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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2008 > February
February 2008
I’m so glad I have already voted
The Ohio primary is only a few days away. I’m so glad I already voted by absentee ballot. The polls will be wild on Tuesday as they are predicting a record primary voter turnout in Ohio (read:DEMOCRATS). That doesn’t bode well for Hillary Clinton. Ohio is probably her last hope for reversing sagging fortunes. Record turnout might mean all those energized voters (read:OBAMA voters) will probably deliver the knockout blow to Hillary’s hopes.
So far today I have gotten 8 ROBOcalls. 6 from the Clinton campaign, 2 from Obama. Since I’m registered as an independent, that says a lot!
How many ROBOcalls have you gotten? Have they had an impact on how you feel about your vote in this primary?
John McCain is going after Obama as if Hillary had already conceded? One gets the sense that McCain is worried. This Obama surge is an amazing thing to behold, a tsunami that might sweep him all the way to the White House.
What do you think?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: politicked
LA Times book prize nominees
Three of my favorite books from 2007 have been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. In non-fiction:
Simon Sebag Montefiore “Young Stalin” (Alfred A. Knopf)
and
Naomi Klein “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
and in fiction:
Junot Díaz “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (Riverhead Books)
For the full list of nominated books click here.
Here is my capsule review of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein:
This disturbing piece of investigative journalism asserts that some theories of the late economist Milton Friedman have adversely impacted economies around the world. Klein claims disasters are providing opportunities for the exploitation of millions of people under the guise of spreading democracy and free markets. She demonstrates how crises were exploited in Chile, Russia, South Africa, China and Iraq and in situations like Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami and 9/11.
And my capsule review of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz:
This story bounces across the pages. Oscar is intelligent, overweight and obsessed. He’s a Dominican kid living in New Jersey with his comic books and a fantasy of one day finding the woman of his dreams. The action shifts to the Dominican Republic, where Oscar becomes enamored with a dangerous female. This inspirational tragedy unfolds with diabolical precision among astonishing footnotes.
I just re-read “Young Stalin” by Simon Sebag Montefiore and I remain astonished at the superb job he did in researching the early years of the brilliant, demented monster Joseph Stalin. The author dug up information in obscure archives in the former Soviet Union that had never been revealed to anybody but perhaps, the secret police. Some documents had eluded Stalin during his lifetime, otherwise he would have surely destroyed them. The book ends as the Bolsheviks are taking power. There are many astounding footnotes. My favorite one is that the current Russian leader, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, had a grandfather who was a cook in the Kremlin. Putin’s grandfather prepared meals for Lenin and Stalin. Amazing!
I’m delighted when books that I enjoy are being appreciated by others.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | | Categories: that's what they say
remembering William F. Buckley
William F. Buckley has died. Here is a report from the New York Times.
February 27, 2008
William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.
Mr Buckley, 82, suffered from diabetes and emphysema, his son Christopher said, although the exact cause of death was not immediately known. He was found at his desk in the study of his home, his son said. “He might have been working on a column,” Mr. Buckley said.
Mr. Buckley’s winningly capricious personality, replete with ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare with an anteater’s, hosted one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine, National Review.
He also found time to write more than 45 books, ranging from sailing odysseys to spy novels to celebrations of his own dashing daily life, and edit five more.
The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 biweekly newspaper columns, “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-sized books.
Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.
To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”
In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.”
“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.
“And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”
The liberal advance had begun with the New Deal, and so accelerated in the next generation that Lionel Trilling, one of America’s leading intellectuals, wrote in 1950: “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.”
Mr. Buckley declared war on this liberal order, beginning with his blistering assault on Yale as a traitorous den of atheistic collectivism immediately after his graduation (with honors) from the university.
“All great biblical stories begin with Genesis,” George Will wrote in the National Review in 1980. “And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration.”
Mr. Buckley weaved the tapestry of what became the new American conservatism from libertarian writers like Max Eastman, free market economists like Milton Friedman, traditionalist scholars like Russell Kirk and anti-Communist writers like Whittaker Chambers. But the persuasiveness of his argument hinged not on these perhaps arcane sources, but on his own tightly argued case for a conservatism based on the national interest and a higher morality.
His most receptive audience became young conservatives first energized by Barry Goldwater’s emergence at the Republican convention in 1960 as the right-wing alternative to Nixon. Some met in Sept., 1960, at Mr. Buckley’s Connecticut estate to form Young Americans for Freedom. Their numbers — and influence — grew.
Nicholas Lemann observed in Washington Monthly in 1988 that during the Reagan administration “the 5,000 middle-level officials, journalists and policy intellectuals that it takes to run a government” were “deeply influenced by Buckley’s example.” He suggested that neither moderate Washington insiders nor “Ed Meese-style provincial conservatives” could have pulled off the Reagan tax cut and other reforms.
Speaking of the true believers, Mr. Lemann continued, “Some of these people had been personally groomed by Buckley, and most of the rest saw him as a role model.”
Mr. Buckley rose to prominence with a generation of talented writers fascinated by political themes, names like Mailer, Capote, Vidal, Styron and Baldwin. Like the others, he attracted controversy like a magnet. Even conservatives — from members of the John Birch Society to disciples of conservative author Ayn Rand to George Wallace to moderate Republicans — frequently pounced on him.
Many of varied political stripes came to see his life as something of an art form — from racing through city streets on a motorcycle to a quixotic campaign for mayor of New York in 1965 to startling opinions like favoring the decriminalization of marijuana. He was often described as liberals’ favorite conservative, particularly after suavely hosting an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” on public television in 1982.
Norman Mailer may indeed have dismissed Mr. Buckley as a “second-rate intellect incapable of entertaining two serious thoughts in a row,” but he could not help admiring his stage presence.
“No other act can project simultaneous hints that he is in the act of playing Commodore of the Yacht Club, Joseph Goebbels, Robert Mitchum, Maverick, Savonarola, the nice prep school kid next door, and the snows of yesteryear,” Mr. Mailer said in an interview with Harpers in 1967.
Mr. Buckley’s vocabulary, sparkling with phrases from distant eras and described in newspaper and magazine profiles as sesquipedalian (characterized by the use of long words) became the stuff of legend. Less kind commentators called him “pleonastic” (use of more words than necessary).
And, inescapably, there was that aurora of pure mischief. In 1985, David Remnick, writing in The Washington Post, said, “He has the eyes of a child who has just displayed a horrid use for the microwave oven and the family cat.”
William Francis Buckley Jr., was born in Manhattan on Nov. 24, 1925, the sixth of the 10 children of Aloise Steiner Buckley and William Frank Buckley Jr. (According to “William F. Buckley, Jr., Patron Saint of the Conservatives,” a biography written by John B. Judis, Mr. Buckley’s sister Patricia said he was christened Francis instead of Frank because there was no saint named Frank. Later, in “Who’s Who” entries and elsewhere, he used Frank.)
The elder Mr. Buckley made a fortune in the oil fields of Mexico, and educated his children with personal tutors at Great Elm, the family estate in Sharon, Conn. They also attended exclusive Roman Catholic schools in England and France.
Young William absorbed his family’s conservatism along with its deep Catholicism. At 6, he wrote the King of England demanding he repay his country’s war debt. At 14, he followed his brothers to the Millbrook School, a preparatory school 15 miles across the New York state line from Sharon.
In his spare time at Millbrook, young Bill typed schoolmates’ papers for them, charging $1 a paper, with a 25-cent surcharge for correcting the grammar.
He did not neglect politics, showing up uninvited to a faculty meeting to complain about a teacher abridging his right to free speech and ardently opposing United States’ involvement in World War II. His father wrote him to suggest he “learn to be more moderate in the expression of your views.”
He graduated from Millbrook in 1943, then spent a half a year at the University of Mexico studying Spanish, which had been his first language. He served in the Army from 1944 to 1946, and managed to make second lieutenant after first putting colleagues off with his mannerisms.
“I think the army experience did something to Bill,” his sister, Patricia, told Mr. Judis. “He got to understand people more.”
Mr. Buckley then entered Yale where he studied political science, economics and history; established himself as a fearsome debater; was elected chairman of the Yale Daily News, and joined Skull and Bones, the most prestigious secret society.
As a senior, he was given the honor of delivering the speech for Yale’s Alumni Day celebration, but was replaced after the university’s administration objected to his strong attacks on the university. He responded by writing his critique in the book that brought him to national attention, in part because he gave the publisher, Regnery, $10,000 to advertise it.
Published in 1951, “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom,’” charged the powers at Yale with having an atheistic and collectivist bent and called for the firing of faculty members who advocated values not in accord with those that the institution should be upholding — which was to say, his own.
Among the avalanche of negative reviews, the one in Atlantic by McGeorge Bundy, a Yale graduate, was conspicuous. He found the book “dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author.”
But Peter Viereck, writing in The New York Times Sunday Book Review viewed the book as “a necessary counterbalance.”
After a year in the Central Intelligence Agency in Mexico City (his case officer was E. Howard Hunt, who went on to win celebrity for his part in the Watergate break-in), Mr. Buckley went to work for the American Mercury magazine, but resigned after spotting anti-Semitic tendencies in the magazine.
Over the next few years, Mr. Buckley worked as a freelance writer and lecturer, and wrote a second book with L. Brent Bozell, his brother-in-law. Published in 1954, “McCarthy and His Enemies” was a sturdy defense of the senator from Wisconsin who was then in the throes of his campaign against communists, liberals and the Democratic Party.
In 1955, Mr. Buckley started National Review as voice for “the disciples of truth, who defend the organic moral order” with a $100,000 gift from his father. The first issue, which came out in November, claimed the publication “stands athwart history yelling Stop.”
It proved it by lining up squarely behind Southern segregationists, saying blacks should be denied the vote. After some conservatives objected, Mr. Buckley suggested instead that both uneducated whites and blacks should not be allowed to vote.
Mr. Buckley did not accord automatic support to Republicans, starting with Eisenhower’s campaign for re-election in 1956. National Review’s tepid endorsement: “We prefer Ike.”
Circulation increased from 16,000 in 1957 to 125,000 at the time of Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964, and leveled off to around 100,000 in 1980. It is now 155,000. The magazine has always had to be subsidized by readers’ donations.
Along with offering a forum to big-gun conservatives like Russell Kirk, James Burnham and Robert Nisbet, National Review cultivated the career of several younger writers, including Garry Wills, Joan Didion and John Leonard, who would shake off the conservative attachment and go their leftward ways.
National Review also helped define the conservative movement by isolating cranks from Mr. Buckley’s chosen mainstream.
“Bill was responsible or rejecting the John Birch Society and the other kooks who passed off anti-Semitism or some such as conservatism,” Hugh Kenner, a biographer of Ezra Pound and a frequent contributor to National Review told The Washington Post. “Without Bill — if he had decided to become an academic or a businessman or something else — without him, there probably would be no respectable conservative movement in this country.”
Mr. Buckley’s personal visibility was magnified by his “Firing Line” program which ran from 1966 to 1999. First carried on WOR-TV and then on the Public Broadcasting Service, it became the longest running show hosted by a single host — beating out Johnny Carson by three years. He led the conservative team in 1,504 debates on topics like “Resolved: The women’s movement has been disastrous.”
There were exchanges on foreign policy with the likes of Norman Thomas; feminism with Germaine Greer and race relations with James Baldwin. Not a few viewers thought Mr. Buckley’s toothy grin before he scored a point resembled nothing so much as a switchblade.
To New York City politician Mark Green, he purred, “You’ve been on the show close to 100 times over the years. Tell me, Mark, have you learned anything yet.”
But Harold Macmillan, former prime minister of Britain, flummoxed the master. “Isn’t this show over yet?” he asked.
At age 50, Mr. Buckley added two pursuits to his repertoire — he took up the harpsichord and became novelist. Some 10 of the novels are spy tales starring Blackford Oakes, who fights for the American way and bedded the Queen of England in the first book.
Others of his books included a historical novel with Elvis Presley as a significant character, another starring Fidel Castro, a reasoned critique of anti-Semitism, and journals that more than succeeded dramatizing a life of taste and wealth — his own. For example, in “Cruising Speed: A Documentary,” published in 1971, he discussed the kind of meals he liked to eat.
“Rawle could give us anything, beginning with lobster Newburgh and ending with Baked Alaska,” he wrote. “We settle on a fish chowder, of which he is surely the supreme practitioner, and cheese and bacon sandwiches, grilled, with a most prickly Riesling picked up at St. Barts for peanuts,” he wrote.
Mr. Buckley’s spirit of fun was apparent in his 1965 campaign for mayor of New York on the ticket of the Conservative Party. When asked what he would do if he won, he answered, “Demand a recount.” He got 13.4 percent of the vote.
For Murray Kempton, one of his many friends on the left, the Buckley press conference style called up “an Edwardian resident commissioner reading aloud the 39 articles of the Anglican establishment to a conscript of assembled Zulus.”
Unlike his brother James who served as a United States senator from New York, Mr. Buckley generally avoided official government posts. He did serve from 1969 to 1972 as a presidential appointee to the National Advisory Commission on Information, and as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations in 1973.
The merits of the argument aside, Mr. Buckley irrevocably proved that his brand of candor did not lend itself to public life when an Op-Ed article he wrote for The New York Times offered a partial cure for the AIDS epidemic: “Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals,” he wrote.
In his last years, as honors like the Presidential Medal of Freedom came his way, Mr. Buckley gradually loosened his grip on his intellectual empire. In 1998, he ended his frenetic schedule of public speeches (some 70 a year over 40 years, he once estimated). In 1999, he stopped “Firing Line,” and in 2004, he relinquished his voting stock in National Review. He wrote his last spy novel the 11th in his series), sold his sailboat and stopped playing the harpsichord publicly.
But he began a new historical novel and kept up his columns, including one on the “bewitching power” of “The Sopranos” television series. He commanded wide attention by criticizing the Iraq war as a failure.
On April 15, 2007, his wife, the former Patricia Alden Austin Taylor, who had carved out a formidable reputation as a socialite and philanthropist but considered her role as a homemaker, mother and wife most important, died. Mr. and Mrs. Buckley called each other “Ducky.”
He is survived by his son, Christopher, of Washington, D.C.; his sisters Priscilla L. Buckley, of Sharon, Conn., Patricia Buckley Bozell, of Washington, D.C., and Carol Buckley, of Columbia, S.C.; his brothers James L., of Sharon, and F. Reid, of Camden, S.C., a granddaughter and a grandson
In the end it was Mr. Buckley’s graceful, often self-deprecating wit that endeared him to others. In his spy novel “Who’s on First,” he described the possible impact of his National Review through his character Boris Bolgin.
“ ‘Do you ever read the National Review, Jozsef?’ asks Boris Bolgin, the chief of KGB counter intelligence for Western Europe, ‘it is edited by this young bourgeois fanatic.’ ”
I admired Buckley. I didn’t agree with him. His vocabulary and slashing conversational approach were things that awed me. I always dreamed of interviewing him.
Last summer his publisher offered me an interview with Buckley. I was overjoyed. As the date of our meeting approached I was informed that they needed to cancel it. No reason given.
In any case, I shall always regret that missed opportunity and I pay tribute to his wicked genius.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: we remember
the March of the OBAMAtons…
As Ohioans prepare for the big debate tonight in Cleveland between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama one feels the momentum is shifting here as Clinton’s formerly massive lead in Ohio polling has shrunk to miniscule single digits.
Obama presided over an impressive rally yesterday at the Nutter Center. The Clinton forces are in disarray, clutching at straws in their flailing efforts to find some way to derail the March of the OBAMAtons.
They are pleading with voters; Please! Cast your vote early before the OBAMAtons take over your mind!
Poor Obama, cursed with charisma, good looks, and a faithful spouse. Who knew?
Voters can smell fear and the Clintonistas are running scared as the March of the OBAMAtons crashes through every nook and precinct of Ohio. This is war!
So, will Hillary Clinton come out of her corner tonight spewing flames? Will Obama keep his cool? Or, will he melt? Is this debate Hillary Clinton’s Last Stand? When the dust clears and the battle of Ohio is over who will be left standing? Will it still be the two of them, or just Barack Obama?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: politicked
blogging the Civil War-Sherman’s Fifth Corps
Joyce Barnes wrote a novel based on the true story of General Sherman’s Fifth Corps. Barnes wanted to shine a light on a dramatic chapter of history that had languished in obscurity until now. Barnes describes the genesis of her story:
“In Nov. 1864, Gen. Wm. T. Sherman embarked on his historic March from Atlanta to the Sea. Along the way, he unintentionally liberated thousands of slaves. They became Sherman’s Fifth Corps. Through actual and fictional letters, diaries, journals, news accounts, official reports and for the first time, words of the ex-slaves themselves, S5C tells a story of the man and the March that has never before been told. From Nov. to January, follow the March daily and imagine what happened when hardened Union soldiers and newly liberated blacks formed an unplanned, unprecedented alliance to bring about the end of the civil War, the end of slavery, and a new birth of freedom. Literally.”
Barnes has taken a unique approach in rendering this novel. She describes her method as “collage:”
“In November 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman left Atlanta, Georgia in flames and embarked on his historic March from Atlanta to the Sea. Along the way, he unintentionally liberated thousands of black people held as slaves in the Georgia cities and towns. They left the farms and plantations in droves—some joining the Union Cause as hired servants, cooks, laundresses, teamsters, and pioneers, and others saying goodbye to slavery to begin living as free citizens of the United States. They were Sherman’s 5th Corps, and one of them, a young ex-slave named Jennie Lewis, became Sherman’s mistress.
Through actual and fictional letters, diaries, journals, news accounts, official reports and for the first time, the words of the ex-slaves themselves, Sherman’s Fifth Corps uses the artistic technique of collage to tell a story of the man and the March that has never before been told.
Beginning November 1864 and ending January 1865, each entry in this blog presents a daily account of the Great March, told in the words of the people who were there. From their individual reports, we can reconstruct and imagine what happened when hardened Union soldiers and newly liberated blacks marched across Georgia and formed an unplanned, unprecedented alliance to bring about the end of the Civil War, the reconstruction of the Union, the end of slavery, and a new birth of freedom for this country.”
Intrigued? You can read the entire novel on-line. Barnes posted it as a blog. To read it, click here.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: we remember
are Americans getting dumber?
Susan Jacoby believes that the dumbing down of America is gaining momentum. Her new book, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON (Pantheon) has been attracting a lot of attention.
I spoke to Jacoby about it. Our conversation aired Sunday on WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs. If you missed the interview you can listen to it by clicking here.
Well, what do you think about that? Do you agree? Disagree? Are Americans getting dumber?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: heard on the radio
observations from the last Saturday in February
My phone has been ringing all day. I’m letting the machine answer because every call has been from the Hillary Clinton campaign. ROBO-calls. Not one from a real person. Not one call yet from the Obama people? There was also an attack piece from the Clinton campaign in my mailbox. The postman must have dropped it because it had mud all over it. Or perhaps the mud was there on purpose? Lots of mud being flung around Ohio these days. It feels like Clinton’s Last Stand.
I’m fighting a cold. Hot tea seems to help. The best remedy I have found so far has been walking barefoot through the snow. I’m not kidding!
I reviewed another example of “missing kid lit” this week. Check out my review tomorrow in the DDN.
Yesterday I interviewed one of my favorite writers. She is outspoken. She is a Christian and most incredibly, a LIBERAL! Some astute readers know of whom I’m speaking. You can find out her identity next week in the DDN.
I’m also working on some reviews of books with local connections. With all the mud flying through the air between now and March 4, I hope to hunker down and just embrace my keyboard until things settle down.
I went downtown this morning (Yellow Springs). The EMPORIUM is usually a beehive of exuberance on Saturday mornings. Not today. It felt like a morgue. The death of Antioch College hangs over the village like a black shroud. So, I had the best breakfast around, courtesy of Norah, and I got the heck out of Dodge.
My cat Buddy is enjoying the thaw. His friend Mister Mole plays tag with Buddy beneath the bird feeders. Mister Mole rises to the surface for a snack and Buddy is there to greet him. We call it Buddy Love.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: clearing the cobwebs
remembering Antioch College
“We heard the news today, oh boy. The English Army had just won the war. And though the news was rather sad. Well, I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph.”
A DAY IN THE LIFE (Lennon/McCartney)
It was a foregone conclusion really. For those of us who live in Yellow Springs, who watched the tortured final death rattle of a great idea as it choked and struggled to breathe. For some of us, the death today of Antioch College, was almost a blessing. Almost…
Have you ever had someone who you loved living on life support? Connected by tubes? Machines keeping them alive? It was like that.
You try to remember their better days and all the reasons that you loved them but when they finally expire you feel a sense of release. Almost…
Unfortunately, Antioch College wasn’t a person. The remains of Antioch College will now become the subject of dispute, and possibly, litigation.
A death in the family doesn’t always bring closure or peace. People fight over what has been left behind. In the case of Antioch College and the Yellow Springs community, the dispersal of these noble remains shall become either a blessing, or a curse.
Only time can tell. Is the fight for Antioch College over? That remains to be seen.
Antioch College…born 1855-euthanized 2008.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: we remember
John McCain: “I intend to move on”
The first juicy scandal of this young political season has reared it’s ugly head. According to an article today in the NEW YORK TIMES it involves John McCain.The article states that:
“A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.”
Oh, my! Senator John McCain moved quickly to deny any kind of improper or romantic relationship with a lobbyist:
“Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign issued the following statement Wednesday night:
“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”
For more on John McCain’s reaction, click here.
What conclusions can we draw from this story? Only one, I suppose; John McCain will most certainly cancel his subscription to the NEW YORK TIMES.
Ah, politics, don’t you love it?!
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: politicked
How I miss baseball
Baseball season is just around the corner. I can always tell because the baseball books start coming out. I just got PERFECT, ONCE REMOVED- When Baseball Was All The World To Me (Walker) by Phillip Hoose. This memoir was written by Don Larsen’s cousin. The focal point is Larsen’s perfect game, the one he pitched for the NY Yankees on October 8, 1956, in the World Series.
Another new arrival is FAR FROM HOME-Latino Baseball Players in America (National Geographic) by Tim Wendel and Jose’ Luis Villegas. Here are the stories of some of our greatest players; Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Luis Tiant, Roberto Clemente, and Tony Oliva, to name just a few. Then, there are some that I wish they had left out of the book; Sammy Sosa, Miguel Tejada, and Aramis Ramirez. I have my reasons.
And, for you truly hardcore fans we have THE BASEBALL ECONOMIST-The Real Game Exposed (Plume) by J.C. Bradbury.
It won’t be long now. The guys are already at spring training. The steroid wars are receding-one might hope. I am relishing the prospect of a baseball season without the toadlike Roger Clemens. He threw one too many pitches high, and tight.
Batter up!
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: secret passions
incredible art coming to Springfield
Edna Boies Hopkins (1872-1937) was a gifted artist with many Ohio connections. She is best known for woodblock prints that she executed of floral designs that found their inspiration in early Japanese prints. The Columbus Museum of Art is currently displaying many of her works. In mid-March, the exhibition will move to The Springfield Museum of Art. Don’t miss it!
Ohio University Press recently published a companion catalog to these exhibits, EDNA BOIES HOPKINS- Strong in Character, Colorful in Expression by Dominique H. Vasseur is a gorgeously done book that offers an excellent overview of this artist and her exquisite art.
Vasseur is the curator for European art at the Columbus Museum of Art.
Don’t miss your opportunity to see this show when it comes to Springfield.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: looks good on paper
Is Barack Obama a plagiarist? Do we care?
Just in from the Associated Press:
Clinton Fingerprints on Plagiarism Flap
CLEVELAND (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton says reporters, not her campaign, uncovered evidence of Democratic rival Barack Obama sharing speech lines with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
She made the claim Tuesday despite the fact her campaign posted video clips on YouTube illustrating similarities in the speeches and has suggested in several instances that the shared lines amount to plagiarism.
THE SPIN: “It’s not us making this charge, it’s the media,” Clinton told Honolulu television station KITV Tuesday. “The media is finally examining my opponent which I think is important. We’re trying to pick a president, someone for the toughest job in the world.”
She added: “I think the media is going to be putting forth whatever facts and information it has for voters to assess on their own.”
In an interview with another Honolulu station, KGMB, Clinton noted that Obama and Patrick share a strategist, David Axelrod, “who is apparently putting words in both of their mouths.”
She added: “I think that’s a serious concern.”
FACT CHECK: Any suggestion that the story had a life of its own, apart from the Clinton campaign, is disingenuous.
The Associated Press, the Boston Globe and other news organizations have reported on instances in which Obama used some of Patrick’s speech lines — often without attribution.
In the latest example, from a Democratic Party dinner Saturday night in Milwaukee, Obama repeated almost word for word part of a speech Patrick gave in 2006 extolling the importance of powerful oratory in politics. This was to rebut Clinton’s charge that rhetoric is less important than results.
The New York Times reported the speech similarities Monday, having looked into them the day before. The story said the similarities “were highlighted by a rival campaign that did not want to be identified.” The common lines were not characterized as plagiarism in the story.
Patrick, a friend and supporter of Obama, said he encouraged the candidate last week to respond to Clinton’s criticisms about his rhetoric, as he has done before. He said he shared lines from his 2006 campaign for governor with Obama’s speechwriters and wanted no credit, because the two men often swap ideas.
The Clinton campaign jumped on the matter. Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson held an hourlong conference call about it Monday and repeated many of the charges during another call Tuesday.
“Senator Obama is running on the strength of his rhetoric and the strength of his promises and, as we have seen in the last couple of days, he’s breaking his promises and his rhetoric isn’t his own,” Wolfson told reporters Monday.
Wolfson added: “It raises questions about the premise of his candidacy.”
And Clinton told reporters Monday night: “If your whole candidacy is about words, those words should be your own. That’s what I think.”
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said: “Senator Clinton knows full well that her campaign held a conference call with reporters to fan these flames and the fact that she suggested her campaign had nothing to do with it is exactly the kind of evasive tactic voters are rejecting.”
Obama said Monday he wished he’d credited Patrick. He noted Clinton occasionally has used lines similar to his in her speeches.
By Beth Fouhy
Tsk..tsk…What do you think? Is the Clinton campaign making a mountain out of a molehill here? Is this a legitimate issue? Or, is this a case of the Clinton campaign feeling like their backs are up against the wall against the surging Barack Obama?
How do you view this latest uproar? With the Wisconsin primary Tuesday we might find Obama gaining so much momentum that this plagiarism accusation will be a moot point. Thoughts?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: politicked
if you read only one book this year, read this one…
Song Yet Sung by James McBride (Riverhead Books, 359 pages, $26).
James McBride wrote “The Color of Water,” a powerful memoir of growing up in a biracial family.
McBride’s new novel, “Song Yet Sung,” begins: “On a grey morning in March 1850, a colored slave named Liz Spocott dreamed of the future.”
Liz the Dreamer possesses that rarest of gifts, an ability to see what tomorrow will bring. She has escaped her abusive owner. Now gravely wounded, recaptured, she sees visions of the future as she lies in chains alongside an elderly woman in a slave trader’s attic. They converse. Her nameless companion teaches Liz the “Code.”
The “Code” was the secret system of messages that guided escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad. The Eastern Shore of Maryland was a favored region for runaway slaves to pass through. As they fled north, they watched and listened for coded signals to help them find their way safely.
A network of “watermen” — oystermen and fishermen along the Chesapeake Bay — ferried escapees to freedom. Slave-hunting patrols played a deadly game of cat and mouse with the runaways and their sympathizers. Many slaves, like those warehoused in that attic, were forced to return to endure the same horrors that they had dared to escape.
McBride got the inspiration for his character Liz the Dreamer from the legendary Harriet Tubman, who showed hundreds of slaves a way to freedom through the swamps and forests of that area. His vicious slave hunter, Patty Cannon, is also based on a woman who actually existed.
“Song Yet Sung” is a war story. This war pits the “Code” against the “Trade.” The slave trade was a lucrative business. Slave hunters collected bounties for returning runaway slaves to their owners. Runaways employed the “Code” to circumvent the “Trade.”
The novel is also a love story. Liz the Dreamer has a high price on her head. As a number of bounty hunters are searching for her, a slave named Amber helps her. He loves her.
McBride has invented a character named “Woolman.” This descendant of slaves lives a wild existence in the forest: “he had the wildest mane of wooly hair that she’d ever seen on any colored, muscles in every part of his upper body, and legs as thick as tree branches.”
Woolman brings a muscular, unifying resolution to this fast-paced adventure. While slaves and slave hunters play a deadly game of hide and seek in the swamps, Woolman watches and waits to wage his private war against society.
Racism is the primary color on McBride’s literary palette. Sexism and racism merge, forming hybrid shades of oppression. One character observes: “Men, she thought bitterly. They run the world to sin and then wonder why the world wakes up every morning sucking sorrow.”
Liz dreams an ominous future in which her people remain enslaved. Clothing fads, violence, bad diets and hip-hop form new shackles in her dark visions.
McBride will visit Joseph Beth Booksellers at Rockwood Pavilion, Cincinnati at 2 p.m. Feb. 24.
This is my review of the new book by James McBride which ran on Sunday in the Dayton Daily News.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: confessions of a galley slave
THE RIGHT STUFF
Who is the luckiest person that you know? Did you say John Glenn? He gets my vote. John Glenn was my hero back in the day. The stories he can tell…
I interviewed John Glenn. We talked for over an hour. What an amazing guy! He told me about his love of flying. Fighter pilot. Test pilot. Astronaut. That was plenty. We didn’t have time to talk about his time as a United States Senator, presidential candidate,or his return to space as a senior citizen.
Not enough time. One thing we did get into was his reaction to the book THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe. I was reminded of John Glenn’s reaction when I saw that Picador has just reissued the book. John Glenn also told me how he felt about the movie version of the book. John Glenn is SO cool.
I shall always treasure the memory of that conversation with my childhood hero. John Glenn always had the right stuff.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: we remember
this teacher changed my life
I’ll never forget her. She was a Dominican nun. Sister Ellen Clare. My third grade teacher. She loved words. She had a passion for language.
She taught us some BIG words. I still remember most of them….words like PREVARICATE….PROCRASTINATE…DEBRIS… Heady stuff for children. I loved it!
Sister taught us that there are millions of words and we could never know them all but, if we started early, and worked hard, we might learn some of them.
She was from Dubuque. Sister inspired me to read the dictionary. I loved it! I thought of her today. I got an advance copy of READING THE OED- One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Perigee/June 2008) by Ammon Shea.
Shea read the entire Oxford English Dictionary. This book describes the joys he experienced by doing so-the words that stopped him cold: Gulchin-a little glutton…Happify-to make happy….Hypergelast-a person who will not stop laughing…Interdespise-to hate someone, as they hate you….. I love it!
Sister would have loved it…..
And it reminded me of that wonderful third grade teacher of mine, Sister Ellen Clare. She changed my life-for the better.
Did you ever had a teacher like her? Someone who made a lasting impact? Share your story with our readers.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: secret passions
don’t cry for me, Hillary Clinton
After Barack Obama shocked the presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by winning the Iowa Caucuses the pundits wrote her off.
Then Hillary Clinton made a savvy political calculation; she displayed a rare thing for her, vulnerability. It seemed real. She appeared fragile. Her eyes welled with tears. Then, she threw back Obama in New Hampshire.
That seems like a million years ago. Obama has run off a string of 8 straight wins over the past 2 weeks. Since Hillary won California on Super Tuesday she hasn’t had a whole lot to smile about. She had to loan her campaign 5 million dollars while the surging Obama campaign is rolling in dough.
Now some pundits are predicting that she has to win in both Texas and Ohio to stay in this battle. The Ohio primary is on March 4. That seems like a million years from now.
The Obama surge is the one surge that seems to really be working? His campaign is energized. Hillary’s spouse Bill Clinton has been muffled of late. Michelle Obama is making fiery speeches.
How can Hillary Clinton turn this thing around?
Heeeere come those tears again…..
The Democratic Party seems on the verge of deserting the candidate who once acted like she had the nomination all locked up.
It’s my Party and I’ll cry if I want to!
How did things come to this?
You would cry too if it happened to you!
So, can we expect the floodgates to open? Perhaps, but not just yet. Recent polling shows that Clinton still holds a large lead over Obama in Ohio. It needs to be said however that she once held a huge lead over him nationally. That has been reduced to nothing. It is a dead heat.
Cry-y-y-ying, over you! Cry-y-y-ying, over you!
No matter how you slice it, this battle for the Democratic nomination has turned into that most unusual of scenarios in modern American presidential politics, a race!
I can’t wait to see what happens next?
Heeeere come those tears again…..
Sometimes tears are not enough…..
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: politicked
a literary MySpace?
It is being hailed as a “literary MySpace.” Based in San Francisco, RedRoom.com offers users the opportunity to “read the latest author blogs, watch author interviews and other exciting videos, listen to author podcasts.”
Does that sound like something you might wish to check out? RedRoom.com just sent out a press release announcing that Barack Obama has joined the site as an author. As the saying goes, timing is everything.
Here’s a link to the RedRoom website: click here.
Did you check out their website? They have amassed quite a bit of content. It appears that they have substantial financial backing for their endeavor.
What do you think? Is this the sort of thing that will attract interest? Will you be checking it out?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: that's what they say
Wisconsin cheese
Well, it looks like Barack Obama might have Hillary Clinton on the ropes? Say, can you pass the cheese, please?
And Roid Rocket, Roger Clemens is sweating bullets right now? I’m thinking about cheese.
How cheesy of me. I love cheese. When I lived in Iowa we made annual pilgrimages to the Wisconsin border, crossing over to La Crosse for that real cheese.
I’m reading WISCONSIN CHEESE-A Cookbook and Guide to the Cheeses of Wisconsin (Three Forks) by Martin Hintz and Pam Percy right now.
When you think of Wisconsin what do you think of? The Green Bay Packers? Those losers. Senator Joe McCarthy? Best forgotten. Cheeseheads? BINGO!
I love cheese. Wisconsin cheese is the best cheese in the land. Cheese is a heavenly dairy product. I’m thrilled to have this new book because it is full of recipes for dishes that feature cheese.
Here are some recipes that help me forget about politics, steroid investigations, and all the other boring stuff that is frankly too cheesy for my taste:
Wisconsin Gorgonzola, Caramelized Onion, and Potato
Rosti (Swiss Fried Potatoes)
French-fried Wisconsin Cheese
Soft, “Sexy” Wisconsin Cheese Grits
Cherry Cheddar Crusted Pork Tenderloin
Hook’s Blue Cheese Cake
Wisconsin Cheese Steak Sandwich
Excuse me, I need to check out the kitchen. I hear some cheese calling my name: Vick! Come here! We are leftover cheesy potatoes. Hurry!
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: secret passions
this blog on National Public Radio
Regular readers of this blog have probably read my posts from the category In The Amazone. There was a piece that just ran on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition that mentioned this blog!
I have written posts about Amazon.com’s customer reviewing system and in particular, Amazon’s NUMBER ONE reviewer, the mysterious Harriet Klausner.
The NPR piece by Martha Woodroof featured several guests who commented on Amazon’s highly successful customer reviewing feature. If you missed the piece on Morning Edition it is archived on the NPR website.
If you listen closely you will hear Martha Woodroof mention the Dayton Daily News, this blog, and Harriet Klausner. If you listen very closely, you will hear me expressing my thoughts about Harriet-my lonely voice crying in the wilderness.
Here’s a link to the NPR page that contains audio of the piece: Click here.
If you want some background on this situation with some of the Amazon top customer reviewers you can learn more by scrolling through some of my posts on this blog in the category of In The Amazone.
Some of the posts attracted a number of interesting comments. As of this post the mysterious Harriet Klausner is closing in on her 16 thousandth book review on Amazon. The second place reviewer trails Harriet by almost 10 thousand reviews. And Harriet likes every book that she reads……
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: in the Amazone
a cartoon version of the Bible
What do you think about this new version of the Bible that has just been published in the Japanese manga graphic novel form?
Here are some details as reported in the New York Times:
The Bible as Graphic Novel, With a Samurai Stranger Called Christ
By NEELA BANERJEE
“Ajinbayo Akinsiku wants the world to know Jesus Christ, just not the gentle, blue-eyed Christ of old Hollywood movies and illustrated Bibles.
Mr. Akinsiku says his Son of God is “a samurai stranger who’s come to town, in silhouette,” here to shake things up in a new, much-abridged version of the Bible rooted in manga, the Japanese form of graphic novels.
“We present things in a very brazen way,” said Mr. Akinsiku, who hopes to become an Anglican priest and who is the author of “The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation.” “Christ is a hard guy, seeking revolution and revolt, a tough guy.”
Publishers with an eye for evangelism and for markets have long profited by directing Bibles at niche markets: just-married couples, teenage boys, teenage girls, recovering addicts. Often the lure is cosmetic, like a jazzy new cover.
Sales of graphic novels, too, have grown by double digits in recent years. So it makes sense that a convergence is under way, as graphic novels take up stories from the Bible, often in startling ways. In the last year, several major religious and secular publishing houses have announced or released manga religious stories.
The medium shapes the message. Manga often focuses on action and epic. Much of the Bible, as a result, ends up on the cutting room floor, and what remains is darker.
“It is the end of the Word as we know it, and the end of a certain cultural idea of the Scriptures as a book, as the Book,” Timothy Beal, professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, said of the reworking of the Bible in new forms, including manga. “It opens up new ways of understanding Scripture and ends up breaking the idols a bit.”
While known for characters with big eyes and catwalk poses, manga is also defined by a laconic, cinematic style, with characters often doing more than talking.
In a blurb for the Manga Bible, which is published by Doubleday, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, is quoted as saying, “It will convey the shock and freshness of the Bible in a unique way.”
No doubt. In the Manga Bible, whose heroes look and sound like skateboarders in Bedouin gear, Noah gets tripped up counting the animals in the Ark: “That’s 11,344 animals? Arggh! I’ve lost count again. I’m going to have to start from scratch!”
Abraham rides a horse out of an explosion to save Lot. Og, king of Bashan, looms like an early Darth Vader. The Sermon on the Mount did not make the book, though, because there was not enough action to it.
The Manga Bible sold 30,000 copies in Great Britain, according to Doubleday. The print run in this country is 15,000, and it sells for $12.95.
Mr. Akinsiku, 42, who uses the pen name Siku, grew up in England and Nigeria in an Anglican family of Nigerian descent. He recently graduated from theology school in London. For years, he has worked as an artist, and a rendering of the Bible was the best way of glorifying God, he said in a telephone interview from London.
While younger adults and teenagers are the most avid consumers of manga, Mr. Akinsiku said he had heard from grandmothers who picked up the book as a gift for their grandchildren. The book is meant to be a first taste of the Bible, which many feel too intimidated to read, Mr. Akinsiku said. Every few pages, a small tab refers to the biblical verses the action covers.”
What do you think? Would you be interested in reading this version of the Bible?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: what do you think?
J.K. Rowling is a big meanie!
J.K. Rowling is flexing her million dollar muscles to protect Harry Potter’s good name. Or, so she might claim. According to an article in the New York Times, the creator of the mega-best-selling Harry Potter series is clamping down on just about anybody who wants to write a book related to her creation.
Here’s the scoop:
February 9, 2008
TALKING BUSINESS
A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity
By JOE NOCERA
On Friday, a lawyer named Anthony Falzone filed his side’s first big brief in the case of Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books. Mr. Falzone is employed by Stanford Law School, where he heads up the Fair Use Project, which was founded several years ago by Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the law school’s best-known professor. Mr. Falzone and the other lawyers at the Fair Use Project are siding with the defendant, RDR Books, a small book publisher based in Muskegon, Mich. As you can see from the titans who have brought the suit, RDR Books needs all the legal firepower it can muster.
As you can probably also see, the case revolves around Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling, of course, is the creator of the Harry Potter series — “one of the most successful writers the world has ever known,” crowed Neil Blair of the Christopher Little Literary Agency, which represents her. Warner Brothers holds the license to the Harry Potter movies. Of the two plaintiffs, though, Ms. Rowling appears to be the one driving the litigation.
“I feel as though my name and my works have been hijacked, against my wishes, for the personal gain and profit of others and diverted from the charities I intended to benefit,” she said in a declaration to the court.
And what perfidious act of “hijacking” has RDR Books committed? It planned to publish a book by Steven Vander Ark, who maintains a fansite called the Harry Potter Lexicon. The Lexicon publishes Harry Potter essays, finds Harry Potter mistakes, explains Harry Potter terminology, devises Harry Potter timelines and does a thousand other things aimed at people who can’t get enough Harry Potter. It’s a Harry Potter encyclopedia for obsessive fans.
So long as the Lexicon was a free Web site, Ms. Rowling looked kindly upon it. But when Mr. Vander Ark tried to publish part of the Lexicon in book form — and (shudder!) to make a profit — Ms. Rowling put her foot down. She claims that she wants to publish her own encyclopedia someday and donate the proceeds to charity — and a competing book by Mr. Vander Ark would hurt the prospects for her own work.
But more than that, she is essentially claiming that the decision to publish — or even to allow — a Harry Potter encyclopedia is hers alone, since after all, the characters in her books came out of her head. They are her intellectual property. And in her view, no one else can use them without her permission.
“There have been a huge number of companion books that have been published,” Mr. Blair said. “Ninety-nine percent have come to speak to us. In every case they have made changes to ensure compliance. They fall in line.” But, he added: “These guys refused to contact us. They refused to answer any questions. They refused to show us any details.”
They fall in line. There, in that one sentence, lies the reason Mr. Falzone and his colleagues have agreed to help represent RDR Books. And it’s why Mr. Lessig decided to start the Fair Use Project in the first place.”
The article goes on in quite a lot of detail. (To read the entire piece simply click on New York Times in blue at the start of this post).
So, what do you think? Is J.K. Rowling just a big meanie?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: that's what they say
Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me
OK, so she dumped you. What have you learned from it?
Ben Carlin, the former executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has applied his comedic sensibilities to this question. He also asked some very funny guys to help him out with the project.
He came up with a cool title: Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me. (Grand Central) He had someone design a nifty cover. (Yes, those are plastic replicas of body parts).
Best of all, he asked some gifted comedians (and others) to make contributions. And it is funny! I laughed. Guffawed. Chortled. Gasped. Sympathized.
Face it guys. we have all been dumped, right? Here are some selected essay titles to give a sense of some of the pathetic manturf getting plowed up here:
Andy Richter (remember him?)contributed “Girls Don’t Make Passes at Guys With Fat Asses.”
Ben Karlin wrote You Too Will Be Crushed.
Ben Rees offers up Get Dumped Before it Matters.
It gets worse-so guys, what’s your tale of misery? Share with us the most hideous, humiliating rejection that you have ever experienced? Go on, tell. It will be therapeutic, right? Don’t be a chicken.
And ladies, tell us how you did that to him. Describe that loser and what it was like when you finally gave him the bad news.
Dump those dumping sagas right here.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: clearing the cobwebs
circle the drain with Mitt Romney
There is an author who can’t be thrilled about Mitt Romney’s evacuation of his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.
That would be a fellow named Niles Fuller, the author of Will Americans Elect a Mormon President? Why Religion Will Not Keep Mitt Romney Out of the White House in 2008.
At the moment you can buy a copy of the book for ten dollars over at Amazon.com. I’ll bet you ten dollars that the price of this book will be dropping faster than Mitt Romney could change positions on the issues. Now that’s fast!
Poor Mitt. OK, not exactly poor. He couldn’t buy it-the presidency, that is. He loaned his campaign all that money. Now Hillary Clinton has taken a bit from the Book of Mitt; she just loaned her campaign five million dollars!
For we live in the land of opportunity- financial opportunity. What a country!
Then there is poor Niles Fuller. He must actually be feeling poorly this morning.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: booms and busts
in the Amazone
My phone has been ringing a lot lately. It seems that there has been a surge of interest in a subject I blogged about last spring. You might recall that I was wondering about some of the top customer reviewers over at Amazon.com. In particular, I was curious about their top reviewer, the mysterious Harriet Klausner.
I wrote a number of posts about these top Amazon reviewers. You can read them by clicking on my blog category IN THE AMAZONE. I got a call today from a reporter with a national broadcast network. She wanted to know more about Harriet. What can I say? OK, I told her what I thought on that subject….
I think that reporter’s piece will air next week. I’ll let you know when I find out more details.
It has taken some time for this story to get noticed. One never knows what one will find IN THE AMAZONE.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: in the Amazone
Remembering Joe Fenley
Joe Fenley has died.
Here is his obituary as it appeared today in the DDN:
By Anthony Gottschlich
Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
DAYTON — Former Dayton Daily News Managing Editor Joe Fenley died overnight following a lengthy illness.
Mr. Fenley, 74, died in hospice care at the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center, according to his daughter, Elizabeth Smith.
Known as an old-fashioned newspaperman who had a hard-nosed yet compassionate style, Mr. Fenley served as managing editor from 1976 until his retirement in 1988.
“He touched everything that went on in the newsroom,” said Steve Sidlo, Fenley’s immediate successor and now publisher of the Springfield News-Sun. “He was so compulsive about making everything just the way he thought it should be. Every paper that came off the presses back then had Joe Fenley’s fingerprints on every page.”
Mr. Fenley led the newsroom when the Daily News and Journal Herald merged into one newspaper in 1986. A tireless worker and teacher to many, the University of Missouri graduate and photography buff thrived on the coverage of breaking news.
“One day something happened, something blew up somewhere, but we didn’t have a photographer handy and Joe grabbed a camera and ran over there and shot it himself!” Sidlo recalled with a laugh. “He was never above doing anything in the newsroom. He loved every facet of the job of putting out a newspaper, and he was happy to dive in there and do whatever he could to get the story right.”
Asked what he learned most from his mentor, Sidlo replied, “His integrity. He taught me a lot about pure integrity. He was obsessed with accuracy, balance and fairness.”
Mr. Fenley, Sidlo added, valued restraint over sensationalism, especially when the news involved ordinary people thrust into the limelight because of some tragic circumstance.
He also respected the role newspapers play in society.
Upon his retirement, he said, “The most important journalism that we’ve done is when we’ve looked at subjects of significant importance to the community and tried to address them in ways that contributed to the dialogue of the community, where the paper could be a positive presence.”
Mr. Fenley, a Staten Island, N.Y., native, served four years in the U.S. Navy as an aviation ordnance man. He joined the Daily News in August 1963 after his first newspaper job with the Painesville Telegraph in northeastern Ohio.
After serving stints as court reporter and business editor, he left in 1969 to work for Industry Week, a New York City-based business magazine. He returned to the Daily News in 1972 as an assistant city editor and was made metropolitan editor in 1974.
“Joe Fenley’s energy and enthusiasm for the news was unsurpassed,” said retired Daily News reporter Rob Modic, whom Fenley hired in 1979. “As a reporter in the courthouse, he was well known to cover five trials in a day and he knew everything that happened. As he moved up the ranks of the newspaper, he applied that (energy) to the entire community.”
For several years Mr. Fenley served on the board of the Family Service Association and later on the board of Building Bridges, a program concerned primarily with at-risk teenagers.
In retirement, he practiced photography and taught at Miami University in Oxford. He also authored a book, The Deadly Groom: An Ohio-Arkansas True-Crime Saga.
He and his wife Ann had a son, Brian, and two daughters: Shawn, who preceded him in death, and Elizabeth.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
I met Joe Fenley on one occasion. He came out to Yellow Springs to appear on my radio program, the Book Nook, on WYSO Public Radio.
We had quite a conversation about his book, The Deadly Groom: An Ohio-Arkansas True-Crime Saga. After he retired, “he felt compelled to write about the murder of the widow of a former colleague.”
I could tell that this was a story that had piqued his journalistic instincts. It is a fascinating story. I was honored to spend that long ago hour with a real newspaper guy.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: we remember
former Antioch student vanishes in Hawaii
An article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer describes the mysterious disappearance of an Ohio man in Hawaii in November, 2005. He hasn’t been heard from since.
According to the article, the young man, Dan Marks, was “described by family and friends as bright, well-spoken and “different” at Girard High School, he found his way to the liberal callings of Antioch College in Yellow Springs in 1999 to study music.”
His family has pieced together how Dan Marks got to Hawaii and the last known sighting of the young man:
“Among the last e-mails he sent before heading to Hawaii was one to a friend ticking off a few recent getaways to “national parks and wilderness excursions with strangers I found on craigslist, a trip into Death Valley” and a “totally random and super cheap flight forwarded to me by a friend that has prompted me to fly to Kauai.”
The last people known to have seen Marks were tourists, a Colorado couple taking in the breathtaking views from the lookout high above Kauai’s Kalalau Valley. That was Nov. 10, 2005, at about 4:30 in the afternoon.
“It was just a quick ‘Hi, how are you, where are you from?’ kind of conversation,” said Robin Carter. “He was trying to get down the mountain before sunset. He looked like he knew what he was doing. My husband was taking pictures and when we got in the car to leave, we were like, ‘Holy crap, what’s he doing going down that mountain at this time of day, and alone?’ We just thought, ‘There goes one gutsy dude.’ “
Marks was hardly a weekend hill-hopper. He had hiked extensively in Australia, New Zealand, India, Central America and much of the Western United States, including Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.
From the lookout, he surveyed steep 4,000-foot drops on both sides, the sharp-edged terrain framing a lush valley that leads northward to the sea. Locals call it true wilderness. Rainbows often sprout from the clash of rain, sun and mountain mist. It looks like God’s garden. Paradise. Carrying a couple of hiking sticks and a small backpack, he set out for the eastern ridge.
Then he vanished.”
The article compares this situation to the tragic story of the young man depicted in Jon Krakauer’s best selling book INTO THE WILD. That true story was adapted into the film by Sean Penn made last year.
I was working at WYSO Public Radio on the Antioch College campus when Dan Marks was in Yellow Springs attending Antioch. I remember seeing him around. He was quiet but he had a strong presence about him.
I wonder what became of Dan Marks? This mystery will hopefully inspire an author to write a book about it. Maybe then the puzzle of this young man’s existence can be solved.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: that's what they say
A Walk in the Woods with Robert Redford
The last time I spoke to Bill Bryson he told me about a meeting he had had with Robert Redford to discuss the film rights to Bryson’s classic travel book A WALK IN THE WOODS. At the time, Bryson wasn’t too optimistic about the film being made.
Things change. Redford seems to be moving ahead with the project. Which begs the question: who will play Bill Bryson in the film? Robert Redford? He must be 80?! Better yet, who will play the role of Bryson’s trusty sidekick, Steven Katz?
Do you have any ideas? Who would you suggest should play the role of Bryson? What about Katz?
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: booms and busts
American Movie Critics
Are you a hardcore movie buff? Then I have just the book for you; AMERICAN MOVIE CRITICS- An Anthology From the Silents Until Now is a new expanded edition that compiles the greatest American movie criticism from the entire era of film. Edited by Philip Lopate, this superb collection from the Library of America is an absolute treasure.
Here’s a blurb from the LOA website:
“Now available in an expanded paperback edition, American Movie Critics is an anthology of unparalleled scope that charts the rise of movies as art, industry, and mass entertainment. Beginning in the silent era—with poets Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg hailing the new medium and Edmund Wilson paying tribute to Chaplin’s Gold Rush—the collection traces the rapid evolution of the medium in an age of tumultuous political and social changes. Here are the great movie critics who forged a forceful vernacular idiom for talking about the new art: Otis Ferguson in the 1930s finding in James Cagney “the dignity of the genuine worn as easily as his skin”; James Agee in the 1940s on American war films and the advent of Italian neo-realism; Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, Vincent Canby, and others from what Lopate calls “the golden age of movie criticism” from the 1950s through the ’70s, a period when enthusiasms ran high, and arguments over style and content often took on a larger-than-life quality. Here too are the finest film reviewers on the contemporary scene, including Richard Schickel, Roger Ebert, and Manohla Dargis.
New to this edition are selections featuring Stephanie Zacharek, Nathan Lee, and David Brodwell that highlight the influence of Internet-based criticism and the impact of new technology on film-viewing.
Joining the full-time film writers are many distinguished American authors weighing in on a range of cinematic experiences, including Ralph Ellison, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, Brendan Gill, and John Ashbery. Together they define an often underappreciated genre of American writing, a tradition filled with the “energy, passion, and analytical juice” that for Lopate mark the best in movie criticism.
Phillip Lopate, editor, is an essayist, novelist, and poet, whose books include Bachelorhood; Against Joie de Vivre; Portrait of My Body; and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan. He has edited The Art of the Personal Essay and, for The Library of America, Writing New York: A Literary Anthology. His selected film criticism appeared in Totally Tenderly Tragically, and he currently serves on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival.”
If you love movies and crave the opportunity to study various aspects of film then you should savor this book.
The LOA is a non-profit publisher. They put out extraordinary books.
Vick Mickunas
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some hot new paperbacks
Two of my favorite books from 2007 have just been issued in paperback. CANAAN (WW Norton) by Donald McCaig is the long awaited sequel to his Civil War novel JACOB’S LADDER. This one is set during the years following the Civil War and runs up to the time of Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn. It is a sprawling good read, a western of the grand old style with bigger than life characters and action that spreads across the pages with cinematic expansiveness. I think McCaig is at the top of his game here. I interviewed him when this book came out in hardcover and he agreed, he thought this was his best writing.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw the book WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP by Michael Lesy. It was in the early ‘70’s and the book has haunted me ever since. Lesy has finally published a book that seems like a fitting bookend to that other book; MURDER CITY - The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties (WW Norton) is a chilling death trip back to a Windy City that was gripped in a kind of homicidal madness. Sure, there were lots of gangster killings in Chicago during that time but Lesy has chosen to focus on a number of other murders that took place during that period. Lesy told me in an interview that he spent a long time going through the photo archives to select the perfect shots for these narratives; mostly killers who look at the camera with doomed expressions. Some look quite insane.
Lesysifted through the newspaper archives of the time and has assembled a series of senseless crimes that once captivated readers with gruesome headlines. People were killing each other for a car or a few dollars. One guy murdered the car salesmen then took his mother for a cruise in his new ride.
Some of the murders were the acts of WWI vets returned from the killing fields of France. These were sensational and thoroughly outrageous offenses. One particularly disturbing homicide was the act of a woman. Something was really messed up about Chicago during this period and Lesy has put together a volume that is almost as haunting as WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP. Don’t read this book late at night. It may give you ghastly dreams.
Vick Mickunas
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