Book Review: Life of a Useless Man

Title: The Life of a Useless Man 

Author: Maxim Gorki (pseudonym for Alexis Peshkov)

Translator: Moura Budberg

Date: 1917 (Russian), 1971 (English)

Publisher: Doubleday (1971)

ISBN: none

Length: 240 pages

Quote: "[E]veryone called the boy Old Man. The nickname suited him perfectly."

Yevgeny, the little orphan nicknamed Old Man, is a timid little fellow who thinks the world around him ought to be nicer than it is, but lacks the courage to seek the goodness he admires either inside or outside himself. When he witnesses a homicide, he has no particular reason to report it or person to report it to. Nevertheless, he becomes a political spy, and when he learns that his duty requires him to do harm to the living people he likes best, he feels despair.

Alexis Peshkov, who chose a pen name that can be translated as "The Most Bitter One," wrote from his own formative experience in the years before the Russian revolution. Spying, corruption, appeals to the Czar that didn't lead to the results they led people to expect, are the substance of his story. They were things he presumably fictionalized from personal experience. 

Neither Czarist Russian nor Soviet publishers were willing to publish what Budberg tells us was the full text of Gorki's novel. According to her this was the first complete edition, available only in countries that were still officially enemies to Gorki's country in the Cold War, only in a language foreign to its author. Gorki was greatly admired by his contemporaries but his work was censored.

How much can you trust a novel that purports to be the first complete edition of what someone no longer living wrote, that is published only in translation? Is this Gorki's novel, or Budberg's? I have no idea. 

As a novel it's a lively, picturesque, not exactly cheerful read. Its form can be classified as either a biography or a tragedy, depending on whether or not we accept Yevgeny as a tragic hero whose fatal flaw is weakness. How can a hero be weak? If you're looking for a novel where the protagonist overcomes his fatal flaw and lives happily ever elsewhere, this is not it. If you're willing to read about the events that led up to the revolution as seen through the eyes of a weak character, this book is for you.

Book Review: Flint

Title: Flint 

Author: Louis L'Amour

Date: 1960

Publisher: Bantam

ISBN: 0-553-10988-X

Length: 185 pages

James T. Kettleman, a.k.a. Jim Flint, is a tough gunslinger facing a tough diagnosis. He has some money, some unworthy heirs trying to hasten his demise, and someone he wants to be able to leave the money to. But can he survive long enough to shake off the unworthy heirs and establish the deserving one? 

It's another one of Louis L'Amour's yarns about a Wild West where every nice, levelheaded, ethical person just had to kill a few bad people to survive. People loved these books. Flint stayed in print for more than twenty years. 

Book Review: The Hotpoint Food Freezer Instruction and Recipe Book

Title: The Hotpoint Food Freezer Instruction and Recipe Book

Author: Virginia Francis

Date: 1955

Publisher: Hotpoint

ISBN: none

Length: 64 pages

Illustrations: many drawings, some photos, many in full color

Though it contains fewer elaborate recipes than most cookbooks of its vintage, this collection of basic freezer-food recipes belongs in the collection of anyone interested in mid-twentieth century cookbooks. The instructions for preserving food by freezing it will still work; relying on a freezer for long-term food storage is risky, but it's certainly possible to use a freezer to extend your garden seasons. This cookbook assumes more interest in keeping produce or food bought in quantities fresher longer than in making fancy dishes. There's only one page of recipes for homemade ice cream. 

I have a collectible copy in good condition. Local lurkers may begin bidding now. 

Book Review: Vanna Speaks

Title: Vanna Speaks 

Author: Vanna White (with Patricia Romanowski)

Date: 1987

Publisher: Warner

ISBN: 0-446-51366-0

Length: 191 pages

Illustrations: color photo section

Quote: "My publisher pointed out to me that I was a woman of mystery, because I didn't talk on the show."

At the time when the word "supermodel" was invented, Vanna White's career was going beyond "supermodel." The luckiest model in the world attracted enough attention to create a demand for a memoir while she'd hardly reached her full adult size. She may still be the only human being who's ever been paid, primarily, to walk around a giant signboard touching panels in a different designer dress every day, for almost forty years. As she's grown older feminists in the audience have demanded that she start talking on the show, but a main attraction of "Wheel of Fortune" has always been "What Vanna will be wearing." 

Could she explain the secret of her success for younger models who might want to emulate it? Of course not. It's doubtful that there ever will be another lifelong career opening for a generic blonde whose primary talent is looking good in a lot of different dress styles. Some of Vanna's dresses have been pretty controversial, but an early decision to keep the same model on the show allowed Vanna to become as iconic, almost as dearly loved by people who've been watching since the early eighties, as Alex Trebek. 

Did she, in fact, have anything to say that would have sold a book if she hadn't been famous as the ultimate fashion model? Not exactly. People wanted to know how she'd sound if she talked. The answer was blandly polite. In 1987 Vanna White was thirty years old and had had some life experience other than modelling clothes--bereavement, for one thing--but nothing she reveals in this book is very radical or controversial. The big surprise for her audience was that the things she hadn't talked about included losing her mother to cancer and a boyfriend in an accident.

Far more surprising was that, instead of fading off the scene at thirty-five as models normally do, Vanna White would go on dressing up and lighting letter panels for another, by now, thirty-four years. She is by no means the only baby-boomer who still looks as if she might be thirty or forty years old while being well past sixty, or even the only one whose splendid state of preservation has been displayed on television for all those years, but she is the only one for whom looking thirty or forty years old has been her only noticeable career skill.

Nice work, as the saying goes, if you can get it. Being Vanna White has taken some talent, fortitude, and discipline, but in this early memoir it was still mostly about luck with some mention of exercise and learning to eat sensibly. 

By this time most people who originally wanted to read Vanna Speaks have undoubtedly read it, but documentation that the Ultimate Supermodel really is older than some of their mothers may still interest the young, so here it is, complete with a solid crochet pattern you, too, can use to fill up boring backstage time with unique handmade gifts for all your friends. 

Book Review: The Poisoned Needle (short form)

Title: The Poisoned Needle 

Author: Eleanor McBean

Date: 1977

Publisher: Lord's Covenant Church

ISBN: none

Length: 16 pages

Quote: "This is the photographically reproduced cover of a 235-page book which every American should read. Look inside for sample pages and information on how you can obtain a copy."

The information on how you could, in 1978, buy a copy of McBean's 235-page book is probably as outdated as the vaccine studies in this "trailer" booklet. 

I'm willing to sell this short version of the original anti-vax book because my parents distributed it for years. There is some very important information in it but I would expect that all of you Gentle Readers would see, on first glance, why it lacks final authority. It's the reverse of what the corporate lobbyists were saying--and no more authoritative than what they were saying. The corporate lobbyists naturally said "All our products are Good"; McBean says "All vaccine products are Bad." 

Vaccination is of course a homeopathic sort of approach to protecting health. Most Americans generally favor either allopathic or naturopathic approaches, so the homeopathic approach goes so deeply against our grain that many of us don't even think of vaccination as being homeopathic--although that's what the idea of stimulating a patient's immune system to fight a disease is. 

Many of us just naturally happen to hate needles and/or doctors' bills.

Many of us who don't hate needles, who would demand vaccines for rabies or dysentery if we were exposed to such deadly diseases, just frown on the idea of trying to vaccinate everybody against every infection however trivial. For most people flu, measles, and many other things for which some pediatricians will urge parents to vaccinate babies, are not serious concerns; the risk of having these diseases does not compare to the risk of getting a contaminated "shot." I've had the vaccines for diphtheria and polio and a few other oldfashioned diseases of comparable awfulness, and would encourage anyone at any risk of exposure to have those, but as this web site has noted before, if measles were a hazard of a vaccine against mononucleosis I might recommend everyone consider having that vaccine. 

McBean discusses in detail the hazards associated with certain specific batches of vaccine in the mid-twentieth century (some even going back to the nineteenth century). Some of them were dire. McBean has blurry black-and-white photos of the hideous form of cancer some people developed as a side effect of the swine flu vaccine in 1976. No other flu vaccine has been solidly linked to cancer; that one was. 

I think it's important that everyone know that some vaccines have caused death in efforts to prevent what would probably not have been disabling diseases. (Swine flu spread like, well, the flu, because most people honestly did not think it was painful enough to miss work or school for; many people worked right through it.) 

I hope that most people will catch the fallacy of McBean's generalizations. If you believe it is a sin to ingest other animals' or people's blood into your body through vaccinations, that is a legitimate belief that can be supported by some sacred texts and I support your right to act according to that belief; after all, if a vaccine is going to save any lives, it will save those lives regardless of whether or not any other people have it. But the fact that some batches of vaccine have been contaminated does not prove that all of them are. The belief that taking a vaccination is a sin has to be supported by sacred texts alone; it is not supported by consistent scientific research. Many vaccines are a waste of time and money, and a few have been harmful, but more vaccines have prevented diseases than produced diseases, overall.

Read this book if you want to see some facts that have been suppressed--but read it with a careful eye, please, and a scientific mind.

Book Review: Tucker

Title: Tucker 

Author: Louis L'Amour

Date: 1971

Publisher: Bantam

ISBN: 0-553-29883-2

Length: 185 pages

Quote: "When I rode up to the buffalo wallow [P]a was lying there with his leg broke and his horse gone."

And he ordered Tucker to go after the horse that had wandered away with all of his gold in its saddlebags, and so began the coming-of-age adventure in which Tucker found it necessary to kill a few older men (strictly in self-defense) and bonded with a half-Ogallala girl. 

It's a "western," but L'Amour was generally agreed to be one of the world's best writers in this genre. I bought this book for resale. Local lurkers may form a line and start the bidding now.

Book Review: The Tall Woman

Title: The Tall Woman 

Author: Wilma Dykeman

Date: 1962

Publisher: Wakestone (and others)

ISBN: 0-9613859-1-X

Length: 315 pages

Quote: "Lydia said softly, 'I never asked for easy, Mama.'"

Trigger warning: This classic of American Women's Literature is not a comedy, in form, but a biography. When a novel has the form of a biography the character may succeed, and her or his successes may be both satisfactory and laughable, but the happy ending is often "Then the character died old, regretted by all, and his or her heir was..." The time frame of the story simply exceeds that of the main character. The time frame of The Tall Woman exceeds that of its protagonist, Lydia McQueen.

In 1962 books that emphasized women's height often addressed baby-boomers who had been so unladylike as to grow taller than their fathers were, and after assuring those girls that there were enough overgrown young men out there to go around, they spent most of the space available talking about how to look shorter (stripes, shirts and skirts in different colors, skirts that reached exactly to the knee). The Tall Woman broke that rule; though Lydia is apparently the tall skinny type, according to the jacket drawing, the story is not about how she copes with her body shape but about how she copes with crises, brings up children, appreciates the differences among most of her neighbors and eventually beats the one really unlikable neighbor she has in a political dispute. It's a feel-good story.

One of the things I've regretted in life was that, though Wilma Dykeman Stokely was still teaching at Berea when I was there, I didn't demand to be admitted to her class. However, apart from the history in this novel about the late nineteenth century, there's not all that much to discuss about The Tall Woman; the story is easy to follow. It reads like a family legend and, going by its dedication, probably is one. Lydia is as lovable as Elvira Ware in Jubilee, as admirable as Mary Peters. 

Despite its appearance on some school reading lists, this is a novel that can be read for pleasure. It's almost sex-free (we read about the children, not about their begetting) and less violent than many novels about this period (Lydia does kill a bear). It won't embarrass adults if the children read it, at all. It will repay attentive reading; Lydia's relationships with each of her neighbors have their own nuances, and the pleasure of the irony rests on your willingness to remember those nuances.

Book Review: Night Over the Solomons

Title: Night Over the Solomons 

Author: Louis L'Amour

Date: 1986

Publisher: Bantam

ISBN: 0-553-26602-0

Length: 175 pages

Quote: "Back in my pre-World War II knockabout days, I got to know a lot of men like my heroes Turk Madden, Mike Thorne, and Steve Cowan."

Louis L'Amour was best known for his "westerns." He saw himself, though, as an historical fiction writer, and wrote stories and novels set in several historical periods. The six longish "short" stories that make up this book are set in the Pacific "theatre" in World War II. (Chinese people were likely to be friends, Japanese people to be enemies.) Though fiction, they were at least suggested by real war stories.

For people who like this kind of thing, it's the kind of thing they like. I have a copy; local lurkers may form a line now.

Book Review: The Spicy Cookbook

Title: The Spicy Cookbook

Author: none mentioned

Date: 1982

Publisher: Rand McNally

ISBN: none

Length: 32 pages

Illustrations: drawings and color photographs

Quote: "The Spicy Cookbook brings you recipes for 28 highly seasoned dishes...appetizers, soups, salads, entrees, desserts, breads, and beverages."

This book was created as an advertisement for Listerine. Seriously. Though Listerine is an antibiotic and we now know that daily use of it can harm our immune systems, the purpose of this book was to encourage people to cook and eat things after which they'd want to wash the spicy odors out of their mouths with Listerine.

Accordingly the recipes are arranged by the featured spice, and although the list does include caraway, clove, and ginger, this book features ways to use more pepper, chili, curry, garlic, horseradish, mustard, onions, and Worcestershire Sauce. 

The good news is that it's easy to taste as you go and correct the seasoning if you so choose. You don't have to put a whole teaspoon of pepper into a salad or stuff twenty garlic cloves under the skin of one baked chicken. You could use different spices, too, substituting for the ones you don't tolerate.

For cookbook collectors, this book marks a turning point in the history of American cookbooks. For a long time, though gourmet cooks had spice racks, many cooks seasoned food with salt, pepper, maybe a sprinkle of vinegar or lemon juice, and that was about all unless they baked gingerbread or pumpkin pie. Some doctors even warned that spices could irritate the digestive tract, which for some people is true. In the 1980s doctors began warning people to cut back on salt, and American cookbook writers discovered that food requires less salt if it's seasoned with other things. Some went overboard, perhaps, with the spices; I'd say that the writers of some of these recipes went too far, but this is where the fashion for spicy recipes really starts.

Morgan Griffith on D.C. Statehood

I agree with him. The capital city of these United States was meant to be nobody's home, but a place where people went to work for a few years. Part of this was that full-time residents were not given a separate representative in Congress but, originally, people who lived on the Arlington side were counted as Virginia residents, and people on the Washington side were counted as Maryland residents, with a vote for the representative from the appropriate State. Why either D.C. or Maryland would object to reviving this original system to guarantee D.C. residents the full benefits of citizenship has never been explained to me. I would expect it to have benefits for both.

"

Congressman Griffith’s Weekly E-Newsletter 4.16.21

Retrocession, Not Statehood, for D.C. The U.S. House of Representatives will soon vote on statehood for the District of Columbia. Proponents have offered many reasons in support of the cause, some of these arguments having stronger justification than others, but they have yet to satisfactorily address what I believe to be the greatest counterargument against D.C. statehood: the Constitution of the United States. Among the powers granted to Congress by Article I Section 8 is “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.” The purpose of this clause was wise. In a federal union, allowing one state to contain the seat of government would create the potential for that state to dominate it. James Madison wrote in The Federalist that “a dependence of the members of the general government on the State . . . might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to” other states. Madison had been a member of the Continental Congress in 1783 when it had fled Philadelphia after Pennsylvania’s state government refused to defend it from mutinous soldiers. That episode weighed on the minds of the Framers. A 2020 Wall Street Journal opinion piece written by lawyers David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey noted that the late Robert F. Kennedy, a bust of whom now resides in Joe Biden’s Oval Office, understood well the reasoning of the Founding Fathers. “It was indispensably necessary to the independence and the very existence of the new Federal Government to have a seat of government which was not subject to the jurisdiction or control of any State,” then-Attorney General Kennedy wrote in the 1960s. A famous compromise over dinner between rivals Alexander Hamilton on one side and Thomas Jefferson and Madison on the other led to the creation of Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River, and Maryland and Virginia each ceded land for the purpose. Ultimately, the land west of the Potomac was returned to Virginia in 1846. Further affirming the District of Columbia’s distinct status was the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, giving it votes for president and vice president in the Electoral College. Any measure giving the District statehood would need to go through the process of amending the Constitution. H.R. 51, the statehood bill the House will consider, does not do so. Instead, it shrinks the seat of the U.S. government to an area around the Mall, the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and other federal buildings, and admits the rest of the District as a state. This approach suffers from an additional flaw beyond its constitutionality. The 23rd Amendment grants electoral votes to the “seat of Government of the United States,” not the District of Columbia specifically, meaning that the handful of residents in this area, presumably including the president and his family, would have as much weight in the Electoral College as some states. Giving the residents of the District of Columbia a voice in the Federal Government is a worthy goal, but it must be done constitutionally. I have introduced a bill that meets this standard. H.R. 2614, the Compact Federal District Act, recognizes the right of D.C. residents to be represented in Congress by returning most of the District to Maryland. Residents could then vote for a U.S. Representative and Senators from Maryland. Maryland would gain by the transaction. It would pick up a U.S. Representative and thus more political clout. The District has enjoyed solid economic growth in the 21st century, and Maryland could expect to benefit from this trend. Further, the District and its Maryland suburbs share similar voting patterns, and the bill provides for a smooth transition of administration, minimizing any political upheaval. A smaller seat of the Federal Government would remain, preventing it from falling within Maryland and potentially being dependent on that state. Its residents would be required to vote by absentee ballot, however, removing their outsized representation in the Electoral College that would otherwise be created by the 23rd Amendment. I believe this solution fairly addresses the desire to grant D.C. residents voting representation in the Federal Government while respecting our oath to uphold the Constitution. If these are the goals of the House Democrat majority, I would welcome their support for the Compact Federal District Act. If House Democrats continue to pursue H.R. 51, they indicate that the Constitution and fair representation are subservient to their political goals, and they will have my opposition. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov

"

Book Review: The Rider of Lost Creek

Title: The Rider of Lost Creek 

Author: Louis L'Amour

Date: 1976

Publisher: Bantam

ISBN: 0-553-25771-4

Length: 153 pages

Quote: "We're wild, and we belong to the far, open country."

Matt Davis didn't want other ranchers close enough to need fences. Lance Kilkenny, a feral gunslinging type, becomes his ally long enough to have a few violent adventures. At the end of the book Kilkenny has a partner with a settled business, but he rides away making the classic cowboy-movie-hero excuse.

Not my genre, but these novels appeal to a lot of people and everyone has to admit that L'Amour researched the parts of the nineteenth-century "West" about which he wrote, thoroughly. No hoop skirts in 1880, no railroad through Texas in 1840. Men like Kilkenny were fewer and lasted less time in real life than they do in fiction, but they existed, and people find them interesting, so why shouldn't L'Amour have written fiction about them.

Petfinder Features Return, But Not Here

Blogspot is still not displaying photos efficiently. This site always had a quirky approach to photos--the page I see claims that I have some choice over whether they appear in the center or on the left or right of the screen, but in reality I've never had any control of that. Now it has a discouraging tendency to fail to display photos at all. Obviously this web site is not going to be featuring photos of America's most photogenic adoptable pets for a while.

But I have been nagging Petfinder, as I hope youall have been doing to, and I have seen enough improvement there to be able to say that the Petfinder links will return...in my Tuesday Revue newsletters.

For those who came in late: Twitter has been trying to promise corporate sponsors "bigger reach" than individuals on Twitter, which of course is contrary to everything Real Twits used to like Twitter for, and Real Twits have been continuing to resist and complain in every way we can think of. Some people did a "Twitter boycott" one day. I keep blocking the "promoted tweets" and those who post them, and posting any product-unfriendly thoughts that come to mind. I've been shadowbanned. Yes! You're nobody until you've been shadowbanned on New Twitter! Bestselling authors, winning politicians, even artists and musicians get shadowbanned all the time these days. The bottom line, though, continues to be that Twitter is still treating the private people whose tweets people visit Twitter for as "low-quality" accounts. When I read my own Twitter "home" page I'll see all the latest tweets from, e.g., Amy, Carol, and Ellen, if they're the last few Tweeps whose pages I've visited this week, but I'm still having to go to their "profile" pages to see whether Barbara, Diane, Felice, Gail, and Hazel are still using Twitter. Like many Real Twits I really, really don't like having friends' tweets blocked just to keep our "home" pages full of corporate drivel, even after the only corporate accounts I've not blocked are those of the main news media I originally wanted to follow. It's very annoying. I do want to see the headlines from the Washington Post, but I also want to see the "low-quality" friends-only tweets with the photo of what Ingrid had for dinner last night and the terribly cute malapropism Jane's two-year-old uttered. 

Enter a European company, originally based in Ireland but now with headquarters in Amsterdam, called Revue, offering to make it easy for Twits to read each other's content by e-mail. Currently there's no charge for anyone with a Twitter account to set up a Revue newsletter. Revue handles the mailing list so the newsletter compilers don't even see our correspondents' e-mail addresses; Revue promises not to spam people. 

It would be possible to set up Revue newsletters to circulate all the "went to this restaurant with Tracy and this is what I ate and this is what Tracy ate" kind of tweets, among groups of friends who were interested in that. Probably some Twits are doing that. I didn't want to do that. I want to scroll through pictures of what people had for dinner on Twitter but I'm not sure that that sort of thing needs to be republished and recirculated in e-mail.

I also didn't want to go back to doing the weekly Glyphosate Awareness Newsletters because, although this may change, currently both Carey Gillam (US Right to Know) and Robert Kennedy (Children's Health Defense) are doing those, and since they have better photos and more professional newsletter production teams than I have I prefer to promote what they're doing rather than imitate it.

I would suggest this. If you follow Green sites and people, generally, there is currently an easy way to sort out the True Greens from the Poison Greens. All True Green sites, organizers, and organizations, and this includes Ralph Nader's USPIRG, yesss!, are currently working on Glyphosate Awareness. Not all private individuals who just blog about their own Green lifestyles are working on any public issues, because they're busy canning their garden produce and upgrading their solar water heaters, but if they work on public issues the good ones are working on Glyphosate Awareness. The ones who've sold out to George Soros and his Euro-socialist friends are ignoring Glyphosate Awareness and screaming about Al Gore's long-disproven hypothesis of "global climate change" or "global warming," according to which, as all adults should remember so well, Miami was supposed to have been underwater by 2010, and as Miami is still above water adults won't touch this theory with a ten-foot pole. But the young always want money and the Euro-socialists have bought a lot of influence on people who weren't reading newspapers in 2010. I don't blame these kids for being kids, nor recommend that you do. I merely state that their public work is not True Green and not likely to accomplish anything good for our environment. 

Anyway, what I'm offering in the Revue is "GAN: The Fluff," the cute, warm'n'fuzzy, feel-good links that people used to read this web site and/or follow me on Twitter for. It won't be the same as my actual Twitter page, where there are a lot of retweets and links of mere tweets. The Revue will link to full-sized posts and web sites and feature categories like New Books from Favorite Authors, Poems & Songs, Funny Things, Nature and Phenology...and also Animals. This week we have cartoons selected by a bestselling author, a batch of book reviews (other than mine--I don't plan to link most of mine in Revue since you can already see them here), the Petfinder winners and more.

You can get the Petfinder feature in your e-mail on Tuesdays, free of charge. You'll see small pictures of the most photogenic animals in their category with links to their Petfinder pages. Petfinder is still a clunky site (some nagging remains to be done) but you'll need to open it only if you want to adopt one of the animals; their stories and small pictures will be in the Revue. You're positively encouraged to forward the Revue to friends who might want be interested in the animals, and you're invited to nominate places (or even specific animals) you'd like to see featured as bonus Petfinder links. 

I don't know how Revue is going to work out but, so far, it's working very nicely for those of us who are circulating our first few issues to one another. No spam, newsletters open easily, links work. Revue has the potential to be tremendous fun. 

If you'd like to get the Petfinder links and other pleasant things in your e-mail on Tuesday morning, click here to subscribe: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/priscillaking2020 .

And, if you want to see my uncensored Twitter feed, or display yours for your friends? There are several blog hosting sites that can be automatically synced with Twitter to display all of your tweets in one place. Live Journal, where my shadow blog address is cat_sanctuary.livejournal.com, indexes them by time and date so you don't have to scroll back through seven years of tweets to find the older ones (which by now include several vital Glyphosate Awareness links). It's a diabolically effective way to subvert Twitter's hateful "low-quality accounts" filter. I love it. 

April Haiku

The color called "spring green"

is what we see on the hill

against the blue sky.

Book Review: A Study into the Meaning of the Word Gentile As Used in the Bible

Title: A Study into the Meaning of the Word "Gentile" as Used in the Bible 

Author: Curtis Clair Ewing

Date: not shown

Publisher: Church of the Covenants

Length: 16 pages

ISBN: none

Quote: "Using the word Gentile to translate these words is often misleading." 

Though printed as a separate book, this little monograph was originally written to fill up a few full-sized pages in a magazine. It's short and concise, and what the author accomplishes is to demonstrate that the words translated by "Gentile" properly mean "tribe" or "nation" and could include the nation of Israel. (Abraham was told his descendants would become a great nation, goy, the same word that's translated in the context of "foreign nation" by "Gentile.")

It's easy to smile and dismiss Ewing as just another non-Jew (or non-Mormon) who didn't want to be a Gentile, but his linguistic study makes a solid case that all instances of goy and ethnos in the Bible should be translated by "nation," "tribe," or "people."

I've not found much information on Curtis Clair Ewing, but have been given to understand that at some point in his career he espoused the Anglo-Israelite Identity Theory, a view of European history that has never been proved or disproved. Like some Anglo-Israelites my family knew well, he apparently accepted the version that teaches that North America was the Promised Land, and, since real descendants of Israel had been led to North America, the U.S. (and presumably also Canada) didn't need to support the nation now known as Israel. So of course they were accused of being haters, for political reasons, whether any of them really was or not. (The ones we knew were not--but many people have heard that they were.) Bible students may or may not want to display copies of Ewing's books, in view of his reputation. The copy I have is usable but never was meant to be displayed, so if you want it for reference or as a rarity only, you might do well to buy it from me.

Amazon has had a copy of this book for sale (a nicer copy than I have, with a jacket--my copy was folded and stapled) but doesn't have one now; it's not an easy book to find. My copy was cheap when new and I'll sell it cheap now, in real life. About the price of cleaner, prettier copies I can make no guarantees.

Book Review: Rally Round the Flag Boys

Title: Rally Round the Flag Boys 

Author: Max Shulman

Date: 1957

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: none

Length: 278 pages

Quote: "Here begins a tale of action and passion, a guts-and-glory story of men with untamed hearts, of women with raging juices." 

That's a joke; if you can read it as funny, you'll enjoy the rest of the novel. This is a comic novel about a young Army officer whose mission is to persuade a small New England town to accept its new Army base; his fiancee, a future teacher with her head full of 1950s psychological theories; a more or less happily married man who doesn't want to grow up; his wife, who copes with waiting for him to grow up by taking on ever more civic responsibilities; a teenaged girl who'd be tempted to run around with boys if she felt less contempt for the boys she knows; her main admirer, a teenager who would like to be regarded as a delinquent but who has so far managed only to become a jerk; a soldier who was a rising country music star before he was drafted; a mean, grumpy man who'd be miserably married to anyone at all, and his wife, who seems nicer than he is, but only because she's better-looking; and a Little League team who have to cope with the question of whether the "scrub" players really want an equal amount of time on the field. 

It's Max Shulman, the author of "Dobie Gillis" and "The Tender Trap," so you know the comedy will be heavy-handed and burdened with tedious 1950s lubricity. If you can stand that, you may enjoy a story in which, even during a rumble disguised as part of a play, the soldiers don't use any Army Language at all. The characters in this book are tempted by adultery and murder, but not by profanity. 

Morgan Griffith on New Technology

Er. Um. Not everyone in the Ninth District has been keen on either of these things. I personally don't mind small low-polluting aircraft flying over other people's property, but I want it to stay clear of mine. Anyway, from U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

Technological Advances in the Ninth District

Technology has the ability to deliver new opportunities for rural areas like ours. New and exciting innovations can increase the availability of services which previously were sparsely provided or nonexistent.

Some of these innovations are not only being deployed here but are being developed and tested here.

Drones

Southwest Virginia has been the setting for major achievements in drone technology. In fact, the vehicles that completed America’s first drone delivery at the Remote Area Medical clinic in Wise on July 17, 2015 and the country’s first commercial drone delivery in Christiansburg on October 18, 2019 already belong to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, artifacts in the same collection as the first plane flown by the Wright Brothers and the command module from Apollo 11.

I learned firsthand during a recent visit to Radford University about further pioneering efforts in drone technology. The demonstration I witnessed was a product of work at the university’s Department of Geology. Drones can be used in the place of geological field visits, solving the problems of limited time or reaching inaccessible locations. Applications for this use of drones include preparations for road construction and evaluating mines and quarries.

Universities in our area, including Radford and Virginia Tech, will continue to lead the way in adapting drones for new, practical uses that can improve our lives.

In the future, we may increasingly look to the skies and see drones. Look further beyond them and we may also see a solution to the problem of broadband connectivity – low orbit satellites.

Broadband/Low Earth Orbit

The digital divide between rural and urban areas is a serious public policy challenge. Engaging in almost any aspect of modern life, from the economy to education to leisure to health care, demands reliable internet access. Isolated and remote regions, however, often lack this access, in part due to the expense and difficulty of laying fiber line in these areas.

One creative solution around this problem is to use low orbit satellites to provide broadband access. Companies developing this technology include SpaceX and Amazon.

SpaceX’s project, called Starlink, has been deployed to Wise County as part of a pilot project. I learned more about this endeavor during a briefing in Wise organized by County Clerk of Court Jack Kennedy and featuring school officials and parents.

The partnership between Wise County Public Schools and SpaceX addressed the need for better service in the county, a need which became urgent as the coronavirus pandemic forced students into remote learning. According to the schools’ Director of Technology, Scott Kiser, at the outset of the pandemic, a survey found that 25 percent of student households lacked adequate internet access. Remote learning revealed the real number of student households lacking adequate access to be closer to 40 percent. Students had to find hot spots simply to do their schoolwork.

Starlink’s pilot project in Wise County includes 45 homes, and for them, the parents at the briefing testified that it has been a great asset. The change has not just been from going without service to being served. The service has proven to be good, with speeds above 100 megabits per second comparing well to the Federal Communications Commission standard of 25 megabits per second. The briefing offered positive signals about the pilot project so far.

At present, fiber remains the best option, but low orbit satellites offer quality service now, while completing the buildout of fiber networks would still take years. Choosing “all of the above” for connecting people to the internet offers hope for closing the digital divide. In this effort, competition and innovation in the private sector should be encouraged, and regulation by the government should stimulate deployment.

I came away from the visit to Radford University and the briefing in Wise optimistic about the benefits of these technological tools. The people of our region are hard at work developing, applying, and advocating for new ways to solve longtime problems.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

" 

Book Review: Better Homes & Gardens Cooking with Herbs and Spices

Title: Better Homes & Gardens Cooking with Herbs and Spices 

Author: none named

Date: 1967

Publisher: Meredith Corporation

ISBN: none

Length: 24 pages

Quote: "Here are wonderful recipes to help you discover herbs and spice. You'll find an entire new world of flavor!"

In 1967 that meant simpler flavors than you might have had in mind. The first recipe directs the cook to brown steaks in garlic butter. Then there's a recipe for marinating steak in ginger sauce and serving it with pineapple, which would probably make it easier to digest. So, no worries, these recipes use spices at levels that won't be much of a shock to diners.

Chocolate spice cake was a fad of this period. I remember baking a few different versions and thinking the combination was overrated because the chocolate and cinnamon cancelled each other out, but some people thought it was very distinctive and great fun. Taste and tell.

There's even a recipe for luncheon meat. I've not seen that in a store recently. Nor have I missed it. Luncheon meat was basically a fine-grind sausage, like baloney, that came in a can. It could contain the flesh of almost any animal but usually seemed to major in pork and chicken. It wasn't exactly the same thing as Spam, not better, not worse, a little more savory rather than sweet. Probably any meat (or Worthington Foods soy-gluten "loaf" in a can) that you substitute for luncheon meat will be an improvement. 

The modern cook may have the most fun with the quick recipe suggestions on the last two pages of the book, sprinkling a pinch of one spice at a time into familiar recipes for fresh taste variations. There's a reason why adding dry mustard to scrambled eggs or rosemary to corn has not become the dominant American custom, but many people enjoy these variations once in a while.

Amazon says the price of this little collectible is already hovering around ten dollars a copy, so add it to your vintage cookbook collection now. 

The Dear Cute Little Birds in the Orchard

In his mind, he's a mean, fierce, angry wad of testosterone. Touch him and he'll bite. It would feel like having a spring-type clothespin stuck on your finger, and you'd think he was adorable.

The phoebe and the cardinal yell

at each other, this time every year.

To them it's very plain to tell

each wants the other far from here.

The cardinal has the better claim:

of humans he has much less fear.

The phoebe stomps and shouts his name;

in his mind that makes his case clear.

The cardinal likes the privet hedge

whose berries he alone can eat.

The phoebe wants a wider edge

between his hunting field and street.

If this goes on they'll come to blows

and the cardinal has his strangling move,

which every little male bird knows

his case will absolutely prove.

More likely, phoebe's weary wife

will settle closer to the road,

and phoebe will give up the strife

and grudgingly take up his load.

Meanwhile when some city folk

see tiny feathers, hear shrill tweet,

they'll say without a hint of joke,

"The birds! So happy, cute, and sweet..."