Gulliver's Travels.. In the Amazon Rainforest?

Howdy! Just checking out a new feature today! From Amazon, and if you would like to buy the item, please do on this website! I thought it was handy, and it benefits the writers! Thanks everyone. I've got a nice post up my sleeve for later.

Followers and contributors; and recent archaeological discoveries

As of today, we have 6 followers. If we get more, Theo and I will consider opening up posting privileges to others. We can have as many as 100 people with posting privileges. What do you think? Do we have 100 people in our family-and-friends network that we can persuade to read Gulliver's Travels and to post? I can think of five right away: Sarah Durfor, who reads all the time; Rachel Durfor, who runs an on-line book review service; Mary, who reviews books almost every day, and is a terrific writer; Frances, who is working on a book of her own; and John, who would find a way to reproduce Liliputian recipes in his comments. Can you imagine the proportions? "1 ml water; 1 pinchinho of salt (pinchinho is the Liputian term for "pinch").

And here's the startling news that my title promises: Bulgarian archeologists working on Liliput recently unearthed a 1754 decree on a market stele that established an official measure for a pinchinho: 100 pinchinhininhos. We don't yet know what a pinchinhininho is. But clearly Lipiput was already on a metric system of some sort. Think of it: it took England 150 more years to catch up to Liliput! And the US still sadly lags in establishing a metric system.

Health

I seriously question the civility of the Lilliputians when they chain Lemuel Gulliver to a large building on the outskirts of their capital city, and then do not let him leave his building to relieve himself! (Yes I know, disgusting topic.) He must go the farthest away from the spot where he lays and sits, then.. relieves himself. At least let the man go outside! The smell must be revolting!


However, I do believe in the cause of this confinement. Lemuel has himself admitted occasional treacherous feelings towards the small folk. The power he has over people that are only six inches tall, it's a feeling that is very common in contemporary standards. Let's say in a hypothetical scenario that you are placed in front of an accumulation of groveling persons. Let us also (no offense) suppose that you are a slightly corrupt or wicked person. What would you do? The difference is that he is interested, and works in a kind way with the little folk, for he is ultimately interested in their ways and who they are (and a little afraid!).

This book reflects much upon the modern world. The longing for discovery, the surprise of discovery, and the feelings of fear. It's in a way a syllogism (a Greek philosophical three-step thought process).

If all people are analytical , and Lemuel is a person, then he's automatically curious.

Starboard! Port! Whiskey!

So I have finally been fortunate enough to receive my copy of Gulliver's Travels after many incidents of large flocks of ostriches, rabid hyenas, and a very large newt, here I am! Anyway, enough excuses (I'll save those for later), to the book!

Lemuel Gulliver, a man of no acclaim or fortune looking for adventure around every corner, is a well educated man, under his main study of becoming a surgeon, he takes navigation, physics, and other skills required for navigating the open seas. After the failure of his many practices in the London area, and also the inability to decide whether to settle down with his family or go out to sea (Brett Favre!), Lemuel chooses, admirably (after many of his jobs on ships in the past had not proved very successful), to follow his dream one last time. He received an opportune offer from Captain William Prichard, captain of the Antelope, on May 4th, 1699. The voyage was interrupted by a disasterous storm which drove the vessel to the north-west. Two thirds of the crew was dead, and the other six were on the eve of loss. The boat which Lemuel had sailed on was cast into a large boulder and soon found itself underneath the ocean waves. But where Lemuel Gulliver found himself was quite astounding, and a little surprising.

When he awoke, what a sight he must have been! For his hair was tied up in tiny little bundles of string, and his body lay inanimate, tied in rope, against the beach of the unknown island he was attending.

The experience I would have if I ever would have come upon this mysterious land of Liliput, as little sensations of movement moved up my body to my torso and eventually head and neck, would have been bewildering. What could this be? Hermit crabs? Insects? Nematoads? Then a little man, not 6 inches tall!, pops his head up in sight. Not only would I question my sanity, but also I would feel inclined to ask the question, "How many would fit in my stomach?".

Lemuel had too felt the need to ponder these theories, but did what every great explorer could do, and decided to ask for nourishment! "After all! These were the beaches I was shipwrecked onto! I deserve some right for delicious meat! No matter how small! And do not forget the wine!", I imagine he would have spoke this if English was the common language.

The fair little people of Liliput understood he was parched and starved, so they brought to him draughts of wine (quite ingenious fellows, crafting food and drink for a creature so many times larger than themselves) and pebble sized pieces of meat. The mysterious people had to explain this to Gulliver after, but, they treated his wine with a sleeping potion, and while he was sedated the Liliputians crafted up the most magnificent contrapition to move him to their capital city (if only America could find a contraption to move Sarah Palin away!).

Reading Gulliver in Gulliver, Michigan

A strange coincidence, too wonderful to call a mere accident: on Jim and my recent trip from Chicago to Moose Maple Cottage, I started to read Gulliver's Travels in Gulliver, Michigan. In the late evening light, as Jim and I drove along US 2, a cross-peninsula highway that winds through forest and along rivers, I pulled out my laptop and loaded chapter 1. Gulliver in Gulliver: the little town shelters 200 people, along two streets that run along the shores of Lake Gulliver. Somewhere in the lake, as we slowed for the yellow caution light, a loon voiced its haunting cry; along Minneapolis Street, a few shoppers, strangely diminutive North Woods denizens, furtively slipped in and out of stores. Indeed, as Jim remarked, the whole town appeared to be a tiny replica of a village, with traffic signs so small that we couldn't read the print and streets so narrow that we had to drive across town with the left tires on US 2 and the right on Minneapolis St. Jim glanced at the gas gauge to confirm that we needed fuel; he pulled into a BP station, but only after I had gotten out of the car to read the sign by kneeling down and peering closely. As we drove up, Jim asked me to get out and guide him to the gas pump. Since we couldn't fit under the canopy, Jim simply straddled the station. At first the attendant ran into the nearby woods, but I coaxed him back to the station by waving my Visa card high above my head, to show that we meant no harm and only sought peaceful commerce. At first puzzled about how we would get gas from the tiny pump. so larger than a thimble, into the towering car, the attendant soon solved the problem by the most ingenious solution. He had noticed that the Big Gulps that Jim and I had bought in Escanaba had straws that would neatly fit onto the gas nozzle and extend the hose far enough to reach the gas tank. But in order to lift the two giant straws into place, he had to move his wrecker alongside the car and raise the knuckle boom to its full 36" height in order to fill the tank. After he turned on the pump, he emptied his station's four tanks into Jim's Toyota, each tank adding a gallon to the car's fuel. After an hour's pumping, he disassembled the extension straws and asked for my Visa card. Since my card weighed nearly two ounces, enough to crush the attendant, I helped him by reading the numbers as he punched them into his keyboard. But then we confronted the most difficult problem of all. How was I to sign the receipt, which was smaller than my fingernail? In this instance, again, the attendant demonstrated that the little people of Gulliver possessed the greatest ingenuity. Ducking out of the station, he walked quickly to a tiny cage by the side of his house, and opened it to reveal a miniature porcupine. Working quickly so as to avoid the animal's sharp spines, he extracted a quill. Under the overhead light of the station, I dipped the quill into a tiny can of red touch-up paint, then, in my best microscopic script, I signed the receipt. And, with a hearth farewell, the attendant sent us spinning off into the night.

"Well," said Jim, "small world! Imagine the chances of your opening Gulliver's Travels to the first chapter and finding yourself in Gulliver.!"

Shipping out!

Here on the Western Slope, on the skirts of the world's largest flattop mountain, the Grand Mesa, all voyages -- even a ten-minute trip to the Post Office -- happen in a fantastic landscape. Living and visiting on such a terrain inspired Theo and Joe to ask a question: How have authors of voyages in imaginary worlds mapped their ways? We propose to begin our own journey with reading Jonathan Swift's Gullver's Travels. As we read, we'll comment, upload maps of Gulliver's voyages, deposit images of his adventures, and discover the past and present meaning of this "most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions." Some may think that imaginary voyages are the idle play of people with too much time on their hands. We think otherwise. Here's Jonathan Swift's take on books about imaginary trips to far-off places: "I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other." So put aside Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Lessing's Shikasta and ship out with us.