Mrs. Tim of the Regiment 1

• 
  The author D. E. Stevenson wrote this in 1934 to tell the daughter of a friend what it was like to be married to an officer in a Highland Regiment. However, the version I read was copyrighted in 1940 by Farrar & Rinehart. This shows the condition of Hester Christie, one not at the top of the social heap, in the form of a daily journal for six months. She has two children Betty and Bryan, two servants and a cook, a husband who is concerned with his possibilities of advancement, and her husband's superior, Major Morley, who might be hiding a romantic interest in her, but she (and we) can really tell. Hestor is concerned with others, smiling and pleasant, and wins a cheer at a children's party when they appreciate that she is going away with her husband to western Scotland for several years.
• Hester and Tim rub shoulders with the upper class at a point-to-point riding contest where Tim is brought to win honors for the regiment, and later when she goes for a month to northern Scotland with her neighbor, to be squired by her neighbor's innocent son Guthrie (a naval officer) and Major Morley. Luxury gives her time, and the social constraints give her a set of theaters to manage others, such as rescuing Guthrie from an unsuitably shallow wife.
• I kept thinking of the role of court, in which the king is treated as a baby. The upper classes are given total support, so that the men may go forth and fight, and the women may manage their estates and raise their children. The benefits and responsibility are both great. Those of lower classes, as Hester deals with them in suitable ways, give alliegance and support to them.
• As with the other D. E. Stevenson book, there are occasionally places of skillful discription, especially of the wild places in the Scottish Highlands. An occasional ghost is seen, placidly, and taken in stride, for they are a part of the weight of their surroundings. I doubt that I would sense these places so deaply.

The Changeling Sea 1

SPOILER ALERT! The items discussed here are familiar books that are being re-read for travel. As such, no effort is made to shield the reader from the results of plot development.

• The book was written by Patricia A. McKillup and published by Del Rey in 1988. It deals with a girl Periwinkle (Peri for short) who hexes the Sea because it has taken her father and her mother's attention. This releases a sea dragon (the size of a blue whale), who is confined by an enormous golden chain. The magician Lyo turns the chain to periwinkles, to the horror and anger of the fishermen, who have been dreaming of GOLD, and the dragon begins turning to human shape at nights, and learning to speak. At the same time, Peri meets Kir, the son of the king, who wants the enter the sea the way her mother does, and can not even fall in love with her, for he loves the sea more.
• It turns out that the king loved a Lady of the sea, and then married a lady on land. The two ladies gave birth at the same time, the land lady died, and the children were exchanged. Now, the children want to change back, and Peri and Lyo and the king meet the Lady, who gives back the hexes transformed, and says that she is willing to exchange the children (young men) and Kir agrees to call for Peri when she is an old woman, to invite her to enter the sea.
• This view of sea people contrasts sharply with the view in The Riddle Master of Hed, where the people of the sea take human form and act as assassins, without ever explaining why they are so vicious. The initial view of the sea was hateful, but the differences were mediated.
• Magic is never explained, but the unthinking hexes of Peri were very effective because she had "power".

The English Air

SPOILER ALERT! The items discussed here are familiar books that are being re-read for travel. As such, no effort is made to shield the reader from the results of plot development.

• This book was written by D. E. Stevenson in 1940 and was published by Farrar & Rinehart. It deals with a young cousin of the family whose mother was an English woman and whose father was German, who wooed her and took her to Germany in 1914, where her foreign-ness held back his career and caused him to fall out of love with her. She willed herself to death, and her son repudiated the stain of his English heritage. By 1938, he was a proper young Nazi, when his father had him visit his English cousins to determine what they are like, and whether they would fight in a war.
• The English family is upper-class, and they all appear silly to the stiff German Franz at first. But he sees daughter Winne and son Rob fight one moment, and be friends the next, and hears from Claire who had studied music in Germany that social work is performed by a large unpaid army of social workers, and that Winne handles a troop of Girl Guides.
• However, there is more to all this than social convention. Frank feels increasingly light and young. When he realizes that cousin Wynne looks fragile, but that she can play games all day and dance half the night without turning a hair. "The air of England is very wholesome," said Frank. "Yes," Wynne agreed, "of course it is. You're much fitter than when you came." [This makes Frank think.] The food was amazingly good, of course, but Frank preferred to ascribe his increased weight and fitness to the English air. (page 101) At one point, Cousin Sophie looked up and met Frank's eyes. "Did you enjoy yourself?" she inquired. "Very much," replied Frank. "It was a lovely drive. The English country is very pretty. It has an air of its own." (page 103) [Later, the process was completed.] Frank had surrendered to the kindness of his new friends and for a time he was completely happy. He had never been so happy in his life. They all noticed his changed appearance, his light step, his ready smile, and the gay abandon with which he threw himself into the business of living. "You're looking so much better, dear Frank," Sophie told him. "It's the English air," replied Frank. (page 109)
• The countryside helps. Before Hitler brings all relations crashing down by invading Prague, Frank and Roy go for a tour in western Scotland, and are told of short walk to the village of Inverdrum, but they can not find it after they had ..."walked hard for an hour and a half and there were still no sighs of the 'fine wee town' they came to the conclusion that they were lost. They did not mind much for the hill was a pleasant place to wander, and the air was soft and clear and fragrant. There was no sound save the sudden cry of a bird and the tinkling of water ... water running everywhere. It ran in small rocky channels or hidden between overhanging banks of green grass. There was withered brown heather; there were outcrops of rock; there were bushes of bog myrtle and an occasional bush of gorse with blazing golden flowers. Here and there they came upon treacherous patches of moss, some of it brilliantly green and some of it pale pink like the inside of a seashell." (page 151, 152) I find this writing conveys a strong, pleasing picture to me.
• A shephard directs them to the shoulder of a hill and they see, "a magnificant view. The hill stretched steeply down to the shores of a big sea lock -- a wide expanse of blue water which curved away between the green hills and brown mountains until it was lost to sight. The sun was dipping down into a bank of rosy clouds and the eastern slopes of the hills were faintly shadowed. Below them and a little westwards lay the town which they had been seeking, it was build on the shores of a bay and was sheltered from the winds by rocky promontories. The houses were close upon the edge of the lock, and the waterfront was built up from sea-level with old grey weatherbeaten buildings which looked as if they had been there from time immemorial. A pier ran out into the water, and there was a church spire with a clock; the remainder of the twon consisted of small grey houses and winding streets and one or two villas in patches of green garden. To Frank the place looked like a wood-cut from the fairy tale -- it had an other-worldly air-- and Roy put this feeling into words when he inquired suddenly in a puzzled voice: 'Shall we ba able to buy socks there . . . and handkerchiefs?' 'No,' said Frank, half laughing and half in earnest, 'no Roy, we shall only be able to buy ingredients for a fairy's spell . . . ." Nature points beyond itself, into a land of fairy, or even into a further land of heavenly strength.

Dread Companion II

SPOILER ALERT! The items discussed here are familiar books that are being re-read for travel. As such, no effort is made to shield the reader from the results of plot development.

• This actually stems from a comment by my nephew Hans Ka:rn when he heard that a dowser can dowse a map as well as actual ground: "But this means that anything is possible!" I had to say 'Yes', but I knew that this is not true. Direct evidence comes from Henry Gross and his daughter being able to suppress each other's dowsing reactions. The mental atmosphere rules. Also, the detailed articulation of what is searched for is a wonderfully effective filter of the results.
• The responsibility of being moral about wielding dowsing scares me, and the discussion on how to acquire such skills in reality is something I should be responsible for in speculations here in this blog. I then realized that there are several schools of savants who work together to prevent blocking and to self-regulate their activities. Dread Companion shows three schools; the Beautiful new folk, the Ugly new folk, and the old folk, who generally combat excessive use of dowsing powers. Other books, such as the Talcot Mundy "Jimgrim" series posit a right hand path of scholars and a left hand path. The right hand path works for general good of all, including non-gifted, while the left hand path school works for personal good, and reverts to facism. Sufis and semi-Sufies, such as the followers of Gurdjief, are more modern examples of such schools.
• So, I will let the schools handle the morality problem, and travel elsewhere for a while.