Fenwick vs. Felicity
Students earn scholarships
Minster vs. Southeastern
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 > October
October 2008
remembering Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel died today in Chicago. He was 96. Here’s a report from The Chicago Tribune.
There will never be another one like him…
Studs Terkel signs autographs in Dayton, Ohio. November, 2006. Studs had just gotten the first Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement. That’s me on the right, helping Studs.
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we can go shopping for Sarah Palin
Timmy from Alaska just sent me the following link. You can go shopping for Sarah Palin by clicking here.
(be sure to check out the gun…..)
And after our shopping spree for Sarah we can drop by her new office by clicking here.
(be sure to check out the shredder…..)
Politics can be so much fun! Happy Halloween! (Watch out for FrankenBiden…)
Vick Mickunas
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I accept full blame
It’s all my fault. I did it. Blame me. I have been exposed. The buck stops here…
The evidence is conclusive. Discover the source of my shame by clicking here.
My bad…..
Vick Mickunas
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a Presidential Quiz
Test your presidential knowledge by taking this quiz:
(1)Four presidents never held elective office before becoming president. Who were they?
(2)Which president had 15 children?
(3)Four presidents died before their parents did. Who were they?
(4)There is a pending suit in Warren County, Ohio right now that alleges that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Name the presidents who were not born in the United States?
The person who provides the most correct answers between now and the end of Election Day next Tuesday will win a fun prize.
Post your answers in the comments section. Thanks!
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writing letters to President Obama
Millions of Americans are getting ready to watch Barack Obama’s half hour program tonight on network TV. I’m supposing that John McCain is troubled by this program? He keeps slamming Obama about it - McCain spends a lot of time slamming Obama. A lot of good that seems to be doing John?
I just got wind of a new project. Some people are writing a book that will be filled with letters to President Obama. I guess they think that he might actually win this thing? The book will be called Letters to President Obama: Americans Share Our Thoughts and Dreams with the First African-American President (Skyhorse).
I am not aware of any such project to write letters to President McCain. If you know about anything like this for Senator McCain please leave me a note in the comments section. Thanks!
And, if you wish to make a contribution to this letter writing project, or you know someone who does, you can find out more about writing a letter to President Obama by clicking here:
(Barn located between Yellow Springs and Clifton, Ohio. Photo by Amy Achor)
Out of idle curiosity I just did some Google searches. I searched for “President McCain” and I got 583,000 links. I searched for “President Obama” and got 15,400,000 links back.
Oh my…..
Vick Mickunas
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Al Qaeda endorses John McCain
At first I simply could not believe this - but here it is; the most e-mailed article at the New York Times today. Check this thing out:
October 26, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Endorsement From Hell
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
“John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.
“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”
That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.
Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.
“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.
An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.
During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam.
In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests. Perhaps the best example is one of the least-known failures in Bush administration foreign policy: Somalia.
Today, Somalia is the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur or Congo. The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame. But Bush administration paranoia about Islamic radicals contributed to the disaster.
Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.
Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia’s best hope for peace collapsed.
“A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. As a result, Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism have surged, partly because Somalis blame Washington for the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers.
“There’s a level of anti-Americanism in Somalia today like nothing I’ve seen over the last 20 years,” Professor Menkhaus said. “Somalis are furious with us for backing the Ethiopian intervention and occupation, provoking this huge humanitarian crisis.”
Patrick Duplat, an expert on Somalia at Refugees International, the Washington-based advocacy group, says that during his last visit to Somalia, earlier this year, a local mosque was calling for jihad against America — something he had never heard when he lived peacefully in Somalia during the rise of the Islamic Courts Union.
“The situation has dramatically taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “The U.S. chose a very confrontational route early on. Who knows what would have happened if the U.S. had reached out to moderates? But that might have averted the disaster we’re in today.”
The greatest catastrophe is the one endured by ordinary Somalis who now must watch their children starve. But America’s own strategic interests have also been gravely damaged.
The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That’s probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.”
Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden is kicking back, writing his memoirs.
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remembering Tony Hillerman
The novelist Tony Hillerman has died. Here’s an obit from the International Herald Tribune:
Tony Hillerman, novelist, dies at 83
By Marilyn Stasio
Monday, October 27, 2008
“Tony Hillerman, whose lyrical, authentic and compelling mystery novels set among the Navajos of the Southwest blazed innovative trails in the American detective story, died Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, The Associated Press reported.
He was 83 and lived in Albuquerque.
The cause was pulmonary failure, according to the AP report.
Hillerman’s evocative novels, which describe people struggling to maintain ancient traditions in the modern world, touched millions of readers, who made them best sellers. But although the themes of his books were not overtly political, he wrote with a purpose, he often said, and that purpose was to instill in his readers a respect for Indian culture. The plots of his stories, while steeped in contemporary crime and its consequences, were invariably instructive about ancient tribal beliefs and customs, from purification rituals for a soldier returned from a foreign war to incest taboos for a proper clan marriage.
“It’s always troubled me that the American people are so ignorant of these rich Indian cultures,” Hillerman once told Publishers Weekly. “I think it’s important to show that aspects of ancient Indian ways are still very much alive and are highly germane even to our ways.”
Hillerman was not the first mystery writer to set a story on Indian land or to introduce a full-blooded Native American detective to crime literature. In 1946 the grand prize in the first short-story competition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine went to Manly Wade Wellman for the first of two stories he wrote with an Indian protagonist.
But beginning with “The Blessing Way” in 1970 the 18 novels Hillerman set on Southwest Indian reservations featuring Lieut. Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, brought a new dimension to the character of the traditional genre hero.
Joe Leaphorn, seasoned and a bit cynical, has a logical mind and a passion for order that reflects his upbringing in the Navajo Way. His code of behavior is dictated by a belief in the ordered, harmonious patterns of life that link man to the natural world. But he is not a fundamentalist in terms of religion; the grizzled skeptic is the holder of a master’s degree in anthropology.
Younger and more idealistic than his pragmatic fellow police officer, Jim Chee seeks a more spiritual connection to Navajo tradition. Over the course of several books, he studies to become a hataalii, a singer or medicine man. This ambition often creates friction between the religious faith he professes and the secular rules of criminal justice he is sworn to uphold. Chee first appears in “People of Darkness,” Hillerman’s fifth novel, as a counterpoint to Leaphorn’s cynicism.
Leaphorn and Chee appear in separate novels of Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police series , each novel challenging them with a crime that seems to be entangled in the spirit world yet at the same time starkly rooted in the modern reservation life Hillerman knew so well.
In “Skinwalkers” (1986), Hillerman first brought Leaphorn and Chee together on the same case to offer a fascinating interplay of two different representatives of Navajo culture. In “Skinwalkers,” the police officers investigate three murders on the reservation linked only by pellets of bone associated with the murder weapons. Is this an indication that the murders are the work of skinwalkers, witches who can fly and take the shapes of dogs, wolves or other animals? Leaphorn hates witchcraft and holds superstition, unemployment and whisky responsible for much of the suffering endured by his people. But Chee knows the power of forces the science of the white man cannot explain. The detectives blend their special views of the world to solve the case.
In addition to his complex heroes, Hillerman also wrote compassionately and with intimate knowledge of a great range of clansmen from the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes, people with whom he felt a deep affinity because he grew up among those very much like them. “When I met the Navajo I now so often write about, I recognized kindred spirits,” he wrote in an autobiographical essay in 1986. “Country boys. Folks among whom I felt at ease.”
Anthony Grove Hillerman was born May 27, 1925, in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, to August Alfred Hillerman, a farmer and shopkeeper, and his wife, Lucy Grove. The town was in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and the family’s circumstances were so mean that Hillerman would later joke that “the Joads were the ones who had enough money to move to California.”
“In Sacred Heart, being a storyteller was a good thing to be,” he said of his country village, which had no television and was 35 miles from the nearest library. Growing up on territorial lands of the Potawatomie Tribe, he went to St. Mary’s Academy, a school for Indian girls run by the Sisters of Mercy, and attended high school with Potawatomie children. He maintained throughout his life Indian friendships that he credited for much of the veracity of his stories.
“I cross-examine my Navajo friends and shamelessly hang around trading posts, police substations, rodeos, rug auctions and sheep dippings,” he once wrote of his research methods.
After attending Oklahoma A&M College, he enlisted in the Army in World War II. In two years of combat in Europe, Hillerman said, his company of 212 rifleman shrank to 8 survivors as they fought their way through France. In 1945 in a raid behind German lines he stepped on a concussive mine. His left leg was shattered and he was severely burned; he never regained full vision in his left eye.
During a long hospital convalescence he said he got caught up in “the world’s greatest, longest, Guinness Book of Records poker game,” which came to an end only when the head nurse, outraged that the players would not even stop to attend a memorial service for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, confiscated their cards.
He returned from Europe in 1945 with the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He picked up his studies, this time at the University of Oklahoma where he met and married Marie Unzner, a Phi Beta Kappa student in bacteriology, and took up a career in journalism. He was a crime reporter for The Borger News-Herald in the Texas Panhandle; city editor of The Morning Press-Constitution in Lawton, Oklahoma; a political reporter in Oklahoma City, and later bureau manager in Santa Fe for United Press International and executive editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican.
At that point Hillerman and his wife had one child and adopted five more. He was almost 40 and had put in 17 years as a newspaperman. But he was becoming restless.
“The yen builds to work in something more malleable than hard fact, an urge grows to try to deal with the meaning of all this,” he said. So with his wife’s support he quit The New Mexican and the family pulled up stakes and moved to Albuquerque, where he enrolled at the University of New Mexico. He earned his master’s degree in 1966, joined the university’s journalism faculty, taught writing and ethnic courses and became chairman of the journalism department. Increasingly fascinated with Indian culture, he also became something of an authority on the Southwest.
Hillerman is survived by his wife, Marie, and their six children.
In the late 1960’s he began to “practice” writing by working on a mystery. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to work in plastic instead of flint; make your own imagination drive the writing.’”
When he had returned home on convalescent leave from the Army he came upon a group of Navajos on horseback and in face paint and feathers in Crownpoint, New Mexico They were holding a Navajo Enemy Way ceremony, a curing ritual for a soldier just like himself just back from the war. The ritual exorcises all traces of the enemy from those returning from battle.
He was moved by the ceremony and by the Navajos “I’m drawn to people who believe in something enough that their lives are affected by it” and stirred by the vastness of the country to the extent that he resolved to live there. The experience became the basis for “The Blessing Way.”
He spent three years writing the novel and sent the manuscript directly to Joan Kahn, a fabled mystery editor at Harper & Row. She responded with a detailed critique of the book, which included advice to beef up the role of a secondary character, the Navajo Tribal policeman Joe Leaphorn as well as an offer to publish it. Hillerman complied and credited Kahn for starting his career.
He departed from Indian themes for his second book, “The Fly on the Wall” (1971), a story of big-city corruption that featured a political reporter. But he was already yearning to get back to the country where all his other novels are set.
“I love the place,” he wrote of the vast tribal lands that span the northeast corner of Arizona and straddle the borders of New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. “I need only drive west from Shiprock and into that great emptiness to feel my spirit lift.”
That aching passion for place becomes palpable in Hillerman’s soaring descriptive prose. Immersing himself in settings like Canyon de Chelly, he would “collect” sensory impressions that surfaced in his deeply felt evocations of “the way the wind sounds down there, the nature of echoes, the smell of sage and wet sand, how the sky looks atop a tunnel of stone, the booming of thunder bouncing from one cliff to another.”
“When I’m writing it’s essential for me to have in my mind a memory of the landscape,” he once said. “So I tend to go around looking for locations like a movie director.”
The lyrical descriptions in a Hillerman mystery are always germane to the story because they illustrate how violent crime disrupts the harmonious Navajo world. “Everything is connected,” Jim Chee reflects in “Ghostway” (1984). “The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.”
In the same way, the particular nature of a crime, from grave robbery to murder, always reflects the aspect of Navajo culture that it offends. “Navajos did not kill with cold-blooded premeditation,” readers learn in “The Blessing Way.” “Nor did they kill for profit. To do so violated the scale of values of The People. Beyond meeting simple immediate needs, the Navajo Way placed little worth on property.”
When murder is the crime, the Indians in Hillerman’s books find it easier to attribute such an act to witches, a superstition that horrifies the rational Joe Leaphorn but makes sense to Jim Chee, who sees witchcraft metaphorically, “in people who had turned deliberately and with malice from the beauty of the Navajo Way and embraced the evil that was its opposite… in those who sold whisky to children, in those who bought videocassette recorders while their relatives were hungry, in the knife fights in a Gallup alley, in beaten wives and abandoned children.”
The vividly impressionistic quality of Hillerman’s writing spilled out from the novels and into nonfiction works about the land he loved, including “Indian Country: America’s Sacred Land” (1987), with photographs by Bela Kalman; “New Mexico, Rio Grande, and Other Essays” (1992), with photographs by David Muench and Robert Reynolds, and “Hillerman Country: A Journey through the Southwest with Tony Hillerman” (1991), with photographs by his elder brother, Barney.
Within the narrow, specialized and frequently contentious world of mystery fiction, Hillerman was that rare figure, a best-selling author who was adored by his fans, admired by his fellow authors, respected by literary critics and universally liked for his personal modesty and legendary professional generosity. Formal honors came his way with his third book, “Dance Hall of the Dead” ( 1973), which won the Mystery Writers of America’s 1974 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Novel.
“Skinwalkers,” which is generally considered his breakthrough book, won the Western Writers of America’s Golden Spur Award in 1987. In 1991, after solidifying the Navajo Tribal Police series with “A Thief of Time” (his own favorite novel), “Talking God” and “Coyote Waits,” he received the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, its Grandmaster Award.
The recognition that gladdened him most, however, was the status of Special Friend of the Dineh conferred on him in 1987 by the Navajo Nation for his honest, accurate portrayal of Navajo people and their culture. It was also a special source of pride to him that his books are taught on reservation high schools and colleges.
“Good reviews delight me when I get them,” he once said. “But I am far more delighted by being voted the most popular author by the students of St. Catherine Indian school, and even more by middle-aged Navajos who tell me that reading my mysteries revived their children’s interest in the Navajo Way.”
Although some critics took Hillerman to task for humorless moralizing and for the reverential attitude with which he favored his Indian characters, none faulted the flawless construction of his classic plots or the sheer power of his storyteller’s voice.
“It seems to me that I am writing what Graham Greene called ‘entertainments,”’ he once said. “My readers are buying a mystery, not a tome of anthropology.” While the praise heaped on the authenticity of his novels pleased him, he insisted, “The name of the game is telling stories.”
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Amazon. com does the right thing (again)
No, I’m not talking about Oprah Winfrey’s latest discovery, the Amazon Kindle. It’s amazing how Oprah’s stamp of approval carries so much weight. The Kindle, Amazon’s paperless reading device came out about a year ago. A lot of people had never heard of it until Oprah started gushing about it. But no, that’s not what I’m talking about.
Long time perusers of this blog might recall that I have done a number of posts about Amazon’s customer reviews. In particular, I have written about Amazon’s Numero Uno customer reviewer. I call her The Mysterious Harriet Klausner.
I check out Amazon’s website on a daily basis to see what books are hot. Now and then I look at Harriet Klausner’s gargantuan pile of book reviews and chuckle because I have never believed that anyone, even Harriet Klausner - could possibly read AND review that many books. As of today Harriet has posted 17, 532 reviews!
As I have stated in previous posts on this subject, I am biased. I love Amazon.com. They sell almost everything and they do it very well. Amazon.com is a well run company. That’s why I have always been puzzled that Amazon was allowing their customer reviewer system to be dominated by a few mega-reviewers who posted so many reviews and got so many positive votes for their reviews that mere mortals could never hope to match their output.
I have wondered about it on this blog and it has gotten the attention of other media. I did an interview about it for Slate.com last year. That piece in Slate was noticed by someone at National Public Radio. I did an interview about Amazon top reviewers for NPR. Most of my comments never made it on to NPR’s airwaves but my main point was this: AMAZON.COM is too good of a company to allow their customer reviewing system to keep going on this way….
Apparently, I was right about Amazon.com….
Last night after the World Series game ended I logged on to Amazon.com to see what was what. I hadn’t looked at Harriet Klausner’s reviews lately so I decided to check them out for a wee guffaw. When I did I made a stunning discovery….
Amazon.com has altered their customer reviewing system. They have created another tier of customer reviews with a different ranking system. On this new system, Harriet Klausner remains at the top of what Amazon is now calling their Classic Reviewer Rank. But here’s the shocking part: Amazon has a new ranking system that is running alongside the old one. They are calling it their New Reviewer Rank and in that new system Harriet Klausner ranks at the truly humbling #445.
Amazon.com has done the right thing by trying to address some flaws in their customer reviewing system. Amazon has extensive areas devoted to customer feedback, reviews, discussion boards, etc. I got a good chuckle when I checked out some of the comments Amazon has been getting from some formerly lofty status reviewers who have been demoted on this new ranking system.
Such pathetic whining from some of them….but not from the Mysterious Harriet….she soldiers on with her heavy load…plowing through the books like candy…three hearty cheers for Amazon.com !!!
For Amazon insights from the outside check out the Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society.
Reporting from the Amazone, I’m Vick Mickunas….
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beware the slumbering Tiger….
“The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga, (The Free Press, 304 pages, $14).
There’s a stack of books I’ve set aside. I plan to read them. Last spring I placed “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga in that pile. It got great reviews. Still, I had not cracked it open yet.
“The White Tiger” just won the Man Booker prize, Great Britain’s most prestigious literary award. Each year an author from Britain, Ireland, or one of the British Commonwealth countries is chosen to receive it. It comes with a lovely check for 50,000 pounds. That’s about $86,000.
That piqued my interest. The author was born in India in 1974. “The White Tiger” is his first novel. Adiga is a former correspondent for Time magazine. He found a part of India as a journalist that he never witnessed before - grinding poverty. He decided to write this book.
The White Tiger of the title is Balram Halwai, the narrator of the story. As it starts Balram has heard that the premier of China is coming for a state visit. The book is written in the form of letters that Balram is writing to the premier.
Balram identifies himself as an entrepreneur. He suggests that “apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punct uality, does have entrepreneurs.”
Over the course of seven nights Balram describes how he rose up from horrifying conditions in the Indian countryside, an area that Adiga refers to as the Darkness. Balram became the driver for a wealthy family in Delhi. He observed as his corrupt employers bribed government officials and lived the high life while the multitudes struggled to exist.
In his travels across India the author was struck by the fact that most Indians lived a threadbare existence yet the country has a low crime rate. His character Balram marvels that his fellow servants don’t steal from their masters. As the story develops readers observe Balram’s resentment growing. He plots a monstrous revenge.
The book has ruffled some feathers. The Press Trust of India reports that “Adiga’s novel is creating ripples in India for its defiantly unglamorous portrait of the country’s economic miracle.” Adiga makes no apologies. He told The Times of India “I tried to tell a very real story about India on the brink of unrest. I tried to challenge the assumptions that many in middle-class India hold about the poor: that they are stupid, easily manipulated, excessively religious and bound by caste and family.”
Adiga’s Balram is a fascinating fellow. “The White Tiger” is animated by Balram’s dark humor. We balance on the trembling knife edge of irony as Balram astutely observes: “See, the poor dream all their lives of20getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of? Losing weight and looking like the poor.”
“The White Tiger” has just been re-issued in paperback.
Vick Mickunas
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an interview with Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin recently published EXIT MUSIC (Little, Brown), his last book in the two decades long series featuring Deputy Inspector John Rebus.
Rebus has reached mandatory retirement age with the Edinburgh, Scotland police. As the book opens, Rebus has ten days left on the job.
I have interviewed Ian Rankin on a number of occasions. I spoke to him the other day about this latest book. During our conversation I asked him what he thinks of the Rebus television series on British TV? Rankin’s response was not what you might expect.
You can listen to our conversation this Sunday morning at 10:30 on WYSO Weekend on WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs. That’s 91.3fm….
Vick Mickunas
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let’s get small
Our incredible shrinking economy seems to be telling us something: let’s get small.
Everything seems to be getting smaller. My IRA is a good example. Profits are getting smaller. So are cars. The bigger is better philosophy is getting downsized. Economies of scale are getting scaled down. Even gas prices are getting smaller? Ha! Wait until after the election to see how long that trend lasts…
Walmart might become Smallmart. All around us we see the shrinkage. I have a car dealer just down the road from me. She has half a dozen vehicles for sale on her lot. Big car dealers take note.
We need to think about planting victory gardens next year. We need to learn how to share. I know a guy over by Cedarville who has been keeping me supplied with hot peppers. We all need to start sharing what we have to share. Get small.
I have been stacking up firewood. It’s going to be a cold winter. And long. And small.
Do you have what it takes to survive tough times? You have to have smalls. Lots of smalls will see us through hard times.
My dad lived through the Great Depression with one pair of shoes. He was forced to think small for the rest of his life. He didn’t waste things.
There was always food on our table.
It’s a small world after all….
Vick Mickunas
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The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program
Sometimes one has to laugh just to keep from crying. As we count down the final, we hope merciful days of George W. Bush as our Fearless Leader and we dream of being able to say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and have those words actually mean something we need to take time to laugh.
I found something to help me laugh. It’s a quickie paperback that came out this week, The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program (Villard) by Gene Stone. It is being billed as “a lifesaving guide to shaking off the horrors of the last eight years, with practical advice on relapse, remission, and recounts.” Ha ha-that’s so funny it hurts.
Stone is the author of a previous bestseller, The Bush Survival Bible. The back cover cautions that “the first step is admitting that you have a Bush problem - and that you have ten bucks for this book. (note: the book came out this week and it is already selling on Amazon.com for a measly 3 bucks…)
The back cover goes on to advise that if you answer YES to one of the following 3 questions then you should seek help. Here are the questions:
Do you think that after eight years of George Bush, this country is in good shape?
Do you feel that the US Constitution has too many amendments?
Do you often dream of George Bush in a flight suit?
The book follows along the lines of the classic 12 Steps but these are steps that are laced with humor.
The book has some interesting blurbs. Check’em out:
“The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program is the best book of its sort that I’ve ever read.” - G. Washington, Virginia
“Every American should read this book in order to understand the depth of the problem as well as the need for a new president.” - A. Lincoln, Illinois
“I liked this book, but I still don’t understand who the problem is.” - G.W. Bush, Texas
“Read this book and I will shoot you.” - D. Cheney, Hades
Don’t be afraid to ask for help…..it helps to chuckle…
Vick Mickunas
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Sarah Palin does a mean Miss Piggy
There is quite a piece today on Sarah Palin in the New Yorker.
Sarah Palin gave an initial boost to the Republican ticket. But lately, Palin has become more of a boat anchor shackled to John McCain’s ankle. Here’s an excerpt from the New Yorker piece:
“The thoroughness of the campaign’s vetting process, overseen by the Washington lawyer and former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr., remains in dispute. The campaign insists that Palin’s record and personal history were carefully examined. (Culvahouse declined to comment for this story.) The Los Angeles Times, however, reported that the campaign never contacted several obvious sources of information on Palin, including Lyda Green—a Republican state senator in Alaska, and a former ally turned opponent. Also in dispute is whether Palin disclosed to the campaign, as she and officials have said, that her unwed teen-age daughter was pregnant. “I am a hundred per cent sure they didn’t know,” McCain’s longtime friend said. Another campaign source, however, insisted that McCain’s team knew about the pregnancy.”
Then there’s the Sarah Palin shopping spree. Today’s Boston Globe relates that “Politico reported that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 to clothe and accessorize Palin since she was picked by McCain in late August. According to financial disclosure records, the bills include $75,063 at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis and $49,426 at Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York. The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.”
Then there’s Palin’s children’s travel bills that have been footed by the taxpayers. According to the Associated Press:
” Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.
The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.
In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor’s children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business. As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor’s schedule.
But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.”
We have an expression back in Iowa for somebody who is riding the gravy train like Palin seems to be. Barack Obama used the term just the other day. We would say that Sarah Palin has been LIVING HIGH ON THE HOG
Those high fliers on Wall Street spent the last 7 years like hogs at the trough.
You can put lipstick on pigs. They’ll still smell funny. The taxpayers who are being forced to bail out Wall Street don’t see much humor in swine. But they do recognize when something stinks….
Vick Mickunas
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have you voted yet?
My absentee ballot arrived today in the mail. I couldn’t wait to read it. I live in Greene County. I was amazed to see how many candidates on the Greene County ballot were running unopposed. All Republicans.
This could have been a good year for a Democrat to run for Greene County Coroner…
On my election bookshelf: Confessions of a Republican Operative - HOW TO RIG AN ELECTION (Simon and Schuster) by Allen Raymond. (Raymond is a former top operative with the GOP. He did time in a federal prison for a phone jamming operation that he coordinated during the New Hampshire elections of 2002. Some might call him an expert).
I mailed my ballot right back - I want it to be counted. This looks like a great year for voter turnout. I can’t wait until the dust settles and we see who won the various races. When the history books are written about this election I think it will go down as one of the most historic elections in American history. Are you excited about being a part if it?
Have you voted yet?
As they used to say in Chicago: Vote early and if you can, VOTE OFTEN! (I’m really kidding here…about voting often)
Vick Mickunas
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don’t look now, there’s a pumpkin chasing you
It’s that time again. HALLOWEEN. PUMPKIN TIME. The art of pumpkin carving has never been wilder or wackier.
Extreme pumpkin carving is an art form that just gets weirder every year. Exhibit Number Two: EXTREME PUMPKINS II - Take Back Halloween and Freak Out a Few More Neighbors (Home) by Tom Nardone is the sequel to his highly acclaimed and utterly bizarre EXTREME PUMPKINS.
Have you seen any extreme pumpkins? Have you carved any? Don’t you love how they freak out the little ghouls who show up on Halloween? We won’t even mention the reactions of the trick or treaters and their parents. Wow!
It’s almost Halloween….so creepy.
Vick Mickunas
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Chocolate - A Healthy Passion…
Tonight I’m listening to game 7 of the titanic duel between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays on XM Satellite Radio. This has been a fantastic baseball series!
Radio is a beautiful medium. And while one listens one can do other things. I’m browsing through a new book, CHOCOLATE - A HEALTHY PASSION (Prometheus Books) by Shara Aaron and Monica Bearden.
This book is a chocolate lover’s dream! It is a blend of history, anecdotes, recipes, and photos. The reader learns where chocolate originated and how it is produced. The authors even provide incentives to eat more chocolate. They claim that there are actually some potential health benefits in doing so! Sweet!
They provide recipes for tasty treats like:
Chocolate Ganache
Dark Chocolate Nut Clusters
Molded Chocolate Turtles
Chocolate Hot Cross Buns
and Chicken Enchiladas with Mole’ Sauce
yummmmm…
Vick Mickunas
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Pat, I would like to buy a Vowell, please..
“The Wordy Shipmates” by Sarah Vowell, (Riverhead Books, 254 pages, $26).
Sarah Vowell is a frequent contributor to the public radio program “This American Life.” That squeaky voice and sarcastic humor have made her a mainstay on the air.
Vowell parlayed that recognition into a rising career as an writer. Her 2006 book “Assassination Vacation” allowed her to indulge a morbid fascination with American history. She mined historical archives, uncovering bizarre links between the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.
In her latest effort, “The Wordy Shipmates,” Vowell takes readers back to the 1630s and the Massachusetts Bay Colony that was founded by English Puritans. Vowell was inspired to write the book by three significant events: the attacks on 9/11, our invasion of Iraq and the funeral of President Ronald Reagan.
She noticed that Ronald Reagan used a term in speeches, which originated in a sermon by John Winthrop, the governor of the Bay Colony. Winthrop spoke of the “city upon a hill.” Reagan embellished this term, calling it “that shining city on a hill.”
Intrigued, Vowell studied the writings of Winthrop and other notable Puritans from that community. “The Wordy Shipmates” of the title are Winthrop; John Cotton, a Boston minister; Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island Colony, and Anne Hutchinson, a midwife devoted to Cotton’s preaching. Vowell dredged up their dusty scribblings from the 17th century gloom.
I expected to be amused. While there were frequent glimmers of Vowell’s trademark sarcasm, this grim history is far from amusing. Vowell is not a historian, but she is the ultimate history geek, and so readers learn about this period. Now and then, we get a glimpse of Vowell’s personal history.
The motto of the Bay Colony was “Come Over and Help Us.” This somehow implied that American Indians asked Europeans to come to America to help them. We know how that turned out. Vowell attempts to link that slogan with the mindset that seems to guide our philosophy even now. She asserts that after the United States became a global power, our government used it to justify incursions around the world. In reference to Iraq, she writes: “of the American invasion (Vice President) Cheney claimed, ‘My belief is that we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.’ After all, we’re there to help.”
Her argument seems somewhat flimsy, though.
Vowell grew up Pentecostal in Oklahoma. That Puritan faith opened floodgates of her memory. “I was exposed, from infancy on, to so much wretch-like-me, original-sin talk that I spent my entire childhood believing I was as depraved as Charles Manson when in reality I might have been the best-behaved 9-year-old in the 20th century.”
That past inspires her best lines: “Once, when I told a member of the fabled East Coast Media Elite that I was raised Pentecostal, he asked if that meant I grew up ‘fondling snakes in a trailer.’ I replied, ‘You know that book club you’re in? Well, my church was a lot like that, except we actually read the book.’ “
Over the years I have had the occasion to meet Sarah Vowell. I have interviewed her. And years ago, when she came to Dayton for an event with David Sedaris I had the opportunity to introduce them to the audience.
Sarah Vowell is a very interesting person…
Vick Mickunas
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cupcakes OR pizza?
Last night I stayed up to listen to the Red Sox game on the radio. It was quite a game. Tampa Bay was slamming Boston 7-zip when the Sox came storming back to win 8-7 and keep their hopes alive.
While I listened I was checking out some books. Nothing too taxing. Cookbooks, actually. I found myself drooling over a couple of new ones.
PIZZA and Other Savory Pies (Fireside) by Brigit Binns contains mouth watering recipes and photos. I got some great ideas for winter pizza pies.
I can’t wait to try out her recipes for Jerk Chicken Pizza, Pizza Rustica, and Egg, Sausage, and Cheese Breakfast Pizzas.
My sweet tooth isn’t very sophisticated but when I do indulge in sweets, I savor them.
I was checking out CUPCAKES - Luscious Bakeshop Favorites from Your Home Kitchen (Fireside) by Shelly Kaldunski. This seems like the perfect time of year to try out some Pumpkin Pecan Cupcakes?
Others that appear rather succulent in their photos are the Chai and Honey Cupcakes, PB&J Cupcakes, and the Christmas Peppermint Cupcakes.
Perhaps I can choke down more than one of these sweeties? That nip in the air might be from my sweet tooth…in the meantime, sling me over another slice of that hot pizza pie….mmmmm…….winter….he come soon!
Vick Mickunas
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a letter for John McCain
This afternoon I stopped by the post office to mail a few letters. A dignified gentleman of my acquaintance was doing the same.
He was standing in front of me and as he began to drop his letter into the mail slot I could not help but notice that he was mailing a postage paid envelope addressed to McCain-Palin Victory 2008.
I was embarrassed to be caught snooping and I stammered something along the lines of “oh, making a donation to push them over the top?”
He replied that he was not making a contribution but rather, he was sending a letter to explain why he wasn’t making a donation. Then, he handed me a copy of the letter he was sending and expressed a desire to share his thoughts with John McCain and others.
Here’s his letter:
16 Oct 08
McCain-Palin Victory 2008
Enclosed is your recent request for a contribution. I am not contributing - and am hereby providing a brief explanation.
I am an 82 year old, life-long, agriculturally-based Republican. I am a WWII vet. I have a long and favorable association with John McCain. I admire and appreciate him. For at least 10 years, I have contributed to his campains. I have not contributed to the present campain. For a wide variety of reasons, I favor Obama for President. I believe he has the attributes and characteristics that our country needs at this time. I believe the Bush administration has been the worst in American history - and I am an amature student of history. We need some “strong medicine” to “get over” Bush. I know John McCain is not Bush. Unfortunately, McCain is further “colatteral damage” from Bush.
The cause of this present letter is a telephone message I received shortly before the letter arrived today. The message was from the McCain-Palin “organization.” The call was extremely critical of Obama - strongly implying that he was a lying, traitor, etc. It was way “over the top.” That call converted me from someone who liked McCain - but would vote for Obama - to someone who is intensely offended - and disappointed - in “what has happened to the John McCain that I know - and admired and appreciated.”
“Come Home John McCain. We still need you! Don’t bring Sarah.
(name withheld by request)
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can Joe the Plumber vote?
Last night John McCain kept talking about Joe the Plumber during his debate with Barack Obama. Joe the Plumber lives in Ohio. Suddenly Joe the Plumber has become the personification of Joe Six Pack.
Joe won’t say if he plans to vote for Obama or McCain. Apparently, that’s a moot point. Joe’s sudden fame and searches for information under his real name have revealed a most important point: it would seem that JOE THE PLUMBER is not even registered to vote?
Can this be true? Say it ain’t so, Joe…
UPDATE 1: Joe the Plumber might now wish that he had never spoken up for it has now been revealed that he owes back taxes. We won’t even get into his lack of a plumbing license….
UPDATE 2: and the Toledo Blade has the scoop on Joe the Plumber’s voter registration…
One can imagine the ghost writers clamoring to write Joe the Plumber’s memoirs….
Vick Mickunas
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2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTS
The finalists for the National Book Award have just been announced. Here’s the list:
Fiction
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)
Nonfiction
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
(Alfred A. Knopf)
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a
War on American Ideals (Doubleday)
Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (Penguin)
Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order (Harcourt)
Poetry
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press)
Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)
Young People’s Literature
Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)
I will make a prediction: Aleksandar Hemon will win in fiction for The Lazarus Project. While I think that Marilynne Robinson could be the favorite for Home, the Hemon book is truly amazing. I interviewed him a few months ago. The man is a force.
But then, so is Robinson. I interviewed her by e-mail recently and she is one of our greatest living writers….
I’ll be curious to see who nabs the award for fiction. In non-fiction I would favor Drew Gilpin Faust for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War..
Vick Mickunas
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Palin as President…
Check it out! This is a very funny idea. click here:
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garage sale finds…
One of the most difficult things for me to do is to pass up a yard sale…or a garage sale…or estate sales…estate auctions. I’m a sucker for all of the above.
If they have old books I’m really in trouble. I have almost gotten into fistfights at auctions over books. There’s one guy who turns up at all the area auctions. I’m guessing he must sell books on the internet? Every time I encounter him he is rooting through boxes of old books.
These boxes of books are neatly stacked. Some books that have been around for a century and they still look new. With dust jackets that are immaculate. No rips. No fingerprints. I crave them.
Then this guy usually shows up. He tears into the boxes, abusing these precious volumes. He violates their pristine pages with nasty, swinish grunting, picking out the ones he wants, trashing the rest. O, I have complained about him. The auctioneers then mocked me; they taunted me, sneering…“oooo this guy wants these crummy old books..he’s mad that they are getting ruined” and they never stop the guy. One time I nearly came to blows with this fellow. I call him STINKY.
What I’m trying to say here is that I really care about books. Old books are even more precious to me. I have found some goodies over the years at sales and thrift stores.
The garage sale season is drawing to a close. Here are a few of the treasured volumes that I have added to my collection this year:
AN ARAB-SYRIAN GENTLEMAN AND WARRIOR IN THE PERIOD OF THE CRUSADES - Memoirs of Usamah Ibn-Munqidh (Princeton University Press-1987)
GANELON, TREASON, and the “CHANSON de ROLAND” by Emanuel J. Mickel (Pennsylvania State University Press- 1989)
THE PEOPLE’S COOK BOOK by Huguette Couffignal (St. Martin’s Press-1970)
PROTESTANTS - The Birth of a Revolution by Steven Osment (Doubleday/1992/First Edition)
THE ILLUSTRATED CHRONICLES OF MATTHEW PARIS - Observations of Thirteenth-Century Life (Alan Sutton Publishing-Gloucestershire-1993)
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook (Harper and Row-1968)
a pamphlet: MAMMALS OF THE CHICAGO AREA by Colin C. Sanborn-Assistant, Division of Mammals-Zoology leaflet 8 (Field Museum of Natural History-1925)
another pamphlet: BLACK MAGIC - The Stirring Story of Bituminous Coal by George W. Turner (1945/sold by Book Mart at Museum of Science and Industry-Chicago)
yet another tasty pamphlet: The National Presto Cooker Recipe Book (undated/National Presto Cooker Company-Eau Claire, Wisconsin)
one more yummy pamphlet: RICE - 200 Delightful Ways to Cook It (Copyright 1935 by Southern Rice Industry)
Did I mention that I love garage sales?
(to be continued…)
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political books that are only available on-line
In the Amazon…
There was an amazing article yesterday in the New York Times. It went into great detail about the E-Commerce giants Amazon.com and EBay. Apparently EBay is losing traction while Amazon.com is on the rise.
Today in the New York Times there is another interesting article about Amazon.com. Almost one year ago, Amazon.com introduced the Kindle, their paperless electronic reader. I know people who won’t go anywhere without their Kindles. One guy told me that he reaches for it first thing in the morning before he even gets out of bed to download and read the New York Times.
This current article is about some new political e-books that are only available on the Amazon Kindle:
Campaign Articles From Newsweek Become E-Books for Amazon Kindle
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
“It would seem to be a magazine’s dream in these straitened times: Take something you have already published and sold, repackage it and distribute it without all that expense of paper, ink and trucks, and then sell it again.
This week, Newsweek will publish four books, one about each of the major presidential and vice presidential candidates — Senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, and Gov. Sarah Palin — books that will not appear in print but will be available only as e-books from Amazon.com for download to Amazon’s Kindle device.
The books will contain versions of articles that Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post Company, has already published during the campaign. Turning this kind of collection into books is an old idea; what is new is to do it with such minimal production and distribution costs that even the most limited sales could be profitable.
Amazon says this is probably the first such venture by a publication, but it is not likely to be the last.
“We think it’s a very interesting model that could broaden,” said Ian Freed, an Amazon vice president in charge of the Kindle reading device. “This could start to change the way at least some books are published.”
The books, at $9.99, will go on sale Wednesday and can be ordered starting Monday.
Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, approached Amazon with the idea about a month ago. The use of material published over the course of the campaign points to another advantage of digital books: a fast turnaround time.
“Every magazine editor thinks their stuff should be in an anthology, but that’s hard to do economically,” Mr. Meacham said. “Here’s a way of doing it more quickly and with virtually no overhead. This is competing in the digital space with our traditional strengths, and that’s been hard to do.”
News magazines, like newspapers, have struggled financially, with circulation and advertising in decline. The economic downturn has cut deeply into advertising, while the magazines are forced to compete with many sources of information available instantly, and usually free, on the Internet.
The Kindle, introduced in November, costs $359. Amazon offers 180,000 books for wireless download, along with more than 40 newspapers and magazines.
The potential audience may be voracious, but it remains relatively small — Amazon will not say how many Kindles it has sold. Industry analysts have estimated that the figure is in the low hundreds of thousands.
But the experiment is appealing “because anyone who owns a Kindle is someone we want as a reader,” Mr. Meacham said. “We’re putting it in front of committed readers.”
(Newsweek/Amazon.com)
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falling over a Cliff…
“The English Major” by Jim Harrison, (Grove Press, 255 pages, $24).
“It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn’t.”
This opening line from Jim Harrison’s novel “The English Major” expresses the blunt reality of how a life can get turned upside down.
“The English Major” is written from Cliff’s perspective. As the story begins he describes how his life was thrown all topsy turvy. At their 40th high school reunion, Vivian rekindled her passion for an old flame.
Cliff, a former school teacher, was growing cherries on a farm on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Their marriage fell apart. Cliff lost the farm. His dog died. Suddenly untethered, Cliff embarks on an epic journey across America in his junker car.
He heads west. There isn’t much of a plot here. The reader is seduced by Harrison’s ornery narrator. Cliff brings along a jigsaw puzzle of the United States. Whenever he crosses another state border he discards the puzzle piece for the state he’s just left.
The trip allows Cliff the luxury to ponder his existence. He recalls warning signals ignored. ” I didn’t pay attention over a year ago when she looked up from her Robert Ludlum spy book and said, ‘You look so forgettable, you’d make a good spy.”
In Minnesota, he picks up Marybelle, a former student. Initially they get along well but after a few hundred miles she is driving Cliff nuts, talking constantly on her cell phone, annoying him to no end.
Harrison’s characterization of his cranky narrator is marvelous. The road trip shifts his memory to the man he once was. “Marybelle joked that I sounded like I had been in long-term parking for 25 years. My feelings were a little hurt and when we stopped to bury the North Dakota jigsaw piece under a rock in the austere landscape my mind wandered back 40 years to when my brain was so alive I could barely sleep.”
Cliff takes a circuitous route to San Francisco to visit his gay son, a successful location scout in the film industry. In California, Cliff’s long suffering vehicle expires. “I had just pulled off the freeway in Sausalito and was near the former home of my boyhood hero Jack London when Ron died. Ron is the private name of my 13-year-old Ford Taurus with just short of 250,000 miles on it. The actual Ron was a high school friend who died when his tractor (a John Deere) tipped over backward on top of him while he was pulling out a stump.”
As Cliff coasts to a fading halt inside the dying Ron, he meets a man with “the name ‘Fred” on his shirt pocket.” Cliff says to Fred: “I think my car has gone to heaven.”
If you enjoy reading a book that takes you to lots of fascinating places with minimal fuss, then you must check out “The English Major.” Jim Harrison writes fiction that feels so real you can believe that he has lived every moment of it. And perhaps he has.
Vick Mickunas
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it feels like 1932…FDR where are you??
After the stock market crashed things got bad quickly. Banks failed. Millions were out of work. People starved. The Republican president didn’t have a clue what to do.
Sounding familiar? President Herbert Hoover was deeply unpopular. They called the shantytowns where Americans struggled to survive HOOVERVILLES. By 1932, things had gotten really rough.
Fortunately for America, a visionary man became our president in 1932. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a product of an affluent upbringing. He was also a man who felt the pain of ordinary Americans and he had the gumption to do something about it. They called it the NEW DEAL.
America took a long time to recover - but it did. FDR had the courage to pursue bold initiatives that alleviated America’s economic ills. I’m reading a superb book that provides new insights into this man who came from privilege - a man who never stopped caring about those who had a lot less. TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS - The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Doubleday, Nov. 4) by H.W. Brands is being published at the perfect moment. It comes out right at the same time that we will be electing our next president.
FDR had a legion of critics. They called him a socialist and much worse. My maternal grandfather, a son of rural Iowa, a Marine veteran of WWI, a schoolteacher, and a life long Republican, despised Franklin Roosevelt.
The next occupant of the White House will face a daunting task. Will our next president possess the genius and the leadership to extricate us from this incredible mess? Will he be someone like FDR? We need leadership and we need bold thinking. We need another FDR….
Vick Mickunas
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Impalin’ Palin
The headlines are: screaming!
Body Blow for McCain as Palin Found to Have Abused Powers (The Guardian UK)
Palin’s Calendar Shows She Was Open to Business (The Houston Chronicle)
Alaska Legislative Probe Finds Palin Misused Power (The Washington Post)
Palin Found Guilty of Power Abuse (The Melbourne Herald Sun)
..thousands of stories about how Sarah Palin has abused her powers as Alaska’s governor.
Abuse of power, eh? That reminds me of somebody…a former vice president..tsk…tsk.
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the buzzards are circling over Wall Street…
“Take your time, it won’t be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game”
Joni Mitchell - The Circle Game
Buzzards are circling above Wall Street. Try as he might, John McCain cannot find a way to distract most Americans’ attention away from THE ECONOMY, the 700 trillion ton elephant in the room. In fact, that elephant seems to be shackled to John McCain now as surely as it is shackled to every other politician who pushed forward the deregulation of the financial industry that has led to this chaos.
It wasn’t so very long ago that President Bush thought it would be a super idea to put the money that provides Social Security payments into Wall Street. Thank heaven that his brilliant plan was defeated.
The buzzards are circling financial centers around the globe. This 700 trillion ton American bred elephant seems likely to take the McCain campaign all the way down.
“Get down, a little closer to ground. That’s what you wanna do…”
(Joy of Cooking)
It’s Barack Obama’s election to lose….
Vick Mickunas
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Salmonella Man on Planet Porno
The United States Postal Service holds a special place in my heart. In another life, I worked for the Post Office. When the expression “going postal” entered the vernacular I felt that I possessed a deeper understanding of the term than your ordinary citizen who has never labored inside the circular chambers of the USPS.
I love the US Mail. I am especially fond of getting mail. I like postal workers because they bring me the mail. Every day (except for Sunday) getting the mail is one certain highlight of my day. I send a lot of mail and I receive quite a bit of it.
Publishers mail books to me. I love opening my mail to see what books have appeared in my mailbox as if by magic.
Today I received Salmonella Man on Planet Porno (Pantheon-Nov. 4) by Yasutaka Tsutsui. It’s a collection of short stories. The author is described as “one of modern Japan’s most renowned writers.” (I had never heard of him). What a great title! What a great cover! What a great name the author has-his name made my spell check feature quiver with curiosity.
I can’t wait to start reading this book. I do love getting mail….
Vick Mickunas
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Jean-Marie Gustave L Clézio wins Nobel Prize for Literature
The Nobel Prize for Literature has just been announced. Here’s the story from the New York Times:
French Writer Wins Nobel Prize
By ALAN COWELL
PARIS — “Amid debate over purported bias against American writers, the Swedish Academy on Thursday awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature to Jean-Marie Gustave L Clézio, a French novelist, children’s author and essayist regarded by some French readers as one of the country’s greatest living writers. An academy official called him a “citizen of the world.”
In its citation, the prize committee in Stockholm called him an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” The prize, won last year by the British author Doris Lessing, was worth $1.43 million.
“I am very moved, very touched. It’s a great honor for me,” Mr. Le Clézio told Swedish public radio.
He was the 14th French writer to win the prize since it was created in 1901. Previous French winners include Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and André Gide. According to the Nobel Prize Web site, the first literature prize was awarded to a French writer, Sully Prudhomme.
Mr. Le Clézio , 68, published his first novel — “Le procès-verbal” (“The Interrogation”) in 1963. It was published in English a year later.
In the early years of his career, he was regarded as a writer who sought new narrative methods, influenced by travels across the globe, including to Panama, where he lived with an Indian tribe.
The announcement followed days of literary argument over remarks by the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, suggesting that American writers were too much under the sway of American popular culture to qualify for the prize.
The last American writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993. After a series of sharp comments by American critics, Mr. Engdahl toned down his remarks about American authors, saying the prize “is not a contest between nations but an award to individual authors.”
At a news conference in Stockholm on Thursday, Mr. Engdahl said Mr. Le Clézio’s “works have a cosmopolitan character. Frenchman, yes, but more so a traveler, a citizen of the world, a nomad.” According to the academy, he studied in Britain and France and has taught at universities in the United States, Thailand and Mexico.
Mr. Le Clézio has written more than 40 books, 12 of which have been translated into English. He was born on April 13, 1940, in Nice. Both parents had strong family connections with the former French and subsequently British colony of Mauritius, the Swedish Academy said.
When he was 8, Mr. Le Clézio and his family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been stationed as a doctor during World War II. “During the month-long voyage to Nigeria,” the academy said, “he began his literary career with two books” which “even contained a list of “forthcoming books.” His first novel in 1963 drew much critical attention. As the Swedish Academy put it on Thursday, “As a young writer in the aftermath of existentialism and the nouveau roman, he was a conjurer who tried to lift words above the degenerate state of everyday speech and to restore to them the power to invoke an essential reality.”
Early in his career, “Le Clézio stood out as an ecologically engaged author,” the academy said, with a series of books published in the 1960s and early 1970s, several of which — including Fever (1966), The Flood (1967) and Terra Amata (1969) — were published in English.
The breakthrough novel establishing him as among France’s leading modern writers is generally held to be “Désert” in 1980, which won a prize from the French Academy.
“This work contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert, contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants,” the academy said. “The main character, the Algerian guest worker Lalla, is a utopian antithesis to the ugliness and brutality of European society.”
Mr. Le Clézio also published collections of essays influenced by long stays in Mexico and Central America, the Swedish Academy said. His books for children and youth include Lullaby, published in French in 1980, and Balaabilou, published in French in 1985.
In 1975 he married his wife, Jemia, a Moroccan, and since the 1990s the two have divided their time between Albuquerque, N.M., Mauritius and Nice, the academy said.
“The emphasis of Le Clézio’s work has increasingly moved in the direction of an exploration of the world of childhood and of his own family history,” the academy said, listing the most important themes of his work as “memory, exile, the reorientations of youth, cultural conflict.”
Among Mr. Le Clézio’s most recent works are “Ballaciner,” published in 2007 and described by the prize committee as “a deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film and the importance of film in the author’s life, from the hand-turned projectors of his childhood, the cult of cinéaste trends in his teens, to his adult forays into the art of film as developed in unfamiliar parts of the world.”
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John McCain calls Barack Obama “THAT ONE”
Last night when John McCain was debating Barack Obama he referred to Obama at one point as “THAT ONE”. For most of the debate McCain was almost reserved - even civil. He never even played the William Ayers terrorism card that has Sarah Palin almost foaming at the mouth these days…
McCain’s reference to “THAT ONE” did strike this observer as somewhat rude. You know - “THAT ONE?” Viewers could read their own implication into what McCain meant by calling Obama “THAT ONE.”
“THAT ONE;” you know Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
“THAT ONE;” the monster who is surging ahead of McCain in the polls.
“THAT ONE;” he’s not like us.
“THAT ONE;” so UNAMERICAN.
Then there was McCain’s suggestion that billionaire Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter, might make a good Secretary of the Treasury. Obama seemed to agree.
Buffett is rich enough to BE the US Treasury! What is it about billionaires that makes them so attractive to the American public? The billionaire Michael Bloomberg is Mayor of New York and there is some serious thought being given to allowing him to run for a third term despite the law preventing him from doing so.
Americans are fascinated with Warren Buffett. A new biography of Buffett; The Snowball:Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder is one of the top selling books in the country these days.
The mention of Buffett last night by both candidates must have warmed the hearts of SNOWBALL’s publishers. Talk about free publicity. You know, Warren Buffett; THAT ONE.
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Antioch Review cover art in Springfield
This press release just came in from the Antioch Review:
Antioch Review, Springfield Museum of Art Announce Original Cover Art Exhibit
Yellow Springs, Ohio—The Antioch Review and the Springfield Museum of Art have collaborated to create a dynamic exhibit of original cover art by David Battle, long-time art director for the Review. The exhibit runs from October 4 to November 15. It shows the evolution of the artist’s creative process from rough sketches to finished magazine covers.
According to Robert Fogarty, Antioch Review Editor, the cover art is as much a part of the creative heritage of the Antioch Review as the notable literary works they have published over their 67 year history.
“We wanted to call attention to the magnificent work David had done on behalf of the Antioch Review over the past several decades. This is our way of honoring him and his wonderful contribution,” says Fogarty.
On October 23 beginning at 6:00 p.m. Robert Fogarty and David Battle will team up to provide a Guided Gallery Talk. The event is open to the public and free of charge.
Visitors can see the free exhibit at the Springfield Museum of Art, 107 Cliff Park Road, Springfield, Ohio 45501. Museum hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. The museum is open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays and closed on Mondays. Call 937-325-4673 for more information.
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nobody dares to call it a RECESSION….
Are you worried about the economy yet? It is getting rather difficult to ignore the 700 trillion ton elephant in the room.
The 700 billion dollar bailout that Congress passed last week was supposed to restore our confidence? Today on Wall Street the stock market was dropping faster than you can say BOTTOMLESS.
So, is this a RECESSION yet? Are we allowed to say that word yet? The economy has revealed itself to be a bottomless pit. For those Americans who are sinking fast beneath this fiscal quicksand there is no more there there. We cannot ask how deep the hole is because nobody seems to know that answer.
Meanwhile the race for the White House has passed into the final month of madness and mudslinging. Sarah Palin has whipped out that once reliable Republican trump card, TERRORISM and is flailing it wildly in a futile effort to distract our attention away from the 700 trillion ton elephant that is rapidly expanding and squeezing millions of Americans up against the wall.
As the economy circles the drain Barack Obama’s poll numbers are surging. For Obama, the economic downturn spawned by the sub-prime mortgage debacle is providing his campaign with a huge boost in momentum; the one surge that actually seems to be working.
What do you think? Are you worried? What are you doing to prepare for what lies ahead? Has this economic morass influenced how you plan to vote?
What do you predict will happen with the economy and the election?
And from the Lousy Timing Department: This week marks the publication of THE PARTNERSHIP - The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles D. Ellis. Some books are written and planned over the course of many years. In the case of this book the publication timing could not be more unfortunate…
Vick Mickunas
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When Will There Be Good News?
“When Will There Be Good News?” by Kate Atkinson, (Little, Brown, 388 pages, $25).
Books can remind me of food. Some are fast food - quick, predictable, nothing special. Some books are like fine meals, readers become immersed in wonderful flavors and textures. We don’t want these books to end, but when they do we feel very good.
Kate Atkinson’s “When Will There Be Good News?” is one such delicious book. Atkinson is a British writer who lives in Scotland. This latest novel is set mostly in Edinburgh. Atkinson has cooked up a medley of crime fiction, mystery, and thriller here that left this reviewer’s literary palate intrigued.
This is her third book that features private detective Jackson Brodie. As the story begins a sickening crime is about to occur. A young mother and her children are taking a stroll in the countryside with their dog. They encounter a homicidal maniac. One child manages to escape the attack.
Then we move forward thirty years. The sole survivor of the attack has become a doctor. She is married and has a new baby. The infant is being cared for by a sixteen year-old au-pair named Reggie Chase. Word has just reached the family that the killer is about to be released from prison after serving his thirty year term.
Atkinson introduces a number of narrators and story lines right away. Jackson Brodie is hanging around a playground looking for a young boy who he believes could be his son. Reggie, the young au-pair, is dealing with the tragic death of her mother and the criminal behavior of her brother.
Then there’s Louise, an Edinburgh cop who has had a major crush on Brodie from the days when he was a police officer. Atkinson keeps casting out seemingly unrelated plotlines then brings many of them crashing together in a train wreck that leaves Brodie clinging to life. Reggie just happens to be there to give Brodie the CPR that saves his life.
I’m reluctant to give away much more of Atkinson’s tricky plotting. Suffice it to say that she comes up with some twists and turns that will have readers teetering on the edges of their chairs. Okay, I will reveal this: right after the killer is released from prison Doctor Hunter and her baby vanish into thin air.
Reggie thinks of Doctor Hunter as a surrogate mother and she adores the baby. She suspects foul play. The doctor’s husband is acting very suspicious and the doctor’s dog seems upset. Reggie does everything that she can to bring this matter to the attention of the police.
Atkinson ratchets up the tension with lines like; ” Reggie’s heart wasn’t even in her chest anymore. it was too big and too loud to fit anymore, it was filling the whole of the bedroom. Boom, boom, boom.”
“When Will There Be Good News ? ” surges to a finale so clever and shocking that you will surely be amazed. Atkinson spins a flawless web of intrigue crafted with spider like precision. And that is good news.
Vick Mickunas
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battling stupidity
Like many Americans, I was appalled by the recent vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. The bar was set so low for Palin that she actually was having difficulty appearing simple enough to squirm beneath it.
I know, some people believe that she performed very well. They must ignore the fact that she could not respond to issues that she hadn’t been prepped to answer. She kept ignoring direct questions and responding to things that she suggested, often things that had nothing do to with the question whatsoever. Don’t get me started.
This situation made me think however. I thought that we could all be much better off if we would each try to improve ourselves. We need to be smarter. We need to make better informed decisions. In one month we have a very important decision to make.
I aspire to improve myself by reading books that stimulate my mind and augment my vocabulary. Right now I’m perusing SMART WORDS - Vocabulary for the Erudite (and those who wish to be) (Perigee Books/Nov. 4) by Mim Harrison.
Many of the words in this book are familiar to me but it is helpful to see their definitions. I recognized and try to use words like: burgeon, castigate, demonize, eviscerate, finagle, garble, hubris, impute and so on….
Then there are the words that I should use but I don’t. This book has taught me the meanings of words like: mugwump (one who remains neutral), thaumaturge (a miracle worker), bombilating (humming or buzzing), and sprezzatura (the difficult made to look easy). Good words! Aw shucks, now if I could just get some other people to understand what they mean when I use them….
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the Cubbies are cursed
That bad smell is wafting in from Wrigley Field where the Cubbies have squandered yet another chance to break a century old jinx. The Cubbies rolled through the National League this year. Cub fans were sure that this would be the year that the curse would be lifted.
Not so fast. The Cubs imploded. Last night they blew their second chance to secure a victory in the Friendly Confines.
I would probably be a Cubs fan myself but I know better. My dad grew up in Chicago and he loved the Cubs even though he was a South Sider who one might expect to root for the White Sox. Dad was born in 1923, 15 years after the Cubs’ last World Series victory. He died in 1993. That was 70 years that he spent on this planet. 70 years that the Cubs choked.
A century has passed. The Red Sox broke their curse 5 years ago. They won again last year. The White Sox won a few years ago. That leaves the Cubbies as the most cursed team in baseball followed by the Cleveland Indians and then, the San Francisco Giants.
I know, the Cubs could come back and beat the Dodgers three in a row. The Red Sox came back from two down to the Yankees in 2003? Of course, that was Boston, not Chicago. Does anybody want to bet that the Cubbies won’t? I wonder what the Vegas odds are against that miracle happening?
The Dodgers have Manny Ramirez now, the former Red Sox slugger. The Cubbies are probably toast. And that bad odor? The Cubbie jinx stinks.
Wouldn’t it be cool if the Dodgers ended up playing the Red Sox this year in the World Series? Manny taking on the team he deserted. Now, that could happen….
Vick Mickunas
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remembering Mary Doyle
I knew Mary Doyle. Her death was reported yesterday in the Dayton Daily News.
I didn’t know Mary very well but over the years we had many conversations and I did find out some things about her.
First of all, Mary was highly intelligent. I met Mary a dozen years ago when I was working for WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs. Mary loved WYSO and she supported it financially. You could always count on Mary Doyle.
WYSO used to have fund drives every spring and autumn and like clockwork Mary would arrive at the station to answer telephone calls from WYSO listeners who called in their pledges during my afternoon program.
And that’s not all. Mary would come in frequently and spend a number of days helping us out with the membership campaigns. And she gave WYSO a lot of money. Big donations. Several hundred dollars in the spring and in the fall.
Mary loved music and she had eclectic tastes. I was WYSO’s music director and Mary would always ask me to put together an esoteric collection of CD’s as her premiums for her financial support. We talked a lot about music.
Mary was also a big fan of my interviews and she would frequently make comments about things that she had heard on my program. Did I say that Mary Doyle was really smart? She was. Smart-engaged-involved.
When WYSO became embroiled in turmoil several years ago Mary was at the forefront of the group of activists who tried to reverse some of the programming changes that had instigated their involvement. Mary was all about localism. Local programming. Local music. She really cared.
Mary also loved her cats. She was a true cat person. When one of my own beloved feline companions died in a tragic accident Mary sent me the kindest condolence note. She understood how I felt. She comprehended the depth of my loss. She cared.
I hadn’t spoken with Mary in quite a long time. We were never close but she was a kindred spirit in some ways.
And I always got a deep sense of sadness from Mary. There were some things that really bothered her. Things that made her sad. Angry. Depressed.
Mary was a good person. Obviously, some things went wrong in her life. I’ll probably never know what happened. A few years ago when I went to Lithuania Mary asked me to bring her back some music. I asked what kind of music she wanted. She said: “something with accordions.” That was Mary. She savored the exotic and the unpredictable.
There’s one thing that I know - you could always count on Mary Doyle….
(Photo by Amy Achor)
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Remembering Hayden Carruth
The poet and critic Hayden Carruth has died. Here’s an obit from the New York Times:
Hayden Carruth, Poet and Critic, Dies at 87
By WILLIAM GRIMES
“Hayden Carruth, whose spare, precise, impassioned verse took myriad forms and stamped him as one of the most wide-ranging and intellectually ambitious poets of his generation, died Monday at his home in Munnsville, N.Y. He was 87.
The cause was complications of a series of strokes, said Brooks Haxton, a poet and friend.
Although known primarily as a critic, reviewer and editor, Mr. Carruth (pronounced cuh-ROOTH) produced some 30 books of poetry that addressed, in charged, taut language, subjects like madness, loneliness, death and the fragility of the natural world.
“He had a greater variety of poems than almost anybody,” said the poet Galway Kinnell, a longtime friend. “He was interested — superinterested — in everything and he could write about anything.”
The tension between the chaos of the human heart and the sublime order of nature imbued his best work with a sense of momentous struggle, “a Lear-like words-against-the-storm quality,” as the critic Geoffrey Gardner put it. Mr. Carruth wrote: “My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.”
Mr. Carruth was born in Waterbury, Conn., and grew up in Woodbury, where his father was a journalist and newspaper editor. He began reading and writing poetry as a child and early on developed a love for jazz, whose improvisations, played out against a structured meter, became central to his notion of poetry.
In high school, he reported on sports for a local weekly newspaper. At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1943, he wrote for student publications and helped edit The Tar Heel, the campus daily. He also discovered the poetry of William Butler Yeats, which sent the encouraging message, he later wrote, that “it’s possible to be crazy and a poet.”
After serving in Italy for two years with the Army Air Forces in World War II, he enrolled in the University of Chicago under the G.I. Bill, earning a master’s degree in 1948. After graduation he edited Poetry magazine for a year and worked at the University of Chicago Press.
In 1953, after suffering a nervous breakdown and struggling with alcoholism, he underwent electroshock treatment at Bloomingdale, a private psychiatric hospital in White Plains, N.Y. On his release, tormented by a fear of people and open spaces, he spent years on the margins, living in the attic of his parent’s house and working out a personal philosophy that dovetailed with European existentialists like Albert Camus, a profound influence and the subject of his book “After ‘The Stranger’: Imaginary Dialogues With Camus” (1964).
In a tentative step toward the wider world, Mr. Carruth moved into a cottage on an estate in Norfolk, Conn., owned by James Laughlin, the founder and director of New Directions Press, where he did filing work.
After marrying Rose Marie Dorn, his third wife, he moved to a small house on a brook near Johnson, Vt. The marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his fourth wife, Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth; a son, David, of Munnsville; and three grandchildren.
While patching together a living doing freelance editing, reviewing, typing and farm chores, Mr. Carruth wrote poetry, which began appearing in publications like The New Yorker and Partisan Review. From 1971 until his death he was an advisory editor for The Hudson Review, and from 1977 to 1983 he was the poetry editor of Harper’s.
His first collection, “The Crow and the Heart,” published in 1959, captured the attention of James Dickey, who found many of the poems mannered and academic but approvingly noted “a kind of frenzied eloquence, a near-hysteria,” in poems like “The Asylum.”
Mr. Carruth solidified his reputation in books like “Journey to a Known Place” (1961), “The Norfolk Poems” (1962), “North Winter” (1964), “From Snow and Rock, From Chaos” (1973) and “Brothers, I Loved You All” (1978). His trials as a mental patient provided the raw material for “The Bloomingdale Papers” (1975). He also wrote a novel, “Appendix A” (1963).
The poetry poured forth. After leaving Vermont to take a teaching post at Syracuse University in 1979, he published “The Sleeping Beauty’( 1982), a long poem consisting of 124 sonnetlike stanzas of his own invention that he called paragraphs. In “Asphalt Georgics” (1985) he incorporated colloquial speech into poems that inveighed against what one reviewer called “the universal plastic nothingness of mallsville.” His collection “Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey” won the National Book Award for poetry in 1996.
Over time, the elegiac note became dominant in Mr. Carruth’s poetry. Sorrow for human loss, unthinking brutality and ecological catastrophe became his dominant themes.
“Regret, acknowledged or not, is the inevitable and in some sense necessary context — the bedrock — of all human thought and activity,” he wrote in 2003. “Intellectually speaking, it is the ground we stand on.”
Correction: An earlier version this article misstated a word in a quotation by Mr. Carruth. The quotation should have been, “My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.”
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