--The Klingon Dictionary, by Marc Okrand

Time's Person of the Century has turned out to be Einstein.

Not a bad choice; I confess that I hadn't even thought of him when I wrote my last entry on the subject.

What's interesting about Einstein is that his role in history isn't clear-cut; it's hard to say whether he made the world a better place or a worse one. What you can say is that he changed it.

So, Law of Relativity. (It stopped being a "theory" long ago, having been proven experimentally.) Certainly did a lot for science, not to mention our view of the universe in general. Also -- once you took away his own fudge factor -- ultimately led to the conclusion that the universe isn't static, leading to the Big Bang theory (this one is only a theory, sorry)... which is nice for religious folk like myself, as, contrary to the established view until that point, this posits that the universe did have a beginning. Unless you go with the Big Bang/Big Crunch theory... but I digress. (See Stephen Hawking's excellent A Brief History of Time for more on both sides of that. Then read Gerald Schroder's Genesis and the Big Bang, if you can find it.)

On the other hand, you have Einstein as a driving force behind America's development of the atomic bomb. Which some would claim was a good thing, and some would claim was a catastrophe. Either way, ever since Hiroshima, nuclear weaponry has been an important factor in just about every aspect of world affairs. There might have been a forty-year staring contest between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. even without the Bomb, but it wouldn't have taken quite the same form, I don't think.

Then again, history has never been my strong point, so maybe I shouldn't even be typing about any of this at all. But, still, what I like about Einstein, in a way, is that all of his accomplishments are shrouded in ambiguity; no, defined by ambiguity. In a way, that's what Relativity is all about: the contention that there is no one absolute way of looking at things, and that any given perspective is as true as another. If you've read this journal for any length of time, you might not be surprised that this appeals to me.

(It is quite possible that I am confusing "relativity" and "special relativity" above. I can never remember which said what, and I'm not inclined to look it up right now. Sorry.)

It seems distinctly unlikely that she's coming out with five novels simultaneously, especially without hardcover printings, so I can only assume that this is something else. Maybe a series of diaries or something? I wonder.

This is of particular interest to me, because, with the exception of her latest work, Ramona's World, I've read every single book of Cleary's ever published. (Although I also haven't yet seen the new illustrations for the reprint of Hullabaloo ABC, come to think of it.) In fact, I originally accomplished this back in 1992, at which point, in my first-ever letter to a Famous Person, I wrote her a letter to tell her so, and to thank her.

And, to my surprise and delight -- nay, rapture -- she wrote back. And asked for some more infomation about me. So I wrote back, including some of my writings. And she wrote back, suggesting that I consider writing a children's book. And I wrote back. And she wrote back. And then that was it.

I keep thinking that I ought to write her again. Goodness knows, I have things to tell her. I haven't written a children's book, or even tried to, but I have spent seven summers writing a camp newsletter, and I have gone to college as an English major, and I've been writing, and so on.

And, trust me, I think about her advice every now and then. When one of your favorite authors -- who's won virtually every award there is to win in the field -- suggests that you write a children's book, you take the suggestion seriously. On the other hand, storytelling really isn't my strong point...

In a nutshell, I finished the third book over Shabbos. And while, after the second, I'd planned to continue developing the analysis I started after reading the first one -- and I may eventually do so -- I'm not in the mood to do so right now. The third one is simply too good for me to complain about it. Much better plotted than the first two, and the first two weren't exactly shabby in that regard.

Columbine, incidentally, is annoyed about the fact that, as she puts it, the books have been translated from British to American. For some reason, she finds it offensive that an American publisher, in accepting a book for publication in America, would not immediately throw its style guide out the window, but would instead insist on printing the thing in (shudder) American English. The horror.

I should probably elaborate on why I don't think that position holds water, but I don't think it's really necessary; it's all pretty much implied in my previous paragraph. I'd be interested in looking at the British edition for comparative purposes, but that's not because I think it's any better, and I certainly don't think the American version has been "dumbed down."

As it happens, I've noticed the occasional stray Britishism (e.g., Harry was able to "eat whatever he fancied" on page 49 of the third book; given my druthers, I would have changed the last word to "wanted," or perhaps "liked"), but they're not too jarring, so I'm not about to complain.

I guess not.