The Saturday Review of Books...

...is up at Semicolon.

If you're not familiar with it, it's where bloggers can provide a link to a book-related post written in the last week. I've found it a good way to discover blogs as well as books.

Book note: The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough

Reading Theodore Roosevelt Departs for Panama - Nov 9, 1906 at Projecthistory.com made me think of The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough.


The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914

I don't know about you, but for most of my life I had no idea of how incredibly big and dangerous and expensive and controversial and exciting the Panama Canal project was, or about the spectacular failures and side issues associated with it. I'd even visited the Panama Canal, but it just didn't register with me, from where I was at, that this was really much more than the result of tedious ditch digging for maybe a few years and then the building of fairly standard structures. I waved at people on the ships in the canal and they waved back at me on shore, and I had great fun watching the locks open and close, but until I stumbled across McCullough's book several years ago I never really thought about what it took to build the locks or the waterway. Shame on me.

I was in need of an education and this book gave me one, not just on the canal itself but on the swirling activities of people and governments jockeying for influence or trying to shift blame or find a way out of disaster, or taking credit whether it was due or not. (People are interesting, aren't they?)

It was also a good read, as I recall. (David McCullough's books generally are, if you don't know.) What more could you ask of a nonfiction book for laymen?

As it happened, the Panama Canal opened just as World War I broke out. The news of the great triumph in the Americas got buried underneath news of despair and horror in Europe; another reminder, I guess, that our ancestors didn't have a calm, rational world to work in any more than we do, and that their best plans and hopes got dashed now and then, too.

This is one of the author's early works, c. 1977, but it's still in print. In fact, it's in print in paperback, hardback, and several varieties of audiobook. And yes, a David McCullough book read by Edward Herrmann is my idea of good casting, if you're wondering. (I haven't heard this particular audio book, but I have enjoyed Herrmann's narration of other projects.)

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914

As of post time, Barnes & Noble also had a bargain book version of the audiobook available. Precise format isn't listed but I'm guessing it's audiotape: The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914.

Stamp causes stir in Florida elections office

According to Robert Nolin, reporting for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, an absentee ballot came into the Broward County elections office with what looks like an Inverted Jenny on it.

It hasn't been authenticated yet. And there are forged Inverted Jenny's out there, of course. This might be much ado about nothing. Time will tell on that.

Since the ballot was not in a certification envelope, it has been disqualified. There's no clue to who sent it, either.

So somebody sent in an uncountable vote (ouch) using what might be a several thousand dollar stamp (double ouch).

If it's a real rare stamp, there seems to be a bit of disagreement on what the county should do with it. I'd like to see it go to auction. That could be fun, seeing how much somebody would pay for a canceled stamp (on the downside) with a ripping good story (on the plus side).

hat tip: Best of the Web Today (OpinionJournal)

Addition: Here's some information on "Inverts" - Inverted Jenny and otherwise - from the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum.

Update: Stamp thought to be rare Inverted Jenny is probably a fake, expert says (AP, Nov. 14, 2006)

This could be interesting

The editors at Popular Mechanics are:

...collecting examples of reader projects, with a focus on creativity, ingenuity and inventive spirit. And, we're open to anything. Whether you've turned your lawnmower into a hovercraft, tricked out your computer for high-performance gaming, or simply built the coolest shed in town, we'd like to hear from you...

The deadline for submissions is Dec. 31.

Let me know if your project gets chosen for publication.

Norwegian-American humor (and its relatives)

I didn't run into many Scandinavians prior to my marriage, and sometimes I still don't "get" some of their jokes.

Some of them, yes. Certainly. Some of the Sven and Ole jokes, and especially some of the Lena and Ole jokes, some of those are pretty good.

You don't know Sven and Ole and Lena?

Let's see. Their jokes go something like this.

Sven and Ole went in together to sell some hay. It cost them fifty dollars a ton, but they scraped together enough money to buy enough to put a huge flatbed truck almost onto its axles. They drove to another state where hay sales were supposedly going pretty good. There, the best they could sell their hay for was thirty dollars a ton. They sold it for thirty dollars a ton. Then they sat down to calculate. They calculated that, losing twenty dollars a ton, it was going to take a few more trips to make any money at it. So they went home and bought more hay and made another trip...

Ole and Lena were snowed in. For three weeks they'd been snowed in, snow right up to the rafters. One day they heard a knock on the door. Ole answered the door. A man said, "We're from the Red Cross." Ole said "I gave at the office" and closed the door. Ole turned to Lena. "Gee, I don't know Mama. Maybe we might send a donation this year. They must be pretty hard up, if they'd go to the trouble to come through a blizzard and tunnel through the snow like that."

OK, those I get. But why folks on my husband's side of the family are emailing Lars Walker's comments about Vikings and coffee all around, and laughing so hard, that I'm not too sure of. I thought the comments were cute, but c'mon. (The coffee jokes are in the last third of the post.)

Project Valour IT Update

So, the friendly interbranch contest to raise money for laptop computers for wounded troops is going pretty well overall. The good news from the project's home page is "We have raised $ 122,912 towards our goal of $180,000 so far!"

But Air Force is fourth out four teams right now? I'm shocked. (OK, I'm not shocked, but I am surprised. I thought the Air Force had more esprit de corps than that.)

Navy is leading by a wide margin (thanks in large part to Power Line giving them a push).

Air Force, Army, and Marines are actually pretty close right now, but Air Force is in last place... C'mon, Air Force. Give me an A. An I. An R. An F. An O. An R. A C. An E. Gooooo Air Force!

hat tip: Anna

Fire safety for children

During a fire is not a good time for a kid to have to grapple with the question of whether the big suit and face mask on a firefighter make him a monster or not. Barbara at Mommy Life covers that and other kid-specific fire safety topics in this post.

Life in a small town, anti-truancy edition

A few minutes ago on the radio, the DJ read a list of "first period absences" from the high school. He does this every school day.

Would you skip class if you knew your folks and friends were going to hear about it on the radio? Heh. Thought not. (Not that you would anyway, of course, you not being a kid who would dream of cutting class in the first place.)

Of course, most of the absences are excused ones, because of illness or some other reason the parents know about. But still, once in a while, I'm sure there are some surprises on that list. Surprises followed by action, I hope.

Sometimes, too, when there are lots and lots of absences, it can be a good clue that we've got a flu outbreak or something of the kind going on around here. In that respect, it can feed the grapevine in a useful way.

When we first moved here, I was shocked to hear this daily report. I'd never heard of such a thing. But now it's just another small piece of what makes this place what it is.

My thanks...

...to every politician in this recent election who conceded defeat graciously, on the first round, without calling foul or employing lawyers or demanding recounts or any of that noise. Our electoral system isn't perfect, but it is good enough to be treated with respect. Thanks for showing some.

The Chinese are promoting Pearl Buck's work?

Wonders never cease. Author Pearl Buck's work used to be banned in China. Now it's being studied by academics, places associated with her are being turned into museums, and in general her books are being smiled upon even by government officials, according to The Resurrection of Pearl Buck by Sheila Melvin (The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2006). China’s Central Television network has even produced several documentaries and docudramas about Mrs. Buck, according to Melvin.

Who would have guessed?

The article includes a fair amount of biographical and historical background, including a short passage recounting the troubles MGM ran into when it tried to film part of The Good Earth in China in the mid-1930s. The movie, finally released in 1937, is available on DVD, by the way. (Barnes & Noble link: Good Earth)

Check your grasp of American history

Via Jonah Goldberg, here's a place where you can take lots and lots of American history quizzes.

Election 2006 will be remembered in Oregon...

...and Washington not only for the results, but for the heroics of some folks in getting the election to come off at the appointed time, given record rains, flooding and road closures in parts of both states.

I heard that a dump truck had to be sent to Cannon Beach to pick up ballots, because other vehicles couldn't get through. Is that true?

Actually, I've heard all sorts of stories - of people being deputized especially so they could handle ballots, for instance. The day was full of rescues and heartache, buildings being washed away, roads being washed out.

This might be one time it was all to the good we do vote by mail because it meant many, many ballots were already collected before the storms left some people trapped and sent others racing from their homes.

I heard that one little town might have had more than 13 inches of rain in one day. At any rate, many cities and towns have had more rain already in November than they usually for the whole month. The weather guys say it was one of those Pineapple Express storms we do get from time to time, with wet, warm air rolling up from around Hawaii and dumping its moisture here and melting snowpack at the same time.

P.S. If you're wondering, we're OK where we are.

Not all campaigns are alike

See A different campaign: Orthodox congressional candidates bring Jewish text study techniques to campaigning (Jewish World Review, Nov. 6, 2006, by Eric Fingerhut) for the story behind the runs for office of Jeff Stein and Michael Moshe Starkman. They were awfully young to be running for Congress (Stein is 31, Starkman is only 28!), but each of them wound up with about twenty percent (more or less) of the vote yesterday, at least according to current tallies. They were the Republican candidates for U.S. Congress in Maryland's 8th and 4th districts.

And here you thought all politicians were the same...

English acronyms translated

Katherine, recently moved to England, is starting to get a handle on various locally-used acronyms.

(She would, however, like someone to explain "CIA: Seen on outer wall of a small train station in Virginia Water, Surrey.")

On voting and government, etc.

Among other things, I wrestled with my ballot today. I live in Oregon, where all votes are absentee, if you want to put it that way - I think the official line is vote-by-mail.

I've had the ballot for days and days now, but there are still some blanks where I haven't decided on a race or ballot measure. At this point, they might remain blank. Either I don't care which side wins on that particular contest, or I wish to vote "none of the above" and that's not an official option, or I can't figure the durn thing out. Honestly, sometimes I rely on the endorsements provided, albeit usually in a negative manner. In other words, there are some folks and organizations that serve as red flags: if they're for it, I'm wary. What a way to run a railroad country, eh?

At any rate, I don't vote on an issue unless I feel I have some sort of a handle on it. I hate the idea of government "by wild guess." Don't you?

Sometimes I think our way of referring all sorts of sometimes-wild ideas to a public vote is just plain crazy. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure how to rein in ballot measures without forfeiting a very useful tool for correcting the sometimes-wild ideas that the professional pols push through. What I'd like to see, of course, is a gathering of legislators who understand that their job is not to pass new laws, but to try to make sure laws are sensible and do what they're supposed to, and who aren't afraid to get rid of bad laws and... and I'm dreaming here, aren't I? Sigh. I'd love to vote for somebody who pledges to not add one tiny bit more regulation if it can be helped. Do such people exist? That are willing to walk through the minefields of political campaigns and careers, I mean?

And must people refer to people who come close to following that line as "do-nothing" politicians? Like it's an insult? As if someone in a legislative branch who doesn't have oodles of legislation with his name attached has sidestepped his duty, flubbed his job? I'd appreciate it if more senators and representatives did less, wouldn't you? All those folks trying to do a good job by passing legislation left and right have resulted in a mess of laws and regulations that can be impossible to know, much less understand.

A suggestion, if I might, for new countries just setting up a democracy... How about limiting the total number of bills a Senator or Representative may propose in their lifetime? It might make them think harder about what they're doing, for one thing. And it might keep the total number of bills to within what the populace can keep up with? And.... and I'm probably dreaming here, too.

But it's a thought. You'd have to limit how long each bill could be, I think, to make it work. I suspect that bill-limited politicians might try for astonishing, staggering, omnibus bills. Just a guess. Something worthy of their name, you know. ;)

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The Oregon Secretary of State Elections Division is a go-to place for Oregon results, starting tomorrow about five minutes after the polls close.

Some trivia. According to information at the above link, Oregon has 2,002,927 registered voters, of whom 803,250 had returned ballots as of Nov. 5.

If you want reporting, commentary, analysis, and predictions (along with victory whoops and loser whining, most likely) along with the numbers, you can find it at The Oregonian's online Elections Central page.

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A postscript. This weekend I was feeling under the weather and wanted rather badly to get away from politics and the insanities of some of what passes for political debate these days. So I picked up The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1956, edited by T. E. Dikty, published by Frederick Fell, Inc., New York. I used to enjoy science fiction. I haven't read it much in a while. 1956 seemed like far enough back to avoid the topics I wanted to avoid.

Hah.

The first story I read, picked at random, revolved around corruption in 2177. Little guys, who were being destroyed by government regulators who were accepting bribes from their competition, had pretty much decided to throw in the towel, if they could find enough money to file for bankruptcy, that is. But a crazy Irish-Swede drunk looking for a good fight offers to help outfox the opposition. Having no more shame or scruples than the opposition gives Swenson a fair chance at beating the bad guys at their own game, you see...

The second story I picked, also more or less at random, involved a crazy man who is weighing the relative merits of blowing up the whole world. He doesn't care if he, personally, lives or dies, but he would like to take lots of people with him, and he's discovered a way to explode all the iron in the Earth's crust...

The third story got too gross, too strange, and I gave it up. But it involved some guys in government service, as far as I could tell from the first few pages.

The fourth story involved a sneaky, underhanded government plan to get enough people to work in space. First they made a show of preventing boys from stowing away on spaceships. Then they made sure all ships were stocked with enough provisions for one or two stowaways. Then...

This collection of old views of the future didn't provide me much of a break, all in all, after all.

Cries coming from beneath the floor

If, by the title, you were hoping for a good ghost story, sorry. This is a story of a feral kitten that has adopted our house's crawl space for his home. I call him Gremlin. Grem for short.

My husband and I like to feed stray cats, but it's the sort of hobby that can get out of hand. After we moved here last winter, we found ourselves the soup kitchen of choice for rather more cats than we meant to support. Besides that, we were drawing skunks. Having skunks on the back porch doesn't strike me as a great idea. Obviously, keeping the food dish full for whatever happened to swing by for a bite wasn't working. It was expensive, noisy, and sometimes smelly.

So I switched to only putting out a little food when I saw a cat outside, lurking. This worked better. This especially worked better for one cat, named Gizmo by the previous tenants. Gizmo learned quickly how to make her presence known by meowing. If meowing at one window didn't work, she tried another. She trained me rather better than I should have let myself get trained, to put food out when she begged for it.

Enter Gremlin. Grem first came by when he was barely big enough to be wandering around without a protective mama cat as escort; a funny mix of bravado and standoffishness packaged in fuzzy black and grey swirls, still figuring out how to use his legs in an orderly fashion. He saw Gizmo meowing and then me coming out and feeding her. Grem is a quick learner. At first he merely toddler-ran closer to the porch - while carefully keeping a safe distance - and added his earnest, loud voice to hers and shared in the bounty, wolfing down her leftovers. Then he figured out he could do it on his own, without her help, and have the food dish to himself. He also doesn't wear himself out going around the house like Gizmo: he concentrates his efforts at the windows nearest the feeding dish.

We haven't seen Gizmo lately. Sometime back, shortly pre-Gremlin, she went off to have kittens somewhere. For a while after that she'd show up now and then, ravenous, obviously nursing a litter. Just about the time I was keeping an eye out for a baby or two trailing clumsily in her wake, with or without her permission (you know how kittens are), she stopped coming. I'm hoping beyond hope that she's been taken in by a nice family, instead of meeting a crueler fate. She's not a very smart cat on balance, if we are honest about it. I have seen her walk morosely through a small herd of deer in the back yard because they happened to be along the path she was already on. She is not, in other words, great at coming up with a Plan B if Plan A falls apart. But she is a friendly cat that adores petting.

Gremlin, in contrast, will have nothing to do with petting, has set up camp, and spends much of the day underneath our house. When we walk about over his head, he cries. All hours of the day or night, he talks to us, sometimes from underneath one place, sometimes from underneath another. He is obviously lonely, but hasn't discovered the concept of being friends with a human. He'll make full eye contact with me when he's begging underneath one window or another - that, after all, is how this food dispenser business seems to work best, I'm sure. But as soon as I come into full view on the back porch, he dives underneath the house again.

It puts me in an odd position. He looks at me like I'm some sort of trigger-happy tribal god who must be appealed to but who might destroy any creature who gets too close. He is afraid of me. Sometimes when he's crying to me for food, he's shaking with fear. Sometimes when he's looking into my eyes, it's like he's asking why the universe is so horrid that an honest, innocent kitten must go through such an ordeal day after day.

Well, piffle. We got off to a bad start and it bothers me that he's latched onto this view of the world. Living under a house and mainly coming out to beg for food is no fit life for a cat. I don't want to encourage it. He does play a bit now and then in our semi-wild back yard (if he doesn't know someone's watching), and he hunts some (if he doesn't know someone's watching), but he's really spending too much time cringing, feeling sorry for himself, hiding, wearing out his nerves.

Enough is enough.

Yesterday morning when I fed him, I sat down on the stoop. The food dish was in its usual spot, halfway between me and where he comes out of his hidey-hole at one side of the porch. He wasn't happy to have me there. He cried. Yelled. Fidgeted. Stared at me wide-eyed and wary. Kept going back toward his hole. Finally he managed to make it to the food dish, but flinched or bolted at every movement or sound from me, each leaf falling from the apple tree behind him. I stayed put, and kept talking to him. Finally he settled in to eat: quickly, nervously but, when all is said and done, bravely eating under the watchful gaze of his monstrous feeder (that would be me). The way he eats, he must close his eyes for part of each bite. For a while, he tried eating without opening his eyes between chomps. I might have laughed if it hadn't been so very sad.

After a while I got cold, and also started feeling sorry for him, having to put up with that much unaccustomed stress. So I stood up and came in. He ran for his den, of course, but came out later, after I'd come inside and closed the door behind me.

Yesterday afternoon, he appealed to his monstrous feeder again, so I put some food out and sat down on the stoop again. He held back, crying in fear and frustration at the top of his lungs. When that didn't move me, he inched forward, belly low and muscles tight. After several false starts he managed to grab a bite and run back, grab a bite and run back. After a while he almost settled in to eat, but just then a couple of women and two toddlers started doing yard work in the back yard next door. Grem couldn't see them from the food dish, so he moved out on the porch to peek around the corner at the strange noises. He settled in where he could watch both them and me. He had to turn his head one way to see them, and the opposite way to see me. After whipping his head back and forth several times, he settled in to watch -- them. Granted, having his back to me meant he was poised to run away from me - but after a while he seemed to not worry much about me being behind him.

Last night I gave him a break, and just put out a little food before going to bed.

This morning when I stepped out back he ran toward the porch but stopped near cover, and tried yelling at me for a while. Yell, duck, stick head out to see if the dreadful food god is still there. Repeat. Repeat. Then he tried going in circles. None of these actions magically making me disappear, he walked nervously to the feed dish and ate. He tried the 'if I close my eyes and don't see her maybe she'll go away' routine for a while, but then switched to eating a few bites, staring wildly at the monster, and then to eating a few bites before staring appraisingly at the maybe-monster. We ended with him looking more puzzled than terror-stricken.

Well, no, we ended with me standing up to come back inside and him exploding in a mad dash to get under the porch. But before that, if I didn't move he didn't run. Already he's decided I can talk at him all I want to, as long as I don't move much.

This afternoon when I fed him I leaned against the doorframe, looming instead of sitting. He called foul a few times, but went to the dish and ate with me standing there. He wasn't happy, but he didn't run off.

It's a start. Sort of. Maybe.

He might have run wild too long to be tamed completely, but we'll see.

June 30, 2008 update: Since Gremlin is now caring for her second batch of kittens, the "he" in the above post should be read as "she." Grem is almost too friendly some of the time, but is too hyper to be confused with a lap cat. All in all, things turned out reasonably well, regarding Gremlin. We never did see Gizmo again, or her kittens.

On naps

Naps are getting good press. :)

There's even a company in New York that sells naps at $14 for 20 minutes. No, really. (Follow either link. Keep reading. It's toward the end.)

The second link above quotes Sara C. Mednick, a psychologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., author of the forthcoming book Take a Nap! Change Your Life:


Take a Nap! Change Your Life.

This time of year I'd love to take more naps. Shorter days make me sleepy.

New York Times corrects itself on Kerry misquote

I couldn't believe it when I read that a New York Times article on the John Kerry flap did not include what Kerry actually said, but erroneously gave a modified version of what were presented as his prepared remarks. But it was true. Today, however, they've caught up, and to their credit have issued this correction at the bottom of the article:

Correction: Nov. 3, 2006

A Political Memo article yesterday about the fallout for Senator John Kerry over what he called a “botched joke” referred incompletely to the differences between prepared remarks and what he actually said about the Iraq war to students at Pasadena City College in California on Monday. Mr. Kerry not only dropped the word “us,” but he also rephrased his opening sentence extensively and omitted a reference to President Bush. Mr. Kerry’s aides said that the prepared text read: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” What he said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

So, please. If you've been dealing with someone who relies on the New York Times for their information on this, cut them a little slack. They were badly misinformed.

If I might make a suggestion to the New York Times? When dealing with politicians, it's often a good idea to go to the tape of a controversial speech instead of letting the politician's spin doctors or aides tell you what he said. Sometimes they will try to pull a fast one. It happens. Yeah, sure, it's crazy to lie to reporters, but people have been known to do it.

(Full disclosure: I used to be a newspaper reporter. I did get lied to now and then. Once I didn't find that out until a story I'd filed got picked up by the wire services. Gee, that was fun. Not.)

Update: Before you say anything, I am not excusing the original mistake. As far as I can see, in this case the reporter and/or editor either had to be clueless or in on the stunt, neither of which you want to see at any paper, but especially a big one.

Mark Tapscott issues a challenge

Mr. Tapscott, who tracks both media and government, suggests the right side of the blogosphere could be developing more independent news sites, hyperlocal or otherwise. He invites discussion on this.

Hear! Hear!

I'd like to second what Katie Couric says about swearing.