Hey la, hey la, the blogger's back

Arrived back in Y-town early last Wednesday morning. It's been busy since then, but I've finally had a chance to sit down and give vent to more of my usual undisciplined outpourings of ill-considered prose.

To grandmother's house we go

The trip to Missouri was relatively uneventful. I rented a car, since the Ol' Whitey had recently adopted the habit of dribbling steaming green coolant out from under the dashboard on the passenger side. This is not a reassuring prelude to a 1500 mile 'round trip in late July, so I left it in the care of a trusty local mechanic and tried to rent a car from these folks.

Bad idea. And I won't be doing business with them again if I can help it. When I mentioned that I was travelling to a funeral several states away, their sales representative suddenly decided that the absolute minimum daily rate was $70.00. Apparently their corporate policy is to price-gouge customers travelling to funerals. (Actual quote: "Yes, unlimited mileage is included in our regular rate, but if you're going to drive it a long way you have to pay extra.")

These folks were much more reasonable. The car they rented me bore a rather unfortunate resemblance to a silver-toned Batmobile, and the windows were small enough that I kept feeling like I was peering out of armored slits in the sides of some kind of military vehicle, but it got me there and back in good order and reasonably economically. Figures for thought:

Estimated fuel cost of driving truck to Missouri: (1500 miles / 11 mpg) * $1.85/gallon = $252.27.
Approximate fuel cost of driving rented car: (1500 miles / 28 mpg) * $1.85/gallon = $99.11

The difference between the two is fairly close to the weekly rental rate they charged me, so, considering that I got the benefit of having air conditioning and a CD player for the trip, as well as a reasonable assurance that the vehicle wouldn't blow up somewhere amidst the cornfields of Illinois, I suppose I came out ahead.

Across the river and through the woods

A few impressions from the trip: Rural Indiana and Illinois are as monotonous as ever, at least the portions visible from the interstate. The Big River and the Gateway Arch are still impressive, even when seen on a dismal grey afternoon. The Ozarks are as beautiful as ever. The ubiquitous plague of "adult superstores" along the interstate is found there occasionally, but, unlike elsewhere, they're frequently adjoined by towering billboards from local church or political groups proclaiming the evils of pornography, suggesting that the culture war is being contested more fiercely in the hills than elsewhere. (The one that announces "Pornography Hurts Women And Children" sounds plausible and might conceivably shame away potential porn customers whose consciences are vulnerable to such appeals, but the one a few miles to the west, which shouts in giant-sized letters that "Pornography Destroys Everybody", seems to be overstating its case just a bit.)

A country funeral

I can't honestly say that Great Aunt H. was my favorite relative, for reasons which have been touched on previously. I won't restate them here. Little planning or preparation for the funeral was required, since she had spent a substantial amount of time over the past few years writing her own obituary and planning her funeral in great detail -- a blend of practicality and narcissism that seems quite characteristic of her. The obituary she wrote contained enough interesting memories of her early life, growing up with my grandmother, learning to read, riding on horseback to various jobs teaching at country schools, fording flooded streams at night to make it home, and so forth, that I wished I had been able to hear more such memories while she was alive.

The service was held at the church she had attended for most of her life, and she was buried at a rural cemetary only a few miles from the farm where she and her two sisters grew up in the 1920's. Most of the people who attended the funeral, I expect, have relatives buried there. A short graveside service and prayer was held, during which the Biblical phrase "Death, where is thy sting?" was accompanied by a slow, meandering reconnaisance flight by some very large bees investigating this unaccustomed invasion of their pastoral home. Afterward, most people spent some time wandering around the cemetary, the older ones pointing out certain marker-stones to the younger ones, telling stories and taking pictures. Another reminder, I suppose, of the way that life has changed over the past fifty years or so. Who, among those who read this blog, lives anywhere near any kind of "ancestral home" or has any particular intention of moving back to one?

It was good to see and visit other relatives. Politics, understandably, was not the chief topic of conversation, but I found it interesting to hear that a certain aunt, who has heretofore been the very archetype of a conservative rural voter, has stated that she may not vote for Bush. I can't help but wonder whether this is at least partly because she has a son who is of draftable age. Perhaps there is hope for the country yet.

North toward home

The trip back to Y-Town took longer than the trip south and west to Missouri, but that was my own fault since I indulged in my habitual love of exploring obscure back roads and railroad grades -- in this case, the rather eerily quaint former railroad division point at Newburg, Missouri, and the stiff climb up Dixon Hill that caused the Frisco so many operational headaches in the days of steam. Unfortunately, the Newburg public library (right across the street from a two-story wooden boarding house advertising rooms at daily or weekly rates) was closed for lunch when I blew through town, nothing was moving on the railroad, and the yard and the roundhouse facilities for helper locomotives are long gone thanks to the greater operational efficiencies of the diesel locomotive. Progress. Hmph.

I did get one minor side benefit from the trip: I was able to retrieve my television, VCR and DVD player, videos, and various framed pictures and posters that had decorated my previous abodes and offices. I have no idea where all this stuff is going to go, but at least most of my possessions are in one place, rather than being scattered between Y-Town, Marquette, and Missouri. (Except, of course, for that storage compartment in Texas....) If Huron State deigns to honor me with an office of my own this fall, it won't lack for attractive library propaganda on the walls. And I'll be able to spend hours and hours of my scarce time at home watching videos instead of doing anything useful like blogging.

As I mentioned before, I got back home just in time to catch a few hours sleep before going back to work on Wednesday and preparing for MythCon on Friday. That's going to have to wait for another post, but don't worry. I took notes. (I am incredibly considerate of my Devoted Readers' need to know, aren't I?)

Checking in

Contrary to what some might have concluded from the lack of postings to the blog over the past week, I am not dead, in prison, or living under an assumed name in Bolivia. I spent most of the early part of the week preparing for a Parental Visitation, only to have to change gears at the last minute and make plans to travel to Missouri this weekend when I was notified that a great-aunt had died on Thursday. I'll be on the road tomorrow, through the endless cornfields, across the Big River, and into the heart o' the Ozarks. Consequently I'll be out of contact with the electronic world until the middle of next week. Until then, play nice, sleep tight, and don't let the shoggoths bite.

Refgrunt for an evening

You can't find Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet In Heaven on the shelf because all our copies are checked out. Would you like to be on the hold list? Audiobook or printed edition? (Patron was looking at audiobook catalog record but wanted printed copy.)

Telephone call: Do we have The Circadian Prescription, by Sidney MacDonald? No, but other libraries in the network do. Would you like to place a hold?

Teen Summer Reading Program Chaos! Four teenagers simultaneously descend on reference desk with reading lists to collect prizes, raffle tickets, etc. Parent and daughter seem not to understand restriction of one grand-prize raffle ticket per participant.

ChattyGuy stops by to discuss his latest intelligence coup.

Parent of two teenagers suggests that I should flee to the juvenile area the next time her brood stops by.

ChattyGuy stops by to discuss the Khmer Republic embassy and UPS.

Series-Reader says he remembers a series where all the books are named after states. It's Wagons West!, by Dana Fuller Ross, pseud. Noel Gerson. Thank goodness for my gluttonous and indiscriminate habit of reading my parents' discarded paperbacks back in the 1980s. He seems satisfied with the description in Sequels : an annotated guide to novels in series.

Public typewriter is out of correction tape. No one knows where it can be found.

Elderly lady wants an ID card. Not a library card. "They said on the radio I could get one at the library." Doesn't remember which radio program or station. Refer her to the local office of the Secretary of State.

Circulation staff has located typewriter correction tape. I eventually figure out how to install it without benefit of instructions.

"If I print something, how do I know it printed the whole thing?"

Typewriter is broken again. No printing ribbon. No one can find spares.

Yes, we have Coming to America.

Teen Summer Reading Program raffle tickets.

ChattyGuy approaches desk happily smiling, carefully enunciates the name of this organization, grins, chuckles, and goes back to his computer. He seems to think I know why this is funny.

"Where do I return books?"

"Where's the restroom?"

ChattyGuy: "How much is IBM going for?" The answer inspires him to chat some more.

Swiss Family Robinson on video? It's checked out. Place a hold?

Telephone caller wants to critique library website. Refer her to webmaster's mailto link.

Bone, by Jeff Smith. But he wants Book 9. Sorry.

Two girls want to check out local history materials for a school report. One of them has a history of a nearby city in hand and expresses great interest in the subject. I get warm fuzzy feeling that it's all worth while after all.

Warm fuzzy feeling is disrupted by loud, staticky burst of sound from young-adult area as someone figures out how to activate speakers on public internet terminal.

Dragonball Z, volume 4.

"Where's the bathroom?"

Teen Summer Reading Program raffle tickets.

Princess Mononoke? The DVD is checked out. Would you like to put it on hold? Meanwhile, we have a book about the movie.... Querent is appreciative. Warm fuzzy feeling returns.

Querent wants CD set of Great Ideas of Philosophy. (Bully for him!)

Turn off computers, turn off lights. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

Late update: Woman in parking lot intercepts departing library staff and asks them if they can retrieve a very important document she accidentally left near one of the internet terminals. Return to building. Turn off burglar alarm. Walk through dark building to internet terminals. Retrieve very important document, which appears to be a shopping list. Turn on burglar alarm, leave building, deliver important document to its rightful owner, who is duly appreciative. And so to bed. (Or at least toward the general vicinity of same, twenty miles away.)

Presenting.... Bookaeipathy!

My sister-in-law, the commenter-formerly-known-as-S., has contracted the blogging virus. (Sorry, Steph....)

Read all about it here. If anyone has an opinion about Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, this would be a good time to speak!

Sometimes I scare myself...

... and other times, the Bush Administration does it for me. Some time ago, I wrote a rather scathing post for this blog which I chose not to publish because the last line seemed too paranoid for even this venue of shiny-hatted speculation. That last line was as follows: "This administration is the only one that has ever made me wonder, not about the outcome of the next election, but whether there will be an election at all."

Well, well. From this morning's headlines: Officials discuss how to delay Election Day. (More coverage here, here, here, here. Newsweek, cited as a source by many of these articles, seems to be suddenly unavailable on the web -- perhaps due to many people trying to retrieve the story. Or perhaps not?)

The article I wrote back in May, and chose not to post at the time, follows. How the Bush administration manages to portray itself as "conservative", rather than as an aspiring banana-republic junta, is simply beyond my comprehension at this point.

"Criminal" representation

The most disturbing article from the June issue of Reason is not, it turns out, Declan McCullagh's strangely upbeat "Database Nation". It's Jarett Decker's "Criminal Representation", which discusses a legal theory recently put forth by the Bush Administration's "Department of Justice", based on a little-noted section of the so-called "PATRIOT ACT".

One provision that passed without scrutiny was Section 805(a)(2), which expanded the definition of "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations. Under the AEDPA, "material support" already included financing, weapons and explosives, lethal substances, training, personnel, facilities, lodging, safe houses, communications equipment, transportation, and "other physical assets." The PATRIOT Act added a new item to the litany of the banned: "expert advice and assistance." There is no legislative history to explain why the addition was necessary, or what the Justice Department draftsmen had in mind. That would not become clear until the prosecution of Lynne Stewart.

In a June 2003 hearing in Stewart’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Morvillo acknowledged that Stewart could not be charged under the PATRIOT Act with providing "expert advice and assistance" to the Islamic Group because her conduct predated the law. But Morvillo stressed that the "expert advice and assistance" banned by the PATRIOT Act includes legal representation. Then, in a remarkable June 27, 2003, letter to the presiding judge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robin Baker explained that under the Justice Department’s interpretation, an attorney could be convicted of a crime for representing a client allegedly associated with a foreign terrorist organization "IF the foreign terrorist organization has been designated as such by the Secretary of State -- and IF the government could prove that the attorney was acting under the direction and control of the foreign terror organization" -- even if the attorney did nothing but provide "bona fide legal services."

The intent is quite, quite crystal clear. The intent is to effectively strip anyone unilaterally labelled by the Bush as a "terrorist" of all rights to legal representation by threatening to prosecute any attorney who represents them. And, as you may recall, the Bush Administration asserts that it has the unilateral power to declare anybody, at any time, to be a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant" without so much as a court hearing.

Once again, we see the religion, the God, the whole of the political philosophy of the Bush administration: Power by any means necessary. Raw power, rammed down the throat of anyone who disagrees at the point of a gun or the brandishing of a secret Presidential decree. No rights. No representation. Constitution? Bill of Rights? Never heard of 'em. Rip 'em up. Use 'em for toilet paper.

If that's the kind of world you want, by all means vote for Bush. If you want something else -- like, say, that much-heralded democracy that we're supposedly exporting to the Middle East at the point of a gun -- vote to throw the bums out before they do any more damage. And then pray that the votes actually get counted, and that the War Party doesn't concoct an "October Surprise" to sway the election or even cancel it.

This administration is the only one that has ever made me wonder, not about the outcome of the next election, but whether there will be an election at all.

Manor House

To the amazement of certain members of my family who do not think such things are possible, I have managed to survive nine months without a television. However, I have cheated a little, by using library video equipment to view certain programs that I have a particular interest in seeing. I consider this to be qualitatively very different than just passively viewing whatever happens to beamed into my living room -- at least it involves making a conscious choice and some directed effort!

One of the most recent such choices was PBS's Manor House, courtesy of Suburban Public Library and the local library network.

Like the other "House" programs (1900 House; Frontier House; Colonial House), it's a sort of historically-literate reality show which places a gaggle of modern-day volunteers into a recreation of the lifestyle of a bygone era and then documents their efforts to adjust to it and successfully meet its demands. The results can be enlightening and excruciating, and, occasionally, funny. In this case, the historical milieu is a very posh English "country house" circa 1905, at the height of the extravagant Edwardian era. And the obstacles are not things like lack of food or exposure to wintry winds, but the antiquated social mores and rigid class system of that era.

Some of the participants seem to have no trouble adjusting to their new lives. The volunteer chosen to live the life of the wealthy landowner takes to his new life of shooting parties, fishing, extravagant multiple-course dinners, and being waited on hand-and-foot with a disturbingly somnolent alacrity. The youngest son of his family seems to enjoy being doted upon and opines, at one point, that he wishes modern-day families had servants, because it's so "efficient". After all, when he wants something done, he just has to tell somebody to do it!

Servants, you say? Ah yes. Not everybody has life quite so easy....

The majority of the volunteers are assigned roles as servants in the great house, ranging in rank from the butler, who is responsible for managing the enterprise and acting as the sole means of officially-countenanced contact between upstairs and downstairs, through various ranks of housekeepers, cooks, footmen, maids, and finally the hallboy, who doesn't even get to have a private bed, but sleeps in a pull-down cot in the middle of the servants' hallway. And it's here, among the servants, that the real drama of the series takes place, as modern-day people accustomed to modern-day employment practices awkwardly try to adjust to the practices of an era in which employers' books of rules prescribed backbreaking predawn-to-dusk schedules with no allowance for personal time, relationships, entertainment, or "democratic" management. At first things go swimmingly, but before long, the footmen are hung over; the temperamental French chef is cursing sulfurously as he clashes pots and pans furiously over a cranky, coal-burning stove; one scullery maid after another flees the house weeping in exhausted despair, and the hallboy begins plotting rebellion in a very Steerpikish manner. (It's easy to see where Mervyn Peake got his inspiration for the ossified social structures of Gormenghast!)

Meanwhile, women both upstairs and downstairs are becoming frustrated with the Edwardian limitations on their lives. The unmarried sister of the upper-class family chafes at her second-class status, and starts going quietly bonkers from sheer boredom; those servants who have husbands or boyfriends, or choose to pursue such relationships among the other servants, must do so at the risk of being instantly fired if they are discovered. The lady of the house, meanwhile, becomes almost comically obsessed with the very Gormenghastian minutia of rituals and rank.

It's worth seeing, especially for anyone who enjoyed The Remains of the Day or either version of Gormenghast, even if a number of the volunteers do "cheat" by introducing some modern attitudes toward the end.

Bookworms a declining species?

S. brought this paper to my attention last week, and it's been mentioned in several other news sources since. Apparently the National Endowment for the Arts has published a study which reports that "[l]iterary reading is in dramatic decline with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature.... Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline - 28 percent - occurring in the youngest age groups." (NEA press release here; .pdf of report here.)

This is a depressing report, or at any rate, a provocative one that invites closer analysis. As S. commented via e'mail, a lot depends on the study's definition of "literary reading". Here it is, from page 1-2: "The 2002 SPPA asked respondents if, during the past 12 months, they had read any novels, short stories, plays, or poetry. A positive response to any of those three categories is counted as reading literature, including popular genres such as mysteries, as well as contemporary and classic literary fiction. No distinctions were drawn on the quality of literary works."

I have a quibble or two with this definition. Most notably, what about nonfiction? Is the person who reads, say, popular history books, or biographies, or religious commentaries, less "literate" than one who plows through a dozen romance novels or "bestsellers" a year? Is all nonfiction automatically "nonliterary"? (Goodbye, Mr. Thoreau; so long, Izaak Walton; seeyalater, Stephen Ambrose....)

The table on page ix indicates that the percentage of people who read "any book" during the previous 12 months, as opposed to reading "literature", did drop, but not as quickly as the percentage reading "literature". The fact that it dropped at all is disturbing, but I wonder whether the report is masking a trend toward reading of nonfiction rather than "literature".

I also wonder whether some of the decline in reading of printed narrative fiction is due to the increasing popularity of audiobooks. At Suburban Public Library, about half the querents at the reference desk specifically ask for audiobooks rather than the printed variety. Many of them state that this is because they need to listen to it in the car. Can listening to a story while driving carry the same cultural weight as reading it on a printed page?

Of modern medicine, nutrition, and evolution

This topic has come up a few times over the years in conversation with various people who occasionally glance at this blog:

Are we still evolving? Modern medicine has eliminated many previously lethal hazards. So has evolution come to a stop?

[W]ithout natural selection to weed out problematic mutations, humans won't just stop evolving - we will also start accumulating defective genes. Each of us, says Kondrashov, has around a thousand mutations which we would be better off without. Without natural selection, future generations will have many more. Kondrashov is quick to point out that he is not talking about eugenics, or traits that are of dubious disadvantage. Rather, he is worried that we will build up traits that are clearly a problem - such as mutations that inhibit our ability to process cholesterol in the blood.

Since I, my father, and my brother all have eyesight imperfect enough that we would have been unlikely to survive as primitive hunters or gatherers, the following passage particularly caught my attention:

For early humans, a genetic propensity for poor eyesight would have been disastrous - try gathering food or dodging predators when everything is a blur. Today, poor eyesight may be a nuisance, but thanks to modern technology it is no longer remotely hazardous. Jones admits that dependence on such technology might be dangerous if it failed for some reason in the future....

I'm not about to pre-emptively eliminate myself from the gene pool, though.

Link ripped shamelessly from Arts & Letters Daily.

Media concentration in action

Marquette, Michigan, has two movie theaters. Both are owned by GKC, a corporation based in Illinois, which refuses to show Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. It's not because people in the upper peninsula don't want to see it. It's because the president of the corporation doesn't like its politics and wants to silence criticism of the Bush administration. The excuse used, of course, is the tired old cant about how all Americans are obliged to mindlessly approve of everything done in the name of any war, anywhere.

Local petition protests decision: GKC won't show 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

Food for thought when contemplating the effects of media concentration.

Words of wisdom for fiction selectors

Last week, after going through the usual difficulties and runarounds of ordering a book from a small publisher with less-than-customer-friendly ordering practices, I finally received my copy of The Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith. I opened it at random and found a letter from CAS to August Derleth which included the following paragraph:

April 9th, 1931.

Dear August:
[...] I feel the way you do about O'Brien [editor of an anthology of "The Best Short Stories"]. I once tackled one of his anthologies, but was unable to get very far with it. The tales chosen were damnably arid and dry-as-dusty -- which in my opinion is the general characteristic of fiction in the supposedly "better" magazines. I have come to the unconventional conclusion that the despised "pulps" are almost the only ones that ever print anything with any freshness and vitality. The middle-class "smooth-paper" magazines are full of a tame and padded romanticism, and the "quality" publications seem to want nothing but social satire and a sort of dead-sea-apples realism. I'd rather read W.T. [Weird Tales] at its worst -- or even Adventure.

I'll certainly look forward to H.P.'s new story. I hope he'll write a lot of them....

A lovely couple?

Is National Review trying to portray John Kerry and John Edwards as gay? Check out the photos featured in the upper-left corner of their home page and here. (Yours Truly cannot guarantee that these photos will remain in place.)

Edit, 7/13: The pictures are gone.

Also gleaned from NR:

Gary Andres notes that John Kerry "is not picking up the chicks", but allows that Edwards "adds some much needed sizzle" and "may help Kerry here."

And let us hope that residents of the southern states take due notice of the way William F. Buckley enjoys making fun of people with southern accents.

Outrage fatigue

As usual, The Onion has the scoop:

For a while, I wanted more fuel for the fire, to really get my blood boiling," said Madison, WI resident Dorothy Levine, a reproductive-rights activist and former Howard Dean campaign volunteer. "I read the policy papers on the Brookings web site. I subscribed to The Progressive. I clipped cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall. I listened to NPR all day. But then, it was like, while I was reading Molly Ivins' Bushwhacked, eight more must-read anti-Bush books came out. It was overwhelming. By the time they released Fahrenheit 9/11, I was too exhausted to drag myself to the theater."

"It used to be that I would turn on Pacifica Radio and be incensed at the top of every hour," Levine added. "Now, I could find out that Bush plans to execute every 10th citizen and I'd barely blink an eye, much less raise a finger."...

...I'm like, 'Yes, we all hate Cheney. He's an evil puppet-master. Yes, Bush is dumb. This is obvious. How many times can we say it? Now, excuse me, will you let me through so I can microwave my burrito?'"

Recent reads: quick takes

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett. Another pleasantly fluffy fantasy souffle from the creator of DiscWorld.

It's a bird..., by Stephen T. Seagle, artwork by Teddy H. Kristiansen. Working on Superman is one of the most prestigious assignments available in the world of comics, according to one of the characters in this graphic novel. So a struggling writer with a beautiful-but-skeptical girlfriend should, logically, leap at the chance to do so. Unless, of course, one has issues with the character.... The cool, pastel watercolors of Kristiansen's illustrations are very different from the simplified lines and bright colors typical of the Man of Steel's usual print appearances, and well suited to Seagle's tale of a cynical and self-doubting writer who has his own reasons to think twice about the job.

Naturalist in Two Worlds, by Alexander G. Ruthven, president of the University of Michigan from 1929 to 1951. Ruthven's training in biology seemingly predisposed him to view all activities and organizations as ecosystems; the four sections of his memoirs are titled "Adaptation", "Stimulus and Response -- Presidential Years", "The Experimental Process", and (the odd one out) "Retirement". This is far from a comprehensive autobiography or history of the University during his tenure; it's more a collection of anecdotes and episodes and recollections. It's quite possible that he has portrayed himself in a favorable light, but what he's chosen to remember and record makes him seem like an intelligent man comfortable with both scholarship and practical administration, and with a sense of humor as well. I particularly liked his reaction when a visiting artiste complained to him about the way the campus newspaper mocked her performance: "She was assured that the editors would be disciplined. I had my secretary call the editors and the drama critic to my office. As they stood before me I explained that the complaint had been made and I intended to discipline them. There was a period of silence and then I remarked, 'You are to understand you are disciplined, good morning.'"

Digital Hemlock, by Tara Brabazon. Brabazon, a lecturer in history at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, discusses the problems with internet-based education. She's dead-on-target with her skewering of the lack of human contact, the unseemly lust for digi-dollars, the sloppy standards of grammar and communication prevalent on the Web, and the foolish infatuation that many university administrators have with "E"-anything. Less so, to my mind, with her chapter on "Reclaiming the body of the teacher". (Do we really need more university professors flaunting their bodies, or students ogling them?) On the whole, though, a needed corrective.

Recent Reads: Everything's Eventual, by Stephen King.

I've always enjoyed Stephen King's short stories more than his novels, and the modern-day godfather of dark tales comes through again with this collection. Some of the stories are openly-acknowledged homages to past masters like Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Nawthorne, or to nearly-forgotten mini-genres like the gangster tales of the thirties or philosophical concepts of hell drawn from Sartre or Camus. Some are "conventional" horror tales (to the extent there is such a thing); others, such as All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, are subtler stories about people whose despair and horror comes from their everyday lives, the slow loss of illusions and dreams, the banal vulgarities scrawled on the walls of public restrooms. All of them work perfectly, except, perhaps, for L.T.'s Theory of Pets, whose ambiguous ending left me mystified, although King's casual mastery of slightly-cracked characters and dialogue made it a pleasant read anyway. As usual, King's introduction is as interesting as his fiction. Among other things, he discusses his abortive attempt to write a radio play, his experience in electronically publishing Riding the Bullet and The Plant, and the declining market for popular short stories and the magazines that publish them. His description of now-defunct Story magazine as "a lodestar for young writers (including myself, although I never actually published there)" particularly caught my eye, since I recently picked up a decade or so's worth of back issues of that magazine that a certain university up nort' was casually dumping.

An amusing book review

"Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."

-- Ed Zern, Field and Stream (Nov. 1959)

Repression is repression is repression

Thanks to Carlos for pointing out this story: Swedish pastor sentenced to one month's jail for offending homosexuals. The pastor's "crime"?

During a sermon in 2003, Green described homosexuality as "abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumour in the body of society".

Pretty strong words, true. But throwing someone in jail simply for saying strong words is censorship, pure and simple. It's political repression of the most naked sort.

Soren Andersson, the president of the Swedish federation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights (RFSL), said on hearing the sentence that religious freedom could never be used as a reason to offend people. "Therefore," he told journalists, "I cannot regard the sentence as an act of interference with freedom of religion."

Now, as Carlos said, this is simply too ridiculous to even require fisking; however, I will permit myself the following statement: When a group that has been suppressed in the past turns around and suppresses others once it gains political power, it isn't enacting "justice". It's adopting the worst characteristics of the former oppressors. To do so is to live according to the cynical, Machiavellian principle that power is all, that there are no such things as rights and that whoever has power at any given moment can, and should, mercilessly suppress all who would oppose them.

June biographies

Since someone expressed interest in what I decided to order in my newly exalted position as a selecting librarian, here are the biographies I ordered on behalf of Suburban Public Library last month, in alphabetical order by title. (No, I really have no idea whether this is of any interest to anyone.)

Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green (The library had a book about a male-to-female transsexual, so I figured turnabout was fair play.)
Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician by Alyn Brodsky (A forgotten Founding Father.)
Burned Alive: A Victim of the Law of Men by Souad. (Requested by a library patron, believe it or not.)
Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul by Tony Hendra (Likewise.)
John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him
Best by Michael Kranish (About as timely as a biography can be.)
Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life by Charles Calhoun. (Believe it or not, Suburban P.L. had not a single biography of this major nineteenth-century writer, despite his acquaintance with notible Michigander Henry Schoolcraft and the upper-peninsula setting of his ]est-known long poem, The Song of Hiawatha. This one received an excellent review from Booklist: "[W]onderfully readable, sympathetic biography.... Unitarian, antislavery, genuinely interested in and friendly toward other cultures, [Longfellow] lacked bad habits and was a good family man--in short, the very best kind of Victorian liberal.")
The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine by Andrea Stuart.
Saint Exupery: Art, Writing and Musings by Nathalie Des Vallieres.
Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon by Goudsouzian, Aram.
The Sparkling-Eyed Boy: A Memoir of Love, Grown Up by Amy Benson. (Memoir of the author's summer vacations in the upper peninsula, and her crush on a local boy. I'm reading this one now, and may have more to say about it in the future.)
The Stoning of Soroya M. by Sahebjam, Freidoune. (Discussed previously on this blog; I figured it might be of interest to the same reader(s) who pick up Burned Alive.)
Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution by Ronin Ro. (Comics and graphic novels are popular with S.P.L.'s teens; can they be tempted to read up on the background of the genre? We'll see.)
This Boy's Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff.

Next up: June fantasy/science fiction orders, and the July biography order (which will most definitely include this title.)

Edit, 7/12: corrected link in last line.

Axis of Eve

With candidates named "Bush" and "Dick", I suppose this was inevitable.

Thanks to Louise, again.

The Sloganator

Courtesy of Louise: the Sloganator, where you can view some rather startling "official" Bush/Cheney political signs. (See here for a capsule history of the dearly-departed Sloganator.)

My favorites:

The Future is a Thing of the Past
Capitalizing on Tragedy since September 2001
Best. War. EVAH.
Master of Strategery
Leave No Billionaire Behind!
My God is Better than Your God

Carlos must be bored out there on the High Plains....

The Biblioblog has gone dotty!

Republican-connected law firm demands identities of Michigan library users

This story from the Detroit News publicly reports something that's been discussed behind the scenes in Michigan LibraryLand for several days: a law firm in Okemos (near East Lansing) has filed at least 85 "Freedom-of-Information-Act" requests demanding addresses, telephone numbers, e'mail addresses, and other identifying information about all library users over the age of 18. Such requests have reportedly been sent to public libraries with names beginning with the letters A through H. All have reportedly rejected the demands, citing Michigan's Library Privacy Act.

What the story does not report is that Michael Flory of "Flory and Associates" is chairman of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans. (See also here, here.)

Now there are any number of possible motivations for this raft of requests. Perhaps they really were initiated by a 21-year-old law student working as a clerk who merely wishes to compile a profile of library users for purely innocuous purposes.

Or perhaps Mr. Flory is attempting to use the FOIA to compile a free mailing list for political purposes. (When you signed up for a library card, did you do so in hope of receiving more political junk mail? Or being signed up for political-propaganda e'mail spam?) Or perhaps the strategic purpose is to weaken legal protection of library records through litigation. Or perhaps Mr. Marker is compiling information for resale to commercial marketers and spammers. Or perhaps, given the animosity between present-day Republicans and literate people... er, library users... the conspiracy-minded might even speculate that it's to compile a list of Suspected Readers who are more likely than the general, TV-watching population to hold "treasonous thoughts".

Just kidding, officer. You can put away that badge. Heh, heh... Just a little joke....

Let the race begin

I can't believe Fiend hasn't called dibs on this story: Kerry names Edwards his running mate

My reaction: Edwards adds a much-needed dose of youth, photogenic looks, affability, and Southern regional background to an otherwise gray, stodgy, stereotypically "Massachusetts-liberal" Kerry ticket seeming made-to-order for Republican campaigners to ridicule. I don't know much about his policies other than what's listed on his website. He seems to have a good reputation as a speaker and campaigner.

Cranky thought #1: Is his success so far largely due to having a handsome face and a telegenic demeanor? Perhaps I should watch this movie again. On the other hand, it worked pretty well for John F. Kennedy.

Cranky thought #2: Are the Democrats doing the same thing that the Republicans did in 1996, putting the tired old party warhorse at the head of the ticket while submerging a more energetic candidate in the number-two slot?

In any case, at least he's not Dick Cheney.

CD46:6, CD46:7... 6. CD46:9, CD46:10... 6. CD 47:1... OC....

I have just spent the last hour or two performing one of the most menial tasks known to the literate world: updating Suburban Public Library's copy of the local municipal code, then checking every single page against a checklist to make sure the good citizens of Suburbia will have access to the correct and current version of the law in the unheard-of event that one of them comes to the library to look it up. Yes, I know it has to be done. No, I don't like doing it. If I wanted to spend hours poring over the minutiae of local ordinances against railroad trains travelling faster than 35 mph, people trespassing in city cemetaries after 10:00 pm, or the display, in certain zoning areas, of "Human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state, even if completely and opaquely covered", I'd have gone to law school.

Meanwhile, a library user whom I'll call ChattyMan has interrupted me three times to discuss his various get-rich schemes, most of which involve either using the internet to track down misplaced bank accounts or studying obsessively for various civil-service exams. I wish him the best, I really do, but I'm getting a little tired of his knowing winks about whatever latest "secret" he's discovered.

As someone else said recently, I have had more exciting days.

Happy Birthday to the Great Experiment

For those who haven't already seen the happy sparklings of fireworks (as prescribed by John Adams), here's a virtual substitute. For those who feel inclined to do some patriotic reading, try here. May the Great Experiment continue to flourish, and a curse upon all who would wish her ill.

A Bush is not a Bush is not necessarily a Bush

When I was in lieberry skool a few years back, one of the required readings I most enjoyed was Vannevar Bush's 1945 essay "As We May Think", in which he predicted, among other things, a device, the "memex", that sounds much like an analog version of a personal computer. (See especially sections 6-8). He was wrong about the mechanical details of just how the storage and retrieval of information would be handled, since the transistor and many other required components of digital technology were not yet invented, but it's interesting that, by thinking about what people would *want* to do with technology, he was able to predict with a reasonable degree of prescience what they *would* do with it.

Of course, he wasn't always right, but that's the danger of being a prognosticator.

For the Potterphiles among us:

J.K. Rowling has announced the title of the next book in the Harry Potter series. (And, no, it's not Pillar of Storge.) No release date, though.

Thanks to Louise for mentioning it.

To chat or not to chat

Stephen Coffman, V.P. of Library Systems and Services Inc. and author of Going Live! Starting and Running a Virtual Reference Service, and Linda Arret, project coordinator for the early and pilot stages of QuestionPoint, examine the whys and wherefores of virtual reference service. And, more importantly, whether the results have been worth the effort and expense. Many of their observations match my own skeptical mutterings.

Thanks to the ColLib-L list for the link.

A disappointed library user

Requested this evening at Suburban Public Library: pictures of the effects of various sexually-transmitted diseases "like the ones I saw when I was training with the Navy". The grosser, the bigger, the more colorful, the better. He wants to show them to his teenage son, who for some reason seems embarrassed by this request. Querent seems disappointed by the library's selection of medical encyclopedias and the young-adult books on STD's, and asks why the library doesn't have such materials. I pass his suggestion on, without comment, to our young-adult librarian.