no means
all of them), and it’s got a lot more of that Space Opera Goodness we
were looking for. My major complaint about it is that it seems to
contradict things were were told in the second book of the series,
Starpilot’s Grave, though possibly there are reasons for that.

There’s clearly room for yet another book in this part of the series, and
I rather wish Doyle and MacDonald would get on with it.

Big Arm Woman’s husband takes a second look at The Polar Express (the book, not the movie) and finds much worthy of comment. Though perhaps bedtime wasn’t the appropriate occasion….

I know I’ve been linking to Ian a lot recently, but he’s done it again.

He’s right about The High Crusade, too. But that’s another post.

So around 11:15 this morning I gathered up my recorder bag and music stand, snagged a Santa Claus hat from the decorations in our hallway, and wandered off to the conference room in which our section secretaries and admins were busily getting everything ready for the section party. I set up in a corner and played for about half-an-hour, working through my sheaf of Christmas carols) about twice in that time, as the room slowly filled up.

I didn’t do too badly, I guess; I’d been practicing all of the songs at least twice a day since last Thursday, and though I made more mistakes than I’m happy with, my tone and phrasing were pretty good. I’d have had an easier time if I’d played soprano recorder, but I chose to play tenor instead; it’s a nicer solo instrument, with a deep rich tone. It’s also quieter than a soprano, which means that it was hard to hear me play once the room filled up, but on the other hand the mistakes were quieter too.

I made sure I practiced by leaving my music stand in our kitchen, along with my tenor, that it was often convenient (while waiting for dinner, and so forth) to pick up the recorder and play a couple of songs. I really need to make a habit of doing that in general; it’s pleasant.

Anyway, I didn’t disgrace myself in public, and that’s always nice.

In 1906, the city of San Francisco was devastated by an earthquake, followed by a fire that burned for four days. A photographer named George R. Lawrence had developed a means of taking aerial photographs using kites, producing 130-degree panoramas; the prints were 47 inches wide, made from negatives of the same size. (!) On hearing of the disaster in California, he took his crew to San Francisco.

If you’ve read about the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and think you understand the scope of the disaster, I suspect you’re mistaken. Be sure to read the whole thing, or you’ll miss the shot of the port of San Francisco at the very bottom.

(Via Slashdot.)