The Observer: The Perfect Read

I was a relatively new member of the team or group.

Question: How long did it take to size up whether someone was staying . . .

. "It was about watching them, and watching the organization respond to them. I'll give you an example. We're sitting with a large group of folks, about 40 to 50 [in number] and people are standing up to raise certain issues. And I watched this one executive. People were watching and riveted to him, really listening and engaged.
. And then this other executive spoke, and I watched him address the group, and I watched everyone's eyes. And their eyes went back down to their tables. They couldn't even meet eyes with him. It was a clear signal that said, "You've lost us."
. So sometimes you don't know what the messages are that you're going to get, but you have to look for them. They come from your peripheral vision. And that was one of those cases where I just knew it the second it happened."

How Green Is My Valley?--In Summer Time

Some of the fruits and vegetables now being produced in the San Joaquin County area.
Some of the area's top crops and their value:
. Milk $412,643,000
. Grapes $221,807,000
. Walnuts $178,500,000
. Cherries $175,922,000
. Almond meats $175,200,000
. Tomatoes $145,506,000
. Hay $145,970,000
. Cattle, calves $97,788,000
. Corn / grain $69,564,000
. Apples $48,455,000
. Other $495,370,000
.
In other summer news: San Joaquin county area just flipped on the switch for one of the nation's first 4G cellular networks. Significance? 3G speeds ranged from 600 kilobits per second for downloads of web pages up to a max of 1.2 Megabits per second. The 4G speeds (on your smartphones) will give you 3 - 6 Megabits per second with internet pages coming to your cellphone screen almost instantaneously.
. Coming soon: A technology that allows you to complete your debit card purchases in a store by swiping your smartphone in the air above a check-out device that will then approve your purchase, all without touching anything or entering any pin number. It will be a way for phone providers to become providers of transactions like the credit card issuers currently do. Visa and Mastercard now have a reason to worry. Technology will be tested in a couple of locations in the U.S. soon.
. Also, the Corning Glass company recently plowed $160 million into ramping up its production facilities for the manufacture of their patented and secret process for making "Gorilla Glass"--the very same thin but super-strong material that is currently found as the glass screen on smartphones like the iPhone and the Droid phones. Corning expects to quadruple its sales of Gorilla Glass within one year's time. That should have a very definite effect on the stock's share price of $19.00 per share currently. Hmmmm. The symbol for the stock is GLW.
. Have a great Summer!

In Arts Last Week

Top: Patricia Clarkson at the Cafe Loup in the Village, NYC
Middle: A new production of "Madame Butterfly" at Santa Fe Opera
Bottom: A tribute performance to Merce Cunningham in New York roughly titled, "We Give Ourselves Away At Every Moment." (NYTimes)

Images For You

Alfred Dreyfus in 1884. (all photos provided by the New York Times Book Review)




















Two Earlier Novelists: William Somerset Maugham and E. M. Forster



















Soldiers at Roehampton Hospital in London, a center for prosthetic limbs, after World War I.
























A Contemporary Novelist-Lily King

Discovered Poetry--Found Buried Amid The Prose

A dancer who is worshiped as a part-time god,
A female mystic who inhabits a cremation ground
Drinking from skulls,
A sculptor of Hindu idols who believes
He is creating live deities,
A Tibetan monk who enrolls in the Indian Army
In the hope of returning to his homeland,
But ends up killing Pakistanis.

They are survivors from a seductively various world.
Ascetics and mystics,
Mendicant singers and dancers,
Yogic initiates and outcasts.

The nun Prasannamati Mataji is a follower of Jainism.
Mataji’s gentle companion,
Mortally ill with tuberculosis,
Took her own life in the Jain fashion,
Starving herself to death
By stages,
In ritual self-purification.

Mataji is afflicted with the sin
Of intensely missing her.
Mataji has decided to follow the same
Slowly suicidal path,
Although her health is good
And she is still young.

Manisha Ma Bhairavi,
A mystic, worships the demonic god Tara.
She has fled her violent husband
And even deserted her children
To find refuge among sadhus,
Wandering holy men,
In a Bengali cremation ground.
She seeks comfort among other tolerant outcasts
In the goddess’s care.

Ash-smeared and naked,
They sip tea and listen to cricket on the radio.
“It is here, in this place of death,
Amid the skulls and bones and smoking funeral pyres,
That we have found love."
.
[These words, which read as poetry--were discovered amid the statements of a very common form, the book review. They did not reside adjacent to each other but hide among the the ordinary statements of book selling, emerging to be heard only when we listened with the mind's ear. -je] from a review of the book, "Nine Lives," by William Dalrymple and reviewed by Colin Thubron whose next book, "To A Mountain In Tibet" will be published in March (New York Times Book Review dated July 18, 2010)

Atop An Ocean-Drilling Oil Rig

Equipment used to drill for oil under the ocean--a mile deep.

At The Edge of the Earth

The ship contains the orange "Union 76" ball and also the logos for Bank of America and other entities. --from the painting "Ship Shape" by Scott Greene in a gallery exhibition now at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco through Aug. 21. Reviewed by Kenneth Baker in the SF Chronicle Saturday July 17, 2010