Book: Uncle Tungsten
Quotes of Book: Uncle Tungsten
We would sit down fifteen, sometimes twenty, to the table on seder nights: my parents; the maiden aunts - Birdie, Len, and before the war, Dora, sometimes Annie; cousins of varying degree, visiting from France or Switzerland; and always a stranger or two would come. There was a beautiful, embroidered tablecloth which Annie had brought us from Jerusalem, gleaming white and gold on the table. My mother, knowing that sooner or later there would be accidents, always had a preemptive "spill" herself - she would manage somehow, very early in the evening, to tip a bottle of red wine onto the tablecloth, and thereafter no guest would be embarrassed if they knocked over a glass. Though I know she did this deliberately, I could never predict how or when the "accident" would occur; it always looked absolutely spontaneous and authentic. {She would immediately spread salt on he wine stain, and it became much paler, almost disappearing; I wondered why salt had this power.} book-quotekindnesshospitalityAnd I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. {…} Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin {a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"}. But my favorite dream is of going to the opera {I am Hafnium}, sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals-my old and valued friends-Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten. book-quotesciencemanhattanBoth David and Marcus, I came to realize, though they seemed happy enough, and looked forward to being doctors, had a certain sadness, a sense of loss and renunciation, about other interests they had given up.... Both became medical students, in part, to defer their call-up. But with this, I think, they deferred their other aspirations, a deferment that seemed permanent and irreversible by the time they returned to London." book-quote
