Mountain Views News          Saturday, July 5, 2014

B2

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, July 5, 2014 

Jeff’s Book Picks By Jeff Brown


SEAN’S SHAMELESS 

REVIEWS: 

THE ORANGE AND THE DREAM OF CALIFORNIA By DAVID BOULÉ

Juicy with anecdotes and deliciously illustrated. David 
Boul shows and tells readers the history of the Orange -- 
the "Golden Fruit" -- and how it came to be the symbol of 
a dream that is California and a draw for farmers. It even 
became a topic that has even been a continuing story line 
on Mad Men: advertisers who followed the pattern set by 
Sunkist -- to turn a product into a lifestyle. Did you know 
that before Sunkist put its spin on the orange, drinking 
orange juice was barely ever heard of? yep, it all happened 
here in California. The whole country started eating and 
drinking from the big Orange and they just couldn't get 
enough. Boul tells us how and why, and shows us from his 
extensive personal collection of Orangeabilia(color photos, 
postcards, and classic advertisements.) 

THE FOUR AGREEMENTS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERSONAL FREEDOM 
by don Miguel Ruiz

When you get tangled in endless dilemmas -- at home, at work, or with friends -- you need to 
simplify. Don Miguel Ruiz offers the means. In this small book of wisdom, Ruiz, a shaman and 
healer, instructs us in the four agreements that ensure right conduct. Be impeccable with your word, 
Ruiz urges. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best. Through 
this small but potent tract, Ruiz explains how Toltec laws can help us simplify and how they can lead 
us out of everyday snares and into personal freedom.

TIBETAN PEACH PIE: A TRUE ACCOUNT OF AN IMAGINATIVE by Tom Robbins 

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins delivers the long awaited 
tale of his wild life and times, both at home and around the globe.. In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins 
turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, stitching together stories of his unconventional 
life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventures told in his unique voice that 
combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins 
would become over the course of half a century a poet-interruptus, an air force weatherman, a radio 
dj, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counter-culture 
hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters. Robbins 
offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the 
Sixties psychedelic revolution, international roving before homeland security monitored our travels, 
and New York publishing when it still relied on trees. Written with the big-hearted comedy and 
mesmerizing linguistic invention for which he is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the 
private world of a literary legend

By Sean Kayden


HOW TO DRESS WELL

How To Dress Well new album dives into a deep uncertainty. Velvet voice 
singer Tom Krell, who performs under this moniker, returns with third LP, 
“What Is This Heart?” This R&B-induced album is more polished boosting 
higher production values than previous raw recordings. I wasn’t too familiar with his previous 
material, mainly because his music at the time didn’t appeal to me. However, Krell has some tender, 
heartbreaking R&B tracks. His minimalistic approach piqued my interest. He doesn’t go overboard 
and that in itself is a refreshing experience. Sometimes his emotions and feelings seem lost and 
blurred, but when he connects, he hits it out of the park. “Repeat Pleasure” is his best track. It’s lovely 
and as gentle as Krell’s spirit. The Chicago based singer-songwriter clearly has his heart on his sleeve. 
His discord is on display and the music he crafts is both entrancing and exasperating. 

Opener “2 Years On (Shame Dream)” has 
Krell singing over only an acoustic guitar. It’s a 
painful, grief-stricken tune that doesn’t open up 
the album on any sort of exultant note. Most of 
the record deals with trauma, opening up old 
wounds and finding a way to cope. The struggle 
is real, but is there a particular way to deal 
with it? These essential themes guide “WITH?” 
with plenty of ease as you navigate from start 
to finish. “Precious Love” is something special. By far, it’s the catchiest song off the record. Krell, a 
storyteller first, musician second, leaves it all on the table. He doesn’t shy away from the inner pain 
nor does he find a need to mask it. “Childhood Faith In Love (Everything Must Change, Everything 
Must Stay The Same)” is utterly gorgeous. It’s a song that sparks something profoundly within. As time 
goes on in life, you find yourself at a point many times where everything must change, but everything 
must stay the same. Krell explores the darkside of life, but hopes there is still light to be discovered. 

Some tracks are heavy R&B such as “Very Best Friend” and “Face Again.” Both are a bit louder and 
push the electronic soundscape a bit further than the other songs. While that pair of tracks didn’t do 
all that much for me, the rest of the album is fairly powerful. “See You Fall,” describes a love that has 
fallen. It’s a slow jam with Krell’s falsetto vocals on display, as the beats and piano remain weightless 
in the background. With the blend of R&B, pop and electronics, washed out reverb, and Krell’s silky 
vocals, “WITH?” is something that’s oddly potent. It may not know exactly what it wants to express. 
The dichotomy is a bit off with not enough dancefloor jams and a little light on heartbreak tunes. How 
To Dress Well improves upon his craft and the darkly scattered emotions are apparent despite being 
unclear what it all means, all of the time. 

Grade: 7.3 out of 10

“What You Wanted,” “Repeat Pleasure,” “Precious Love,” “Childhood Faith In Love (Everything Must 
Change, Everything Must Stay The Same)”

Artist: How To Dress Well 

Album: “What Is This Heart?” 

Label: Domino Recording

Release Date: June 23rd, 2014


THE WORLD AROUND US

 


LIKE A DIAMOND IN THE SKY

 “Up above the world so high, like a diamond 
in the sky....” A team of astronomers, using 
multiple telescopes, has identified the coolest, 
faintest white dwarf star known. White dwarfs 
are the extremely dense end states of stars like 
our Sun: after their nuclear fuel is exhausted, 
they collapse from the size of a star (about 
1,000,000 miles across) to the size of the Earth 
(7,000 miles across). This white dwarf, located 
in the constellation Aquarius, is so cool that its 
carbon has crystallized, and crystallized carbon 
is…diamond! In other words, this star is one very 
big, Earth-sized diamond, with a mass similar to 
that of our Sun.

 The path to this discovery began when Dr. 
Jason Boyles, then a graduate student at West 
Virginia University, identified what astronomers 
refer to as a millisecond pulsar in this location, 
using a radio telescope.

 This pulsar, or spinning neutron star, is the 
20-mile-diameter collapsed remnant of a star that 
was originally many times more massive than 
our Sun. Known as PSR J2222-0137, which simply 
identifies its position in the sky, it is spinning 
more than 30 times a second. Its orientation is 
such that as it spins, a beam from its magnetic 
pole sweeps repeatedly past the Earth, giving 
rise to regular blips of radio waves. (The pulsar is 
detected only in radio waves, not in visible light.) 
The observations also revealed that this pulsar is 
gravitationally bound to a companion star: the 
two orbit around each other every 2.45 days. This 
companion object appears to be either another 
neutron star or, more likely, a remarkably cool 
white dwarf.

 The distance to the pulsar was already 
known from parallax measurements made by 
Dr. Adam Deller at the Netherlands Institute 
for Radio Astronomy. Parallax, which utilizes 
the motion of the Earth around the Sun, is the 
“gold standard” for determining distances to 
astronomical objects. At only about 900 light-
years away, this is one of the closest neutron stars 
known.

 Knowing the distance is crucial for 
calculating the intrinsic brightness, and therefore 
the temperature, of the stellar remnants. And 
as the lead author of this paper, Prof. David 
Kaplan, remarked, “These same observations also 
pinpointed the position of the pulsar extremely 
precisely.”

 It is also critical to know the mass of each 
component of the binary system. They found the 
pulsar has a mass of 1.2 times that of the Sun and 
the companion has a mass of 1.05 times that of 
the Sun.

 Next, they searched for visible and infrared 
evidence of the companion, using the Southern 
Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope in Chile 
and the Keck telescope in Hawaii. With their 
knowledge of the distance of the pulsar, the team 
was able to calculate how intrinsically faint the 
companion object is. But nothing could be seen 
at the position of the pulsar and its white dwarf 
companion! As Bart Dunlap, a graduate student 
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
and one of the team members, said, “Because of 
the radio observations, we know exactly where 
to look, so we pointed SOAR there and collected 
light for two and a half hours. Our final image 
should show us a companion 100 times fainter 
than any other white dwarf, orbiting a neutron 
star and about 10 times fainter than any known 
white dwarf—but we don’t see a thing. If there’s a 
white dwarf there, and there almost certainly is, 
it must be extremely cold.”

 Cold as stars go, that is. The researchers 
calculated that the white dwarf’s temperature 
would be no more than a comparatively cool 
3,000 degrees Kelvin (2,700 degrees Celsius).

You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.