Selfish Jeans

I've got things to say about "The Selfish Gene". First, no book I've read has ever provoked such a reaction from strangers who spy the cover. Yesterday someone said, "Don't you love it?" I wouldn't go that far. Dawkins assumes a foundation of knowledge I'm far from having attained. I didn't know what a chromosome was, what DNA was (in spite of my extensive CSI background- I know- crazy!), how genes factored into chromosomes etc. etc. Now with this sort-of grasped, thanks to my fine biologist husband, I am enjoying the book. I'm not used to having to follow a text so carefully to understand, and sometimes that's a bit frustrating. And I'm still waiting on character development.

It's strange to realise just how much I don't know, a realisation encourged by reading Annie Dillard, who knows everything. But at the same time, really, how wonderful it is that we can never run out of things to learn. And it all comes together. So much of what Stuart and I have been discussing about genetics, and what it means to give credit to microscopic things, was quite relevant to my class today and I enjoyed that perspective upon it. In fact I quite loved school today in general. Though I was so close to hit by a car on my way home. Apparently I am invisible to people driving through stop signs. I yelped like a wounded bird as the car drove toward me, which caused a group of high school boys to imitate my cry. This was altogether less humilating, of course, than when I fell off my bike in 2001, and a group of high school boys yelled "Whoa! Wipe out".

I'm now reading "Six Words You Never Knew Had to do with Pigs", which is a bit too "gift book" for my liking. And I got a book of Grace Paley's nonfiction out of the library yesterday, so when I'm through with Dawkins I might go there. Bad news. Men still don't like books by women. The winner of the Blooker.

I just baked a cake! Must go and add the topping.