Author: eboisen

This is the second book I have read that was co-authored by Robert Lanza. The previous one was a fictional work named Observer : A Novel. This book  is more of an explanation of the science at the core of the story in Observer. The science, as the title implies, has to do with Biocentrism. Biocentrism dictates that reality is a construct of consciousness. The authors cite many commonly accepted scientific principles to support the idea that life creates the universe.  Nothing can happen without an observer witnessing it. This goes back to the question of whether a tree that falls in the forest makes a sound if nothing and no one is around to hear it. The author does the best job of arriving at the answer that I have ever heard. Sound is really just a person’s or animal’s interpretation of air pressure waves.

In the absence of an observer, a falling tree will certainly create a pressure wave when the tree strikes the ground, but there will be no sound unless someone, or something is there to create it from the pressure wave. Sound is merely a human’s or animal’s consciousness-created signal from an air pressure wave vibrating an eardrum. A bee can see things illuminated with just ultraviolet light.  We cannot. We cannot discern anything with our eye in the absence of visible light. Ultraviolet light is outside of our visible spectrum. Bees see a bullseye of color to direct them to the flower and its pollen. We see none of this. Most of what we do see, is just our brain’s interpretation that is arriving from natural sensors – our eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue. We will interpret air pressure and light waves one way, and a different species may interpret it another way, or maybe not at all. Light has no inherent color. We, discounting color blindness, associate a particular frequency of light with a particular color because that is how our eyes and brain interpret it.

The above examples illustrate the differing realities that different observers of the same event might have, but the observer can also influence the outcome of an event merely by observing it. The author like to reference the famous double-slit light experiment to illustrate this.

An electron will exhibit particle-like or wave-like (diffraction and interference) behavior based on whether it is observed or not. Obviously, an electron or a photon falls under the realm of the very small with regards to physics. Newtonian, or classical physics, does not describe the behavior of very small things very well. For this, the rules of quantum mechanics must be applied. Things appear to behave very differently in the quantum realm than they do in the world we see with our eyes, but biocentrism declares that the strangeness that applies to the very small also has applications to the world we observe and our consciousness actively influences it.

Biocentrism declares that consciousness brings reality into existence.  Space and time, just like the apparent color of light, are products of the consciousness that do not exist without it. Time is merely a way of organizing events that are all occurring concurrently and there is no physical universe out there without consciousness. This is an awful lot to digest. It implies that without time, there is no death. We have simply ended an existence in one of an infinite number of universes and we carry out living in another one. As bizarre as this may sound, it does line up in a sense with the afterlife in Christianity or reincarnation in Hinduism and Buddhism. If any of this is to be believed, attitude would appear to be everything. If we can be happy and content in almost any circumstance and we live forever, is this not heaven?

Best I can tell, nothing in this book can be disproven. Not everything can be proven, however. This makes it an excellent topic to ponder. The only knock I have on the author is that he brings up the case of Sybil, a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason. This is the patient that the famous movie about a woman with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) is based on. The author uses this example somewhat as proof or explanation for multiple realities. The psychoanalyst that treated “Sybil” has admitted to fabricating some of the facts and most of the patient records related to “Sybil” were mysteriously destroyed before outside sources were able to review them. Dissociative identity disorder, which “Sybil” was thought to be suffering from, is also one of the least understood psychological disorders. I have no idea why the author would throw this example in when it does not really help his argument.

The authors do throw in some interesting anecdotes about the nature of things. I would imagine most people know that dolphin use a sort of sonar to “see” things in the water at a great distance. A dolphin will emit a series of chirps or noises and then, from the sound reflected back, paint a mental image, of say, a school of fish in the distance. What is really interesting is the dolphin can emulate this reflected sound and repeat it to other dolphin. Those dolphin will get the same mental image of the school of fish as if they had used their own  sonar.  People certainly have a leg-up on dolphin in terms of tool use, but dolphin seem to be capable of incredibly efficient communication that borders on telepathy.

I found this to be an interesting read, but definitely less interesting than the fiction-based Observer that Lanza has more recently co-authored.

 

I cannot recall what caused me to choose this book. I think I saw some mention of it in a documentary and the story seemed interesting. It is written from the point of view of Holden, a 17 year-old, well-off boy from New York. The story begins on a cold Saturday evening in early winter with Holden revealing that he is about to be expelled from yet another boarding school. The current school is named Pencey Prep and it is in the fictional town of Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Holden appears to be a fairly intelligent boy who has no desire to apply himself academically. His interactions with others are all superficial, with the exception of his little sister, Phoebe. Holden also reveals that he had a slightly younger brother, Allie, that died of leukemia, and an older brother that works as a Hollywood screenwriter. His dormitory mates all seem to annoy him in one way or another and he gets into a fistfight with a particularly athletic one named Stradlater, that results in Holden getting laid out. This, combined with the fact that he is soon to be expelled, makes Holden despondent. He is supposed to go home at semester’s end on Wednesday, but decides instead to have an adventure in New York before going home.

He leaves the school and catches a late train to New York with all his belongings in tow. Holden has flunked all his classes with the exception of literature. He appears to be a pretty good writer. I am guessing a great deal of Holden’s character is based off of the author, J.D. Salinger. Salinger admitted in interviews to being a poor student in his youth and having trouble fitting in at the private schools in New York and Pennsylvania that he attended. The thing that I find interesting about this book, is that you do not necessarily find Holden that likeable. He has serious personality flaws, however, you still find yourself rooting for him to find his way. I guess this is kind of like Bryan Cranston’s character, Walter White, in Breaking Bad, or James Gandolfini’s, character, Tony Soprano, in the Sopranos. These characters are not inherently good people because they say and do some awful things, but you still seem to be rooting for them.

(Artist’s depiction of the main character, Holden Caulfield)

Perhaps we have a soft spot for Holden’s character because he is dealing with the loss of his brother and does seem to treat his sister Phoebe pretty well. He also has a short moment where he is quite pleasant to a couple of nuns he meets in a diner. In most other interactions, however, he is grumpy and self-involved. He largely looks at everyone and everything in a negative manner and dreams of a life where he doesn’t have to interact with anyone. His character is definitely a misfit. Maybe that’s another reason to accept his shortcomings. Everyone likes the underdog.

In his New York escapades, he has a run-in with a prostitute and her pimp, an old classmate, and what appears to be deviant behavior from a former teacher of his. Throughout the book Holden smokes like a chimney, all the while acknowledging the harm he is doing to himself. In the end, Holden has thoughts of hitchhiking to the West coast, working a menial job, and living in a cabin in the woods outside of society, but feels unable to abandon his sister Phoebe to do so. Holden embodies what we all hate about in ourselves when we act selfishly, are ungrateful, and are less than optimistic.  He seems to be ready to make changes in his life and strive to be a better person at the very end, but the reader is left being unsure. This is a very well-written book worthy of all the praise and accolades it has received. There are some references to songs, plays, and movies that are a bit dated, but this book was written before 1950, so that is to be expected.  Oddly, the day I finished this book, one of the songs referenced, “Smoke gets in your eyes,” was playing at the pool while I was doing laps at my local gym. I did not recognize the title when I read it, but realized I had heard the song before. This book is an easy read and has a very unique “voice” that is well worth the time.

This book was suggested to me by my good friend Randy. This is an amazing novel. I guess it is technically a science fiction novel, but it also contains plenty of human drama to entertain anyone who may not be interested in the science fiction genre. Unusual, in that it is written by two authors. This is an amazing collaboration. It has elements of Phillip K. Dick, Neal Stephenson, and to a lesser extent, Kurt Vonnegut. For the most part, it follows Caro, a young neurosurgeon, who is dealing with a social media fallout following her accusing a prominent senior surgeon of sexual misconduct at the hospital where they both work. She fears her career will be in ruins – a stress that is acerbated by having to support a sister that is caring for a seriously disabled child.

As her personal life is collapsing, her uncle, a famous Nobel laureate, offers her an opportunity to work for him in a private compound in the Cayman Islands. The uncle has set up a small hospital and living quarters for a group of people who have developed a technology that allows people to cross over into alternate universes. This is achieved by the implanting of a specially manufactured microchip into the brain and connected to proprietary software and hardware. Caro accepts the job of surgeon with the duty of implanting these devices. She initially has no interest in this type of work, but her circumstances make her reconsider the idea. Her uncle offers a very high salary and also helps provide assistance to her sister and her sister’s seriously ill daughter.

She begins implanting patients and witnesses their short travels to alternate universes. The equipment that the implanted patient is connected to is capable of recording and displaying the events that are occurring in the alternate universe. The implanted are also capable of controlling and creating the universe they are visiting to some extent. This is probably the biggest benefit to this technology. The user can visit with the deceased, or, if one intends to be nefarious, perpetuate crimes without fear of repercussions.

Caro is leery of the technology throughout much of the story. Her initial acceptance of the surgical position she has taken is almost purely out of desperation. She sees the effects the travel to alternate universes has on some of her patients and writes it off as hallucinations. The longer she is on the compound, however, the more she begins to believe that her patients are actually traveling to alternate universes. There do not appear to be any flaws in the science explaining the theories used to create this technology. Einstein postulated in his theory of special relativity that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers. This has the implication that time is not what most of us think it is. Einstein’s theory of special relativity is accepted by the scientific community as a foundation of modern physics and has been proven through experiments. Time is perhaps nothing more than an observer’s way of mentally organizing events.

The takeaway from traveling through multiverses is that we are all one. This cannot currently be proven, but it cannot be disproven either. Many who take the implant journey to other universes to be with loved ones who have passed. The book implies that if time is merely a construct of the observer to organize events, then death is also not what most people think it is. Those who have passed still exist in another universe. It is therefore possible to visit them in these other universes.

The book also delves into the prospect that nothing exists until it is conceived of in someone’s consciousness. This also has a foundation in accepted science by way of the observer’s effect. Photons, for example, will behave differently depending on whether they are observed or not. They can behave like waves, or they can behave like particles. This has been shown to be dictated by whether or not they are being observed and has been proven by experiment. Primarily these strange phenomena are limited to the very small, such as subatomic particles, but there have been experiments with quantum entanglement that show these effects may not be so limited. In physics, it is widely accepted that electrons orbit a proton in any given matter. These orbits are defined as shells.

As can be seen from the illustration, the orbits have different radii (paths are actually more elliptical, so it is foci in reality) and are described with the labels 1n, 2n, 3n, etc. Electrons can move from one orbit to another. When they do energy is either released or absorbed, but the strange thing is that when the electron moves from one orbit to another, it is never anywhere in between. It moves instantly from one place to another without ever traversing the area between. Is this possible on a larger scale? Is this how one could move from one universe to another?

This novel also touches on something called quantum entanglement to illustrate that this strange behavior in very small things may also scale up to larger things. The book mentions quantum entanglement of two diamonds, which are large enough to be visible with the naked eye. My presumption is that it is referring to the 2011 experiment noted here. In this experiment, objects large enough to be seen with the naked eye can influence one another instantly, at a distance through quantum entanglement. The assertion is that this quantum entanglement could scale up to any size, and any distance. Changing the behavior, in this case, vibration, of one diamond instantly changes the behavior of the other diamond, regardless of the distance away. This would imply that not only is time a construct, but space is as well.

All the strange happenings in this novel have plausible scientific explanations. The only fiction is the software, implanted microchip, and the human drama that the characters in the story create. As with all technology that humans discover or create, there is always a bright side, and a dark side. The technology is stolen by one of the primary technologists on the project and finds its way into an underground version of multiverse transport that is used for unethical purposes. This creates a fanatic opposition group that attacks the compound and kills Trevor. The novel ends with Caro desperate to reconnect with her soulmate through the use of this technology that she once dismissed as theatrics. She is reunited with him in an alternate universe as her physical body dies in this one.

This book would make a fantastic feature film and I cannot stress enough, how well this story is crafted. This may be the best work of fiction I have ever read.

 

I stumbled across this book through some mention in a social media post. The topic seemed pretty interesting and the book could be found online for just a few dollars, so I purchased it. The author, Edward de Bono, passed away just a couple of years ago. His credentials were quite impressive. He was a Rhodes scholar and earned a medical degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. He has written several books on what he calls, “Lateral thinking.” This is a method of coming up with new ways of looking at things and creating new ideas. The author refers to conventional thinking as “Vertical thinking.” Conventional, or vertical thinking uses established ideas and paradigms to draw conclusions and formulate solutions to problems. This is how most of the world currently solves problems and creates new ideas. The author suggests that this method often delivers solutions, but maybe not the best ones and it will rarely develop ground-breaking ideas.

Lateral thinking proposes looking at things from different perspectives, much in the way a comedian points out a bizarre quirk in human behavior that we all accept as commonplace. When presented with a problem, we often rely on a reference point, with proven data, for a solution. Oftentimes, this reliance obscures what may be the best idea.  The best example of lateral thinking comes directly from the first chapter of the book. It describes a gentleman and his beautiful young daughter. The gentleman is deeply in debt to a creepy, foul, deceitful, evil man. The man is in debt to a level that he may never be able to pay it off.  He is also in arrears and can be sent to jail for not paying. The creepy, foul, deceitful man has taken a liking to his debtor’s daughter and proposes an opportunity. He says that he will wipe out all debt if the daughter agrees to marry him. The gentleman declines as he has no desire to impose his woes on his daughter, so the creepy, foul, deceitful man proposes something else. They are all standing on a path of small black and white pebbles. The opportunity is presented as follows: they will put one black and one white pebble in a sack and the daughter will draw out one of the pebbles. If the pebble is white the debt is cleared, and the daughter does not need to marry. If the pebble is black, then the debt is also cleared, but the daughter must marry the creepy, foul, deceitful man. The man has the option of taking his chances on what should be a 50-50 game of chance, or he can go to jail. Having no real choice, the man agrees to the game. The daughter recognizes that when the creepy, foul, deceitful man picks up two pebbles and puts them in the bag, both pebbles are black. If the daughter mentions the deceit, the father will go to jail as the game will not be played. What should she do?

She appears to be in an impossible spot. This is where lateral thinking comes in. Most conventional ways of thinking will not provide a solution, but the daughter is very clever. She reaches into the sack, grabs a pebble, and without looking at it, allows it to fall on the pebble path. She then says, “oh, silly me, I dropped the pebble, but it does not matter, whatever I have chosen must be the opposite color of whatever remains in the bag.” A black pebble remains in the bag with the implication that she withdrew a white pebble. This would mean the debt is cleared and she does not need to marry the creepy, deceitful, foul man. The creepy, deceitful, foul man can’t reveal his deceit and must accept the outcome.

Lateral thinking also likes to employ chance to come up with new ideas. If someone is constantly observing the world, there is an opportunity to observe something that may be applicable to a problem. It may not happen quickly, but if someone is always observing things and noting anything that may be interesting at the moment, but has no current application, he or she should make an effort to remember it. Perhaps make a note of it. These observations may provide a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem in the future. Many new ideas are the result of recognizing how two seemingly unrelated things may create something entirely new and useful when combined.

This book was a pretty easy read at only 150 pages. It is well worth the time to explore this book. Perhaps it will unlock something amazing for you.

I am an automation engineer and this book pertains to batch processing. It describes a standard that can be used to produce things, using automation, in batches. Many things are created in batches. From cookies to treated lumber to beer to pharmaceuticals. I read this book again after having read it for the first time about 15 years ago. I had almost no batch processing experience the first time I read this book and did not get much out of it. Now that I have worked and been around batch processes for quite some time in pharma and wood treatment plants, I feel like I got much more out of this book.

Normally I read books that I feel the average person would enjoy learning about. This book is based on a somewhat esoteric subject if you are not involved in automation or process control.  I have begun work at a pharma plant in Pennsylvania. Like most pharmaceutical products, the product made at this site is made in batches using ISA88 principles.  This book is written by the engineers, Jim Parshall and Larry Lamb, who automated three Ben & Jerry’s ice cream plants using the principles described in this book. They used Allen Bradley PLC’s with a batch add-on called RSBATCH. This project took place in the late 1990’s, so the technology they used would now be considered quite dated, but amazingly, the core concepts of ISA88 are still completely relevant.  The DCS control system used in the majority of the pharma sites I have been to is an Emerson product called DeltaV.  It is tailor-made for batch processes, particularly those that need an audit trail.

I found this book to be a tremendous resource for anyone involved in a batch processing operation. A book that covers this type of material would normally be an excruciating read. The authors have done a fantastic job of injecting some life, humor, and practical insights into this subject and have created a very palatable technical read.  Doing a search of this book on the internet, I found that it is priced quite high. Sometimes in excess of $100. Oddly, I also found that the pdf is available for free download on a few sites.  If you have any interest in this topic, I highly recommend downloading and reading this book.

I likely would never have read a biography on Benjamin Franklin, if not for Walter Isaacson. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed his biographies on Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo DaVinci, I felt compelled to give this one a shot. It did not disappoint. I learned a great deal about Benjamin Franklin as well as a great deal about the formation of the United States.

Growing up in America when I did, the only stories I heard about Benjamin Franklin were that he was involved with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and that he flew a kite in a thunderstorm. Hooray for public grade schools! I did often wonder why a guy who was never president, made it on the face of a $100 bill and a half dollar coin. There must be more to his story. There is in fact, much more.

Franklin was born in what is now Boston. It was also called Boston when he was born, but it was in British America. Franklin had an older brother named James who was a fairly successful printer. As a youth, Benjamin was to apprentice with his older brother. His brother taught him the trade for a couple of years, but Franklin yearned to publish his own work. His brother did not allow this, so he fled to Philadelphia. Leaving an apprenticeship at that time was somewhat illegal. It was, however, also difficult to track someone down during that time. Franklin arrived in Philadelphia at 17 and used the skills acquired from working at his brother’s printshop to gain work. He then went to work in a printing shop in London for a few years before returning to Philadelphia.

Printing is where Franklin received his initial wealth and notoriety. He printed the Pennsylvania Gazzette and the Poor Richard’s alamanac. He often wrote stories and articles for his publications using assumed identities. His persuasive and often humor-laced writing was as responsible for his success as his printing and business skills. I found it quite interesting that one of the issues at the time of Franklin’s newspaper publishing was that of vaccination. Smallpox was taking many lives at the time. Franklin’s only legitimate son, Francis, died of the disease at only four years old. There was debate in Franklin’s newspaper and the competing papers of the time as to whether to vaccinate against smallpox. This appears to parallel our recent Covid controversy.

Franklin’s success in publishing afforded him the time and resources to pursue his varying interests. One of his prime interests was creating a better life for his fellow man. He created an organization called Junto to help that aim. Its members gathered regularly to do what they could to aid society. The result was public libraries and volunteer fire departments. That’s right, Ben Franklin invented the public library. He had a voracious appetite for reading books. He had very little formal education, but was a very intelligent man – especially for his time.  His knowledge gained through reading books opened up opportunities for him and he felt that others should also benefit. A book was likely quite a luxury to the common man of his era, so it is probably incalculable the impact that this single creation of a lending library had on the world. Other than personal experience, there was no other way to learn about the world at that time. He is also the primary founder the University of Pennsylvania.

Franklin was constantly tinkering. Pondering the properties of waves in the ocean and lightning in the air. Back in his time, very little was understood about electricity. Franklin came up with the first theories of current flow. If anyone has ever taken a circuits theory class, you are told to follow the current path from + to -. This is not actually correct as the much lighter electrons (negatively charged) actually flow towards the protons (positively charged) particles, but there was no way to know this at the time.

This convention still works in DC circuit analysis and is employed in all electrical engineering courses taught today, despite the actual flow being counter. This stems from his famous kite experiment, through which Franklin came up with the lightning rod that is still employed on homes and buildings to this day.

Franklin, like many people, needed eyeglasses to see properly. At one point he had a set of glasses for reading and another for when he was going about his daily activities. Being a practical man, he instructed his eyeglass maker to cut the lenses of each in half. He put the top half of his regular use glasses above the half lense of his reading glasses. When he looked forward, he was looking through his regular glasses and when he looked down, he was looking through his reading glasses. This is how he invented the world’s first bifocals.

Franklin became one of the first postmasters in America. He devised methods for considerably shortening delivery times of mail and also benefitted his publishing business by controlling its delivery system. He eventually sold the rights to his publishing business and could have lived a very nice life without another day of work. This, however, would have gone against his nature. Franklin certainly enjoyed his leisure time, but remaining idle would go against his personal motto of living to improve himself and his fellow man. Given the time he lived in, he felt as though he would be a good intermediary between the colonial states and England. At the time England was increasing taxes at almost every opportunity. He saw that things were reaching a boiling point and spent significant time in England trying to smooth things over and prevent a war. With England unwilling to compromise, Franklin saw that war was imminent. At this point, he could have lived a gentleman’s life in England, but instead he recruited the French to help with the pending war against Britain. He secured funding, troops, and ships from the French. There was probably no way the colonies would have won the war against England without this.

As England realized they were going to lose the colonies, Franklin again negotiated Independence for the United States and peace between England, France, and the US. He did this as an 82-year-old man with gout and kidney stones. If he was a younger man, perhaps he would have been the first US president. His is the only signature on all the documents responsible for creating the United States – the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Alliance, Amity, and Commerce with France (1778), the Treaty of Peace between England, France, and the United States (1782), and the Constitution (1787). He also helped draft both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

I was struck by how much time the American-born Franklin spent in England. He spent two jaunts of 10 and 15 years living there, including the last 15 years of his marriage. His wife passed away after not having seen her husband for 15 years! He did not even attend her funeral. It seems that Franklin was master at maintaining friendly relationships, but quite disastrous at maintaining close, personal relationships. He left his brother Jame’s apprenticeship, which created a rift. James died at just 38 years old. His relationship with his son William was extremely strained for most of their adult lives. Franklin basically left him nothing in his will and barely communicated with him in the last years of his life. They also choose opposite sides during the Revolutionary war, with William being imprisoned for his taking the side of the British. Franklin only seemed to keep a close personal relationship with one person. Temple was the illegitimate son of Franklin’s illegitimate son William. He did maintain a lifelong relationship with his daughter Sarah, but she maintained his household after the death of his wife, so it may have been out of practicality that he maintained it.

Franklin saw a world based on the middle class and drafted the Constitution with the aim that people earn what they are entitled to based on work and merit, not on birth rite. He was born from almost nothing and ended up being a founder of the most powerful country on earth. He was the exemplification of what it should mean to be an American and that is why his face appears on the $100 bill.

 

This is another book that my childhood friend and former neighbor, Randall, recommended. It is a very interesting read. The gist of the book is that we are all one. Dishonesty, hate, and underhandedness ultimately effects everyone. The purpose of life is to live for others. The principles of this book marry neatly with most religions. I am not an expert on religions, but I do not see where any of the teachings create a conflict with the basic principles of any established religions. It does suggest, however, that some of the biggest religions have been somewhat corrupted over time and some of the original teachings have been somewhat distorted. I cannot really argue with that. Televangelists, cult leaders, and religious extremists have certainly done damage to society under the guise of the supposed word of God.

The basics of this book are aimed at improving society. There are instructions in some of the chapters that outline techniques for establishing truths and assigning scores to people and things. Scores less than 200 are perceived as detrimental to society, and scores greater than 200 are perceived as beneficial to society. The scale is described as ranging from 1-1000, and is said to be logarithmic. This scoring system made me question some passages in the book. This book was originally published in 1995 and the copy I have was printed in 2012. It has had several additions, yet there are some glaring mathematical errors in it. I would think they would have been discovered by now.  The author shows “three-hundred to the tenth power” in figures as ten to the three hundredth power. There are also “scores” for famous people, many of whom are deceased. I may have missed something, but I do not understand how someone, like Einstein, for example, can be assigned a score forty years after his passing.

I also find it a little strange that the author rates certain music, such as heavy metal, as detrimental to society. Everything categorized as heavy metal is bad for society? The book details how to actually score, or using the author’s terminology, calibrate, people and things. This act requires a partner. I have yet to try it out. I do like much of what I read in this book, but am pretty skeptical about the calibration process. I have not actually tried it, so I will not officially knock it until I have.

Overall this book is great for promoting positivity over negativity and for promoting living your life in a moral and just manner. Spread joy, love, and compassion. It has an endorsement from Mother Teresa herself, on the back cover. I found the science mentioned in this book to be a little hand-wavy, but the overall message is so overwhelmingly positive, that I recommend it as a good read.

This is the third Walter Isaacson biography I have read. The previous two were Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein. All were extremely well-written and I found them quite easy to read these books for long periods of time.

Everyone seems to be familiar with Leonardo da Vinci. Many often just refer to him as da Vinci. This is not really proper. His name was Leonardo and he was from Vinci – a municipality of Florence, Italy. Da Vinci just means from Vinci in Italian.

Many are familiar with his painting of the Last Supper.

Many may or may not be aware that this is painted on a church wall and is approximately 28 feet x 15 feet. It was done at a time when a painter had to make his own paint. Making suitable paint was part of the art form.  At the time Leonardo painted this, he was not accustomed to painting on plaster, which is what the wall this was painted on was surfaced with. The oil-based paint that Leonardo preferred, did not adhere well to it and he was face with many challenges, not just in designing and painting this enormous scene, but also on getting it to adhere to this unfamiliar surface. Leonardo typically preferred to paint on walnut planks.

There is a very amusing story related to this painting.  Ludovico Sforza  was the Duke of Milan who was financing Leonardo’s work. Leonardo was well known to procrastinate on many of his commissions and one of the head Monks at the church began to berate Leonardo about his lack of progress at one point. Leonardo explained to the Duke that the creative process can be lengthy, and even when it appears he is not working, he is contemplating the painting. He said that he was currently contemplating the face of Judas to be used and he suggested that the next one to hound him will have his likeness used for Judas. The Duke found this quite humorous and the monks found this to be an adequate deterrent to further hassling Leonardo.

Leonardo is of course also known for painting the Mona Lisa.

This painting resides in the Louvre and is painted on a poplar panel. If it were sold, it would likely be valued at close to a billion dollars. At first glance, it is just a woman in an armchair, but the more you look, the more you see. The background is actually a beautiful outdoor scene with mountains, trees, and flowing rivers. Her hair has very detailed curls and she is wearing transparent veil. Her clothing and face imply a light source to one side of her. Her clothing has every stitch, pleat, and wrinkle, flawlessly represented. There is also something about the expression on her face that makes you wonder what she is thinking. It is rumored that Leonardo had entertainers present while she was posing so that her overall mood was jovial and attentive. The unusual story of this painting is that it was commissioned by a silk merchant and Lisa is his wife, or wife-to-be. The silk merchant was not a pauper, by any means, but when this painting was started, Leonardo was known to have declined commissions from very wealthy royals. Why has he chosen to paint the wife of a silk merchant? What is even stranger, is that he never gave this painting to the silk merchant. He carried it with him for many years, constantly updating it. It was still one of his possessions when he passed away.

Leonardo’s next most recognizable piece of art is the Vitruvian man.

This work is a product of Leonardo’s exhaustive study of the human form. Leonardo was fascinated by human anatomy and spent years studying, drawing, and measuring bodies. At first, it was believed that he was just trying to get the most accurate representations of the human form in his paintings, but it became more of medical study. Leonardo dissected many bodies and made highly detailed drawings of bones, nerves, organs, and muscles.

Of all the body parts, the heart seemed to fascinate him the most. He analyzed it in deceased humans as well as in live pigs. He was fascinated with how the valves of the heart operated. After a lengthy analysis, he determined that the upper valves of the heart operated by utilizing the swirling currents of blood to open and close the valve. Up until 1960, the operation of the upper valves of the heart was not believed to be connected to swirling currents, but simply to the presence or absence of blood in the chamber. In 1960 experiments were devised to precisely determine how the heart valves worked. It turns out Leonardo was correct. Leonardo died in 1519. It took medical science over 400 years to catch up to his knowledge of how the heart worked. Leonardo created hundreds of incredibly detailed drawings and studies of the human anatomy, but he never published any of them!  Many of his discoveries had to wait hundreds of years until someone else discovered them to become part of human knowledge. Had he published his works, he likely would have advanced medicine by many decades.

It is probably well known that Leonardo was left-handed. During his time as an apprentice artist and his time as a master with his own apprentices, he often collaborated on work.  This, coupled with the fact that no one signed their work back in Leonardo’s time, makes identifying some of the artwork from his era difficult to attribute. Being left-handed makes it easy to rule out paintings done by right-handed painters. Experts can readily identify which hand was used to paint by the brushstrokes.  There is one painting that has virtually equal numbers of experts claiming it is by Leonardo’s hand and experts claiming it is not. La Belle Ferroniere is a beautiful portrait that was certainly created by a left-handed painter in Leonardo’s lifetime. To me, everything appears to use his technique and style, with the exception of the hair. Leonardo would normally put much more detail into a model’s hair. Perhaps Leonardo painted the majority of the painting and an apprentice completed the hair? It certainly would help to simplify things if artists signed their work in Leonardo’s time! This painting is owned and displayed by the Louvre, which attributes it to Leonardo.

Leonardo spent the last years of his life as the royal painter, engineer, and architect for King Francis I, who was said to have adored Leonardo. It is reputed that he died in the arms of the king.

 

 

 

 

A Tale of Two Cities, other than the Bible, is probably the oldest book I have read. It was originally released a chapter at a time in a serial publication in 1859. It is broken up into three “books” and is set during the time of the French revolution. The first “book” was very captivating and well-written. The characters are not too numerous and they are described in amazing detail.

The story starts with an 18 year-old woman (Lucie) being informed that her father, whom she has never met and believed to be long dead, is alive and has been in captivity for nearly the entirety of her life. He had been held in a dark recess of Bastille and was forced to make shoes for his entire captivity. When first found, Alexandre Manette, has lost all ability to socially interact. He had previously been a physician prior to his incarceration, but no longer bears any resemblance to his former self. The author does an amazing job of describing the doctor, the place he is found, and his mannerisms. It is some of the best writing I have ever read.

The doctor is then brought back from France to England to recover. He lives with his daughter Lucie and makes very good progress at regaining his former self. Beyond the first book, the author begins adding characters without enough development and makes large jumps (five years) in the timeline.  Lucie also appears to have a daughter named Lucie. It took several times of re-reading passages to distinguish the two whenever the name “Lucie” was mentioned in the second half of the book. The author makes almost no attempt to give the reader a means to distinguish the two and at first I thought “little Lucie” was a reference to Lucie in a flashback.

In the end Lucie finds a husband who is brought to trial twice and is eventually sentenced to death for being an aristocrat. At the last moment he is replaced in his jail cell by a character named Sydney Carton who has offered to die in his stead.

The first “book” is worthy of all the praise Dickens, the author, has gotten for his work. The rest I found almost unreadable. It was very difficult to finish the last two thirds of this book. The subject matter is all bleak, the characters are just tossed in, one after another, and timelines jump without reason. If this novel interests you, read the first book.  Reading the rest is an exercise in endurance and painful, at best, to finish. It is a shame, because it showed so much promise for the first third.

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that my father has passed away. I wrote about him in a recent article and mentioned that he was ill. His obituary can be found here. Please make every effort to let your loved ones know how much they mean to you. I was fortunate in that I was able to spend a short time with my father before he passed. My father was a lifelong artist, musician, playwright, and author. He spent the last decade of his life devoted to teaching music to others – particularly children. If you wish to make a donation in his honor, please do so here: https://www.savethemusic.org/

My dad lived for music and was teaching and performing well into his 80’s.

Thanks for everything dad.