heatherslibrary | #0079: The View from Saturday, by E. L. Koingsburg (Reply)

The View From Saturday
by E. L. Koingsburg

p.1 The fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and the further fact was that she didn't know that she didn't know until she did know.

p.6 When I was down in Florida, Tillie Nachman had said, "The ballpoint pen has been the biggest single factor in the decline of Western Civilization. It makes the written word cheap, fast, and totally without character."

p.8 Sha! a shanka far die kinder! (German) Hush up, it's a shame for the children (to hear)

p.22 Dr. Rohmer could not, would not take his eyes off the man at the podium, and Mrs. Olinski thought of Alice in Wonderland. "Don't look at me like that!" said the King to the Cheshire Cat. "A cat may look at a king," said Alice. Mrs. Olinski wanted to tell Dr. Rohmer that a cat may look at a king. But why bother? The audience was not allowed to speak.

p.23 a mistake. Like brushing the cinnamon off cinnamon toast.

p.27 zaftig -- pleasantly plump

p.51 I watched three talk shows on television. One was about teenagers whose mothers flirt with their boyfriends. They were pathetic. Another was about men who said they lost their jobs because they would not cut off their ponytails. They were pathetic. The third was about people who pierce weird body parts: One girl had a silver nail run through her belly button, another had a diamond stud stuck in her tongue. One exposed her belly button, and the other stuck out her tongue. They were disgusting.

p.54-55 "It all starts," I said, "the minute the new hatchlings scamper over the sand toward the light of the horizon. Once they reach the water, they begin a swimming frenzy. They do not eat. They just swim and swim until the reach the Sargasso Sea. That is when they stop, and that is when Mother Nature turns off the swimming-frenzy switch and turns on a graze-and-grow switch. For the next five to ten years, they will stay in the Sargasso Sea, feeding off the small sea animals that live in the floating mats of sargasso grass. Tonight when the wind blows the seaweed ashore, there will be a lot of immature turtles in it--swept along with the sea grass they have called home.
     "...Here is the tragic part. Even if the tide does go back with them into the water, they will not be able to get home because once the swimming-frenzy switch is turned off, it is turned off forever. Turtles do not have an emergency power pack or a safety switch to turn it on. So, there they are, once again at the water's edge, but this time they are without a mechanism for swimming east. And that is why they will be lost at sea. They will want to graze. they will have an appetite, but they will not be where they can satisfy it, and they will not know how to get there because they cannot turn back their internal clock. They will not find home. They will not find food. They will starve and grow weak and be eaten."

p.63 Every subdivision has a name. They named this one The Farm. It is no more a farm than the Aquarium at Epcot is the Atlantic.

p.85 "Mother was an American by birth' Father by naturalization. I was born on the high seas. That makes me American."
     "As American as apple pie," I said.
     Julian smiled. "Not quite," he said. "Let us say that I am as American as pizza pie. I did not originate here, but I am here to stay."

p.126 Posh means fashionable and is the acronym for Port Out, Starboard Home, referring to the time when India belonged to Britain, and the people traveling there wanted the shady side of the ship both coming. And tip, meaning the small sum of money given for services rendered, is the acronym for To Insure Promptness.

NAMES: Rohmer, Gopal, Laruencin, Masolino, DeLue, Olinski, Korshak, Ethan, Simonetta, Gershom, Nachaman, Nadia