Because you’re inclined
towards blame, gradually
becoming defensive, I
must decide I’ve been blinded:
without even finally sensing it

©Dean J. Baker

In his mind, Derrick Barnes is already casting the film version of his new children’s books.

Will Smith’s daughter, Willow, currently appearing in “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” would play the lead, Ruby Marigold Booker. (But only if she can sing.)

“Hancock” himself could play Ruby’s father. And, of course, Jada Pinkett-Smith could play Ruby’s mother.

You have to forgive the Kansas City author for getting a little ahead of himself.

It’s just that he sees the faces of black mothers when he introduces Ruby to them, and he knows that this is a little girl many of them are eager to meet.

Ruby stars in the first two books of Barnes’ Ruby and the Booker Boys series: Brand New School, Brave New Ruby and Trivia Queen, 3rd Grade Supreme.

The two-books-in-one have just been published by Scholastic, the same folks who gave us Harry Potter. Ruby will have her literary coming-out party Friday night at the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library.

“I just fell in love with her. She’s such a great character,” says April Roy, children’s services supervisor at the Plaza library. “She just has this style all her own, and she’s very expressive. And unlike some of the characters written for kids that age, she’s very respectful.”

Ruby is the daughter that Barnes, the father of three young boys, never had.

She is a smart, sassy third-grader who wears shoes of different colors, owns a pet iguana named Lady Love and is little sister to three brothers who look out for her when she needs it. Her parents own their own businesses, and her mom is treated like a queen in the family.

Writing for children was not the path he set out on when he left for college in 1995 from Kansas City, his hometown. “The only reason I went to college is because I wanted to be like Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs,” says Barnes, 32.

Like Combs, Barnes enrolled in a historically black college, Jackson State University in Mississippi. Barnes hoped that connections he made there would open doors to the music industry, as had happened for Combs. It didn’t.

But while in college, Barnes started writing poetry and short stories just for fun and then landed a columnist gig at the student newspaper. “That’s what boosted my confidence,” Barnes says.

After graduation he came home to “regroup” in Kansas City. “I was going to bum across the country and maybe stay with some of my friends and look for jobs in various cities,” he says.

But his girlfriend, now his wife, suggested that he send his writing portfolio to Hallmark. The company hired him in 1999, the first black man hired to write greeting cards. His training was on-the-job.

“The key, pretty much in a nutshell, is to cram a lot of emotion into a few lines,” he says. “I loved it, and I met so many talented artists there. Hallmark is a place where people stay for life. They don’t leave.

“There were writers on the staff who had been there 30, 40 years. It was so cool to hang out with them and sharpen my craft.”

Six years ago, with the help of a former Hallmark colleague, Barnes created the Booker Boys, Ruby’s three brothers. At first Ruby was just a secondary character. Barnes tinkered endlessly with those boys, once even giving them superpowers. He kept working on them after he left Hallmark to move to New Orleans for his wife’s medical residency.

The Church of England was new religion. It believed in learning, disclaimed dogmas and tolerance - believed in individual faith. It blurred the boundary between Roman Catholic and Church of England, and we find the rise of Puritanism. As church worked against the Roman Catholic, in the same way Metaphysical poetry worked against Elizabethan poetry. The new religious ethos was marked by skepticism, introspection, self-consciousness and self criticism are the characteristics of the Metaphysical poetry as well.

According to T.S. Eliot, Metaphysical poets turn thoughts into feeling – sensuous apprehension of thoughts. ‘Meta’ means beyond and ‘physics’ means sensuous (going beyond the sensuous or realm of mind).As we note in Samuel Johnson’s Life of Cowley: These poet’s wit as “metaphysical” – means a heterogeneous yoking together of ideas by violence.

According to H. Gragson: The poetry is metaphysical not by virtue of scholasticism but by a deep reflection in stressed in the experience of which that poetry is the expression, the new psychological curiosity with which they write of love and religion.

The metaphysical temper goes beyond the 19th century and pervades some of the best poetry written since: the odes of Keats, the narrative poetry of Wordsworth, the ballads of Coleridge and the poems of Hopkins, Stevens and Dylan Thomas and recently the symbolists and Surrealists.

Dryden and Dr. Johnson called Donne a “metaphysical” poet because of his study of scholastic philosophy and his habit to yoke ideas, Donne’s verse was being admired and imitated by wits, lawyers and diplomats.

(GREEK NEWS AGENDA)   Two French magazines that enjoy wide readership - "Le Nouvel Obrservateur" and "GEO" -  have published special issues on Greece. "GEO" special issue (GEO Histoire No9), titled "La Grece Antique" is about the Hellenic world as the inventor of the polis, democracy, theatre and philosophy. The focus is on Greek civilization, culture, mythology and on geographical areas rich in cultural heritage such as Crete, Cyclades and the Peloponnese. In the editorial by Jaen-Luc Marty it is suggested that the definitive "summer journey" is a journey to the history of Greece, a land once inhabited by gods and heroes. The special issue of  "Le nouvel Observateur" ( 18.6.2008 ) is dedicated to the century of Pericles, featuring articles on the status of women in Athens, the building of the Acropolis, the sophists, the invention of democracy and the education system. Clause Weill in the editorial notes that the shortcomings of our contemporary political system and the need to understand what has gone wrong was the inspiration behind this special on the century of Pericles, a century described as a "momentum of democracy". Secretariat General of Information: World Media on Greece - Special Reports

In fiction you both feel like the writer is talking to you and [that] you are intimate with people in a book

and this was especially noteworthy because on the way home I had bought a copy of New Scientist with an article called 'The Science of Fiction' by Keith Oatley, which is about research he and colleagues have undertaken which seems to show that reading fiction has measurable psychological benefits. They found that 'reading fiction affects our psychology, in effect re-wiring our brains as we process the emotional ebb and flow of character and plot.' The paper is called

Bookworm versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds

it can be found here and its abstract states:

While frequent readers are often stereotyped as socially awkward, this may only be true of
non-fiction readers and not readers of fiction. Comprehending characters in a narrative fiction
appears to parallel the comprehension of peers in the actual world, while the comprehension of
expository non-fiction shares no such parallels. Frequent fiction readers may thus bolster or
maintain their social abilities unlike frequent readers of non-fiction. Lifetime exposure to
fiction and non-fiction texts was examined along with performance on empathy/social-acumen
measures. In general, fiction print-exposure positively predicted measures of social ability,
while non-fiction print-exposure was a negative predictor. The tendency to become absorbed
in a story also predicted empathy scores

( I've accidentally made a found poem out of it, but you get the gist)

For instance readers of fiction score better on the 'mind-in-the-eyes' test, which measures empathy and social acumen from subject's ability to identify emotions in photos like this

than readers of non-fiction:

take the test yourself here

They sound a bit like bloggers, those frequent readers, don't they, frequent readers?

You can hear Keith Oatley speaking to Ramona Koval on radio National here

He and his associates have a blog called 'OnFiction' whose aims, as they say are:

We write fiction, and we do research on the psychology of fiction. Our principal goals are:

1. To understand the psychology of fiction in a way that informs its reading and its writing.

2. To understand how literary art enables psychological change to occur so that readers are responsible for that change. To put this another way: we don't aim to understand persuasion, but we do aim to understand how people can use fiction to help transform themselves.

His biography says that:

Keith Oatley is also the author of two novels. The first, The Case of Emily V., in which Freud and Sherlock Holmes work on the same case in 1904, won the 1994 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel. The novel revolves round three relationships, and is told in three voices. It has been translated into French and German. His second novel, A Natural History has been translated into French. It is an interior portrait, set in 1849, of the workings of the mind of a scientist as he strives to solve the problem that is still the most important in medicine: the nature of infectious disease. It is an exploration, too, of the relationship of the researcher with his wife, a pianist. The novel traces ways in which love affects work, and work affects love.

The common themes of this research and writing include furthering our understandings of interactions within complex systems, especially complex social systems. Keith Oatley’s theories of fiction include the idea that novels are simulations that run not on computers but on minds. His novels, then, are ways of enabling people to experience psychological issues as they read. His research is devoted to understanding the ramifications of emotions in individuals and society.

and guess what? He is:

Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Psychology
University of Toronto

Wouldn't you just know it?

its hard to pick just one favorite. 

     Here are ten that I like a lot:

1.  Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables)

2.  Tom Sawyer

3.  Charlie Bucket (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

4.  Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden)

5.  Scout Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)

6.  Oliver Twist

7.  Encyclopedia Brown

8.  Tiny Tim (A Christmas Carol)

9.  Pippi Longstocking

10.  Charles Wallace Murry (A Wrinkle in Time)

     Which juvenile character in fiction is your favorite?

But I've also started an original story, Upside Down is the working title. I don't know whether the beginning's all that good, but I think I have a nice setup. The main character's name is Taras Sazhin, a Russian 19 year old that was 'forced' to take part in a series of experiments dealing with molecular nanotechnology in 2028. One of these is placing a quantum computer (the ideas all exist) inside the human body, connected to the brain through the nervous system etc.

But something goes wrong. Instead of waking up in a hospital bed after the final operation (installing the controlling device that masters all the individual tools), he wakes up in a dirty alley in St Petersburg. The year is 2005 and the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. Apparently, the Gorbachev of this alternate universe used the words glasnost and perestroika as a prelude to the fall of communism instead of revitalizing and redefining communism as he did in Taras' world. Considering the low odds of ever returning to his universe, he has to adapt and avoid detection.

I think it's a nice twist to all the dimension-time-traveling stories where most of them deal with the western civilization blooming. In Taras' eyes this reality, ours, is the alternate. Anyway, that's my setup and it already implies a lot of plotlines, but I'm still figuring out how much more I can add to the concept. What I know for certain, however, is that the (former) communist will discover what exactly a more liberal mindscape can do to a young man. (Meaning: this will feature Taras discovering his like for the male gender).

Nothing's definite of course, but I've written my beginning twice already and this is the one that seems to flow more smoothly. I've got 1,500 words done and it looks promising. There's a myriad of possibilities to explore, so I'm going to use them fully. It probably will be my longest original work so far. I mean I did a fictional blog about a boy falling in love with a robot already, I wrote some memoirs of the emperor of a fictional empire and have had a lot of story ideas in the past but never got around writing them. (An underwater military base; a rebellion in an ant colony; an organization trying to block neo-nazis in politics;...).

It's going to be curious to see where this is going and whether I'll succeed without having the background of an existing series to fool around with.

લોકપ્રિય નવલકથાકાર વિઠ્ઠલ પંડ્યા હવે આપણી વચ્ચે નથી. મુંબઈમાં તા. ૩ જુલાઇએ રાત્રે ૮૬ વર્ષની વયે તેમનો જીવનદીપ બુઝાયો. "સુખની સરહદ", "નૈન વરસ્યાં રાતભર", "યાદોનાં ભીનાં રણ", "સમણાં તો પંખીની જાત", "લોહીનો બદલાતો રંગ", "આખું આકાશ મારી આંખોમાં", "માણસ હોવાની મને બીક", "બુકાની બાંધેલા રસ્તા" વગેરે ૪૫ જેટલી નવલકથાઓ અને ૧૦ વાર્તાસંગ્રહો સહિત ૭૦ જેટલાં પુસ્તકોનું સર્જન કરીને ગુજરાતી સાહિત્યને સમૃદ્ધ કરનાર આ લોકપ્રિય લેખકના નિધનના સમાચાર પણ અમદાવાદથી પ્રગટ થતાં ગુજરાતી અખબારોમાં ક્યાંય જોવા ન મળ્યા. રાજકોટથી પ્રગટ થતા "ફૂલછાબ"માં આ સમાચાર વાંચવા મળ્યા.

આજે તો લેખકો ધારે તો માત્ર લેખનને આધારે આરામથી રહી શકે એટલું માનધન મેળવી રહ્યા છે, પણ હજી થોડાં વર્ષો પહેલાં એ શક્ય નહોતું. માત્ર લેખનના જોરે ગુજરાન ચલાવવું મુશ્કેલ હતું, પણ વિઠ્ઠલ પંડ્યાએ કલમના ખોળે આખી જિંદગી ગુજારી. તેમની પ્રથમ નવલકથા "મીઠા જળનાં મીન" હતી. ૧૯૨૩ની ૨૧ જાન્યુઆરીએ સાબરકાંઠા જિલ્લાના કાબોદરા ગામે તેમનો જન્મ થયો હતો.

વિઠ્ઠલ પંડ્યા મને પ્રિય હોવાનું કારણ હતું તેમનું ફિલ્મી કનેક્શન. જે જમાનામાં સારા ઘરનાં છોકરા-છોકરીઓ ફિલ્મોથી દૂર રહેતાં અને ફિલ્મી કલાકારો પ્રત્યે લોકો સૂગની નજરે જોતા એ સમયે એટલે કે ૧૯૪૦ના દાયકામાં ફિલ્મ અભિનેતા બનવા માટે વિઠ્ઠલ પંડ્યાએ ફિલ્મોમાં ઝંપલાવ્યું હતું. તેમના જ શબ્દોમાં : "પાંચ ફૂટ આઠ ઈંચની ઊંચાઈ, સાગના સોટા જેવું કસરતી બદન, માથે વાંકડિયાં ઝુલ્ફાં, ચહેરા પર આત્મવિશ્વાસની ઝલક... ફિલ્મમાં હીરો થવા માટે આથી વિશેષ લાયકાત બીજી કઈ જોઈએ?"  

જોકે તેમના પોતાના જ કહેવા મુજબ એ જમાનામાં પણ ફિલ્મોમાં ઘૂસવું અને કામ મેળવવું જરાય સરળ નહોતું. એક અભિનેતા તરીકે ફિલ્મોમાં ખાસ ગજ ન વાગતાં વિઠ્ઠલભાઇએ દિગ્દર્શનમાં ઝુકાવ્યું હતું. દસેક ગુજરાતી અને દસેક હિંદી ફિલ્મોમાં સહાયક દિગ્દર્શક તરીકે તેમણે કામ કર્યું હતું. "મંગળફેરા" ફિલ્મમાં તેમણે વ્યાજખાઉ શેઠનું પાત્ર ભજવ્યું હતું. ફિલ્મોનું ભૂત માથેથી ઊતર્યા પછી તેઓ લેખન તરફ વળ્યા હતા, પણ ફિલ્મોમાં જેટલો સમય તેઓ રહ્યા એ દરમ્યાન કેટલાંક જાણીતાં થઈ ચૂકેલાં અને કારકિર્દી ઘડી રહેલાં અનેક કલાકારો અને કસબીઓ સાથે કામ કરવાની અને ખાસ તો ફિલ્મી દુનિયાને નિકટથી જોવાની તેમને તક મળી હતી.

વર્ષો પછી ફિલ્મી દુનિયા સાથેનાં તેમનાં સ્મરણો તેમંણે "સમકાલીન"માં આલેખ્યાં હતાં, અને પછી તે "અસલી નકલી ચહેરા" તથા "સપનાંના સોદાગર" પુસ્તકરૂપે પ્રગટ થયાં હતાં. માસ્ટર વિઠ્ઠલ, ઝુબેદા, સવિતાદેવી, શોભના સમર્થ, સ્નેહપ્રભા પ્રધાન, સાગર ફિલ્મ કંપની, નલીની જયવંત, હંસા વાડકર, સુલોચના, લીલા દેસાઇ, નૂરજહાં, વી.એમ. વ્યાસ, કિશોર સાહુ, ચંદ્રમોહન જેવાં અનેક કલાકારોની વાતો રસાળ શૈલીમાં તેમણે આલેખી છે. એ સમયના મુંબઈના ફિલ્મઉદ્યોગ વિષેની ઘણી અંતરંગ માહિતી આ પુસ્તકોમાં છે. વિઠ્ઠલ પંડ્યા વિષે એમ કહી શકાય કે ભલે તેમને ફિલ્મી દુનિયા ન ફળી, પણ તેને કારણે ગુજરાતી સાહિત્યને તો એક ઉત્તમ લેખક મળ્યો. હવે તેમના નામ આગળ "સ્વ." લાગી ગયું છે. સો સો સલામ આ કલમના કસબીને...

       They sipped coffee together, the salesman seated back on the mattress and Brimm in the recliner. The bread and Heinz 57 stayed on the tray. So did the knife. During the slurping silence Brimm's eyes kept darting back and forth between the man and the knife, the man and the knife. After a couple of minutes the salesman thanked Brimm for the coffee and walked over to the desk where he picked up Brimm's notebook, turned it over, and asked Brimm if he wanted to buy the bibles. 

         "I don't think so," Brimm replied and picked up the knife. He sliced the bread in two. "Break bread with me?" he asked.

         "No thanks.

        "Are you sure?"

        "Yes, sir and the bibles?

        "No thanks on the bibles. Bread?"

        "But it can help you with your--"

        "Its not going to help me with any goddamned problems," Brimm growled.

        "But, sir, all problems are God delivered. And we all have our problems," he said looking around the room and frowning at the filth and squalor. "I mean, look: you are alone on Christmas Day in this dingy apartment--"

        "So are you, Stephen, so are you."

       The salesman looked around and shifted from side to side then squared hmself and looked back at Brimm. "Haven't you heard of Deuteronomy--" 

        "Fuck Deuteronomy"

        The boning knife became real then and he fought it back. "Look, you're wasting your time on me," Brimm said getting out of his chair and facing the salesman. "I think you should leave now." 

         "Excuse me, sir?"

         "Leave now," he said pointing at the door with the boning knife. 

         "But this is the Word of God," the salesman said his voice high and cracked and his eyebrows low. He picked up a Bible and walked across the room towards the desk. "God speaks to you through this book," he said leaning on the desk. "

        "Get. Out. Now" he said slowly. 

        The two men stared at each other. The salesman broke the deadlock and Brimm followed the salesman's eyes as they snuck over to the door with the briefcase leaning on it. The room's air was stale and sweating and it felt hard for Brimm to breathe. 

         The salesman fidgeted then stood up straight, his chin leaning forward. "You know," he asked bouncing the notebook in his hand, "that I can't do that."

         Brimm stared.

         "I can't do that, sir. Those who are lost are never a waste of one's time; but rather the ones who waste it." He reached out to Brimm, his hand hovering just over the knife. "Let me help you, sire. Let God help you." 

          Brimm crushed his cigarette on the floor. His teeth bit into each other. "Why were you walking outside last night?"

         "Sorry, sir?" The salesman said looking around the room.  

          "I asked: why were you walking around the street, spying on me."

          "I'm sorry sir. I think you must have the wrong person. I wasn't spyi--"

          "I saw you."

          "N-no, sir, you're mistaken. I was at church." Again the salesman looked at the briefcase leaning onto the door and then back at Thomas Brimm with the knife waving lazily below his bloodshot eyes. Suddenly, Brimm charged at the man toppling the bibles stacked in the middle of the floor, but the salesman was quicker and darted over to the door where he kicked aside the briefcase and grabbed the door handle. He turned back to face Brimm. "Sir, I...."

         "Don't. Don't. Don't!"

         "Sir, I think--"

         Brimm charged again but the salesman scrambled out of the apartment slamming the door behind him. A second later, Brimm yanked the door open and threw the knife down the stairwell where it crashed against the wall and barely missed the salesman as he took the stairs three at a time, practically breaking his neck as he left.

         Brimm returned to his room full of bibles. It was three hours before he noticed that the notebook was missing.

           She turned the leather bound book in her hand. 

           She recognized it. It was an older notebook that she had made sometime in the early nineties when she was working with the German long stitch technique and trying to use recycled products. She opened it and flipped through the pages, which were empty except for one strange word written in a scratchy, nearly desperate handwritting.

          She read the word aloud--"Botswain" she said, not sure whether to punctuate it as a flat statement or a curious lifting question.

          Then repeated it--"Botswain."

My attempt to lighten things by reading fiction went totally awry, although I am enjoying "The Witch of Portobello" to some degree. The library requested Waimarino County back for their Montana Book award display so I couldn't slowly go over that again and I don't have the heart to more than briefly open two poetry books** that unexpectedly arrived, after hearing the author's comments on his poetry. I will have to force myself though as they are due back soon. Libraries are fantastic but sometimes owning a book is required so I keep putting my gold coins in the piggy bank and forgo coffee for a while - I've actually started drinking tea!. I have also been offered the Dean Buchanan book "Wild Beast" at a knock-down price so am mulling over that as my next prospective purchase.

Things do improve as the days lengthen and I was pleased to see the extensive web resources related to the Rita Angus exhibition at Te Papa. Its all good for shut-ins like me and I think Te Papa has really picked up their game on the internet front, although I suspect they have a backlog of work to get through. And a tip - you can download the audio resources for the exhibition and take them on your own ipod (or the like) and save yourself $5.

Art writing is taking some interesting turns and I am curious as to why Tom Cardy has been doing the visual arts writing for the DomPost in the last few weeks (interesting look at Fiona Halls "Force Field" today), Jill Trevelyan writes about Picasso's collection in the Listener and on a more literary note anyone interested in the Bloomsbury group (that would be me) would do well to read Diana Witchel's excellent article on her tour. On this subject though, I can't go past the movie Carrington with Emma Thompson in the title role and Jonathon Pryce doing a wonderful Lytton Strachey.

(Giles) Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), by Dora Carrington, 1916.

*common English for Hotch-Potch, a mixture; mutton soup thick with pieces of meat and all sorts of vegetables, also Hot-Pot
**"Houses, days, skies" and "Streets of Music" by Martin Edmond

Check it out:

http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/

Stay tuned for a dabbling in creative writing using a prompt.

All of this combines to make reading his attempt at light comic satire in the style of a Romantic novel an absurdly satisfying experience.

"Sweet Ermengarde -or- The Heart of a Country Girl," a short story in seven chapters produced under the pseudonym of "Percy Simple" in 1917, displays the talents of a man who might possibly have done more with himself than he did. The appalling parody of "Ermengarde" is not up to the quality of, say, the various chapters of Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock's Nonsense Novels, but for its time and place--and considering its source--it tends to impress rather than disappoint. Interesting trivial note: Lovecraft, a great champion of the art of walking around, is reported to have once hiked up to Leacock's summer home in Orillia, Ontario, whereat he spent a pleasant afternoon in conversation with one of my country's finest authors. No record remains of that conversation, unfortunately, much as no record was ever permitted of the several-hours-long conversation that passed between Leacock and Chesterton over a game of billiards.

But I digress. The first paragraph of "Ermengarde," to lift your spirits:

Ermengarde Stubbs was the beauteous blonde daughter of Hiram Stubbs, a poor but honest farmer/bootlegger of Hogton, Vt. Her name was originally Ethyl Ermengarde, but her father persuaded her to drop the praenomen after the passage of the 18th Amendment, averring that it made him thirsty by reminding him of ethyl alcohol, C2H5OH. His own products contained mostly methyl or wood alcohol, CH3OH. Ermengarde confessed to sixteen summers, and branded as mendacious all reports to the effect that she was thirty. She had large black eyes, a prominent Roman nose, light hair which was never dark at the roots except when the local drug store was short on supplies, and a beautiful but inexpensive complexion. She was about 5ft 5.33...in tall, weighed 115.47 lbs. on her father's copy scales - also off them - and was adjudged most lovely by all the village swains who admired her father's farm and liked his liquid crops.

Who could not read on after that?

This is hardly the only time Lovecraft bursts out of his eldritch box to try something different, and future posts will deal with other astonishing efforts. The poetry alone (a six-hundred-page volume in the complete edition, much of it having been written with perfect seriousness in the style of eighteenth-century occasional verse) would be enough to bewilder this blog's readers for months. We'll see what transpires.

Solider. Mother. Father. Son. Lover. Husband. Friend. Daughter. Sister. Brother. Stranger. Clergyman. Aquantance. Who is the letter from?

Is she reading a letter sent to her, or spying words sent to another?

In her solitude, as she reads, does she hear the person's voice in her head? Is she formulating a response, or is she receptive?

She is by a window for light. Is the letter light and air to her?

The paper on which the letter is written is clean and uncrinkled. This is not an old letter, something she's read before, but something new.

She holds the letter at heart level and appears very still. What will she do next?

About all those arguments affecting human equality, I myself always have one feeling; which finds expression in a little test of my own. I shall begin to take seriously those classifications of superiority and inferiority, when I find a man classifying himself as inferior. It will be noted that Mr. Ford does not say that he is only fitted to mind machines; he confesses frankly that he is too fine and free and fastidious a being for such tasks. I shall believe the doctrine when I hear somebody say: "I have only got the wits to turn a wheel." That would be real, that would be realistic, that would be scientific. That would be independent testimony that could not easily be disputed. It is exactly the same, of course, with all the other superiorities and denials of human equality, that are so specially characteristic of a scientific age. It is so with the men who talk about superior and inferior races; I never heard a man say: "Anthropology shows that I belong to an inferior race." If he did, he might be talking like an anthropologist; as it is, he is talking like a man, and not infrequently like a fool.

I have long hoped that I might some day hear a man explaining on scientific principles his own unfitness for any important post or privilege, say: "The world should belong to the free and fighting races, and not to persons of that servile disposition that you will notice in myself; the intelligent will know how to form opinions, but the weakness of intellect from which I so obviously suffer renders my opinion manifestly absurd on the face of them: there are indeed stately and god-like races- but look at me! Observe my shapeless and fourth-rate features! Gaze, if you can bear it, on my commonplace and repulsive face!" If I heard a man making a scientific demonstration in that style, I might admit that he was really scientific. But as it invariably happens (by a curious coincidence) that the superior race is his own race, the superior type is his own type and the superior preference for work the sort of work he happens to prefer.

Thanks to Nancy Brown at the ACS Blog for posting it. I've edited the last sentence slightly by putting brackets in place of commas at one point and removing a superfluous comma at another. What was acceptable grammar in his own time today runs the risk of appearing to be only the first half of a thought. Those who read the original version on the ACS Blog will likely notice the trouble immediately.

Are the candidates taking security too far? The video below shows a 61-year-old librarian being harrassed and removed from a John McCain town hall meeting in Denver, Colorado. Now as I understand them, town hall meetings are where you meet the candidates and then ask your most probing questions of them to see if they are worthy of your vote. It is also suppossed to be a forum where you express your opinions to candidates to see if they are willing to do something about the issues that are most important to you. This video clearly shows the people in charge of the McCain camp and the meeting trying to stop some individuals who might have dissenting opinions of McCain from even attending the rally. They cite security as their reasoning for refusing the admittance. The police are then called and tickets are issued for trespassing at a public event! Is this Security or censorship? Are our politicians more interested in the orchestration of their gatherings than maybe having a rogue question catch them off guard? How are we to have a political process when the process is quelled. This video shows a disturbing trend with individuals who are obviously no danger to anything being ushered out of sight, out of mind and then to add insult to injury with fines and court appearances when they are performing a valid exercise of their political, not to mention constitutional rights. Last I looked, this was still the United States wasn't it? Did I miss a meeting?

 A CUP OF TEA SAVED MY LIFE

What do you do when you're confronted with a knife weilding thief? Why you make him a cup of tea of course. A 30-year-old Tokyo, Japan woman was walking along a corridor in her apartment building with her daughter on Monday when a man brandishing a knife demanded money. I hate it when that happens. When the housewife told him she had none, the man barged into her apartment. Apparently he didn't believe her. Hoping to calm him, the woman made the thief a cup of tea, whereupon he put his knife away and began a 20-minute monologue about his life. The dude had a Dr. Phil moment. Or maybe it was a Jerry Springer moment, we don't actually know what he said to her. The woman then gave the man 10,000 yen ($93.34) and ran outside to call the police from a pay phone. The guy should have been paying her for the couch time.  Police rushed to the scene, but the thief had fled and is still being sought. See, a spot of tea can save your life, quick thinking, a friendly ear, it's all good.

COP SAYS DECAPITATED MAN GAVE PERMISSION TO STEAL HIS BELONGINGS

I can't believe any one actually bought this load of bull. A  Caledon, Germany, police captain, Dawid Johann Jullies claiming that a decapitated car crash victim  had given him permission to take the floor mats and hub caps from the wrecked vehicle, was subsequently found innocent of theft by an internal police hearing when the investigators concluded that the decapitated victim did indeed give permission, contrary to the family's claims that this was impossible. What? How stupid were these people? Subsequently, a court agreed with the family and found the officer guilty of theft, sentencing him to 3 years in prison, suspended for 5 years. So in other words, he got off with a "don't do it again." However, Julies became the police station commissioner the very next day, or ironically, the head of the police station, despite having been found guilty of theft by the court. There's nothing like rewarding larceny. Yep let's give him a promotion. Somtimes there's just no justice.

MARRY YOUR DOGS, NO MORE "LIVING TOGETHER"

Do you have nore than one dog? Well, don't let them live in sin anymore, get them a wedding and make their life legal. Yes, it's a new trend, like Americans didn't have anything else to spend their money on. The popularity of dog weddings is on the rise and Reverands are finding that a little pet wedding can add an extra boost to their coffers. For the 63% of Americans who own pets, there’s a growing sector of the $40 billion dollar pet industry waiting to sell them wedding-related services like pet marriage counseling, pet wedding planners, pet caterers, pet trainers, and even special pet priests who conduct actual certified pet weddings. As one reverend told the Chicago Tribune: “Marriage for an animal is almost like marriage for a human. An animal union is more like a blessing under God. Well, I am a reverend,” Scott said. He apparently didn't want to give his full name. “If you’re in a family with two animals and they want to unite in a wedding, what difference does it make? It is not a sign of the Apocalypse. It is a sign that animals often seek to form a lasting bond and have deep commitment.” Keep telling yourself that Scott. Pet owners can make the wedding even more official by getting a real human marriage license and setting up a gift registry at PetSmart. You didn't think big business wasn't going to get in on this did you? Question: If the dogs are legally married and they have puppies, does selling them constitute puppy slavery? Does the married couple have recourse to get their children back? I bet there's some lawyer out there willing to test this.

IT APPEARS SOMEONE FINALLY FOUND A USE FOR THAT ORDAINMENT LICENSE THEY GOT FROM THE BACK OF ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE FOR $20.

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Read...Savor...and most of all Enjoy

Then, randomly playing songs on my iPod, I heard David Crosby's "Hero".  It has a couple of lines that struck a chord:

"It was one of those great stories that you can't put down at night.  The hero knows what he has to do, and he wasn't afraid to fight.  The villian goes to jail while the hero goes free.  I wish it were that simple for me."

... and ...

"And the reason that she loved him was the reason I loved him, too.  He never wondered what was right or wrong; he just knew."

That's the attraction; the young adult stories that I've been reading address the adult problems of the world, with black and white solutions - absolutely wrong or right - and it's O.K.

Harry Potter and Lord Voldermort who is unquestionably bad - Lord Voldermort gets it in the end, and even if there is a cost, it's unquestionably worth it.  It's a battle unquestionably worth fighting.

Thomas Pullman's Lyra in The Golden Compass (which I read for the first time years ago, and have picked up again since seeing the movie) and subsequent stories - ... along with Madam Coulter...

Fiction with clearly defined, clearly bad, bad guys and clearly defined, clearly good, good guys - even when they have flaws - is just soothing, because everything is either right or wrong, good or bad, and no one sits on the fence.   Those who do are traitors, and therefore bad, even if they occasionally contribute to whatever good is up to.

Unfortunately, life isn't ever that clear, and people such as my DH who see just about everything in terms of black and white drive me absolutely bonkers.  The world isn't black and white.  Those stories are fictions, because, magic aside, they wouldn't really happen that way in the real world.  Hardly anyone can be good (or bad) all the time, and the situations we face are rarely clean-cut either.  There's always at least two sides to everything.  So it's soothing to get into a fiction where right and wrong are as clearly opposite as black and white.

Of course, this type of fiction is always a little shallow; the best stories are the ones that mash it all up (Ender's Game, for example).  Why?  Because they are a better reflection of reality, of ourselves, and easier to connect to and really feel.  But it's not as easy to cheer our characters on, because we see do a little of the not-so-good along with the good. We want to smack them upside the head and yell, "You moron!  what the hell were you thinking?!?!?"  If you notice, young adult fiction doesn't often have the hero do things that warrant that.

As a kid, those simplified versions of the world act as a sort of lession - here's what to expect when you get there, and here's the moralized ideal of how to act when you face whatever it is.  Which, I supppose, is as good a starting point as any.  As an adult, though, it's a nice escape back into a simpler place where those very same moralized ideals rarely work out-of-the-box.

Another theme of this article that is not really pointed out is that some places act as hypnotic traps for a suicidal mind. The Golden gate bridge in San Francisco is given as an example. I have read an excellent book by Tom Hunt called ''Cliffs of despair'' that explores Britain's Beachy head chalk headlands as such spot that lures suicidal people from all over the country.

Here's the article from The New York Times,

''The Urge to End It All''

            For twenty years the Assyrians continued to build their cities on Venus without making any major attempt to conquer the others. They flooded the planet with not only soldiers, but families from Earth—both Assyrian and conquered peoples—to produce a permanent population. Meanwhile the natives on Venus began to get restless. The fleet in orbit around them had grown to 750 vessels, making it impossible for them to leave or contact Earth. Fleeing or calling in reinforcements was out of the question. So in the meantime there was nothing left for them to do but stop fighting each other and wait.

            And so they did. Those years before the Assyrian land wars were some of the most peaceful that Venus had ever seen. Their population began to grow at an astounding rate. From 745-725 B.C. it rocketed from 490,000-640,000. Their total armies were about 63,000.

            By 725 B.C. The Assyrians had 104,000 people on Venus. Their army number 41,000. They knew they could wait no longer to attack. The population of their enemies was spiraling out of control.

Click on the “Story” page for the table of contents

This account is based on the SkyPath Crusade Epic Poem

*Wear: A JUSTICE fashion line. [psfk]

*Memory loss: I swear this was previously mentioned on the listenerd. EMI is wading into the world of vinyl reissues.

*Literature: The Indie Rock Coloring Book, Colour It Red, benefits the (RED) campaign. Also:The Indie Rock Connect the Dots book includes homages to Elliott Smith and Sleater-Kinney. [p-fork]

*Deals: Nickelback has signed a 360 deal with Live Nation for between $50M and $70M. Personally, I am not a fan of the band Nickelback. [getty images]

*Stats: Everybody hates music critics. (For me, it's all the big words they use.) But we'll take music recommendations from our friends!

*Listen: NPR posts a live set from a Fleet Foxes gig in Washington, DC. [music slut]

*Mental health: There are people paying to see Bon Jovi play in Central Park, even though it's a free concert.

*Off topic: Urlesque gathers a linkbaiting list of 20 bloggers they would like to see in bikinis. WITH ONE GLARING OMISSION.

*Question: Who does not want a GUN for a CHANDELIER?

"This enabled first him and then her to command authority regardless of birth, resulting in the forging of networks and even institutions whose benefits cut deeply across bloodlines."

Yes, the humanities are vital to a democracy, or at least in creating common experience through a mastery of language, rhetoric, and expression.  This occurs by reading, writing and discussing novels, philosophical texts, poems and ocassionally, music.   It can be a great leveller and unifier.

"The university began with the humanities at its heart, but today it is playing catch-up with the natural sciences."

Which university was that, exactly?  Even when functioning well, the humanities aim towards philosophy, and have vaguely modelled themselves after the sciences, at least in this country.  Most importantly they focus on the contribution of artists.  We read Walt Whitman for his poems.   

"Nevertheless, to paraphrase Keynes, every time we turn on the radio or television, read a newspaper, pick up a novel, or watch a movie, we are in the thrall of one or more dead humanists who set the terms of reference through which we see the world."

Yes, but we are also in thrall to Maxwell's equations and thories of electromagnetism that helped invent the radio and T.V.  And to be cruder, we rely on the printing press for the newspaper and novel...the camera for the movies.

I guess Fuller means most people could benefit from reading the great artists to understand what's right in front of them and to broaden and deepen their thinking.  I agree, but would also like to point out that thinking doesn't begin nor end there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a quote from George Santayana:

-The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

When he with this group of people, Vreloran felt worse than stupid, felt like a low life underachiever, felt he was some sort of marginally useful tool so they could keep their minds clear of moral dilemma. Sort of like a judge in days long past having someone else hang the convicted, pleading their own impartiality.

Vreloran had no choice but to suck it up and learn the ‘craft’ they were teaching him, even though it was uncharted territory for every last one of them, indeed, for everyone on the planet.

Yet another animal had been chosen for special disposition, and if this worked again as expected, he knew they would be itching to test this on an actual person.

Vreloran hated the idea of what he was about to do to this unknowing creature. He was not at all sure if he could handle taking the next leap beyond that exercise in their operational plan. That the creature remained alive when the test was over was a secondary matter. Since only one species could communicate how they feel after incurring trauma, no one had any idea what horrific things unfolded within a test subject.

Two hours later and after yet another ‘successful’ test, he sat alone in the facility cafeteria nursing a drink. Staring at an entertainment broadcast, his mind in actuality far away from the programme subject, his guilty conscience continued its struggle against his need to care for his family.

“This is Brellian’s doing” Vreloran mentally looked to place blame. When Brellian N’verinkar was nominated and accepted the position as chief of government, Brellian knew it was only a matter of time before ugly things began happening. And now he was one of the first people to witness just how ugly things would get.

There wasn’t much Vreloran could do. People had little inkling their leader was a masochist, seemingly devoid of any compassion and caring, but Vreloran had seen him in action, and there was little doubt this alleged leader would make good use of this latest illicit technology.

One person was going to be front and centre for taking blame, and it wasn’t going to be Brellian. If things one day reached such a point, that honour would be bestowed upon Vreloran.

Published by Mtv books its the story about a girl who grows up without her mother and turns to music, specifically punk music, because her father tells her that her mother left because she was a free spirit and was compelled to follow the music. Turns out that isn't exactly true. Anyway this girl harbors this hope that her music will perhaps catch her mother's attention and bring her home.

I plowed through this book in about two days, which is unusual for me, but then it wasn't a very hard book to read. Pretty straight line plot. Nothing overly ambitious. In some ways the drama was pretty junior highish, the typical kind of character psychology, although I suppose it was trying to be edgy by portraying young girls as trolling for guys and boozing it up, chain smoking, doing drugs and hanging out an old warehouse converted to a band venue. And of course the main character's band hits it big, getting a record contract, showing up her ex's lesser musical talents. All very girl power-ish. All the male characters in it our either very quiet and sturdy and support the wild raging of the female characters or they are whiney and immature or even threatening. But hey, Hemingway had most of his female characters pretty much stock typed and marginalized, so you know...

Having said all that, I liked it well enough. I like the subject matter, the whole band subculture thing. I had friends who had bands back when we were right out of high school. They weren't punk, more late 80s Pretty Boy Alternative or whatever, but still.... None of them hit it big, but a few albums were produced. It was a cool time. I do think better novels could be written about this world. But I Want to be your Joey Ramone ain't half bad.

I recommended this novel to the Young Adult librarian where I work because it seemed more like a Young Adult novel than a regular adult novel, but the YA librarian had some reservations, because it is marketed an adult novel and has the drug use and sex etc. I argued that though it did have some so-called edgy subject matter it was pretty heavy with positive message, which was part of what I didn't like about the book. I want drama not lessons from a novel. I want it to make me think and feel, not tell me what to do and how to do it. We'll see if it get added or not.

So now I'm back to White Noise, which seems to strike a bit of pretentious posture, if you ask me, not that anyone really is, but I've always felt that I should read at least one thing of Delillo's and so now I'm doing it. This novel was pubbed in 1986, the year I graduated, which seemed significant for reasons I cannot really explain, so don't fucking ask.