Blogtrotter

Book Meme Award?

Credit or blame Stephen McEvoy over at "Book Reviews & More." My circle of trusted blogmates who I can "award" in turn as I've been rewarded by my Canadian counterpart may be too narrow! None of the six I ferreted out last month after "Bo" over at "The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast" and "The Cantos of Mvtabilitie" tagged me (see last month's "Tagging" entry for details) appeared to have taken the byte bait. So, I don't want to burden them with more unwanted taps. I can barely find five now.

If Chris B. (Leader of the Pack), my dear wife (CasaMurphy USA), Coyote (Coyote-BlueJay), or Tony (Ecopunks) won't take me up on last month's belated challenge, well, maybe they will on this month's pursuit. "Bo" might, as a confessed bibliomancer. As "Bo" noted to me after tagging me, this spontaneous divination works wonders. But I'm only bugging them at this discreet distance. And Miss T, since she's back in blogspot.com style (now débuting her Templeton Chronicles).

From Mr. McEvoy, here's the explanation:

The Rules:
Pass this on to 5 blogging friends. Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56. Write the 5th sentence, as well as two to five sentences following that.

And my dutiful excerpt, very first book at arm's reach. Had to be the second, as the first was one I'd just reviewed, "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess," full of diagrams, so only five sentences the whole page. Bigger tome hoisted, I started five sentences down, and copy the rest of the paragraph.

"Yet a helium nucleus really does weigh less than four protons, despite being composed of heavier particles. We are forced once again to remember that we are in the realm where quantum physics and its associated effects dominate, and the solution lies here. It is true that if we can measure the mass of a proton on its own is slightly less than that of a neutron, but the substance particles are not free. In a helium nucleus they are bound together by the strong nuclear force and are less free to move. The creation of these between subatomic particles releases energy and we measure a drop in the mass." ("Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Brian May, Patrick Moore, Chris Linott. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. Pg. 56!)

P.S. Spousal Synchronicity Syzygy: I realize that "bibliomancy" produces no fitting image. Neither does "spontaneous divination." Complaining aloud, my wife heard me. (She also suggested googling "girl reading bible" after a few discouraging keywords failed to conjure up my eidetic image.

She told me, to my surprise, that similar to her writing about eucalyptus the same time I was last month, she'd been working on a blog piece about none other than spontaneous divination-- that very afternoon! She sent me a paragraph to prove it. It's true.

Here's her amazing entry confirming again our forking paths, our winding roads that lead back from labyrinths towards each other. She does make me happy, and I try to do the same in my fumbling, bookish, introverted, clumsy gait. Read her reflections: "Semiotics".

Photo: Walter Sanders. Blind Girl Reading a Braille Version of the Bible. Life Magazine, Sept. 1956.