If feathered, how I'd fly

I have been off the wider internet for almost five days, so if anything of particular interest happened this last week that would not upset me to know about, please link.

I am in Somerville. I have a political commitment in just about an hour. I am very tired, but mostly what I need to do is make eye contact and take notes and I believe I can manage that.

I have been alternating the afternoon between catching up on work and re-reading children's books, like Ursula Vernon's Castle Hangnail (2015) and Eleanor Cameron's Mr. Bass's Planetoid (1958). The latter has the worst illustrations of all the Mushroom Planet books, but is otherwise my favorite of the series and has been as far back as I can remember. I realized some time ago that I associate Cameron with Diane Duane not just because I read The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954) around the same time as So You Want to Be a Wizard (1983) but because they both write beautifully about science and space and time, making the laws of physics as weird and powerful as mythology. So one of my favorite passages from Planetoid has always been this quick tutorial in atomic theory, against a backdrop of cosmic rays and dapper mad science:

"But what a funny way to say it," put in Chuck. "How could the world unravel?"

David stared at the table. For it was turning, in this instant, into a mass of dancing particles, as though insects hummed in a net. Those particles were atoms, tiny blurs of energy that were knit together into the wood of the table; there it was (David blinked), hard to the touch, yet really a collection of infinitely small spinning worlds of furious activity. Think of that! Everything—salt, sugar, vinegar, milk, metal, glass, wood or flesh—everything you could see or smell or touch was made of atoms, blurs of energy knit together into whatever you were seeing or smelling or touching.

And Mr. Brumblydge's Brumblitron—if it went out of control—might unknit all this; energy would be released all over the place, and the world would light up like a nova, or new star, and then disappear completely.

Or this lesson in meteorites through the lens of dapper mad scientist Prewytt Brumblydge himself, encountering a chunk of the mysterious element he's named after himself (he names all his discoveries and inventions after himself) in Tyco Bass' basement, where he sort of has a right to be:

In a second his pain was forgotten. "Ah," he breathed in delight, and reached out to touch the lumpy little thing, slightly smaller than the one he had found, dark iron-colored, and with one side cut and polished smooth until it shone. But not grayish-silver as do most cut and polished meteorites. No, this strange metal gleamed a warm, coppery gold with a hint of green in it, the same as his own piece of Brumblium. And traced across its face were those mysterious hieroglyphics which are the visible memories of every meteor's early life in the molten heart of an ancient planet—a planet that cooled slowly for millions of years and then exploded in some catastrophic collision that sent its debris drifting forever about our solar system.

But she can shift registers effortlessly from science fiction to science fantasy, as here in a tense moment on a speck of an island in the Outer Hebrides with Prewytt who does not yet know what it means that he could read without a second thought the absolutely non-human scratches and sigils of Tyco's Random Jottings:

When David and Chuck came to the chasm and stared over, they could not believe what they saw. For little Mr. Brumblydge was climbing rapidly straight down the rocky wall toward that place where his precious paper was caught by some twig or twisted vine. Where he found crevices to put his feet or ledges to cling to with his fingers, they could not see. It was as though he were not human, but some elf or troll with the magic gift of clinging to nothing. Not human! Not human! But then he wasn't, was he? came into David's head. No, he was a spore person.

Oh, but born into the world of humans with the breath of this world in his blood. For now suddenly he must have missed his step—for his hands flew out, his white face turned upward, glimmering in the darkness, he gave a brief, sharp cry—and then backwards he went—and was seen no more.

That line about the breath of this world has always haunted me, which I suppose is apparent. I worry sometimes that I am just a collection of childhood references and once you recognize all of them, there's no reason to talk to me.

It is probably not true. And even if it is, I should give this cat on my lap one last pet and go try to make this world I live in a better place, without blowing it up if I can.