Lightning Fall: a Definitive Novel about an EMP attack on America

EMP attack. We hear the words and kind of fuzzily think "oh the power will be out, better stock up on candles." At least, that was how I looked at it. Faraday cages. Tinfoil hats for our mobile phones. But it's not a laughing matter.

5 years ago, Bill Quick put out a warning in the form of his well-researched, scientifically accurate novel "Lightning Fall". (It's also an exciting adventure story, but we'll get to that part later.)

This past November, the US Military issued a report on the danger of EMP that in many ways paralleled the likely events Quick had identified in 2014: "Military warns EMP attack could wipe out America, 'democracy, world order' "

This week, our President Trump took action to protect us against EMP attack.

In his second National Emergency Executive Order, President Trump again puts our safety first, and established the first ever "comprehensive policy to improve resilience to EMPs".

Congress was first warned about the danger of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack in 2008. Two presidents and five Congresses failed to act to shore up our local defenses against it. But finally, we have a President who does not play "kick the can".

We know we dodged a bullet when we elected Trump instead of Clinton 2.0. A read of Lightning Fall shows us we also dodged an atomic bomb - and how important is our President's action to protect us against just such a disaster.

As for me, if I had not read Quick's book, I might have glossed over this presidential EO without thinking. However, coincidentally, I finally read the book last month. As they used to say "my consciousness has been raised". I understand the danger now. I won't laugh at tin foil any more.

A good storyteller, and a perceptive cultural analyst, Bill Quick's novel can almost be used to blueprint our own preparations for the total disruption of communication and services. Lightning Fall takes snapshots of the consequences from every angle and puts them up for us to see how our particular location would look. Through his characters, who seem like people I already know, we get ideas to adapt to our own circumstances to insure our own survival, the survival of our families and our neighborhoods.

I don't know about you, but I will remember "how" info better when I have a context for it... a scenario creates a full picture of not only how, but of what and why, of when and who.  This is what I found in Lightning Fall.

Lightning Fall is a fast paced, exciting thriller with unpredictable turns that kept me turning pages until late at night, and a solid story peopled with characters who matter.  Quick's characters are ordinary people in different locations around the country, from Mississippi to San Francisco to the heartland to what seemed in 2013 the inevitable Hillary Clinton Whitehouse ("Millicent Carter"). Each faces different problems caused by the EMP attacks and has to handle those problems in different ways, whether prepared or not.

What a battle they face. There's a criminal element in every town, from cities to the smallest hamlet, and those are the first bad guys to take advantage when the lights go out. Threats can also come from unexpected sources: a bank manager who refuses to allow a mother to empty her safe deposit box in order to pay the mortgage, a neighbor alerting a gang member to supplies in the apartment below. But faithful allies are also not as far away as first believed, and the weak uncover strengths they had not needed before, in the nick of time.

A deeper crisis threatens the very foundation of our republic when the national government - unaffected by the EMP - sets a course to abandon the needy and take overtly political action that means the deaths of millions, in order to assure partisan victory in an upcoming election. The individuals in our story are facing not only immediate threats, but the prospect of being left to their own devices indefinitely.

Quick has given his individual characters some advantage: they've been "prepping", each in their own way, so they aren't completely in the lurch immediately. Instead, each faces dangers and threats they had failed to foresee, and has to rely on their wits, and the hand of Providence, to win out over those who would separate their soul from their body without a second thought.

Bill Quick is an astute observer of the culture and politics of our time, and Lightning Fall showcases those observations well. Ever imagine that Mexico's capital might be working behind the scenes to undermine local governments in California? Or that someone else might be pulling the eternally corrupt strings that animate Mexico's political class? Lightning Fall maps the course some of that leverage might take.

His grasp of what a Hillary Clinton presidency would have been like is chillingly authentic... and I suspect if Mrs Clinton or Bill ever read Quick's portrayal of their marriage, they might look around and wonder if he had been listening in, so credibly does he suggest how the fictional "Carters" relate to each other in the intimacy of their private marital relationship, right down to moments that are almost endearing (or would be if the consequences of their ambitions weren't so fatal to the rest of us).

Our heroes, most of them, survive in this story, and are looking forward with strength and hope at the end of the book, thanks to their remarkable American values: personal will and individual resources knitted together with neighbors in a fierce joint determination to procure survival not only for themselves and loved ones, but also for their place and their local civilization: to defend their homes and the ground on which they stand against whatever force evil might throw at them, and to be found standing when morning comes.

Get ready. Stock up on canned chili and fresh water. Buy and read "Lightning Fall: A Novel of Disaster" by Bill Quick.

Book Review: "Life Unworthy" by Christopher Taylor

In the old days, when authors used agents and got publishing contracts, Christopher Taylor's books would have been published by Ace Books or Ballantine, and would have been in bookshops across the country. Today's publishing climate is both easier and harder for writers who aren't celebrities, and so Taylor is an independent author and "Life Unworthy" is a contract-worthy book available on Amazon for Kindle and in Trade Paperback. I bought the hard copy.

It's a good werewolf tale, keeping us on pins and needles all the way through, true to its genre, and a solid mystery story as well. But for those looking for more depth than monsters, "Life Unworthy" is rich historical fiction, replete with accurate detail that gives us a genuine sense of life-on-the-ground in 1943 Poland, occupied by the Nazis and terrorized by ancient curses.

Meticulous research includes many tiny details true to the era that might not be consciously appreciated by a casual reader. I love the way everyone smokes *everywhere*. Young people won't recognize that bit of "atmosphere" from a time when up to 80% of adults smoked and didn't die from it, but it is just one of the myriad ways Taylor paints us into a realistic picture. The ubiquitous cigarettes, the constant reference to "the Great War", are not essential to the story, but serve to rattle us into thinking a little deeper, immersing us into the time and place.

The psychic hold "the Great War" has on the soldiers in this novel is particularly effective, and has been seldom covered in war writing - whether fiction or fact, most WWII writing is colored by later knowledge that this was indeed "the second world war", whereas in the early years, it was still seen even by those in it as a more hopeful war: the Nazis were buoyed by recovering what they had lost in the catastrophic brutality of the Great War, Poland had not yet been betrayed, and so even the Poles and Gypsies in Life Unworthy desperately clung to belief that it would end with freedom.

Great characters are fleshed out well, and believable. It is crazy to see how almost likable some of the Nazis can be, and it jars when we realize the jobs they are doing, how much "routine" funnels them into the soul-killing deeds they do in response to orderly commands.

Almost an allegory, the werewolf's struggle to control the beast is an opposite, a mirror image of these Nazis' efforts to rationalize within themselves the evil they are promoting. This is a subtle juxtaposition all through the book that slowly dawns on the reader as we go.

Look carefully to catch the clues woven throughout the novel. They are difficult to spot, seamlessly inserted into the prose. And the whispered hints are even more difficult to unravel. I found myself stopping along the way to look up a reference, a location, to uncover more layers of the deep history. It's impossible to anticipate the ending, yet when it comes, the threads trace back to early hints, mentions, shadows, and you think, "Ah! So that is what that meant!"

A satisfying resolution that takes its own sweet time to unfold is one of the best things about Taylor's writing style. I am often annoyed by otherwise good writers who rush their endings - building to the climax then wrapping everything up in a quick couple of paragraphs, as though they suddenly realize they've reached their word limit. Taylor doesn't do that. He never leaves his readers in the lurch. He continues to follow the story for a bit to let us absorb what happened and neatly finish the final seams, so that it is complete and full.

All in all, "Life Unworthy" is a good story, a satisfying read, that doesn't waste our time. It's a book for adults, and will leave you thinking about the characters long after you've shelved the book in your permanent collection, to read again someday.

Christmas Recipe Challenge & Our Chex Mix Recipe

Hopefully, over the week the comments thread on this video will fill up with tasty family favorites! Do you have a You Tube channel? Make a video  and come share in the comments on You Tube!  Watch til the end to find out how to take part. Maybe your name will be drawn for the "Christmas with Martha Stewart Living" book give away! :-)

Progressive Blacklists Get Uglier: Dinesh D'Sousa's "America" (#5 Best Seller on Amazon) Removed From Costco Shelves

At least McCarthy was loyal to the United States of America. The Progressive Blacklisting of anything decent and normal and American is getting too ugly to tolerate.
On Monday, Dinesh's book "American: Imagine The World Without Her", the companion text to his latest hit movie, was #51 on Amazon overall. Today it is #5, thanks to patriotic Americans' reacting to Costco's disgusting attempt to control what the public reads.

When you finish reading, please go to your favorite blog and use their affiliate links to buy your copy through Amazon. I am not an affliliate, but that is no reason not to share the wealth with the other conservative bloggers who keep us informed and thinking for ourselves.

Here is Dinesh's statement on the matter (click here to go to the Facebook post):

Dinesh D'Souza   July 08, 2014 at 5:28 PM
"Yesterday I was stunned to learn that Costco had pulled my latest book, America: Imagine The World Without Her, from all of its stores. This was despite the fact that the book had sold very well at the chain and that my movie of the same name was releasing on over 1,000 screens the very next day. Today, I am disappointed to learn that this news has been confirmed by Costco . This action confirms the suspicions of all freedom-loving Americans and is a direct attack on my livelihood which I take very seriously. In a free society, Costco is free to ban my book, but their customers are also free to shop at other stores which don't censor books. In the book and the movie, I talk about the shaming of Americans and a culture of intimidation and censorship that has been spearheaded by the President himself. It's one thing for Costco executives to pal around with President Obama and donate almost exclusively to Democrats. But to turn their company into a tool for suppressing dissent against the government is another matter. I urge all Americans to watch our film in their nearest theater and buy the book from an establishment that honors freedom of speech. Once they do that, they will understand why the President and his allies are so afraid of this message and determined to keep it from reaching the American people."

I do not EVER want to hear any liberal try to talk about some 50 year old events of any kind again.  Not ever. Not ANY. What matters is what is happening today. They are aggressively blacklisting Christians, people who support ACTUAL EXISTING LAW, people who support sexual constancy as a virtue, people who support honesty in all things,  people who don't give a damn what YOU do but are willing to say when asked that they support the only kind of marriage any society in the history of the world has ever recognized, people who support legitimate elections, people who oppose concentration camps and support defended borders, people who expect citizenship to mean something that it has ALWAYS meant.

In general any person who loves, lives and speaks out in favor of legitimate American Culture is embattled by hateful people who are not thinking at all, but taking marching orders like zombies.

The zombie apocalypse is here, and the brain eaters call themselves "Progressives".


UPDATE 7/9/14:  Newsmax reports that Costco has retreated following the loud outcry and promises to restock the books. The company's official reasoning shows how recursive Progressives are - everything runs in a closed circle with these people:  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti  "said that the company's national goal is to market books that are on The New York Times' bestseller list, but that "America" has not been on the list. A company statement on the Costco Facebook page stated."

BUT of course (and Costco's people know this), The NYT has refused to place Dinesh's book on their list at all, despite strong debut sales:  the Washington Examiner reported previously that America has been "banished" from the famous list, despite far outselling one by Hillary Clinton:

"The New York Times bestseller list hasn't waited a millisecond to put Hillary Clinton's book atop its influential chart after just a week of sales, but has totally ignored another top-10 hardcover from noted conservative and critic of President Obama, Dinesh D'Souza.

"His new book, on sale for three weeks, isn’t just absent from the top 10 lists already set for the next two Sundays, but totally missing from the list of the nation’s top 25 nonfiction hardcovers despite having sales higher than 13 on the latest Times chart.

"According to sales reports provided to Secrets, D'Souza's new book America: Imagine a World Without Her, sold 4,915 in the first week and 5,592 in the second week. Had it been included on the upcoming June 22 Times hardcover nonfiction list, it would have ranked No. 8, and then No. 11 on the June 29 list that puts Clinton's sales at 85,721. The lists are widely circulated in the publishing industry before they go public.

"The Times is somewhat mysterious in how it calculates its list, but it includes several books selling well under 3,000 copies in a week. A spokeswoman said, “We let the rankings speak for themselves and are confident they are accurate.”

"America is expected to explode when the accompanying movie debuts next month. In America, D’Sousa slams Obama’s agenda and targets Clinton too — maybe one reason the Times hasn’t recognized it."

Click through to read the rest of the article by Examiner's "Washington Secrets" Columnist Paul Bedard.

Remember this every time some Progressive tries to convince you of anything. All of their arguments are self-referential and meaningless. As one would expect from zombies.

UPDATE 7/17/14:  The New York Times had to relent finally, too, or risk losing what shreds of authority the gray old thing has left, and allowed "America - Imagine A World Without Her" on the NYT Best Seller List. Result?  America will debut at #2. From Dinesh's site:

" Dinesh D’Souza’s publisher at Regnery recently sent this note about his latest book:
“I am happy to report that for the week of July 27, America will appear on the New York Times best seller list at second place for hardcover books as well as eBooks!”
This comes following the New York Times past omissions of the book from the best seller list, despite its rise to #1 on Amazon’s best seller list." 

Congratulations, Dinesh - and all red blooded Americans of all heritage. The zombies are still outside the gates, but chalk one up for reality this week!

'Calamity Jane' The Great American Desert Novel

[Note: I posted this book review on Amazon this morning, but will also put it here. I'm not an Amazon affiliate, so please go through your favorite blogger's Affiliate link to get there so they will benefit from your purchase! Christopher Taylor or Pat Austin are two that I try to patronize.]

Fans of his Jack Ross Mysteries will be excited to learn that Bernard Schopen has published a new novel: Calamity Jane, Baobab Press (November 12, 2013).  "Calamity Jane" sets us up with a tale about a movie: when Hollywood makes a movie in a small town, that is news for the next 50 years. When the subject of that movie is not only a legendary actor, but the town's most famous resident, there's a book in it just waiting to be written. Thus aging writer Winnefred Waner, best known for her textbook story about women driven insane by the desert, sits down to record a story of famous lives and inadvertently reveals her own.

Jane Harmon comes to Blue Lake, Nevada ("Nev'bad'a", not "Nev'odd'a") to make a movie and she hasn't even arrived in town before she is annoying the natives and endangering her surroundings. It is no accident she is dubbed "Calamity Jane" by the plain speaking oldtimers... much like her older and wiser counterpart was nicknamed the genteel "Miz Waner Ma'am" by her students. The narrator tells us the town is small enough that a new young woman's mere presence alters the future for more than just the man who takes her home, and sets events out of balance. Calamity Jane leaves destruction in her wake, but never looking back, she doesn't understand that she herself was the force of nature responsible for the wreckage. Her interactions with women are even more complicated; and her encounters with Ione Hardaway crackle from the beginning, as though the two women were old time gunfighters destined for a showdown at high noon. Something has to break, something harder than a heart. 

The book isn't labeled a mystery, but mysteries permeate this novel. Some brush the cheek like an errant breeze and their whisper never materializes. Others inhabit tumbleweeds and scatter across the landscape again and again, showing a new side each time and continuously dropping leaves and seed, until they finally come to their last rest, gaunt and harmless - and resolved. 

Schopen was born and raised in Deadwood, South Dakota, and spent his career teaching Literature at the University of Nevada at Reno. His wife is a friend of mine, but because our friendship was born on the internet, I've never met him. The desert landscape sprawls through every page he writes, but Schopen is no naturalist. You won't learn where to find  burrowing owls or how to predict the rain here. The phenotypes he studies and knows so intricately are people, and the work of living as human beings in the desert world. He tells us only in passing why people came to string-along towns like Blue Lake, but by the end of his books we know something more important: we understand why some of them did not leave.

I've only flown over Nevada but I lived a long time in the West Texas desert. Schopen's landscape is so familiar I can smell the dust and admire the ageless, rustless, ruination of every abandoned thing along the road decaying in its own long time,  without a drop of moisture to help.  That is the bit that marks Schopen as Desert Man: he understands the stark junk, the inevitable accumulations of broken abandonment that just stay where they happen to end up,  he understands the crazy beauty of obsolete iron and dry rotted shacks and the half-ruined but fiercely strong people that live among it all at their own free choice. 

Schopen's books are clean like the desert stays clean despite the snakes and thorns. The desert rarely allows nuance to survive, and his characters are good or evil.  His vilains can be vile, sometimes shudderingly so, but Schopen does not exult in their depravity: he describes just enough to engage the imagination without inflicting ugliness on his readers, and quickly offsets this with a turn to primary decency.  While the good & the heroic may fall into error, they are true to their desert upbringing, and they never really give up hope.  Schopen doesn't erase the past to generate happy endings, but he opens the doors and leaves them ajar, offering shelter for the feathered things.

"Calamity Jane" is billed as a clash between the old and the new. Those who understand the desert know what wins that battle. This is a stolid tale of love lost and won, of tragic youth and triumphal old age, of lives that don't need fame for meaning: a chance to peer behind the cotton curtains and through the rising dust into the real life that still abides in the desert west. It is a book that will outlive its author, and may, someday, when the "post literate" hoopla has inevitably passed and literature matters again, be hailed as Nevada's own Great American Novel.

The Author Reviews My Review

There are some good books out there in the self publishing world today. One way to find some of the better ones is to read the authors' own blogs. That is how I came across a particularly memorable story about a thief and a castle and a wizard.....   Author Christopher Taylor (Word Around The Net, linked from my sidebar), approves of my review of his fun chivalrous fantasy novel "Old Habits":

 "I expect to get indifferent, happy, and even insulting reviews, but something I never expected was a review that so completely understood what I was trying to accomplish with my story and seems to have crawled inside my head when I was writing it, which is deeply humbling and gratifying all at once. I wanted to share it with everyone so they can learn more about the book."       

See? Can this guy write or what? Click over to his blog to read the review - and buy the book!

Maybe if he sells enough of this one he will feel inspired to write a sequel! 

Computer Failure and Summer Pleasantries

My trusty Dell Inspiron lies comatose, due to hard drive failure. It is 6 years old, so unlikely that we'll have it repaired. I'm going to ask Devin to look at it, and if it is costly to fix, he can have it for parts. There go all my bookmarks, photos, blog notes. C'est la vie. We won't replace it soon, there are more important priorities. For the time being, Paul is letting me share his computer - which is also our tv source.

So blogging will be lighter, but will not disappear. This blog has done well as an outlet for me and I enjoy my readers and the friends I've made through it.  I'll simply be posting once a week instead of 2 to 3 times. Maybe the quality will improve! Ha! :-)  Anyway, thanks for reading and for continuing to follow along. In the meantime, feel free to visit our sponsors.   :-)

It's actually been pleasant to be without a laptop.  At Paul's urging, I've resumed an old hobby, making costume jewelry and stringing beads - and making beads. When we met, I sold my jewelry in a couple of shops and did shows, but had let the hobby fall to the wayside long ago. Expect to see some pieces here at some point.

I've also been working on a big project that has been sitting and waiting for a couple of years: a tiny Cardinal travel trailer, vintage late 1960s. It had been gutted and I guess used as a food cart or something so it was a real mess! We aren't "restoring" it as such, but making it liveable as a secure place to sleep. Whereever we camp will certainly have "facilities" with showers and clean toilets, thank you very much! I am a big fan of hot water and indoor plumbing even when roughing it.  Paul shored up the inside and got the tags on and will take care of the electrics. My brother in law is going to paint the outside of it for us when we get to that point. Yesterday I finished the second coat of paint on the interior and now I'm searching for curtain material. It needs to have a touch of the avocado green of the naugahyde cushions, have a little blue, either  beachy, tropical or mid-century modern pattern. I lost the "before" pics on my computer, but I'll put up some "in progress" ones soon.

Yesterday morning after I got off work, we went to Cross Plains Texas to Robert E. Howard Days (aka Barbarian Days). I've been wanting to go to that since I first heard about it but something always interfered. We toured the author's house, bought various bits of Conan the Barbarian comic art, took pictures (I'll add them in a later post), and went to the Barbarian Festival. Cross Plains has a great, oak-shaded park for this kind of event. It was cool and comfortable. Live music, great Fair food, free watermelon and neat tshotshkes. One book I bought was "Lone Scout of Letters", the collected correspondence of Herbert C. Klatt, who died at 21 on 1928. Not only for those interested in Boy Scouts history, the Lone Scout organization, or the history of amateur journalism, the book also gives a glimpse into the life of a teenaged boy in rural Texas in the early part of the last century. 


We'll pick up the grandkids today to come spend a week or two. They are older, and they come each summer to help with the community Vacation Bible School. They always have a lot of fun, and we are so happy to have them. 

Now, off to church. Dinner on the ground and baptisms this afternoon, as more people answer Jesus' call to "Come, follow me."   


God bless you this Sunday, and through your week!

A Nook eReader: Make Room for the Library of Alexandria

Where have I been all week? Wellllll.....Devin and Sandy gave me a Nook for Mother's Day. Oh my!

Here was a gift I didn't know I wanted until I got it! I had been thinking I might "have" to buy an eReader to read some of the new indie work out there, self-published by writers who offer eBooks only.

The connection I had not yet made, though, is that despite a lifetime of avid, eclectic reading, there are still so many great books I have not read.

Among my favorite genres are exploration and true adventure. Many of these books were previously available only in expensive originals, or in hard-to-find reprints. Most of my reading in the subject has been serendipitous as a result. With my Nook, suddenly hundreds of truly good books can be at my fingertips, for free!

After downloading a Bible,  I searched the Barnes and Noble Nook site for "Exploration", sorted by "Price, Lowest First" (to bring up the free books), started with "A", and the first book I downloaded was a gem previously unknown: "A Handy Guide for Beggars", published in 1918 by Vachel Lindsay.

In school, I was exposed only to Lindsay's Jazz Poetry. I did not know he had written his own version of the Great American Road Saga. Like Travels With Charley or A Walk Across America,  A Handy Guide for Beggars records his impressions of the people who sheltered and fed him as he walked around the United States in the opening decade of the 20th century, paying his way with chapbooks and spontaneous lectures.

Among my favorite stories in the book are "House of the Loom" and the beautiful "Lady Iron Heels".  Politically correct? No. Incomplete? Maybe, but far less judgmental - and far more human - than most 60s anthropologists. Naive? Only the bored think that naive is a bad thing. I'll take naive over global sophisticates every day.

Arctic exploration fascinates me, probably because I shiver at 70 degrees. Peter Fruechen's books are favorites. When my grandson did a research paper on Matthew Henson this year, I gave him some Henson memorabilia I had collected: one of the cigarette trading cards printed in 1912 to honor Henson's achievement when he accompanied Peary in the race to reach the North Pole, and a school library book from 1957 that had a whole chapter on Henson.  Now, thanks to my little Nook, it is easy to read Matthew Henson's own 1912 book "A Negro Explorer at the North Pole".
 
Still in the "A's", I've added "Australia Twice Traversed" by Ernest Giles, 1880; "A Summer in Alaska" by Frederick Schwatka, 1893;  "An explorer's adventures in Tibet" by Henry Savage Landor, 1897; "Across the Everglades: A Canoe Journey of Exploration" by Hugh Willoughby, 1898, and "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" by Isabella Lucy Bird, 1879.  

When going through the list to download a book, be sure to scroll or page through to get to the free version - sometimes Barnes and Noble will mix in "for sale" versions that require payment.

I am still learning to use it, and still prefer to read an actual printed book when I can, but the e-reader is lightweight, and easy to carry in my purse. Sandy said she loves hers when traveling. I can see why - when I used to fly, I often carried 4 or 5 books in one of my carry-on bags, but today's weight and volume restrictions, that is no longer practical.

Reading free volumes on the Nook is like having a lending library next door that is open 24 hours a day. This is definitely a place where technology has its perks.

Heh! While I waited for Blogger to wake up from its Sunday afternoon nap so I could post this, I saw a similar post at "Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated". I'm guessing the time is not far distant when even the most passionate reader will no longer argue with the interior decorator over "merchandising" the book shelves!

"Information is Holy": Musings on the Printing Press, the Internet, and the Church of Kopimism

 In his letterpress printed pamphlet "Saint Gutenberg, Pray For Us",   AAPA member Michael Coughlin (Superior Letterpress) makes a case for the value of printed books over digital in the preservation of original knowledge. He writes "With our frequently shortsighted perspective, we seem to imagine what we are experiencing is unprecedented in history. While the technology is new, it's far from true that human history hasn't before experienced dramatic, sudden, and far-reaching transformations."

"Saint Gutenberg, Pray For Us" helped me sort several threads that have been getting tangled together in my thoughts for a while: in particular, the likelihood that uncensored data and accumulated knowledge can or will be preserved if they exist only in digital or continuously-editable form.  What follows are my answers.

~~~~~~

"Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness."  Isaiah 30:8

In Buddhism, the passion for making large numbers of copies of prayers and charms led to the early use of blocks for printing. The prayer wheel and prayer flags stem from the idea of making copies or spreading the word by keeping the prayers in motion, to create a virtual "Copy" with each turn of the wheel, with each flap in the wind.

In this world of wonders, who is to say the actual information is not tossed onto the breeze with each turn?

But the knowledge expressed in the prayer is not made accessable to human beings in these repetitions. Somewhere along the way, the form, the act, of copying and motion took precidence over the essential result: the sharing of information itself. Thus, while Buddhism teaches that enlightenment can be achieved, that rational thought and personal acquisition of knowledge are religious activities, ultimately the Buddha did not see information as holy in its own right.

But the Kopimist does.

~~~~~


 "After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:  “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up."  Jeremiah 36:27-28

In Sweden, the Missionary Church of Kopimism has been recognized as a legitimate religion. The Kopimi believe that "kopyacting" - file sharing - is a sacred action that deserves the protection granted other religions. The new Church grew out of the tension between draconian copyright demands by governments at the beck and call of powerful media companies, and the freedom internet technologies hold for people eager to preserve, share, and disseminate information.

According to Business Week:

[Kopimists'] "central commandment, “Copy and seed,” is a call to download files and make them available for sharing. Life itself, the newly declared believers observed, depends on the replication of cells and the endless duplication of DNA."

"“In the beginning, it was a joke,” says Gustav Nipe, the church’s chairman. “But maybe we’ve stepped on something greater than we thought.” "

"The church’s chief missionary is Isak Gerson, a 20-year-old student of philosophy. ...In addition to being the country’s top Kopimist, Gerson is a committed Lutheran who attends mass about twice a month. “Information is holy,” he says. One important distinction between religious values and other values is that you can’t explain them rationally.”

"Information is holy. "

~~~~~


"Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it..."  Exodus 17:14 (written down circa 1450 BC)

After the Roman Empire descended into chaos and barbarism in the 5th Century AD, the nations of the world confronted centuries of apocolyptic conditions of social upheaval, plague, famine, extreme weather, and war. Societies broke down, pavement crumbled, trade dissipated. Technologies and learning were lost - or would have been, had it not been for the culture of education within the Christian monasteries scattered throughout the Empire.

For a thousand years, until the invention of moveable type in the 14th Century, the scriptorum of Europe served to fill the libraries of the Christian world with books - in every place the Roman roads had gone, and farther still. From Italy to Ireland, from Switzerland to Denmark, from France to Greenland. Christian brothers made it their sacred duty to faithfully copy the accumulated knowledge of the known universe and the classical world: not only religious tomes and the Holy Bible, but works of mathmatics and science, of medicine and history.

And they not only copied, but translated and collected and sought new sources. All of the world's accumulated knowledge base was painstakingly and lovingly reproduced and disseminated, conveyed into the vernacular of the local monastics, shared to create local libraries that all could use.


The Abbey library of Saint Gall in Switzerland, founded circa 800 AD, is one of the oldest in the world, and remains in operation as a library today.

From this preservation, translation, commentary and actual copying of works, learning was reestablished and began gathering the momentum that has propelled the world throughout all the centuries since, because the Christian,Western world believed "Information is holy."

~~~~

"When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law..." Deuteronomy 17:18

When Charlemagne took the throne of France in 751 AD, he actively pursued the preservation of Rome's literature. Almost without exception, Roman authors are available to us today only from copies produced under the Carolingian government. They would be lost forever otherwise.

In the interest of educating the public, Charlemagne established free local schools to teach full literacy and mathmatics, proclaiming in the "Capitulary of 787", sometimes known as the "Charter of Modern Thought",
that the Christian work of the Church must include "the study of letters, each to teach and learn them according to his ability and the Divine Assistance."

He continued: "Let every monastery and every abbey have its school, in which boys may be taught the Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing, arithmetic and grammar.", followed 10 years later by an even stronger edict: "that the priests establish schools in every town and village....and let them exact no price from the children for their teaching nor receive anything from them save what their parents may offer voluntarily..."

By 1200, Europe had universities and seats of learning in all major cities and many minor ones. The still extant University of Padua in Italy, where the great priest-scientist Albertus Magnus studied, was one of the first true "universities" in the world.  Colleges and Libraries proliferated on the continent, and the thirst for learning that generated this activity has never slowed in the West.

All because the Christian Emperor Charlemagne believed that "Information is holy."

~~~~~


"...it will be like a sealed scroll. If you take it to someone who knows how to read and ask him to read it to you, he will say he can't because it is sealed. If you give it to someone who can't read and ask him to read it to you, he will answer that he doesn't know how." Isaiah 29:11-12

Imagine a world in which the Holy Bible itself had never been copied or translated into our own language, because a rights owner refused to license it. Without it, the ever-brightening lamp of learning that fueled the West's unending knowledge revolution would never have happened.

In contrast, that is precisely what did happen to the Koran, and all doors to the future were closed deliberately by its guardians, the very men who taught and led Islam.


 "The House of Wisdom", an Islamic library founded in Baghdad in 762 continued until the Mongols burned it in 1258, but in reality it began to decline aound 850, due to the increasing fundamentalism and insularity of the leaders of the young Islamic culture, nervous about any knowledge that did not originate within the Arab lands.

So great was the distrust of learning even at an early stage that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan burned all copies and fragments of the Koran except for the version known as the "Hafsah codex". He destroyed all religious writings that did not issue from his prescribed version. Even variations in the text due to regional dialects were prohibited.


Upon Gutenberg's invention of moveable type and the printing press in 1436, printing spread like wildfire throughout the West, and was even carried into the New World on the earliest voyages. Spain, newly freed from the yoke of Moslem rule in 1492, sent the first printing press to Mexico in the company of missionaries in 1539, and published extensively in various indigenous Native American languages.

But not in Islamic lands. There, Moslem scholars prevailed against progress, and in 1483 Sultan Bayezid II forbade, on penalty of death, any printing in Arab script in the Ottoman Empire.

The West struggled to reach out, and Pope Julius II commissioned printed texts in Arabic script from 1503 through 1512 for Christians in those areas. Even the oldest printed Koran was printed in 1537, not in Baghdad, but in Venice. But the leaders and clerics were rigid in enforcement, and stamped out attempts by the populace at modernization.

Thus, Arabic printing was expressly illegal and a capital offense until 1727 - even then, only non-religious works were allowed, and these were carefully watched. These belated attempts to establish presses were unsuccessful, and were closed by 1780.  In the intervening centuries, Jews and Christians within these territories produced a smattering of works for their own use in Hebrew, Armenian, Greek and Latin, but for all intents and purposes, according to Wikipedia, there was no genuine printing industry in the Moslem world until late in the 19th century.

Similarly, despite continual attempts by Christian Missionaries to install printing presses in the far East beginning as early as 1590, here too the agents of stagnation prevailed, terrified of the change fostered by making information freely available, and printing technology was not adopted in China, India, or Korea until late in the 19th century.

As recently as last year,  the ancient Institut d’Egypte , founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 in Cairo, which had survived for 200 years during the West's intense patronage of Egypt's archeological history, was burned by rioting Egyptians in the media-dubbed "Arab Spring".

Progress cannot come to cultures that do not believe "Information is holy."

~~~~~


"But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.” Daniel 12:4

The advent of the electronic age and the upheaval of the Technological Revolution have once again turned things topsy turvy when it comes to information dispersal. In "The Gutenberg Galaxy",  Marshall McLuhan had these things to say, a decade before the internet was invented, about our current situation:

"Instead of tending toward a vast Alexandrian library, the world has instead become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existance.....

[T]error is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. ....

[In] our striving to recover for the Western World a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture."

Thus, rather than sit back and give rational thought to a decision, organizations, companies, and even governments react to "virtual" riots as though they were real - as though a million automated anti-tweets in 48 hours has any basis in reality, or reflects the actual customer base itself.

This is why we see absurdities like the Susan G Komen Foundation's capitulation to funding Planned Parenthood, the founder issuing an appeasement to the abortionist in order to quiet down the server traffic.  Or companies like Carbonite and Sleep Number hysterically responding to Twitter-bullying by rejecting their long-proven, lucrative advertising with Rush Limbaugh, only to watch their sales and stock fall the next day as their legitimate customers and investors countered with concrete action to support the radio personality's right to free speech.

The forces for the status quo used the  internet to amplify hysterical voices, generating a sense of terror far beyond their actual numbers, and by this means bullied their way into control over private companies' previously freewill spending decisions. CEOs hired to front companies in easy times discover they lack courage and wisdom when faced with new informational dangers. Those like Chick-fil-A's Dan Cathy and Hobby Lobby's Steve Green,  whose decisions are based on uncompromised principle rather than  trendy focus groups, find themselves and their businesses supported and admired when they stand up to the liberal bullies.

Our science has been compromised. Scientists with political ambitions have abandoned the scientific method, refusing to make public the details of their work, instead trying to convince policy makers and the public  - and legitimate scientists - to "take their word for it", claiming that some ill-defined ideological "consensus" should trump legitimate analysis, data and methodology.

Most visible in so-called "climate science", other fields are under attack as well. All scientific disciplines that have  been politicized: statistics, biology, anthropology, genetics, sociology, psychiatry, dietetics, law, education, medicine, history, linguistics, even obstetrics - are suffering as the principles of their fields are being trampled by unhealthy pseudoscientific attempts to skew results toward desired political ends.

Only the free flow of genuine information - a belief that "information is holy" - can keep true, unadulterated science moving forward in ethical, human-friendly directions.

~~~~


"Write down for the coming generation what the Lord has done, so that people not yet born will praise him." Psalm 102:18

Imagine a world in which the writings of Descartes, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, C.S, Lewis, JRR Tolkien, or the Apostle Paul couldn't be shared, because a rights owner refused to license them for publication.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 promotes the control of information through a concept called "intellectual property". SOPA/PIPA is the latest in these efforts to manhandle the internet and restict information flow on behalf of political darlings and moneyed schemers. Other modern copyright, trademark and patent laws enable corporations to gather and control information to an almost unlimited degree, conceivably extending monopolies for centuries.

A 2001 court case, Worldwide Church of God v. Philadelphia Church of God, centered on this. A minister wrote a book that some followers (the WCoG) later came to believe to be unscriptural. The minister died, the WCoG pulled it from publication, destroying all extra copies. Other followers (the PCoG) believe the book is actual scripture, and the foundation for their faith. They issued a new edition, claiming "fair use", and the copyright battle was joined. The court actually found for the WCoG, who refuse to publish the work, despite the acknowledged intent of the author for the work to be disseminated, and despite the express need of the PCoG for copies in order to practice their religion.

The decision stands, but it was not unanimous. In his dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Brunetti sided with the original verdict of the lower court, and had this to say:

"The prohibition of PCG's noncommercial, religious use "would merely inhibit access to ideas without any countervailing benefit." Accordingly, the fourth statutory factor also supports a finding of fair use.


"In this lawsuit, WCG appears less interested in protecting its rights to exploit [the book Mystery of the Ages] than in suppressing Armstrong's ideas which now run counter to church doctrine. Although the Supreme Court has recognized that "freedom of thought and expression 'includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all,'" it does not "suggest that this right not to speak would sanction an abuse of the copyright owner's monopoly as an instrument to suppress facts."


"In light of this principle and the statutory factors discussed above, I conclude that the district court ... properly found that PCG's distribution of MOA constitutes fair use. "

Judge Brunetti's opinion did not affect the outcome, which prevented the  believers from legally copying and sharing what they believe to be a holy text. But his dissent shows a foundation within United States law and precedent to deny legal protection to the suppression of facts, and to accept the belief that "information is holy".

~~~~~~



"To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: This is the message from the one who is holy and true. He has the key that belonged to David, and when he opens a door, no one can close it, and when he closes it, no one can  open it." Revelation 3:7

You can't unring a bell, and devious organizations like Wikileaks and Anonymous flex their muscle against the bell rope at companies and agencies that fail - or refuse - to lock up the information they don't want made public.The debate about control of information moved from powerful high echelons onto the public world stage as WikiLeaks grew from a site on which disgruntled employees published embarrassing emails from their Silicon Valley bosses to a media outlet whose inputs originate with disgruntled corporate spies working within governments.

And yet.

While some elements of culture run to and fro in terror of each new potential cataclysm, there remain pockets of literate, lawful society who "keep calm, and carry on". Millions of people take individual responsibility for preserving those things important to the future in the format each believes to be is essential.

The Open Directory Project was a vast volunteer effort to organize the internet and open up the information on millions of individual webpages to easy use by anyone. Free and "open sourced", it became Google's original database.

Project Gutenberg was founded by Michael S. Hart, the inventor of ebooks (in 1971!), as a massive volunteer project to digitize and give to the world all the literature and accumulated knowledge therein. Hart wrote: "Learning is its own reward. Nothing I can say is better than that."

Wikipedia, from which I gathered a number of the historical facts cited above, for all its flaws and left-leaning slant, remains a sincere reflection of Western culture's understanding  that "information is holy."

Every day in the world of letterpress printers and private presses, individuals like Mike Coughlin print excerpts, new editions, or entire historical documents into chapbooks and broadsides,  generating small editions of hard copies to cast out as bread upon the water.


Even as the traditional, expert-mediated publishing industry battles against extinction, more writers are writing more books than ever before, as Print-on-Demand technology makes it possible for ordinary souls to publish
the book they always wanted to write.

Thanks to these new technologies, the number of books published in the United States in 2010 topped off in record numbers, especially in the "non-traditional" sector, which, including "print on demand" and self-published books, almost tripled from 1,033,065 titles in 2009 to 2,776,260 in 2010. And buyers are buying these books: nearly 25% of all sales of eBook fiction are now from self-published authors.

This does not represent new demand - the demand was always there - this represents new access, thanks to the internet, which has given any author a nearly cost-free access to markets outside their local area.

Print-on-demand brings all of this within the reach of any individual. And  “within the reach of any individual” is the secret of Western liberty, as well as of modern,Western-driven, civilization.

The ability to "have our own" access to information is a principle element of the Pursuit of Happiness that none willingly give up.

Despite attempts to convince us otherwise, the Western world still stubbornly believes that information is holy, and the Missionary Church of Kopimism is one expression of that deep conviction.

"Copy, and seed."


*Updated 11/17/2012

Bubbles? What Bubbles?

 I have been having hissy fits at Yahoo about their slanted headlines, and propensity for putting undergrad opinion pieces under the "News" heading. This morning, the headline was so bad that Mad Magazine would have rejected it.

But the guy over at "The Wingnut Musings" (aka The FourthCheckRaise) (who has just published a book of the same title) found a neat little way to take the hot air out of the ridiculousness of it all:

The "How Thick is Your Bubble Quiz" !

I am proud to say I am bubble-deprived, and I feel a whole lot better:

How Thick Is Your Bubble? » exam maker

"On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 13 and 16.


"In other words, you don't even have a bubble."

Hee!  I do have to admit the ones I missed were probably the very ones that would have let me be an honorary redneck, but oh well. Can't be all things to everyone, right? 

Try the test and see if you've been encased in soapy surface tension all this time without knowing it! ;-)



.

The Evolution of Internet Media: One of These Things is Just Like The Other

Surely I'm not the only blogger who writes 4 or 5 posts that I never complete or publish for every one that sees daylight. Why is that?

Here's an example of one - my musings on a "news report" to the effect that "[Latest New Introduction] Will Mean The End of Blogging":

One of These Things is Just Like the Other, One of These Things is Quite the Same.

Has anyone else noticed that most "new" internet websites that claim to be new technologies... aren't? Instead they are just mostly repackaged versions of the basics with snazzier marketing than their predecesors. Each improves on their ability to attract a crowd - and that crowd-attraction is the real heart of any business - but they do it by just tweaking good old concepts someone else tweaked last year.

And there you have it: an MBA-on-a-Post-It.

Consider:

The Personal Webpage = Space on the internet that can be customized using HTML. Amount of text content that can be included is nearly limitless. It's like if there were blogs back in 1994. Most ISPs provide this space free as part of their monthly service fee. Need to learn HTML or pay someone to code your page. Each change needs to be coded as well. Very easy to use for people who formerly used PFS Write as their word processing tool in the computerized days before the internet.

Guest Book = Set of Code you can add to your Personal Webpapge that automatically codes updates, so new content displays immediately without need to individually prepare the HTML. It's like if there were comments back in 1994. Code allows anyone to submit content to your page, and each contributor's content is separated by a border but otherwise allows an almost limitless amount of text. Only Server Host may delete or edit content, including that submitted by others.

eBay Feedback = Personal Webpage Guestbook, with strict character limits, that allow only 142 characters to be posted at a time. It's like if there was Twitter back in 1995. The Feedback Personal Webpage Guestbook is automatically assigned to your account, with customization prohibited. Original code allowed anyone to submit content to your page. All content was public. eBay was owner (not you), thus only eBay could delete or edit content - generally they did not.

Blogs = Personal Webpage pre-designed with Guestbook appearance that only you can add content to, and that owner can edit and delete. Comes with limited choice of pre-set HTML codes governing appearance and content activity but otherwise allows for nearly unlimited addition of text content. Part of this code allows for easy addition of links to other sites and ability to display some of their content as they are updated.

MySpace = Personal Webpage Guestbook Blog that not only provides html templates but also encourages nearly complete freedom of customization by using custom HTML. Allows owner to prescribe some limits to activity of visitors.

Facebook = Personal Webpage Guestbook MySpace with character limits that prevent addition of more than nominal text, and prohibits customization of appearance or content activity. Owner cannot control how content is displayed, only to whom (within tight parameters). It's like if MySpace were put on restriction. Allows owner to add limited content in arbitrary locations. Allows easy addition of links to other Facebook pages with pre-defined display of some of their content as they are updated. Allows owner to limit access and designate which persons have visibility of some content.

Twitter = Personal Webpage Guestbook with Feedback-mirroring character limits. Inflexible format comes with limited choice of pre-set HTML codes governing appearance and content activity. Part of this code allows for easy addition of links to other sites and ability to display some of their content as they are updated.

Google + = WOW! You get MORE than 140 Characters! Google+'s revolutionary new technology lets people spell real words and write complete sentences!

Is Google+ "The End of The Blog", or just "the end of Blogger(TM)"? 

Here's a Truth, from someone who knows: When it comes to the Internet, the only time anything is the end is when it is The End.

No One Who Writes Can Hide His True Self For Long

Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club has two posts on perception and public communication that dovetail into each other: "Words to Live By in the Online Age" and "Body Language". I commented on "Words":

Consider: that in the "post-literate age" of You Tube etc, the overwhelming passion continually returns to text-based communication: texting, tweeting, Facebook and Blogs. Every time the futurists proclaim the written word deceased, the public passion proves them wrong.

There is a great secret about the written word: it craves truth. And while lies may be written down they
cannot expand as far and wide and long as written facts and truths can. Human beings know this instinctively, it shows up in early childhood behaviour: every two year old will write his name on the walls, just as every
human being before him since mankind left the Garden, and God graced us with writing to help us along our lonely road.

No one who writes can hide his true self for long. Oh on the net, he may assume a persona of some type and promote a fiction for a spell, but contrary to popular myth, identity is not self. And it is self that comes
through when one writes.

Body language and tone of voice can hide the true meaning of spoken (heard) words. People may show more of their true selves in their written communication than is ever visible in their public behavior. Compare Mrs Palin's email correspondence with the email records from JournoList participants or from the Climategate files. Even comparing the textual nuances of speeches given by one speaker to differing audiences over time can reveal essential points audiences might miss: not simply talking points but the underlying marketing agenda is found in the words, not the body language.

It may take time, but in written form, even now, "at the length, truth will out", always.


"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

Redbud Blossoms on the Table

The Redbud trees are blooming now. Their shocking magenta blossoms cover the branches, visible from far away in their little spots tucked in among the oak and mesquite. Later, after the leaves come on, these little understory trees will melt into the background until their pretty leaves turn yellow in the fall.

Unlike the mesquite trees, redbuds are native here. It's Oklahoma's state tree, and is plentiful in Texas as well, roughly following the "blackjack belt" through the state from east to west. The "blackjack belt" is named for the Blackjack Oak tree - very similar to the Post Oak, with slight differences. Both are small (as the name indicates) deciduous oaks that grow near each other.

The ferns in the vase with the redbud branches are asparagus that got away from me! Less than a week since I checked on the asparagus bed and the first shoots went from invisible to 3 foot tall ferns. This is the first year we can gather shoots since we planted the crowns three years ago so we are looking forward to our own homegrown asparagus.

Redbud blossoms are edible too, in small amounts,and make a pretty addition to salads (well, salad for luncheons. Don't feed it to the kids or they will grow up and tell stories about the weird food you forced on them). My copy of "Texas Trees" also says the young seed pods are also edible sauted in butter for a bit but I have not tried them before. Maybe this year I'll remember to gather some before they have matured, and we'll see if I live to tell the tale. ;-) That is a joke, but it is wise to remember that many wild plants with pea-like leaves and pods are poisonous (some deadly so - see last paragraph of opening article here: Pea Family) , so be certain to verify edibility and confirm identification with experts (& I am not an expert outside my own family) before experimenting with these things.

At any rate, Redbuds make a lovely specimen tree in town too, and are recommended by the Native Plant Society of Texas. With their small size and glossy, heart-shaped leaves all summer, they fit nicely into an ordinary sized yard and require little care. And of course, make very nice bouquets in the Spring: which encourages me to leave the peach blossoms on the tree so they can turn into fruit I KNOW we will eat!

Part Two: 18th Century Business Women in Publishing: Limited Only By 20th Century Interpretation

We like to recognize "firsts", but so often that's the least interesting part of the story. Mary Katherine Goddard's career is most fascinating to me because it was neither unusual nor controversial in its time. In fact she reflects the ordinariness of a successful business woman in the 18th century, when women published 16 newspapers in the colonies - nearly a quarter of the 78 papers put out each week.

And that is only the women who owned the presses: how many more were employed in all these various shops, as unheralded as the also forgotten men who worked beside them?

Printing was actually a rather common occupation for a woman in the 17th and 18th (and 19th) Centuries. So common that it was little remarked. In 1638, Elizabeth Glover (who later married Harvard's first president) founded the first press in Massachusetts. Her Cambridge Press published the famous "Bay Psalm Book", the first book printed in the colonies.

A publishing dynasty began in 1738 when Elizabeth Timothy took over publication of the South Carolina Gazette as Benjamin Franklin's partner, then left the press to her son who operated it until his death, when he was succeeded by his wife Ann. Cornelia Bradford succeeded her husband as publisher of Philadelphia's American Weekly Mercury in 1742.

Anne Catherine Hoff Green continued the family publishing business in Anapolis after she was widowed in 1767, and became the official printer for the Maryland General Assembly in her own name. Her business was later renamed "Anne Catherine Green & Son, Printers", but she retained control of the reins and they worked for her. Two of her sons and her granson followed her in earning their livelihood as printers.

Following her husband's death in 1773, Clementina Rind ran the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette and was named official printer of Virginia.

Again and again we hear feminists say these women "don't count" because they were only in business by default through their husbands or fathers. They are excluded from lists of Firsts and from lists of accomplished women.

These stories do not show what they are assumed to by people who fail to understand the substance of legal marriage in a predominently Christian or Jewish society as a full joining of male and female into a single social and economic entity as well as a spiritual and physical one. In older days, widows were frequently elected to political positions, including Governor, in
their own right, by a citizenry that fundamentally credited women as full partners in all the achievements of the marriage, recognizing either party's success as stemming from a united purpose.

Is that an old fashioned way of looking at things?

Strangely, even this common occurance in our earlier history of electing women as Governors is poo-poo'ed. Texas tied with Wyoming, both electing women as governors on 1924 - the same year than New Mexico's Hispanic Woman Secretary of State served as interim governor of New Mexico.

These stories are ignored, discounted, and actively hidden by agenda-driven feminists and progressive writers & academics, playing with semantics. One wonders why they refuse to admit to those early accomplishments, and even more why they dually ignore similar husband/wife mutual interests today.

Why? It does not lessen any person's own accomplishment to admit that others have also achieved a position. It does not make the one greater to ignore history and accuracy in reporting.

Did anyone blink when Kimora Lee Simmons took over as CEO of Phat after her ex-husband & company founder Russell Simmons stepped aside? Do people say her achievements "don't count" because her husband started the business or because they ran it as partners? No? Of course not - it would be outrageous to apply that logic. It is just as outrageous to discount the talent and earned prominence of other wives in earlier eras.

Consider how the legacy of Mrs. Coretta Scott King was her own yet inextricably joined with that of her husband, Dr Martin Luther King.

Or the appointment of Missouri First Lady Jean Caranhan, widow of Governor Mel Carnahan, to the US Senate in 2001 in the place of her husband who had passed away during the campaign for Senator and been elected postumously. Had Hilary Clinton been more focused on winning the nomination and less intent on proving she was not running as Bill's wife, she'd be our President today.

Margaret Chase Smith still holds the record as the longest serving, most successful female US senator - and she was originally elected as the widow of the Congressman upon his death.

Does anyone discount the achievements (or controversies) of Indira Gandhi because she succeeded her father Jarawalal Nehru as Prime Minister of India? Or claim that Benazir Bhutto was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan only because her father had held the office before her?

Just so, these women in Colonial times were not mere tokens thrown by chance tragedy into business, struggling ineffectually against an adversarial society. Far from it. The original sources show they were accepted without question and with full confidence in their capacity to run a profitable business and meet the exacting needs of their clients.




Photo: From an 1865 issue of Harper's Weekly "The Magazine of Civilization", image of workers (both women and men) in a large commercial printing operation.

Other articles in the theme:

Read Part 1 - 18th Century Equal Opportunity & Success: Some Women Printers in Colonial America

Read - Working Women in Earlier America: Not so Uncommon After All

Meet The 2 Snoops

Here's the scenario:

Two sisters spend their careers fighting crime in a big-city Texas sheriff's department. They each retire to the country with their husbands, and nestle into ranch life in a tiny rural community. Life is peaceful, and full of homespun activity.

On a lark, they decide to open an heir-locator business to help people claim inheritances they may not have known they had. But they need their PI License first. The business just expanded before it even got started.

Meet Sheila and Grace: 2 Snoops Private Investigations.

They find people.

Sounds like a great setting for a cozy mystery novel doesn't it? But 2 Snoops is real, and they are my friends, and they are very good at locating old friends, out of touch classmates, long lost cousins.

They also bring a hefty experience to background checks and other kinds of information research. Their license gives them access to information sources, and their experience gives them a knack for knowing where to look.

Of course, there's also the grittier side of P.I. work, for bail bond companies, insurance companies, and other businesses who have need to trace individuals.

All chatting aside, Sheila and Grace are seasoned, efficient professionals who understand their business and the needs of their clients.

As Private Detectives, they have found a way to put their training and experience back to work in a new way, and I wish them much success in the venture!

If ever you need the services of an investigator, please give them a call.


P.S. Sheila gave me this cool pen and I promised to show it off. That's the extent of my "compensation" for blogging about them! ;-)

The Great Horace Greeley on Funding Education

Horace Greeley on having only the education one's parents can afford:

"The last Summer that we lived in New Hampshire, an offer was made by the leading men of our neighborhood to send me to Phillips Academy at Exeter, and thence to college, — the expense being so defrayed that no part of it should fall on my parents. They listened thoughtfully to the proposal, briefly deliberated, then firmly, though gratefully, declined it; saying that they would give their children the best education they could afford, and there stop. I do not remember that I had then any decided opinion or wish in the premises ; but I now have; and, from the bottom of my heart, I thank my parents for their wise and manly decision. Much as I have needed a fuller, better -education, I rejoice that I am indebted for schooling to none but those of whom I had a right to ask and expect it."

Horace Greeley "Reflections of a Busy Life" 1868, page 47

Of Pocket Knives and Paring Knives: Peeling Our Own Apples

Clifford at Red Stick Rant posted this morning about the outrageous case of a girl suspended from school for having an eating utensil in her lunch bag: "On The Cutting Edge Of The Nanny State". I posted a reply there but decided to expand it a bit here.

I still have - and carry - the little pocketknife my grandfather gave me when I was 7 or 8. In the 1960s, a pocketknife was an essential tool and every pocket and pocketbook had one, children as well as adults. This is a small 2" two-blade knife with a yellow marbleized handle. That's it in the photo above. I don't carry or use weapons. I use TOOLS. My knife is a tool.

The main thing my pocketknife was used for in my youth was removing splinters and stickers and bee stingers. Over the years, it also trimmed loose threads, sharpened pencils, cut fruit, trimmed hangnails, opened letters, cut patches for bicycle inner tubes, scraped gum off the soles of shoes, uncorked a wine bottle, dug an arrowhead out of the ground, loosened and tightened screws, pried off lids, opened tamper-proof packaging...

My boys each got their own little pocketknife around the same age. It was a ritual that every boy's grandfather or father gave them their first good pocketknife - the all-purpose tool they would carry with them and treasure for the rest of their lives.

A modern pocket knife is the exact same tool that a worked bit of flint is. It is a fundamental human belonging: the use of a knife predates the harnessing of fire! A knife is an inseperable component of human natural history. It is as essential as shelter and to human life: our first tool is still the ultimate tool.

A knife is not a weapon: a person intent on injury is a weapon, and they will find a tool for their purpose, whether that be a stick or a string, their own strength or something else.

Children as well as adults have a right to feel competent to manipulate their environment and provide for their own needs - including their need to peel fruit, sharpen their pencil, trim their fingernails, and frankly, to carve their initials in a tree in a heart with their first love.

(And furthermore, I think a high school kid should have a right to not have secret searches of their belongings by strangers, but that's another issue).

Clifford posted a link to KnifeRights.org and I haven't looked through it yet, but the front page has an endorsement from Ted Nugent.

It is outrageous that in the United States of America of all places, we should have to join PACs in order to preserve our ancient and uninterrupted human right to make and own and carry and use the tools that fundamentally define not only human cultures, but earthly humanity itself.

I could say a lot more, but playwright James Goldman gave the best words to Eleanor of Aquitaine (played definitively by Katherine Hepburn) in The Lion in Winter:

"Of course he has a knife. He's always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're barbarians. How clear we make it.

"Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war -- not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing.

"We are the killers."

The vast majority of us are not as disfunctional and violent as those characters. For 99.99999999999999% of Americans, a knife is just an eating utensil, a paring knife is just a tool for peeling an apple.

And I think I have a human right to cut my own meat, and peel my own apples, whether I am at school or at home, whether I am 10 years old or 110.

Coolest New Tool: Google Ngram - Research and Graph Trends

This is nifty! The graph above tracks mentions of the following phrases in books published between 1950 and 2008: Childhood Obesity, Nutrition Program, Soy Protein. I started by wondering if there is a correlation between increased school meals (like breakfast) and children's weight. It looks like one culprit may be the increased use of Soy in nearly every processed food. It's not science, but is an easy way to start developing & testing a hypothesis.

The tool is the Google Books Ngram Viewer (also now linked from my sidebar). It takes a bit of tweaking (the search tool is case sensitive, and has rules for handling punctuation, and doesn't account for the quaints used by early printers eg "Congrefs"), so keep those in mind when testing phrases.

It's a hoot to use! I may be here all night!

My Christmas Present

I don't have all my presents yet, but it will be hard to top this one. When Paul gave me Sarah Palin's new book "America By Heart", he said "When she becomes our first woman President, you'll have her autograph." To which I replied "You betcha!"



I don't read political books (time is limited and one must draw the line somewhere), so I have not read "Going Rogue", despite Mama's great review and my admiration for Sarah as an ordinary American woman in an extraordinary time and place. So this one I wanted to read, and now I have a copy to keep. :-) Review to follow....

PS The bookmarks are examples of letterpress printing from Printers around the country. If you are interested in printing (of words or art) or desktop publishing, or writing, or editing, check out the AAPA (American Amateur Press Association) and see if it is something you might like to get involved with - and request a sample bundle.

def·i·ni·tion: a statement of the meaning of a word

 "How do you know the fella what wrote the readin' wrote the readin' right?"  Festus Hagin






"Besides, if language must vary, like fashions... we must have our standard dictionaries republished, with the fashionable pronunciation... otherwise a gentleman in the country will become intolerably vulgar, by not being in a situation to adopt the fashion of the day. ...

"The new editions of them will supersede the old, and we shall have our pronunciation to re-learn, with the polite alterations, which are generally corruptions.

"Such are the consequences of attempting to make a local practice the standard of language in a nation. The attempt must keep the language in perpetual fluctuation, and the learner in uncertainty."
Noah Webster


 When Nicolas was very young, he scared me one day when I looked out to see him standing very close to a car stopped in the street, talking to its driver. Although the incident proved harmless, I scolded Nicolas, asking him "Haven't we told you never to talk to strangers?" His intelligent 4 year old reply "But that wasn't a stranger - that was just somebody I didn't know." Having only heard the word "stranger" used in a negative context by both the people in his life and in TV ads and shows, Nicolas had surmised that a stranger was not just someone he didn't know but specifically a scary looking person he didn't know.

So, we taught him the correct meaning of the word, and while he continued to be an outgoing kid, he was better prepared for life knowing that sometimes danger can come in attractive packages - and that sometimes words don't mean what one thinks they mean.

Between Noah Webster's definitive American Dictionary, and the Oxford Unabridged, the English language was once well served by printed dictionaries that provided a universally accepted standard for word usage and interpretation.

When it comes to words and their standard, accepted meanings, we can only make sense to each other if we all use the word to mean the same thing. And when a person or population doesn't know the standard definition or established word, the answer is not to change the word but to educate the person and the population, using established standards, so that they are then on an equal footing with us in use and understanding of the word.

To change the meaning to the incorrect one, or to stop using the word and switch to a different one robs the unknowing person and the population as a whole of clarity and understanding, perpetuates misunderstanding, and denies everyone the comprehension to debate equally with those who do use the word or phrase in its traditional sense.

If it seems Americans aren't able to reason together any more, it's not only differences of opinion but mostly due to growing differences in language. Thanks to misappropriation of words and their meanings by the Marketing and Influence industries, we've probably already lost even the word "reality". Other words that have been fully co-opted to our detriment just in the past 20 years include color words ("pink", "green"), and "integration" (now used to signal defined separation within "multiculturalism", where once it was fully understood by all with its true meaning of assimilation into a democratic union).

Rationality itself understands the need for a constant standard. The presence of instantly edited and impossibly condensed online dictionaries adds to the confusion. I once thought we'd no longer need the great old OED, Abridged, but now I am looking for another copy. Sometimes young people for whom English is their second language have a more effective vocabulary, and more easily understand my meaning, in part because they were taught from traditional source materials. Other times, I have found myself reading a resume from a well educated, sharp candidate and setting it aside because it was so laden with neologisms and buzz words that it failed to convey any coherent thought.

This trend has been growing over the past 20 years or so, with corporations setting out their own internal writing guidelines and news media adopting new style books that specify the actual words a reporter may use when reporting on a particular topic. Even small organizations like local school districts have added a Communications and PR branch to their permanent administrative payrolls.

Frequently, particularly in controversial matters, experts from one point of view may coin a new, "persuasive" definition for an established, well-understood word and begin a campaign in which they quietly use it with a new and different intention - to generate one meaning among "insiders" and deliberately foster misunderstanding among opponents. At the same time, academics may also manufacture objectionable connotations for the synonym(s) most commonly used by their opponents, not only limiting speech and pressuring English speakers to stop using a word in its legitimate context but also thereby twisting historical texts without need for rewrite as students are increasingly exposed only to the idea of the "bad" definition as the only possible interpretation.

We see this misappropriation of standard English words in many of the calls for "civility" - which itself has been co-opted to describe a peculiar system of "anger management" intervention rather than the full historical breadth of meaning - as these calls claim new objections to specific traditional words they want deleted from opponents' lexicon, yet do not establish a process that allows dissenters to impose similar restrictions on their own vocabulary. In traditional discourse, formats for debate are well established and the parties work together mutually to agree on parameters that provide each with equal footing. In traditionally civil discourse, even on topics that generate much emotion the debaters can clarify the nuance of the terms they use without attack, and agreement on specific words is unnecessary outside limitations on introduction of particular topics.

Clear communication between people on all sides of any issue requires, as a basis, that first people share a common language with long established rules of use familiar to all parties - young and old, rural and urban, self-made and ivy league, industrial and technological - and in which the words have standard definitions developed over time. Until very recently, many textbooks had a useful life of several years before edits were needed - dictionaries from my grandmother's time are still accurate. Webster's Bluebacked Speller was used for more than 100 years in nearly every school in the young United States.

Those of traditional bent overall tend not to change existing language much except where necessary for inventions or adoptions. The very word "conservative" means "to conserve, to save, to preserve". Instead, they can speak in broad vocabularies rich with historic references and the shared experience of readers. Conservatives and inventors also coin brand new, specific words or phrases for those situations or items which are truly new (as opposed to just seeming new to the inexperienced).

It seems to be nearly always those of non-traditional views who give new meanings to old words, change connotations from bad to good or good to bad, and create new words for old ideas or situations. Of course, people holding non-traditional views may be found among both major political parties, Republicans as well as Democrats: [PDF file].

If we really want to be able to sit down and talk - or stand up and debate - and really move toward understanding each other, a great place to start would be by calling things by their real names again in all of our conversation both internal and external, with supporters as well as dissenters, using the appropriate traditional professional jargon and formal vocabulary when speaking or writing, and not adopting euphemisms, neologisms or "redefinitions" to replace the words used over long history.

Try to make a habit of paying attention to the repeated words when we hear or read about things. Once your ear is attuned to flagging those buzzwords, you'll find yourself naturally becoming a little more interested in figuring out which words are deliberately not being used. And it is those words that are deliberately not said which hold the key to understanding the intentions of the speaker.

Here are some interesting lists of words and phrases that politicians of both stripes have either adopted or decried in effort to "frame the debate". As you read through them, notice which have been in use the longest, and why a new or different word is being pushed instead.

1. The Atlantic May 2010
2. Der Spiegel March 2009
3. The Weekly Standard April 2010
4. Newspeak Dictionary
5. Ed Driscoll > The Daily Telegraph May 2010
6. The Washington Post February 2010
7. Buzzle.com undated article
8. Middle East Forum May 2009
9. Lake Superior State University 2010
10. Skookum Pete undated
11. Washington Post June 2010
12. The Underground Grammarian 2000

Suffice to say that generating new meanings for old words, or new words for old crimes, it is an old, old trick. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss - or not really as the case may be. As Samuel Adams wrote in 1776: "How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"

Forget a "new Reagan" - we need a new Noah Webster:

"The two points therefore, which I conceive to be the basis of a standard in speaking, are these; universal undisputed practice, and the principle of analogy. Universal practice is generally, perhaps always, a rule of propriety; and in disputed points, where people differ in opinion and practice, analogy should always decide the controversy."

"Even supposing that a number of republics, kingdoms or empires, should within a century arise and divide this vast territory; still the subjects of all will speak the same language, and the consequence of this uniformity will be an intimacy of social intercourse hitherto unknown, and a boundless diffusion of knowledge."