On "Deep Time" by David Darling ***

Darling sets out to write the history of the universe from start to finish, in which man among that history is but a blip. Even so, man does ends up with a much larger role that perhaps time itself warrants, because, after all, we are the ones reading and writing and theorizing this history.

We start with the big bang, an event for which there seems no logical first cause. The next several chapters then focus on one particle, as it comes into being and as it works its way around this fledgling universe. Darling points out how much happens in those first few seconds but how, in a sense, because of that, time really is different at this point, wherein things are so condensed.

Darling does his best to keep things simple. Unfortunately, writing about such a wide span of time in such a short work means that there's a certain glossiness to the whole, a blurriness, such that at times I found my attention waining. It didn't help that I read the work online as an ebook. I think reading in print, taking a bit more time and being a bit more comfortable, would have made the reading experience better and thus the book better.

Although Darling admits that the universe would seem to need some sort of physical law for the components to work as they do--for positive and negative to exist and attract one another--he mostly keeps to a naturalistic view of everything. When we finally get to Earth and the formation of life, we are given the story of the primordial soup from which life springs. And then, for a heartbeat, we see man emerge.

After man's emergence, Darling spends most of the rest of the book talking about the spaceship Voyager, as it wanders out of the galaxy and into the wide universe. What happens to it as the years pass and as the universe itself continues to expand. Eventually, the stars start to go out. A few black holes swallow up vast swaths of the universe, but still other parts continue to wander aimlessly, cut loose from their suns and centers, until they too fall apart and return to their particulate state.

Another option, the one now less popular, Darling also explores, that the universe is not ever expanding, that it is limited, like a balloon, and so at some point begins to contract. This idea gets shorter attention.

Darling ends with a pull toward Eastern philosophy, but with a Western slant. He hypothesizes how many himself could change the universe, especially insofar as the observer is never really separate from what is observed. We are part of the universe itself. Our mind is the universal mind. It seems a happy note to go out on, even if the picture of dead stars wandering and disintegrating add infinitum is a rather dreary future to look out upon.

On “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson ***

This is the first in a list of westerns I intend on reading, a genre I've read little of. Jackson's book probably doesn't come to mind when one thinks of western tropes, I suppose, but it's set in the Old West, so I'm calling it one. It's a love story of sorts, but really, it's a screed meant to defend Native Americans and shame white America for its treatment of them. Jackson wrote a nonfiction work on a similar subject, got little traction, and so wrote this novel, which proved a success in terms of popularity but judging from history did little to change the tide of what was actually happening.

The work is about Native Americans and the manner in which they are mistreated by the white Americans moving into California. It centers around the person of Ramona, a half-Indian gal, but the story starts off being about Senora Moreno and her ranch, which her son runs in name but which she technically has control of. (I'm about to summarize the happenings, so avoid reading on if you don't want the work spoiled for you.) The Morenos are Mexicans who lost a huge chunk of land to white settlers as well. Juan Can, the main helper on the ranch is growing old and broken, and one day Felipe goes to help him, gets a heat stroke, and is in grave condition. In steps Alessandro, an Indian, who has been requisitioned to help with the sheep shearing. He suggests the Felipe sleep under the stars, like the Indians. The treatment works wonders.

Meanwhile, Ramona falls for Alessandro, even as she once had an interest in Felipe. Senora Moreno opposes this love affair. Ramona shall not marry an Indian, as that is below her station, but at the same time, she would never be able to marry Filipe, because he is above hers. One wonders who would possibly be appropriate, since she is half-Indian and half-white. Moreno threatens to send Ramona to the nuns and also to cut off her inheritance. (It turns out that her father had left her a large dowry. Senora Moreno agreed to take Ramona in when Moreno's sister, who had keep the the gal, died. There is no love for her, however.)

Ramona runs off. Alessandro is a leader among his people and fairly well off, but the Indians of Temucula, whom he brings her to, it turns out, have been kicked off their land. The U.S. government doesn't recognize their property rights, and white Americans are moving in. Alessandro and Ramona flee to San Pasqual, where the same thing happens again.

Flustered and angry, the couple move to the high mountains, where the trails are difficult to navigate. At last, they should find piece. But the couple's baby grows sick, a white doctor offers no real help, and Alessandro goes crazy. Eventually, the leads him to mistake another man's horse for his own and he is shot as a horse thief.

Meanwhile, Senora Moreno dies. Filipe regrets letting Alessandro and Ramona be sent away, so he goes in search for them, which is complicated by the fact that they covered their tracks (even changing Ramona's name) so as not to be caught. It is shortly after Alessandro's death that he finds Ramona and brings her back to his ranch to take care of. He admits his love for her and marries her. He also concludes that California is no longer a good place for people of his ethnic background, so he sells out to Americans and heads to Mexico to live.

The work is in many ways very melodramatic, reminding me a bit of the plays one sees at Old West amusement parks.