By Jessica Garrison

Sue Grafton, author of the alphabetically themed mystery series starring the snappy female detective Kinsey Millhone has long been adamant that her books and her character would never make it to the Hollywood screen. She even told her children that she would haunt them if they were to sell the rights after her death. It certainly hasn't kept her heroine from the kind of fame that is usually only achieved by being the main character in a blockbuster film.

Any casual reader of mysteries is familiar with Grafton's protagonist and her alphabetized series of madcap cases. So you know that central to the books' appeal is not the hoodlums and their crimes but rather Kinsey herself. She has reassuring habits. She runs three miles a day and grumbles about it. She likes to drink bad wine and hide from the world on her couch with a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. She doesn't have much of a love life, but she does have a supporting cast, including her beloved 80-something landlord Henry Pitt.

Most of all, she is witty and weary and a lot of fun. When we first run into Kinsey in V Is for Vengeance, she has had her nose broken, on her birthday. This happened, she admits, because yet again she was "sticking said nose into someone else's business." It goes without saying that someone soon winds up dead, and that Kinsey can't let it go. She pulls at the pieces until she determines that her chance encounter with a lingerie shopper connects to murder, a nationwide shoplifting ring and, of course, a naughty cop and a thief with a heart of gold.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, something dedicated readers know that Grafton doesn't do. In her books, there is always time for one-liners and amusing descriptions and asides, which are half the fun. Take the trip to the lingerie store that sets the story in motion: Grafton takes the time to describe the route Kinsey takes, her choice of parking spots and the fact that Kinsey usually prefers "the low-end chain stores, where aisles are jammed with racks of identical garments, suggesting cheap manufacture in a country unfettered by child labor laws." But on this day, Kinsey picks a Nordstorm, where, bored of "holding lacy scraps across my pelvis" she allows herself to be diverted by a woman stealing teddies and silk pajamas. Kinsey alerts store security, the woman is arrested and shortly thereafter turns up dead.

The initial verdict is suicide, but of course Kinsey is determined to learn more. Off she goes on her usual mix of madcap drives in her blue Mustang and stakeouts with her low-tech note cards, her witty repartee with any number of people and her disgusting meals at the local pub. It's not long before she's threatened, and vows briefly to mind her own business, although this determination lasts less than a sentence before she is back for more.

Kinsey shares the spotlight with a few other characters whose stories are at first unrelated and who get chapters devoted to their points of view. This time, we get a manipulative but appealing trophy wife with a tragic past and a semi-decent gangster looking for love. And because they are drawn by Grafton they are highly entertaining. It will not lessen the suspense to reveal that these two eventually wind up intertwined in the same mystery as Kinsey. Or that Kinsey comes out, as always, bruised and battered but ready for a glass of Chardonnay and her next case.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-book-sue-grafton-20111123,0,545082.story

By Bonnie Rochman

In my house, bedtime stories are sacred. Rarely does something derail the nightly routine, although feverish kids have been known to be tucked in without a story. But last week, my strep-throated 4-year-old awoke at 1 a.m. with this complaint: “You forgot to read me my bedtime story.” She was right. So I groggily pulled a book from her shelf and cuddled her close as she turned the pages. Reading forges connections between parents and children. It's also good for little brains.

But does the form in which the words appear matter? The New York Times reports that parents — even those who download books — are shunning kids’ e-books for the real thing. It seems that the feel and texture of paper pages dappled with colorful illustrations trumps the static dimensions of a screen. The article ran in the Time's Monday business section, but it may be more of a cultural tale. More than 25% of some adult literature is sold digitally, but e-books targeted at kids under 8 account for less than 5% of total children's book sales. “Reading a childhood classic on an e-reader is such a cold thing to do,” says Carol Moyer, head of the children's department at Quail Ridge Books, a bookstore in Raleigh, N.C., where my kids grew up going to book readings by visiting children's authors. (As far as I know, you can't get the e-edition of the latest Magic Tree House installment signed by the author.)

The bookstore's weekly story times — where real books are paged through — are more popular than ever. “E-books don't have the warmth and intimacy of the illustration on the page,” says Moyer. It is, in fact, kind of hard to conjure up with an e-book the same sort of Norman Rockwell coziness that comes with flipping pages with your child. It's even harder to imagine touch-and-feel board books for toddlers translated successfully to digital media. How can you pet the boar's fluffy tuft in Matthew Van Fleet's Tails or feel the porcupine's spines? And what about pull-tab books or intricate pop-ups?

Technophiles believe e-books can compete. Rick Broida sings the praises of the iPad, which “can do a lot more than just display static pages. It can read stories aloud; it can enrich a classic tale with touch-powered extras; and it can even render pages in 3D.” He describes Alice in Wonderland as a “lavishly illustrated 52-page abridgment of the classic tale [that] incorporates animation like no other e-book to date. Readers can tilt the iPad to make Alice grow and shrink; shake it to watch the Mad Hatter's bobble-head bobble; and so on.”

Sounds cool, but it seems more like a movie than a book. Just as ketchup isn't a vegetable, watching extravagant digital dramatizations of stories isn't reading. When my kindergartener spent tech-lab time following instructions to navigate to an e-books site, her teacher recognized that she wasn't reading; she was learning to use a computer. As is, our kids spend more than enough time in front of a screen. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wants parents to ban television and computers for kids under 2 because they just can't comprehend what's going on yet. After age 2, two hours of screen time should be the max. Should e-books count in this calculation?

There's also the nagging concern that the technology could prove more compelling than the storyline. “The bells and whistles of an iPad become a distraction,” Matthew Thomson, a dad of a 5-year-old told the Times. “When we go to bed and he knows it's reading time, he says, ‘Let's play Angry Birds a little bit,'” Mr. Thomson said. “If he's going to pick up the iPad, he's not going to read, he's going to want to play a game. So reading concentration goes out the window.” Moreover, if the iPad can read Alice in Wonderland aloud, Mom and Dad start to seem a tad superfluous. Parents are discouraged from propping a bottle so that a baby can drink on her own because feeding time should be bonding time; isn't that what reading stories is all about too?

“If you're farming out the reading part to a virtual reader, it becomes a different experience,” notes Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, who authored the AAP's recently updated policy on media use for kids under 2. Still, points out Brown, what really matters is spending time with your child, telling stories. “When you have a parent and child reading together, whether it's an electronic book or a paper book,” she says, “the experience they're sharing is what's important.”

Why Parents Still Want to Read Real Books, Not E-Books, to their Kids

America's emerging "fat war" threatens to pit a shrinking population of trim Americans against an expanding population of heavy Americans in raging policy debates over "fat taxes" and "fat bans." These "fat policies" would be designed to constrain what people eat and drink - and theoretically crimp the growth in Americans' waistlines and in the country's healthcare costs.

Richard McKenzie's HEAVY - ISBN: 3642201342 - offers the new insight into economic causes and consequences of America's dramatic weight gain over the past half century. It also uncovers the follies of seeking to remedy the country's weight problems with government intrusions into people's excess eating, arguing that controlling people's eating habits is fundamentally different from controlling people's smoking habits.
McKenzie controversially links America's weight gain to a variety of causes including: the rise of women's liberation, the long-term fall in real minimum wage, the downfall of communism, etc.

In no small way - no, in a very BIG way - America is the "home of the fat" because it has been for so long the "land of the free." Americans' economic, if not political, freedoms, however, will come under siege as well-meaning groups of "anti-fat warriors" seek to impose their dietary, health, and healthcare values on everyone else. HEAVY! details the unheralded consequences of the country's weight gain, which include greater fuel consumption and reduced fuel efficiency of cars and planes, growth in health insurance costs and fewer insured Americans, reductions in the wages of heavy people, and required reinforcement of rescue equipment and hospital operating tables.

McKenzie advocates a strong free-market solution to how America's weight problems should and should not be solved. For Americans to retain their cherished economic freedoms of choice, heavy people must be held fully responsible for their weight-related costs and not be allowed to shift blame for their weight to their genes or environment. Allowing heavy Americans to shift responsibility for their weight gain can only exacerbate the country's weight problems.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20111029/Book-discusses-how-America-can-solve-its-weight-problems-without-government-intrusion.aspx

By Emmanuelle Michel

From Dominique Strauss-Kahn to Nicolas Sarkozy and more, a French blogger has become an Internet hit by poking fun at the rich and powerful with knitted dolls and her reactions to the news. Inspired by the sex scandal around former IMF director Strauss-Kahn, this knitting fan launched her blog in Lille last May. She has since had more than 120,000 visitors to her site. Every week she posts knitted scenes from the news on the blog, called "Delit Maille" (Knitted in the Act).

"It's a way to make fun of something without being too cruel. Wool is soft, nice. You can say anything you want and it's okay as long as it's wrapped up in wool," said blogger Anna, a speech therapist in her 40s who preferred not to have her last name published. Saying she did it "just for a laugh", Anna posted her first knitted scene shortly after Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York after a hotel maid accused him of attempted rape. She said she was inspired by a book , Knit Your Own Royal Wedding, that was released to coincide with the wedding of Britain's Prince William to Kate Middleton.

Her post featured photographs of knitted dolls of Strauss-Kahn and the chambermaid, Nafissatou Diallo, in a variety of poses. In one, the Strauss-Kahn doll is shown wrapped only in a bath towel while the maid recoils in horror. The Strauss-Kahn doll also features a removable suit. "This allows you to play out the different scenarios and to set the protagonists in a scene, to check your theories in a live simulation," was a comment under the photographs.

Her blog was an immediate hit after the Strauss-Kahn pictures were posted. Inspired by this success, Anna began knitting and posting pictures of other news scenes and the blog took off. Anna has made more than 60 dolls and posted dozens of new scenes. Another favourite with readers was former Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi shown being warmly welcomed in France by Sarkozy during a 2007 visit. The Kadhafi doll -- featuring a tangle of black hair and pencil moustache -- is shown with Sarkozy posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, enjoying a picnic and frolicking in a field.

Sarkozy was featured again in a post earlier this month after he was on French television with US President Barack Obama during a summit in Cannes. Waving a small US flag, the French president is shown standing barely half the height of Obama and with his feet dangling above the ground from a chair during the interview. Not every scene is political. Anna has also taken aim at popular culture: In October, a scene with the character Don Draper from the television series Mad Men and he is shown posing in a knitted suit, leaning back with a knitted cigarette and kissing a variety of knitted women. Another post recreates US pop star Lady Gaga's "The Edge of Glory" music video, complete with knitted versions of the singer's raunchy leather outfit and silver-tipped boots.

Anna said the blog is taking up more and more of her time, especially as French political news heats up ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections next year. "It takes at least six hours to make a doll, and then I set the scene. It's a real job!" she said. But despite numerous requests and to the disappointment of fans, the dolls, are not for sale.

[But ... I sense a series of collectible dolls in Anna’s future]

Anna's blog:
http://delitmail.blogspot.com

1. Prepare for more marketing
The number of consumers who plan to hit the stores and shopping malls on Nov. 25 may be down again this year. To lure more shoppers, retailers are rolling out new marketing strategies. Many consumers can expect text messages touting Black Friday deals. Macy's, has been announcing Black Friday deals on Facebook each week since Oct. 31, including 50% off Sharper Image items and 40% discounts on coffee makers and espresso machines. These sneak previews can be a plus for consumers. By knowing Black Friday prices in advance, shoppers can decide whether it's worth holding off until the big day.

2. Thanksgiving or Shopping
This year, some retailers will roll out their Black Friday deals before the Thanksgiving dinner table is cleared. Toys "R" Us and Walmart deals will kick off at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., respectively, on Thanksgiving night in most locations. Macy's, Target, Best Buy and Old Navy say they're opening most stores at midnight. But here's the problem for shoppers: Those who want to snatch up the low price door busters will have to be among the first on line, which means arriving at the store on Thanksgiving morning or at the latest in the afternoon.

3. Black Friday came early
Lots of retailers started the Black Friday-like come-ons in early November this year. Walmart launched a "Super Saturday" sale on Nov. 5. That same day Best Buy hosted an event on select consumer electronics. Some consumers might be better off shopping before Thanksgiving, especially if they're trying to get a TV, computer or other electronics at a discount. While Friday prices could be lower, they'll avoid the long lines and crowds and the possibility of not finding what they want.

4. You should have stayed home
You can always stay home and search online. Your item may even be selling at a lower price than the brick and mortar stores were advertising. Oh, and you might get free shipping, too. More retailers are offering their Black Friday deals online. Toys "R" Us shoppers will be able to get the same deals online that are in its stores. Some great deals will be reserved for stores only. Retailers know that once consumers are inside the store, there's a higher chance that they'll end up buying more items than what they intended.

5. Prepare for violence
In 2008, roughly 2,000 shoppers stormed a Walmart in Valley Stream, N.Y., trampling an employee to death. Since then the company has implemented crowd management techniques. Separately, last year, a shopper was arrested outside a Madison, Wisconsin, Toys "R" Us after she allegedly threatened to shoot shoppers who objected to her cutting the line. The shopper didn't really have a gun, but police arrested her. At Best Buy, employees give shoppers who are waiting in line tickets for the door buster item they want to help maintain order.

6. Don't expect good quality
Stores are less likely to offer big discounts on top quality electronics on Black Friday. Retailers know they can still sell the most coveted models for higher prices. The same holds true for laptops: While enticing, $200 to $300 laptops are usually not the best products. They're intended primarily for web surfing, as opposed to gaming or watching movies. Quality isn't always an issue on Black Friday. High priced clothing is often marked down significantly. Prices on home appliances are also slashed that day. This Black Friday, some examples include an LG washer and dryer each selling for 45% off at Best Buy and a Kenmore Elite top-loading washer and electric dryer at 50% off at Sears.

7. We market to women (but not the best deals)
Women spend four times more on holiday shopping than men. As a result, retailers direct much of their Black Friday marketing toward women. However, the products such as clothing, handbags and jewelry are the least in danger of running out. So consumers might want to hold off until the last few days of the holiday shopping season when retailers typically slash prices on whatever's left. For other products, if you can wait until after the holidays. Cookware and home accessory prices tend to drop at the end of December and bed linens and towels go on sale in January.

8. Don't be fooled by credit card discounts offers
This holiday season, nearly 30% of consumers plan to use a credit card for most of their holiday gift purchases. Unfortunately, store credit cards are among the worst debts consumers can carry. Interest rates are almost always 20% or higher. And store cards have low credit limits, usually below $1,000. When consumers use these credit cards, the balance they carry is likely to make up a large percentage of their credit line, which can lower their credit score.

9. Watch out for your fellow shoppers
Black Friday's limited inventory and crazy crowds can bring out the worst in people. Experts say tug-of-war fights over merchandise and stolen shopping carts are more common than you think. That's why they recommend that shoppers never leave their carts unattended -- even for a minute.

http://www.smartmoney.com/spend/family-money/10-things-black-friday-wont-tell-you-1321569068898/?link=SM_hp_ls1e

1. They take souvenirs of Important Evenings for their “mother.” This is like taking leftovers home for the “dog.” Of course, some mothers do get the souvenirs and some dogs do get the scraps. However, it is not likely.

2. If they find a copy of Richard Yates’s Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, they buy it. It is as if they’ve found a baby on the front step. This is a hostess gift you can give any fiction writer, guaranteed to delight her even though she already has it. Regifting becomes an act of spreading civilization.

3. It makes the writer’s day if he or she can include the opinions of a truly stupid character or text in the story, punctuating those announcements with exclamation points, which are the icing on the cake. For particularly adept and judicious uses of the exclamation point, see the works of Joy Williams and Deborah Eisenberg.

4. Without these things, many contemporary American short stories would grind to a halt: fluorescent lights; refrigerators; mantels. They are its gods, or false gods. In that it is difficult to know Him, these stand-ins are often misspelled.

5. Poets go to bed earliest, followed by short story writers, then novelists. The habits of playwrights are unknown.

6. Writers are very particular about their writing materials. Even if they work on a computer, they edit with a particular pen; they have legal pads about which they are very particular—size, color—and other things on their desk that they almost never need: scissors; Scotch tape. Few cut up their manuscripts and crawl around the floor anymore, refitting the paragraphs or rearranging chapters, because they can “cut” and “paste” on the computer. As a rule, writers keep either a very clean desktop or a messy one. To some extent, this has to do with whether they’re sentimental.

7. Writers wear atrocious clothes when writing. So terrible that I have been asked, by the UPS man, “Are you all right?” An example: stretched-out pajama bottoms imprinted with cowboys on bucking broncos, paired with my husband’s red thermal undershirt and a vest leaking tufts of down, with a broken zipper and a rhinestone pin in the shape of pouting lips. Furry socks with embossed Minnie Mouse faces (the eyes having deteriorated in the wash) that clash with all of the above.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/

http://24.106.243.42:50018/ViewerFrame?Resolution=320x240&Quality=Standard&Size=STD&Language=0&Sound=Enable&Mode=JPEG&RPeriod=3&SendMethod=1&View=Full

One of the two little doxies is blind ...
Can you guess which one
???

The U.S. National Archives and Archives.com are working together to put the 1940 U.S. Census online and free of charge for the first time. The long wait involves a Federal 72-year privacy restriction. The 1940 Census contain the names of over 130 million U/S. residents. That Census Day was April 1, 1940, so records will be open and available on April 2, 2012 on a new website yet to be created.

Details are on the National Archive site:

http://www.archives.gov/research/genealogy/

Details also found on the Archive.com site:

http://www.archives.com/

The cookhouse on Waltz Farm sits 50 yards from where John and Sally Waltz live in Smithsburg, Md. Windows, candles and a fireplace provide its light and heat. Built in the mid-1800s, the 12-by-24-foot wooden structure bears patinas and aromas of the past. John’s ancestors did their laundry there, butchered their hogs, rendered lard and made scrapple. And they cooked in its well-proportioned hearth. Sally fell in love with the idea of it all as soon as she got to explore what was inside.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, having a separate building to prepare food helped keep the main house cool in warm weather and reduced the chances that a kitchen fire might destroy the whole house, Sally says. “I made a deal with John way back when: ‘If I can have this for cooking, you can build other buildings on the property,’ ” she says. They use the cookhouse about four times a year. At Thanksgiving, it comes to life as they produce a fine feast.

Inside the kitchen in the main house, a hutch holds Sally’s collection of redware, earthenware pottery that turns brownish-red when it’s fired in the kiln. Some of the casseroles, round-bellied stew pots, bowls and plates are plain, and some are adorned with Old World flourishes. The redware prompts a story; both she and John, have a way of charming a visitor with their gentle humor and thoughtfulness. Nuggets of history are dispensed like treats. Sally puts this talent to work as a volunteer docent for the Rural Heritage Museum in nearby Boonsboro.

The Waltzes ferry much of their redware down to the cookhouse when they prepare for Thanksgiving, stacking it next to where cast-iron Dutch ovens and skillets sit in front of a tall cupboard full of irreplaceable farm relics. Corn bread molds and baskets hang from the rafters. As part of the Waltzes’ rehab, the cookhouse walls have been insulated and spackled to look like old plaster. To the left of the fireplace, John has stacked two wheelbarrows’ worth of wood, which he estimates is about the amount it takes to cook food all day on Thanksgiving, starting with breakfast.

“We’re usually up at 5 and get a good fire going to heat up the building,” Sally says. By the time relatives arrive at 9 a.m., a hunter’s stew is bubbling, the hominy has cooked down and the griddle for making pancakes has glowing coals beneath it. She began cooking regularly after she attended a workshop at a Lancaster, Pa., museum. The instructor roasted a turkey in a reflector oven. “It’s ingenious, really,” she says. Lightweight and made of tin, the oven’s demi-barrel shape accommodates a bird or roast that’s secured to an iron spit. The oven is placed near — not over — the fire. The secret to open-hearth cooking is maintaining steady, low-level heat.

When Sally cooks an 18-to-20-pounder she loosely stuffs the cavity with celery, carrot and onion. She skips salt and pepper. Over the course of five hours or so, the bird’s dripping juices collect in the bottom curve of the oven, where they can be drained into a gravy boat via the oven’s built-in spout. The turkey browns evenly without the cook’s having to turn the spit or reposition the oven. A hinged door on the back affords an easy glimpse. The turkey that John carves has a slight smokiness. By 4:30 or 5, when everything’s ready, Sally says, it’s dark enough that she has to hold candles close so her husband can see what he’s doing.

She relies on time-tested recipes for the rest of the meal, which includes green beans slow-cooked with bacon and onion; a rich sweet potato soufflé ; a simple, moist corn bread; mincemeat pie, whose filling is drier and meatier than most fruity, stewed variations, plus pumpkin and apple pies; and fresh apple cider. Sally has baked pies inside kettles at the hearth, but the Thanksgiving pies are made 24 hours in advance in her kitchen.

Dinner is served by the warmth of the cookhouse fireplace, as guests sit cozy at the table or settle into the room’s rocking chairs, wooden settee and benches. Candles glow at the windows. The spread includes a dish familiar to folks who live in rural Maryland and Pennsylvania, but it raises the eyebrow of a city dweller: a pot of pickled beets, with peeled, whole hard-cooked eggs mixed in.

Linked recipes at the end of the article include: Green Beans and Bacon … Open Hearth Turkey … Sweet Potato Soufflé … Mincemeat Pie … Red Beet Pickle … Reflector Oven 101 … and … Secrets of a Perfect Pie Crust
.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/thanksgiving-in-maryland-happens-in--and-around--the-hearth/2011/10/21/gIQAbIaCPN_story.html

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This month in New York a zoot suit sold for $78,000. It was a world-record performance made all the more surprising by the disparity between the value printed for it in the auction catalog: $600-$900. “I like to always be on the conservative side with my estimates,” says Karen Augusta, who owns the highly regarded Augusta Auctions, the vintage clothing company that sold the suit. “In my heart I thought it could sell for as much as $5,000, maybe more. And then when I was deluged with phone calls from pretty major museums in the country, I thought well hmmmmm this is going to sell for way more than I expected.”

Indeed. The cream-colored [pictured in the article] woolen outfit is the only zoot suit known to have been sold at auction in the United States. One buyer from a large museum said she had been waiting 40 years to find something like it. Augusta, who has represented collections for the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, bought it from a man who found it at an estate sale in Newark, N.J. With its cranberry-colored rayon lining and enormous shoulder pads, it had been used as a clown costume. The man bought it for less than $20.

The two-day auction preceded two days of men’s vintage sales in Manhattan, part of an increasingly popular enthusiasm among designers and street-style scions for men’s clothing. David Orstein, who runs the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show, described the mood at the Metropolitan Pavilion as “euphoric.” “People are just so appreciative,” he says, adding that he invited more than 900 representatives from men’s fashion designers in the New York area alone. “You’d be surprised how many women’s designers do men’s clothing. Many designers do men’s clothing.” The trend is driven both by museums flush with funds to fill out their collections and by newly enamored consumers who have come to appreciate the subtleties of menswear. Rock-a-billy, motorcycle, Western, military, and Ivy League styles have become especially popular, both for natty men to wear and for designers (Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein) to emulate. One attendee at the show saw several buyers for Ralph Lauren leaving with bags full of Madras prints. A word to the fashion-forward: Watch for that next season.

The zoot suit in particular is special because of its extreme rarity. Suits like this were worn typically by African American, Hispanic and Italian men in the eastern U.S. during the 1930s and 1940s. Their ample folds and drapes were considered outlandish in a time when wool was rationed and silk was forbidden–every spare bit of cloth had to go to the war effort. “I mean it was pretty much illegal,” Augusta says. “There were tailors that would make them, but it was a black market.”

The New York suit was purchased by a large museum that aggressively outbid a second, eager museum contender. Each had carefully researched the piece and felt it would be an essential component for their permanent collection. That’s really the bottom line driving this particular sale, Ornstein says. It just hasn’t been seen anywhere, ever, until now. “Everything is supply and demand, you can’t get around it,” he says. “Not that the demand of the zoot suit is high–there’s not that many people–but it’s so rare that you only need a couple of big buyers.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2011/11/11/mens-vintage-roars-to-life-the-zoot-suit-that-cost-as-much-as-a-bmw/

I spent the summer foraging. The pursuit of wild food has become fashionable.

JUNE

I began working my way north as soon as I arrived in Italy. I unpacked a carton of books with titles like “Nature’s Garden” and “The Wild Table.” I bought new mud boots and enlisted a mentor, John Paterson, who looked at my boots and said, “What’s wrong with sneakers?” Paterson is the kind of spontaneous forager who carries knives and old shopping bags and plastic buckets in the trunk of his car. (I carry epinephrine and bug repellent.) Being lanky and very tall, he can also leap over scraggly brush, which I, being small, cannot. Paterson got his start foraging as a schoolboy. Today, he has a Romanian wife, two children, and a thriving restaurant of his own—the Antica Osteria della Valle—in Todi. In early June, I was finishing a plate of Paterson’s excellent tagliarini with porcini when he emerged from the kitchen, pulled up a chair, and started talking about the mushrooms he had discovered, foraging as a boy.

A week later, we set out for some of his favorite foraging spots. We stopped at the best roadside for gathering the tiny leaves of wild mint (“Fantastic with lamb”) and passed the supermarket at the edge of town, where only the day before he’d been cutting wild asparagus behind the parking lot (“Great in risotto, but it looks like I took it all”). Then we tried the field where he usually gets his wild fennel (“The flowers are lovely with ham and pork”) and found much of that delicious weed. I was hoping to find strioli, too. Strioli is a spicy wild herb that looks like long leaves of tarragon. It grows in fields and pastures in late spring and early summer and makes a delicious spaghetti sauce—you take a few big handfuls of the herb, toss it into a sauté pan with olive oil, garlic, and peperoncini, and in a minute it’s ready.

One tumbledown house spoke to Paterson. He jumped out of the car, peered over a thicket of roadside bush and sloe trees, and disappeared down a steep, very wet slope before I had even unbuckled my seat belt. Tthe wild asparagus, which usually hides from the sun in a profusion of other plants’ leaves and stalks, was so plentiful that you couldn’t miss it. We filled a shopping bag. Paterson had spotted a patch of leafy scrub and pulled me toward it. He called it crespina. It’s a spiny sow thistle—a peppery wild vegetable whose leaves taste a little like spinach and a lot like sorrel. Free food! There’s nothing like it. It always tastes better.”

That is the sample start of a seven page article with July, August and September to go. You are welcome to read more because “Most of us eat only what we know. It’s time to put on your boots (or our sneakers) and look around.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/21/111121fa_fact_kramer?currentPage=all

By Jaime Ferris

Readers know they are in for true historical intrigue and adventure through the darker side of Connecticut’s Colonial history upon reading the William Faulkner quote on one of the first pages of his new book, Tales of Old New Milford: Slavery, Crime and Punishment on the Connecticut Frontier. “The past is never dead,” it reads. “It’s not even past.” This is a truth that the author, Michael John Cavallaro, knows well. He spent years researching New Milford’s colorful and eventful early history. He takes you on a wild ride through the dark side of Colonial history; from the enslavement of the Native Americans to the introduction of African American slaves in the early 18th century, the story of Connecticut’s earliest plantations is examined. The history of the nation’s first detention facility, Newgate Prison is told in all of its graphic detail.

These mysterious stories in their ancient form demand to be unraveled. Research into slavery led to the discovery of some heartbreaking tales, but also inspiring stories of freedom. One of the more uplifting stories revolves around Partridge Thatcher, a farmer and lawyer who lived in town. Partridge Thatcher and his wife, Mary were unable to have children of their own, acquired two African children, Jacob, 11, and Dinah, 10, in June, 1749. The Thatchers raised the children as their own. The Thatchers would have had to examine the social climate of the time and … how their peers in New Milford would view the new addition to their family and the commitment of the choice they made on that day.

Though there were slaves in the area Litchfield County was anti-slavery, as evidenced by the freedom documents unearthed. The first slave freed in New Milford was in 1754, something that then-town clerk Elijah Bostwick noted with beautiful penmanship in the freedom documents he penned. These freedom documents are a beauty to behold. People can find these documents for themselves in town records. Bostwick’s penmanship was extraordinary. You can tell he was proud of his job. It shows in every freedom document he wrote.”

Through research, Mr. Cavallaro also discovered America’s first mass murder. According to his initial research, on Feb. 3, 1780, 19-year-old Barnett Davenport of New Milford entered the home of Caleb Mallory and violently killed him and four other family members. Known as “The Mallory Murders,” Davenport’s crime was so shocking and gruesome that the news spread from Maine to Georgia in a matter of days.

But the story of the Mallory murders became a regional legend of sorts. Research turned up incorrect or conflicting information. Trial records disappeared from the Litchfield court, and Davenport’s confession was missing. It took two years and a lot of detective work to, once and for all, resolve the myths and mysteries swirling around this heinous Litchfield County crime. But it finally cleared up inconsistencies and made some interesting and rather disturbing discoveries. Now, the truth has been exposed for the first time in more than two centuries.

And that led the author to the third subject of the book, Newgate Prison. “One thing led to another … and I became inexorably drawn into the vortex of these intriguing tales,” the author explained. “At every turn, the subject of Connecticut’s Newgate Prison arose. Those references drew me to the story of America’s first state prison, and I found myself fascinated with how the themes of crime, society and the need for a prison were interwoven in early American Colonial history.

The prison, built in Simsbury (now East Granby), was a converted copper mine, and was not a pleasant place. “Most of the ruins above ground are gone now … and the tunnels are too dangerous to explore, but there are many stories about Army deserters, murderers and village idiots who, in Colonial times, were mentally ill persons.”

The book is available [in CT] at the Bank Street Book Nook in New Milford, The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington, House of Books in Kent, the Gaylordsville Market and at http://www.local-author.com. [As of this date the book is not available on Amazon - ISBN 9780981678153]

http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2011/11/12/news/doc4ebf5504553b8271474549.txt?viewmode=fullstory

By Andrew Schneider

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn't exactly what the bees produce, according to testing. The results show that pollen has been filtered out of products labeled "honey." The removal of these microscopic particles makes the nectar flunk the standards set by the World Health Organization, the European Commission have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources. In the U.S., the FDA says that any product that no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.

Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of honey - some containing illegal antibiotics - on the U.S. market for years. U.S. groceries are flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and no pollen which prevents tracking its origin.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 samples of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia. 76 percent of samples bought in groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like Safeway, Giant Eagle, Kroger, A&P and Stop & Shop. 100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS had no pollen. 77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart and Target had no pollen. 100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald's and KFC had the pollen removed. But every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and natural stores like PCC and Trader Joe's had the full amount of pollen.

The above is a sample of a very long article with even longer comments. It prints out to dozens of pages as it persues the following questions:

Why Remove The Pollen?

What's Wrong With Chinese Honey?

The FDA’s Lack Of Action - Why The FDA Ignores Pleas?

Pollen? Who Cares?

Here Are Just A Few Of Many Dozens of Comments

This is food system investigative journalism at it's finest -- exposing the dirty BIG secrets of industrialized agriculture. In this case "honey" that ISN'T honey is laundered through business-as-usual relationships via untraceable multiple brand names to a supermarket, restaurant, convenience store, drug store, fast food outlet near you. The fact that the FDA knows all about it but minimally inspects is also the story. Think of all those dubious apples (arsenic in imported apple concentrate) pesticide-laden fruit, maple syrup (cane sugar), seafood, garlic, veggies and processed products coming in to the US from China and other exporters at low prices bolstering food corporation bottom lines while putting honest farmers and producers out of business...

So -- Run, don't walk, to your nearest local beekeeper and stock up on the Real Thing and taste the difference -- and you'll be much the healthier. And, oh.... BTW we NEED US bees for pollination purposes as well -- our food supply depends on it. Now if an investigation would only pin down another major industrial ag malady --colony collapse disorder -- while the usual subjects (pesticides, GMOs) go on and on with agribusiness as usual....

Just one more reason why "organic" is an expensive joke. Want good honey, buy from your local beekeeper. 'Organic' provides zero assurance of quality.

Never put honey in the microwave or the refrigerator. It is best stored in a nice warm place. All honey over time can have some crystallization but placing it in a pan of hot water will restore it to it's liquid state.

I am a small berry farm operation using organic growing methods with several colonies of honey bees. They are indeed one of the most amazing insects and the only insect that makes food. We owe much to the tiny honey bee. Do you know that a single bee will only make 1 teaspoon of honey in it's lifetime and that it makes hundreds of trips out to gather the nectar to make that teaspoon. Raw honey has numerous health benefits. It's an excellent wound healer, good for coughs, skin and hair, an energizer and full of antioxidants. Eating local raw honey is wonderful for allergies, a good digestive aid and it's full of vitamins and minerals. I use honey on a bee sting and it never swells or gets irritated.

The company whom I worked for in a management capacity know full well the honey it sells comes from Chinese suppliers but their main interest is their bottom line. Don't fall for their advertising spin folks. Buy your honey from small dealers and you won't get poisoned with Chinese chemicals.

Want the best honey which will help reduce allergies in your area? Buy directly from the beekeepers or jars with a local beekeeper's address on it (some of us DO sell through local groceries and other stores). If you're suspicious, make an appointment to come see the beekeeper's facilities. Many/most of us are proud of our hives and are happy to show them off.

No, Chinese honey isn't safe honey, or, indeed, honey at all because they adulterate it with HFCS and other versions of sugar water. It's not SAFE honey because they allow the use of pesticides that we don't allow here and because of the antibiotics they use.

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey

By Beth Harpaz

Is there an avid traveler on your gift list? Or someone who loves reading about faraway places and other cultures? Here are a few ideas and recommendations:

Pauline Frommer, a travel book writer, lists Map Head, by Ken Jennings the legendary “Jeopardy!” winner. He is a very witty, insightful writer and has written an entertaining and educational book about maps.

City Secrets, a new series of small hard covers for travelers, has new guides out this year for London, Rome and Florence/Venice, with City Secrets Manhattan due in late November. “Writers, artists, curators, and others reveal their favorite strolls, hidden gardens, buildings, shops, and restaurants“, says Pat Carrier of the Globe Corner Books in Brookline Village, MA.

Her other suggestions include City: A User's Guide to the Past, Present, and Future of Urban Life by P.D. Smith - “a collection of essays about urban life on everything from skyscrapers and shantytowns to street food”, She recommends two cookbooks with a sense of place, Mourad: New Moroccan, by Mourad Lahlou and Saraban: A Chef's Journey Through Persia by Greg and Lucy Malouf.

Lonely Planet has published a series for children on Paris, London, Rome and New York. These paperbacks are packed with tidbits on local history, geography, the arts and pop culture. Not For Parents: Paris, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know, for example, mentions everything from crepes and the origins of plaster of Paris to a look at a bizarre showcase for taxidermied animals. Lonely Planet's new books for adults include Great Journeys, a coffee-table book about “the world's most spectacular routes,” from the trail to Peru's Machu Picchu to America's classic Route 66. New also is a collection of stories by celebrities called Lights, Camera, Travel! including Brooke Shield's tale of her wintertime visit to the Arctic.

Distant Lands, a travel bookstore in Pasadena, California is recommending Lonely Planet's 1000 Ultimate Sights as the “quirkiest” of new travel must-see books. “If you like golden things, for example, there's a section on `Golden Greats,' encompassing such attractions as the Golden Buddha in Bangkok, the Golden Mummies in Egypt's Western Desert, and Dawson City's Bonanza Creek. Another favorite topic is ‘Most Eye-Opening Workplaces' and `Most Astounding Ego Trips,' from Versailles in France to a 65-foot-tall monument to North Korea's Kim Il Sung. They also recommend Monumental Paris by Herve Champollion. The panoramic photos bring you to many hidden corners ... gardens, canals, parks, and secret waterways that make Paris one of Europe's most endlessly fascinating and enchanting cities.”

Also on Distant Lands' list: Braun & Hogenberg's Cities of the World: Complete Edition of the Colour Plates of 1572-1617 which offers snapshots of how people lived in cities in Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America in drawings and text.

There is a new edition of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. This version adds 200 new entries, including countries not in the original edition, like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Qatar and Mozambique, plus suggestions for lodging and food. An interactive companion for “1,000 Places” offers photos, maps and a way to log your past and future travels. The full app is free with a code included on the first stickered printing of the book.

America's Great Railroad Stations is the perfect gift for train buffs, a coffee-table book with 250 photographs plus vintage black-and-white pictures and text by Ed Breslin. The book tells the story of the role these buildings played in the lives of the people and cities they served, from Beaux Arts monuments in New York and Washington to adobe structures in the Southwest, from the Union Pacific to Michigan Central. Another beauty is The World's Must-See Places: A Look Inside More Than 100 Magnificent Buildings and Monuments with photos and 3-D cutaways and diagrams of places like Beijing's Forbidden City, Mexico's Chichen Itza and Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock.

The Scattered Tribe: Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond is Ben G. Frank's account of Jewish communities from a new synagogue in Tahiti that serves expats and tourists to the nearly gone remnants of North Africa's once-thriving Jewish communities. The survey includes the likes of Vietnam, India and Burma. And the snapshots offered will interest readers with a passion for Jewish history.

A new book is out for fans of Manhattan’s High Line: High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky by Joshua David. The first half is a written conversation about the discovery of the old rail line and how it was shepherded against all odds through city bureaucracy from a decaying dinosaur to a vibrant public space. The second half is a collection of photos, both historic and recent, showing the High Line's history and transformation.

Finally, Travel + Leisure is out with lovely photos and engaging text in Europe: The Places We Love, from the “Sweet Life in Capri,” to “Secret Villages” like Norcia, Italy, and Marvao, Portugal.

http://www.nativetimes.com/life/travel/6367-books-for-the-traveler-holiday-gift-suggestions

Bil Keane was creator of "The Family Circus," the gentle, long-running comic syndicated in almost 1,500 newspapers. Mr. Keane died Tuesday at age 89 at his home in Arizona. He had become a wry poet of the innocence of childhood with his single-panel cartoon portraying the joys and travails of growing up. Except that his characters, based on his own family, never aged at all.

The themes stayed constant for the more than half-century Mr. Keane wrote and drew the comic: The children play with their pets, track snow into the house, have tantrums, kneel for their prayers, and tire out their long-suffering, ever-affectionate mother, "Mommy." The cartoons were more sharply observed than ha-ha funny. "I would rather have the readers react with a warm smile, a tug at the heart or a lump in the throat as they recall doing the same things in their own families," Mr. Keane once said.

A native of Philadelphia, Mr. Keane taught himself cartooning by copying New Yorker artists like Peter Arno and George Price. During World War II, he served in the Army, drawing a strip called "At Ease With the Japanese" for Stars and Stripes. In 1945 Mr. Keane became a staff artist for the Philadelphia Bulletin. In 1954, he launched his first syndicated comic, "Channel Chuckles," which highlighted the lighter side of the emerging medium of television.

He founded "The Family Circus" in 1960, and it caught on quickly. Mr. Keane modeled the mother on his wife Thelma, whom he met in Australia during the war. "When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like 'Mommy' that if she was in the supermarket, people would come up to her and say, 'Aren't you the Mommy in 'Family Circus?' Mr. Keane had friendships with several other cartoonists, including Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, and was close to newspaper columnist Erma Bombeck, illustrating one of her books.

Because so many found "The Family Circus" guileless the strip was a frequent target of satires, many of which Mr. Keane professed to like. But in 1999, Mr. Keane insisted that the website "Dysfunctional Family Circus," which contained astringent captions to his drawings, be taken down. Fellow cartoonists also occasionally paid tribute to the comic, and as a stunt Mr. Keane and Scott Adams, creator and author of "Dilbert," briefly swapped roles. "Bil gave me the best career advice of my life," said Mr. Adams. "When Dilbert was in only a few dozen newspapers, he told me to stop making comics that appeal to cartoonists and start writing for the audience."

He was helped in recent years by his son, Jeff, who handled the final inking duties and plans to continue the comic, according to King Features Syndicate. When they were growing up, the Keane kids "thought our dad really enjoyed being around us," Jeff Keane said. "Later we realized he was getting ideas from us all the time."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577028270146466162.html

By Bill Castanier

You won’t hear the bang of an auctioneer’s gavel, but when bidding closes online this week for the final lots of books being auctioned off at the Library of Michigan. Since midsummer, the Library of Michigan has been selling more than 75,000 books. (mibid.bidcorp.com). Some of the books date back to the late 19th century.

Early in its history the library collected books within broad categories of topics and circulated them across the state in areas where there were no libraries. The books in the collection were categorized under the Dewey Decimal System. In 1987 the Library of Michigan converted to the Library of Congress system. But those original Dewey books were never rolled into the new system. In the last several decades this collection saw little or no use.

When the state was looking for ways to save money it determined the library was an easy target and it was hit with more than $1 million in cuts. It was able to maintain its Michigan and Genealogy collections, but pretty much everything else was determined to be expendable, including staff: The library once had more than 130 employees, but that dropped to 32.

Since late summer the library has sold off books ranging from “Who Put the Bomb in Father Murphy’s Chowder” to books on the nation’s rocket program. The books were auctioned off by ascending Dewey classification numbers, and the final Dewey category, the 900s, was put on the auction block last week, along with some American, German and French literature.

The auction has generated approximately $15,000 in revenue. It was an easy way to dispose of the books since the winning bidder has to haul them away. The majority of books were sold to book dealers who had the ability to handle large quantities. The biography lot of nearly 9,000 books offered in the most recent sale took upwards of 350 boxes and a big truck to move. Most of the books were sold in the range of 50 cents to $1 per book.

Ray Walsh, proprietor of Curious Book Shop in East Lansing, was the winning bidder of the Dewey category Greek literature, consisting of approximately 476 books. He said he has seen some of the books sold at the earlier auctions turn up in local antique markets. “The library should be commended for disposing of these books under the circumstances,” Walsh said. “They’d run out of money and out of space.”

Walsh said many libraries have always practiced deaccession, selling unwanted volumes at periodic book sales. That has not always been the case. Walsh remembers watching a library toss books into a Dumpster 25 years ago. He said he was able to rescue bound copies of periodicals from the 1800s.

It’s bittersweet seeing the materials go, but then again, there hasn’t been any demand for these materials. One book in the lot of the Africa section is “The Journals of Major-General C.B. Gordon at Kartoum,” published in 1885. Two copies of the title are advertised on Amazon at $30 and $45. It’s likely another one will join them soon

http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-6573-turning-old-books-into-new-revenue.html

Sarah Hinman Ryan is a research director at the Albany Times Union. She is a blogger. bringing sleuthing skills and a knowledge of databases to news stories every day. She approaches an investigative story like a bloodhound on a trail.

What’s your work?
I’m a journalist who specializes in using public-records and data-based reporting to look for patterns and connect the dots. I have a knack for what I like to call “forensic interviewing” using electronic sources like court documents, property records and financial records to build a database that lets me figure how and who got the money and how they spent it.

The word ‘librarian’ seems to have fallen out of favor?
Unfortunately, people just can’t let go of the silly, so-yesterday stereotype of a mean lady with spectacles who wields a wicked “shhhh.” “With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging.”

What do you do when you’re not working?
I do some volunteer work with animals and I recently became a card-carrying member of the Mohawk Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. (I am passionate about history and genealogy and this is a great combination of both.)

You recently posted a blog about Petey, a pit-bull-mix puppy that was abandoned and later found. How is he doing?
Petey has won the puppy lottery, thanks to the several dog lovers and local pit-bull rescue Out of the Pits, from which I adopted my dogs. He is in a foster home with another foster puppy, two grown dogs and a little boy, who dotes on them all. The veterinary surgeon who examined him believes that his deformed paw may have been the result of an injury rather than a birth defect.

Speaking of animal protection, what are the big issues and what are the remedies?
Three issues jump out: animal overpopulation, irresponsible owners and an under funded system that struggles to catch animal abusers and prevent them from offending again. My own analysis of data related to animal abuse, “dangerous dogs” and dog bites is getting people to spay/neuter their animals, which could be helped along by increasing license fees for un-fixed animals. This would do wonders for public safety as well, as data shows that the majority of dogs bites involve un-neutered male dogs. Another step would be cracking down on bad people who get animals for the wrong reasons and mistreat them.

Last year, Michael Vick said: “I would love to get another dog in the future. I think it would be a big step for me in the rehabilitation process.” Your thoughts?
I would like to believe his statement is more than a public relations ploy, but I find it hard to do so. Last month I interviewed Rebecca Huss, the court-appointed law guardian for the “Vick dogs” while they were being held as evidence. I learned that, in addition to fighting and brutally breeding dogs, Vick personally tortured pit bulls to death by hanging, beating and drowning them.

What advice would you give to other bloggers?
Relax and have fun. Don’t worry too much about crafting the perfect post.

What books are you reading?
I love historical fiction and crime novels. Recent books in my stack are “The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane” by Katherine Howe and “Lethal Legacy,” a fantastic – and library related – police procedural by Linda Fairstein.

Are you ready to give up ink-on-paper books for an eBook?
No, I think I’ll always enjoy a mixture of print and digital media. I guess I’m an info-omnivore. If I’m sitting on the couch on a Sunday morning, I want the print newspaper. If I’m flying on a plane or sitting in a coffee shop, I want my laptop.

Favorite quote?
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Emerson

Blogger of the week: Sarah Hinman Ryan

I couldn’t resist buying this when I saw it. Someone writing about the death of his squirrel? In 1826? Come on, who wouldn’t? There’s even a picture of the poor creature.

http://www.simonbeattie.kattare.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Hadfield-245x300.jpg

I first thought it was perhaps written by a child, but in fact the history of the poem proved much more interesting. I soon discovered that the author, James Hadfield (1771–1841), was a patient at London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, or ‘Bedlam’ as it’s more popularly known, the world’s first psychiatric hospital. He even gets an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. Why? Because, over twenty-five years before he composed his poem, he had been committed to the Hospital after attempting to kill the King. Hadfield had fallen under ‘the sway of a millenarian cult, becoming convinced that his death at the hands of the state would effect the second coming.

He apparently reasoned that treason—or even attempted treason—would carry mortal punishment, and thus conspired with Bannister Truelock to assassinate George III at Drury Lane Theatre on the evening of 15 May 1800. As the king acknowledged the orchestra’s playing of the national anthem, and the audience rose to its feet to welcome him, Hadfield climbed on a seat and fired a horse pistol at the royal box. The assailant’s actual intention remains a mystery because when the king, unhurt, insisted on speaking to the self styled assassin, Hadfield greeted him by saying, “God bless your royal highness; I like you very well; you are a good fellow.”

Tried for high treason nevertheless, Hadfield had as his defense the leading barrister of the day, Thomas Erskine, who secured an acquittal by arguing partial insanity. This was a first in an English criminal trial. Hadfield spent the remaining 41 years of his life in a cell. Patients at Bethlem were allowed visitors, and Hadfield, perhaps due to his notoriety, seems to have attracted many. One such visitor wrote,

“He lives in a small room and he is not averse to passing the time of day with visitors. We had rather a long visit with him; his conversation and his habits denote a sentimental and loving heart, a pressing need for affection, and he has had in succession two dogs, three cats, several birds and finally a squirrel. He was extremely fond of his animals and was grieved at their deaths. His beloved creatures all have epitaphs in verse which express his sorrow. Above the verses for his squirrel there is a colored image of the friend he lost. I might add that he does a brisk little trade with his feelings, handing out the epitaphs to visitors who in return give him a few shillings”

The archives at the Bethlem Royal Hospital have various examples of Hadfield’s squirrel poem. I wonder how many others survive?

A souvenir from Bedlam

Richard Graham’s first foray into comic books was a 1979 Army Training manual featuring a blonde bombshell going through key points on tire pressure, cooling system filters and payload limits. The dry subject matter contrasts oddly with the gorgeous illustrations courtesy of Will Eisner, one of the most beloved comic book artists of all time. Graham was just a boy growing up on an Army base in Germany when his old man handed him that comic.

Graham, now a 37-year-old professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has made government comics one of the focuses of his career. A few years back, he began a project scanning and digitizing hundreds of comics. This peculiar genre of comics ranges from Army-issued manuals on landmines and assault rifles to pregnancy pamphlets to guides on how to spot a bootlegger. Bert the Turtle taught kids how to prepare for the Atomic Bomb. Dr. Seuss drew a sultry mosquito for a soldier’s manual on malaria.

Graham has now parlayed his archive into a book, Government Issue: Comics for the People, 1940s-2000s. [Paperback ISBN-10: 1419700782] The book contains not just the comics, but also plenty of historical context and anecdotes from Graham. He chronicles the genre’s fascinating inconsistency and inherent contradiction. “They can be really kitschy,” Graham said of government comics. “Anytime the government uses popular culture, it’s like your teacher cussing in the class, trying to be cool. But there are some beautiful as well as some horrible artwork.”

Dr. Seuss drew his malaria comic as an enlisted man. In a lot of the comics, the agencies would pay to have a popular comic character like Captain America or Superman warn readers about the perils of drugs or landmines. The delicious irony is of course that in the 1950s as the government used the comic book form to educate audiences, it also was trying to ban the American comic book. Some schools banned and burned them. Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book, “Seduction of the Innocent,” claimed comic books were a dangerous form of popular culture promoting violence.

And yet all the while, government agencies couldn’t deny the usefulness of this bright and easily digestible format. “It’s strange,” Graham said. “In one way, the government was bringing the medium down by trying to get involved with it. But, on the other hand, it was also bringing some legitimacy to it. The government recognized comics as an effective communication medium, one to bring the message to the masses.”

http://journalstar.com/entertainment/arts-and-culture/books/article_f153acdc-1aa3-50cd-a0e1-edf49148e8d3.html

We asked Richard Graham to pick out a few of his favorite comics and tell us about them.

Fishing Fun is Just Around the Corner
Many colorful characters have been employed by the U.S. government as conservation and outdoors advocates, including Woodsy Owl, Mark Trail and the famous Smokey Bear. Fishing Fun is Just Around the Corner was distributed by the Illinois Department of Conservation. This comic uses the step-by-step illustrative nature of comics to demonstrate the proper way to tie a hook, as well as cast. It also points out the various parts of a rod and reel.

Time of Decision
Time of Decision is the story of a loner at a State University. His popularity and self-confidence increase after he joins ROTC. This comic involves the Pershing Rifles, a drill company started by Gen. John J. Pershing at the University of Nebraska. And like many military recruiting comics, this one showed that “real men” participate in parades and implied that girls would find men in uniform irresistible.

Operation and Preventive Maintenance The M16A1 Rifle by Will Eisner
One of the last military projects Eisner worked on dealt with the use and care of the M-16 rifle. The weapon had developed a reputation for unreliability. Full of double entendres, Operation and Preventive Maintenance The M16A1 Rifle is a classic example of Eisner's incredible ability to combine effectively informational/instructional design with graphic design.

http://journalstar.com/article_7a3b0d47-e8cd-5e1f-9680-7e0a311106b6.html

An Amazon Review of Government Issue: Comics for the People 1940s-2000s

“Since the 1940s, federal and state government agencies have published comics to disseminate public information. Comics legends Will Eisner and Milton Caniff produced comics for the army. Li’l Abner joined the navy. Walt Kelly’s Pogo told parents how much TV their kids should watch, Bert the Turtle showed them how to survive a nuclear attack, and Dennis the Menace took “A Poke at Poison.” Smokey Bear had his own comic, and so did Zippy, the USPS mascot. Dozens of artists and writers, known and unknown, were recruited to create comics about every aspect of American life, from jobs and money to health and safety to sex and drugs. Whether you want the lowdown on psychological warfare or the highlights of working in the sardine industry, the government has a comic for you! Government Issue reproduces an important selection of these official comics in full-reading format, plus a broad range of excerpts and covers, all organized chronologically in thematic chapters.”

He was a silent film star who could leap 12-foot walls. He could charm Oscar voters and inspire devotion from obsessed humans, Rin Tin Tin "never died," says this new biography. "He was an idea, an ideal, a hero, a friend, a fighter, a caretaker, a mute genius, a companionable loner," Susan Orlean writes in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. [Hardbound ISBN - 1439190135} Maybe Lassie was prettier, but Rin Tin Tin was a real hero on a World War I battlefield in France. The German shepherd and his littermates were rescued in 1918 from a bombed-out kennel. The American who found him devoted his life to the dog.

Only six silent films survive of the 20-plus Rinty made, helping Warner Bros. prosper. In the 1920s, the dog earned almost eight times what Warner paid human actors. Orlean spent eight years researching Rinty and intertwines his story with American culture: the movies, TV, treatment of animals, favorite breeds, publicity stunts and lawsuits over rights to the Rinty's legacy. Orlean is on a book tour. Here is an edited version of an interview.

Q • What is the main reason for Rin Tin Tin's appeal?
A • I have a couple of answers for that. He had charisma. He also had the devotion of not just Lee Duncan (the soldier who found him), but Burt Leonard (the movie producer). These people were devoted to the idea of keeping his story alive. Lee Duncan felt this dog had a magic that was exceptional.

Q • Why didn't being a German shepherd, count against him during war years?
A • German Shepherds were the U.S. Army's official dog. Their identity canceled out the identity of them as "German." The Hollywood version of Rin Tin Tin's origins often skipped delicately over the fact that he was born as a German war dog. I think people understand that dogs have no real nationality.

Q • Do young kids know who Rin Tin Tin is?
A • Depends. A film came out a few years ago, and there was a TV show in the '80s called "Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop." Rin Tin Tin isn't well-known, but there is something interesting to say about him.

Q • Lassie, is better known than the action hero Rin Tin Tin. Did you watch "Lassie" as a child?
A • Oh, yes. I loved Lassie. My sister was a Lassie person, so I had to be a Rin Tin Tin person.

Q • Have the descendants of Rin Tin Tin escaped the health issues of the German shepherd breed?
A • They were carefully bred with consciousness of their value. The direct line of Rin Tin Tin dogs, as far as I know, was quite healthy. None of the descendants had quite as much charisma as the original. Also none had that “magic” connection with a human.

Q • Why do most recent dog books or movies seem goofy ("Snow Dogs," "Beethoven," "Marley & Me," etc.), not necessarily heroic?
A • That is a big change. You don't see that same figure of a heroic dog. Dogs are more comic, more playful and they're companions. And a lot of the dogs in pop culture now are naughty dogs, bad dogs. There is some enjoyment in the idea of the naughty dog. We find increasingly that the only heroes are cartoon characters. It's a different world. The other thing is that technology for film has made the sort of "feats" of a dog less amazing. ... You're sort of marveling more at the accomplishments of technology.

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/orlean-explains-rin-tin-tin-s-appeal-in-new-book/article_35cfe54e-2cc2-5f0b-a687-6a2e252aa27d.html

“Fascinating . . . The sweeping story of the soulful German shepherd who was born on the battlefields of World War I, immigrated to America, conquered Hollywood, struggled in the transition to the talkies, helped mobilize thousands of dog volunteers against Hitler and himself emerged victorious as the perfect family-friendly icon of cold war gunslinging, thanks to the new medium of television. . . . Do dogs deserve biographies? In Rin Tin Tin Susan Orlean answers that question resoundingly in the affirmative . . . By the end of this expertly told tale, she may persuade even the most hardened skeptic that Rin Tin Tin belongs on Mount Rushmore with George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt, or at least somewhere nearby with John Wayne and Seabiscuit.”

New York Times Book Review

John Grisham isn’t sure that there will be another John Grisham. He recently published a new novel called The Litigators. Grisham says that his early success was driven by word-of-mouth in brick-and-mortar bookstores. With stores closing because of the e-book things have changed. “Spreading the word on a good book may be more difficult without the bookstores,” Grisham said in a recent interview, “On the other hand, it may be easier online. No one knows.”

How did you come up with the characters in “The Litigators”?

These are compositions of many lawyers. I got the idea for the guys from watching all the TV advertising done by lawyers. It’s epidemic. You see these guys on television appealing for injury cases and all these drug cases.

Did you come away with more sympathy for ambulance-chasing lawyers?

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the ambulance chasing that you see today. Thirty years ago, we didn’t like those guys. We had a certain ethical structure to the practice of street law. That’s been completely eroded. Now it’s non-stop TV advertising that is unseemly and sleazy. When the BP oil spill happened last summer the advertising by the lawyers was disgusting. They were just all over the place begging for cases.

When the BP oil spill happened, what were your thoughts on it?

It’s easier to criticize offshore drilling and oil companies than for all of us to cut back on oil consumption. That was my reaction to it. I had no sympathy for BP….But it’s going to happen again. We didn’t solve any problems.

How did you come up with the idea of ‘The Litigators’?

A little of it was British Petroleum. When that happened, a bunch of trial lawyers swept in. We were bombarded with ads soliciting clients for a whole list of bad products. So I had the idea, what if the product doesn’t do all the damage it’s thought to do? I like to create fictional scenarios about lawsuits or trials or whatever. I’ve been sued several times. A lot of my own experiences went into this book, being a defendant.

Have all the legal shows on TV demystified the law?

People have this insatiable appetite for stories about the law, trials, law firms, litigation, criminal cases, civil cases. We were born with so many rights and if someone messes with our rights, we’re going to protect ourselves. It’s a very litigious society. I don’t know if the public is any smarter about the law because of those shows. But they want to hear these stories.

Are bankers replacing lawyers as our cultural villains?

I think bankers are going through a rough patch, but the truth is the average American is going to have very little contact with a Wall Street banker. But sooner or later he’s going to have contact with a lawyer. Something is going to happen. Hopefully it’ll be a good experience, but it probably won’t be.

How do you come up with and develop your ideas?

First of all, an idea comes up. I carry legal pad in my briefcase. I put it in the computer when I get home. I have thousands and thousands of pages of old notes, ideas for books, names, scenes. I’m always on the prowl, that’s just what I do. It’s second nature. At some point I got the idea of a young lawyer joining the firm of ambulance chasers. It was a very gradual process. Some ideas hit real fast and the stories are clear. Others sort of fester for months or years.

Do you know the endings of your books when you start?

I know the final scene before I start. If you know that last scene, it’s hard to get lost. You can’t outline everything and the spontaneous stuff happens in the context of a structured outline. I have the beginning, middle and end. I have the characters, the main plot, two or three subplots, and that’s what I work off of. But you can’t predict everything that’s go to happen in a book. And you don’t want to.

What’s your take on e-books?

My last book came out a year ago, “The Confession.” A year later we’re running about 60 percent hardback and 40 percent digital. If it gets to be 70-80 percent, a lot of publishers are going to go under, bookstores are going to go under. I do think there will always be books, but it’s just too chaotic right now to predict. Amazon sent me a Kindle a couple years ago, and I read a couple books on it. If I spent some time with it I’d get good with it. But I love books on a shelf. I collect first editions. However, back in January I went to a resort in the Caribbean and I was astonished. 80 percent of the crowd had Kindles or iPads. It was very unscientific research, as to where the future is going.

How is the TV version of “The Firm” coming?

They’ve filmed eight episodes so far out of 22….The buzz is really good. High expectations. NBC is behind it big time.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/11/03/will-there-ever-be-another-john-grisham-john-grisham-has-some-thoughts/

Booksellers everywhere are trying to gain traction in this slippery economy. The big guys are struggling and those little brick-and-mortar stores in small towns are vanishing as fast as the morning fog. But the owners of Pratt's Books in Graham, Texas, have found their footing catering not to the changing appetites of readers, but to those who long for a library all their own. Owners David Pratt, a Graham native and his wife, Gayle, 41, have taken that a step further. They have published a limited-edition book about one of Texas' biggest ranches and they are betting collectors will see these books as gems that will become more valuable with time.

History of the Waggoner Ranch, by Knox Kinard will roll out Saturday at a big party at Pratt's Books. Illustrated with 16 tintype photographs of modern-day cowboys from the Waggoner Ranch. This little book measures just 61/2 inches by 9 inches and each volume is a work of art, a showcase for a number of Texas talents:. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry wrote the forward. Award-winning Four-O Press of Abilene produced the book, and Jace Graf of Austin's celebrated Cloverleaf Studios designed it. Well-known tintype photographer Robb Kendrick added the 16 tintypes that illustrate the text.

Most of the books will go for $125. Each has a "quarter bound cloth" cover featuring the Waggoner's famous backward Triple D brand in silver ink. But 16 deluxe editions are valued at $3,500 each. These have a "quarter bound leather" cover with foil-stamped gold lettering and green silk cloth. Each is numbered and presented in a "rare books box." An original tintype is included. Tintype photography dates from roughly 1855 to 1900 and uses a metal plate to reproduce the image. There is no negative. Daguerreotypes were from a little earlier and use a glass plate.

The author's credentials are local. Born in 1896, he spent his working life as an educator in Texas schools. He had written about the fabled Waggoner Ranch for his master's thesis in and later he used that material to write a long article for The Panhandle-Plains Historical Review. With all the proper permissions, that article has become the text of this book.

"The ranches are so important to Texas history, and there's very little available about them," explains Gayle Pratt. Her dark eyes shine and her hands busily punctuate her words. "There's so little out there about the Waggoner Ranch or any of the big ranches.... We thought it was important to preserve this and make it available." In fact, the Waggoner Ranch is the stuff of Texas legend. Sprawling over more than half a million acres and any number of counties, it is second only to the King Ranch in size.

Dan Waggoner began accumulating this land in the 1850s when the few plains settlers were forever in conflict with the Comanche and Kiowa that roamed the vast prairie south of Vernon. Dan soon took his son, W.T., as a partner and together they built an empire. They were friendly with Comanche war chief Quanah Parker and went hunting with U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt. They lived big lives and produced an interesting and flamboyant family. But readers won't find anything about the more recent history of the ranch or the bitter squabbles among the Waggoner heirs. This book predates the lawsuits and rulings of the past few years and focuses on the ranch that was the dream of two men tough enough to hold on through the hard times.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/11/02/3494765/rare-history-small-town-bookstore.html

The market for maple syrup is very odd. The thin, pale Grade A Light Amber syrup commands the highest prices. The thick syrup marked Grade B bursts with maple flavor, but sells at a significant discount. Why does the nominally inferior grade offer decidedly superior flavor? The answer lies in the history of maple syrup. The sap that runs at the beginning of the season, with the spring thaw, is clear. Twenty to thirty gallons, boiled down, will yield a gallon of light amber syrup. As the season extends, the sap grows watery. More of it must be boiled down. Concentrating that sap also makes late-season syrup darker, thicker, and more flavorful.

Early colonists were less interested in liquid syrup than in granular sugar. The pure, white imported cane sugar was an expensive luxury. Maple sugar offered an affordable substitute. These colonists took the concentrated maple sap and poured it into conical molds, refining it into white sugar loaves The clearest syrups and whitest sugars commanded premium prices.

After the Revolution, Americans looked at the maple tree in a new light. Here was a commodity that could compete in a global market. It tapped an abundant resource, required only a small amount of labor, and used supplies most farmers already owned. Best of all, it would destroy the market for Caribbean sugar cane, produced by slaves laboring in horrifying conditions. But all of these efforts failed commercially. As a refined commodity maple sugar simply could not match the low-priced products of the cane plantations. The late-season sap, with its strong flavor, was not capable of attracting consumers who had access to more refined alternatives.

Most maple syrup continued to be turned into sugar by frugal farm families for use as a home sweetener. And as a symbol of freedom, it remained potent. People shunned the products of slave labor, and sought out maple sugar. From a Vermont almanac in 1844. "So long as the maple forests stand suffer not your cup to be sweetened by the blood of slaves." But by the end of the nineteenth century, the Department of Agriculture scorned the idea of refining maple sap into white sugar, noting that maple syrup was "prized for their peculiar flavor, and are luxuries rather than staple articles of the daily diet."

The emphasis on a light, delicate flavor made the product susceptible to adulteration. Syrup was cut with glucose, sorghum, or corn. Some purveyors relied on appearance alone, boiling brown sugar. So maple syrup became a symbol in a crusade to secure the authenticity of the food supply and helped rally support for the Pure Food and Drug Act. The law was passed in 1906, and the USDA set about cleaning up the nation's grocery shelves.

However consumers sought out cheaper alternatives. Pancake syrups proliferated. Brands like Log Cabin pitched themselves by stressing the science and research that had gone into their production. The big boom came after the Second World War, with the introduction of brands backed with corporate heft, like Aunt Jemima and Mrs Butterworth which included only trace amounts of actual maple syrup. The old dream of the maple replacing the sugar cane had been reversed. Sugary syrups now threatened to push the maple off of American shelves.

Production declined steadily from the beginning of the century into the 1970s, but in recent decades has rebounded. Small producers boosted their efforts to market their wares. And many others felt the call back to the land, inspired in part by Helen and Scott Nearing's Maple Sugar Book, equal parts manual and manifesto. Sugaring is still a seasonal sideline, a way to earn a little cash and it fills a crucial cultural role. As an ode and an explanation, Noel Perrin's Amateur Sugar Maker remains unsurpassed. Sugaring, Perrin observed, "is not really a commercial operation. It is that happiest of combinations, a commercial affair which is also an annual rite, even an act of love."

And, as a result, grade inflation has come to the world of maple syrup. The industry has proposed that all syrup sold at retail be relabeled Grade A, and then sorted into four colors: Golden, Amber, Dark, and Very Dark. No longer will the weakest syrup be assigned a higher mark for approaching the perfect purity of utter blandness, or the most intensely flavorful syrup get graded down for daring to taste like maple. The new system will eliminate the current discrimination against darker syrup. By 2013, the new international standard should be fully adopted, and consumers given the clear choice of syrups. So if you happen to relish the taste of maple syrup, you may want to find a bottle of Grade B while you still can. Soon the rarest, most flavorful syrup will likely command at least as dear a price as its more abundant cousins.

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/05/making-the-grade-why-the-cheapest-maple-syrup-tastes-best/239133/

Thomas Heneage Art Books seeks a bookseller-administrator-manager keen to develop a career in both the arts and book selling.

You must have the imagination and drive to help transform, a traditional, high end bookshop selling both new and antiquarian art books, into the modern idiom. The right candidate will be encouraged and be expected to take on a significant degree of responsibility. You will be involved in everything from generating sales to the organization of the business. Supervision and delegation of staff and the day to day running of our prestigious book shop are all part of this remit.

The books you sell will be predominantly Western European and it would be an advantage if you spoke at least one language other than English, preferably German, Italian, French or Spanish as you will be selling to a varied clientele from all over the world. You will report to and work closely with the Directors and must liaise with the accountant.

Sales & Marketing: It will be your prime responsibility to develop and expand: Retail; Mail Order; and Internet Sales, as part of this you will be expected to play an active role in the development of our new website.

Fairs: We exhibit at TEFAF Maastricht. The organization, administration and successful operation of any fairs at which we exhibit is part of your remit.

Salary: dependent on experience and performance.

To apply please send a cover letter to Thomas Heneage, 42 Duke Street, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6DJ or to abs@heneage.com

Deadline for applications: 30 Nov 2011

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/jobs/Details.aspx?itemID=24903

For Self-Employed Authors
Print journals that accept on-line submissions

http://networkedblogs.com/30vt8

Great flea Market report, bookleaves ... can't wait until next year

Ten law enforcement agencies dedicated hundreds of hours to track the suspects. They used high-tech video equipment hidden on a utility pole for round-the-clock surveillance and used undercover agents to make covert buys. This wasn't a major narcotics investigation; it was a crackdown on the illegal trafficking of raw goat milk, cheese and yogurt.

The arrests of a Ventura County farmer and the operator of a Venice health food store have become a rallying cry for raw-food advocates for what they describe as the government's hard line on nontraditional food sources. In the months since the arrests, new details have emerged about the lengths that authorities went to build their case.

Defense attorneys said they've learned through the prosecution that the investigation included hours of secretly recorded video, "decoy" buys at the Rawesome Health Food Store and at other farmers' markets. The one-year investigation is documented in thousands of pages of reports, they said.

The suspects, the "Rawesome Three, are free on bail and scheduled to return to court Dec. 1. "If this were a terror plot against the LA Airport, I could understand it," said L. Arik Greenberg, who used to shop regularly at Rawesome. "But these are people who want to get milk from a farm and drink it."

Defense attorneys described Rawesome as a private food club where members could buy raw dairy products as well as organic produce, meat and honey. Members paid dues that enabled them to own the animals that produced the raw dairy products. They say the store gave them a healthy alternative to mass-produced, processed foods that fill supermarkets and fast-food outlets.

Prosecutors say raw milk poses significant risks of contamination that can cause illness or death. They say the three suspects violated the law by operating without required licenses, which meant regulatory agencies weren't able to inspect them for safety and cleanliness The law requires raw dairy processing plants to be licensed, animals to be inspected by veterinarians, and facilities and equipment to meet sanitation requirements, prosecutors said.

Six of the charges are felonies and include operating an unlicensed milk plant, conspiracy to sell unlawfully produced milk products, producing milk products in unsanitary conditions and tearing down a health department closure notice and reopening the store. The three suspects have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Legal experts said they were not surprised by the extent of the investigation. It may sound like overkill. But from the agencies' perspective, they want to show they can do their version of a major case. said Law School professor Laurie Levenson. They don't want to lose it. They can say is they're saving human lives, and so it's worth it.

"It's a tremendous misuse of resources and a waste of time," said the attorney representing the store and the farm. "The kind of investigation that was done in this case is similar to what you see in a violent criminal enterprises, something the mob would be involved in."

The arrests and closure of Rawesome have led members to scramble for alternative sources of raw milk, sources that many members decline to disclose. They wonder why tax money is being used to police the production of health food. "It's very misplaced," said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, a Malibu nutritionist and creator of the "Primal Diet," which advocates raw meat, produce and dairy. "We're throwing money to people on Wall Street and not taking care of those criminals and at the same time spending all this money to go after raw milk."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-raw-milk-investigation-20111028,0,4560029.story?track=lat-pick

The Cuala Press was an Irish Private Press set up in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats with support from her brother William Butler Yeats. Cuala was to play an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century. In 1902, Elizabeth Yeats and her sister Lily joined their friend Evelyn Gleeson in the establishment of a craft studio near Dublin named Dun Emer. Dun Emer became a focus of the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement, specializing in printing, embroidery, rug and tapestry-making. Elizabeth Yeats ran the printing operation, and Lily managed the needlework department. In 1904, the operation was reorganized into two parts, the Dun Emer Guild run by Gleeson and Dun Emer Industries under the direction of the Yeats sisters. In 1908 the groups separated completely. Gleeson retained the Dun Emer name, and the Yeats sisters established Cuala Industries at nearby Churchtown, which ran the Cuala Press and their embroidery workshop.

It was intended that the new press would produce work by writers associated with the Irish Literary Revival. They ended up publishing a total of over 70 titles before they closed in 1946. Cuala was unusual in that it was the only Arts and Crafts press to be run and staffed by women and the only one that published new works rather than established classics. In addition to William Butler Yeats, Cuala published works by Ezra Pound, Jack B. Yeats, Robin Flower, Elizabeth Bowen, Oliver St John Gogarty, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, Lionel Johnson, Patrick Kavannagh, Louis MacNeice, John Masefield, Frank O’Connor, John Millington Synge, John Butler Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore and others.

After Elizabeth Yeats died in 1940, the work of the press was carried on by two of her assistants. The final Cuala title was Stranger in Aran by Elizabeth Rivers which was published in 1946. In 1969 the press was taken up by W. B. Yeats' children, Michael and Anne Yeats, with Liam Miller. Some titles were run in the 1970s. Valuable archives are still held by the press.

Above from Wikipedia

Some limited editions of books and broadsides printed by the Cuala Press

http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Cuala%20Press%20Broadside%20Collection/

For almost a century Bram Stoker's private journal sat unnoticed in England. Full of notes the unmarked book had probably been lugged down from the attic in Noel Dobbs' home. Dobbs is a descendant of Stoker. Then a researcher working on a project about Stoker got in touch with Dobbs to ask if he might know anything about a journal his famous relative kept. Dobbs looked around and finally popped open this tiny book. It was signed "Abraham Stoker."

Dacre Stoker, is Dobbs' cousin and a professor in South Carolina. He has written a book about Bram Stoker. When the news reached him that the journal had been discovered, he cajoled his cousin into sending him photographs of a few pages. "When I saw it, I was amazed," Dacre Stoker said. Scholars and hard-core fans have wanted to know what made the man who wrote 'Dracula' tick.

The journal will be published next March as The Lost Journal. The publication will mark 100 years since the author died in April 1912. Dacre has worked with Bram Stoker scholars to annotate The Lost Journal, which also offers quirky bits of folklore from Stoker's homeland, Ireland. There are 305 entries, some pages-long, others just a few sentences.

Bram Stoker was in his early 20s when the journal began in 1871. He had graduated from Ireland's Trinity College. It would be more than a decade before he learned about the inspiration for his Count Dracula, "Vlad the Impaler." The real-life prince of Wallachia who ruled during the Ottoman Empire, Vlad earned his nickname by impaling his enemies. His viciousness became notorious in Europe where tales spread of a man-monster who lived off blood. "Dracula" means son of the Dragon.

The last entry of Stoker's journal in 1881 hints at a major character he would use in "Dracula." In the novel, Renfield has delusions that compel him to eat living beings to gain their life force. The vampire Count Dracula seizes on Renfield's weakness and offers him as many creatures as he can eat in exchange for his eternal devotion. It doesn't work out well for Renfield in the end.

In another passage, Stoker seems to be alluding to a vampire's inability to see his own reflection. Stoker's interest in spookiness shows up in other journal entries. "A man builds up his shadow on a wall bit by bit by adding to substance," he wrote. "Suddenly the shadow becomes alive." The journal also contains romantic poems. There are some very sweet moments here. One note in the journal alludes to the writer's fascination with children.

Stoker was fascinated with the theater and the act of observing. He traveled a lot, a rare thing for his time. Journaling and touring are central in "Dracula." The novel's narrator, Jonathan Harker, writes in his journal as he travels across Europe, witnessing and questioning superstitions and trying to make sense of his own bad dreams and supernatural encounters. The novel also centers on Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England.

Bram was curious. He loved to ask the questions: What is real and what is myth, and where do they meet? Though Stoker died before his Count Dracula became internationally famous in film. The author would be flattered by how his character has stayed relevant over the years. From Bela Lugosi to Anne Rice's Lestat and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to "Twilight" and "True Blood," Stoker's main question: "What does it mean to live forever?" has proved eternal.

And in true Bram Stoker style, he left one more mystery. The author alludes to another diary where he writes about an upcoming trip to London where one can get work as a writer. The journal of writing and notes that was recently found in Noel Dobbs’ home is not that diary. "There's something else out there. Some are dying to know where it is.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/29/world/dracula-journal-discovered/

By Steve Heilig

Walt Whitman’s legendary epic poem Song of Myselfwas self-published in 1855 by the then-unknown journalist who was 37 years old. According to Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, “it was an astonishment, perhaps the most unprecedented poem in the English language.”

Many students read Whitman in high school. Hundreds of people attending a mass reading of the poem last Sunday in West Marin, CA. Some said that was the first and last time they had looked at it. But I think it a fair guarantee that nobody present will forget it. As conceived and conducted by artist, author, Eric Karpeles, this was a literary event for the ages.

Hass himself introduced the poem and then without fanfare launched into the first section, beginning “I celebrate myself…”. Sitting in rows behind him, readers took their turns at two podiums. There were 52 sections of the poem to be read. Those reading were poets and writers, but also carpenters, dancers, naturalists, winemakers, philanthropists, scientists, doctors, lawyers, actors, artists, ranchers, scholars, surfers, farmers, and more.

Younger and older, each reader brought their own personality to the poem, ranging from quiet and meditative to booming and dramatic. The reading flowed seamlessly, for almost two hours. As each person ended, quiet murmurs of appreciation could be heard; some of the lines prompted laughter; sometimes the mood was somber. But the poem is built like a symphony; the power of it was really astonishing by the end, a celebration of life and love and nature and most everything, including death. The end neared; Karpeles rose to read the poem’s final section and read, quietly:

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flash in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
-
At the poem’s final word the whole room erupted into loud applause and cheers. There was a sense of shared purpose and accomplishment. We all stood, cheering for one another, and for Whitman. We had “fetched” him. Walt himself was in the room, in one form or another, for as the very first stanza of his poem holds, “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

I found myself wondering what Whitman might have thought of his beloved America now, the crowded, sprawling, noisy, full of electronic news and nonsense and political insanity. Who knows. He did experience the carnage of the Civil War firsthand so perhaps he would not be very impressed. But his perspective seemed to encompass both impermanence and what lasts, and on nature in all its guises. I think he would love West Marin surrounded by the natural splendor he celebrated. In fact, I bet he would live here. Maybe he does. He certainly did on Sunday afternoon.

People still talk of the legendary San Francisco “Six Gallery” reading that some say launched the Beat “movement” in 1955 with Allen Ginsberg’s reading of his Howl. I wonder if, over 50 years from now, this reading might join that one as a truly historic event. Again, who knows? Afterwards, I asked an elated-looking Hass if, in his long poetic career, he had seen and heard anything like it, and he replied “No. This was just amazing.” It was an astonishment.

The Greatest Poetry Reading Ever?

Book Review by Reenie Rogers

It’s hardly news that tomatoes sold in grocery stores are mostly tasteless. And it’s barely news that migrant field workers who come to work in Florida, often find themselves working under terrible conditions. Author Barry Estabrook's book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit [ISBN: 9781449401092] is a riveting tale. Tomatoland is a place of greed and cruelty that’s barely believable.

Estabrook, an investigative food journalist was inspired to write Tomatoland because of two questions he had.
1. Why can’t modern agribusiness deliver a decent tasting tomato?
2. Why can’t today’s tomato be as nutritious as the tomato grown in the 1960s?
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, today’s tomato has 30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than the fruit of the 1960s. One nutrient that today’s tomato has more of is sodium: 14 times as much.

Estabrook traveled to the tomato fields in southwest Florida to see how tomatoes are grown. Tomatoland is a page-turner. Heroes and villains are alive in the fields of Florida’s tomato agribusiness. Top villains include Ag Mart Produce, Inc.; the Florida Tomato Committee; various cruel and abusive field bosses, and those involved in human trafficking.

Field bosses berate, beat, punish, and cheat their laborers, many of whom cannot speak or read English. They force them to stay in the fields even while pesticides are being applied, without respirators or appropriate clothing. Pregnant workers must to stay and work and be exposed to chemicals known to disrupt fetal development.

Tomato field workers often come from other countries illegally, [Hispanic, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants] with promises of housing and good wages. What they too often find are dilapidated trailers and cruel bosses. The heroes in Tomatoland include the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) who strive to end farm worker abuses, and other people who risk their lives to help fellow workers.

Florida tomatoes, at the center of the story, are bred to withstand the journey from field to market. At harvest time, they are picked green, “green tomatoes so identical they could have been stamped out by a machine, At packing time, pallets of green tomatoes go into warehouses for a treatment of ethylene gas which turns them red and ready for the market.

Tomatoland exposes the extraordinary powers that are wielded by a group called the Florida Tomato Committee. The Committee’s concern is for the tomatoes having uniform shape, size, and yield. There is no consideration for a tomato’s taste. Further, the regulations of the Committee prohibit growers in south Florida from exporting many of the older tasty tomato varieties because their color and shape don’t conform.

To grow Florida tomatoes, many chemicals are applied throughout the season. In Florida, 8 million pounds of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides were applied to tomatoes grown in 2006. California used 1 million pounds to grow the same amount of tomatoes. The Sunshine State might be better called the “Pesticide State.

Estabrook also offers success stories of unique individuals doing large-scale growing of organic tomatoes. While these offer hope, the distressing images in the other fields does not easily fade. One cannot help but contrast the humane farms with farms where slavery, birth defects, workers soaked with pesticides, and bosses cheating workers of their hard-earned wages, occurs.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs appears to have poor oversight. The horrors play out in the tomato fields unbeknownst to consumers who wouldn’t imagine that the tomatoes in their sandwiches, and salads were grown under such sad conditions. One third of all tomatoes sold in the United States from October to June come from Florida.

A reader’s trip through Tomatoland proves that this is a dreary business that needs to be closed for good. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a giant beacon of hope, and a group actively helping to end abuse to farm workers. And yes, organically-grown tomatoes tended by humane growers who treat their farm workers fairly and decently is the way of the future

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/book-review-tomatoland-how-modern-industrial-agriculture-destroyed-our-most-alluring-fruit-63365.html

Prolific children’s book author Florence Parry Heide, whose work was illustrated by such notable artists as Edward Gorey, Jules Feiffer and Lane Smith, has died at her Kenosha, WI, home at age 92. Heide died in her sleep Sunday night; she was in good health, and her death was unexpected. Daughter Roxanne Pierce said, “It came as a huge shock to me this morning. We had such a wonderful evening last night together. We watched a movie, made popcorn, laughed our heads off. It was very, very good, cozy and comfy. It made me feel good.”

Gilliland said her mother was the author of more than 100 children’s books. Heide’s works include mostly children’s books, lyrics and poems She also wrote under the pseudonyms Alex B. Allen and Jamie McDonald. Her most critically acclaimed work was The Shrinking of Treehorn in 1971, which was illustrated by Edward Gorey. The New York Times named it one of the best illustrated children’s books of 1971.

Carthage College professor Marilyn Ward recalls times that she brought her entire class to the author’s house. “She was everybody’s favorite, and she was such a fun person, always enthusiastic; she had a real zest for everything she did.” Heide was well known for the Fourth of July parade she organized each year: hundreds of children with their bikes decorated would gather outside her home and ride twice around her block to the beat of a drum

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/kenosha-childrens-book-author-florence-parry-heide-dies-at-age-92-wrote-more-than-100-books/2011/10/25/gIQAKXZzGM_story.html

Biography

Florence Parry Heide was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 27, 1919. Her father was David W. Parry, a banker, and her mother was Florence Fisher, a columnist and actress. In 1943, she married Captain Donald C. Heide, a lawyer, with whom she had five children: Christen, Roxanne, Judith, David, and Parry.

Florence Parry was educated at the Ellis School in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood before attending Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Two years later, she transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles in 1939, where she earned her B.A. in English. After graduation, Heide moved to New York City with hopes of finding a job. In the years prior to World War II, she worked at R.K.O. in New York, as well as at various advertising and public relations agencies. She later returned to her hometown and worked as the public relations director of the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

Children’s stories, mysteries, poetry, and lyrics are all represented in Heide’s bibliography, though she did not start writing until all five of her children were in school. Heide has been praised for her whimsical sense of humor and her keen insight into the lives of children. While her lighthearted children’s stories have garnered her the most renown and critical acclaim, Heide is also known for her ability to accurately portray the emotions of young girls facing the difficult transition into adolescence in such books as When the Sad One Comes to Stay, Growing Anyway Up, and Secret Dreamer, Secret Dreams. Heide co-wrote many of her books with Sylvia van Clief and continued co-authoring books with her own daughter, Roxanne, after van Clief died. She also co-wrote books with her brother David Fisher Parry as well as another daughter, Judith, and her son David.

Heide has received numerous awards for many of her works. Her most critically acclaimed work was The Shrinking of Treehorn, named by the New York Times as the Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 1971 and winner for the Best Children’s Book in Germany six years later. The Day of Ahmed’s Secret received the Editors’ Choice Award from Booklist in 1991, a prize also awarded to Sami and the Time of the Troubles in 1992. Other honors for her books include several Notable Book citations from the American Library Association and Best Book citations from The School Library Journal. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature by Carthage College in Wisconsin in 1979.

From the Internet

Something is happening in literature, thanks to writers like Justin Cronin, Benjamin Percy, and Colson Whitehead. The trappings of genre fiction: monsters, masked marvels, and gumshoes are no longer just popular fiction. Horror, mystery and science-fiction books have moved to the literature section.

To understand why this is significant, it's important to stress how rare this was in late 20th-century fiction when serious writers trafficked in realistic tales, simply told. Led by Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Amy Hempel, Richard Ford, Anne Beattie, and Tobias Wolff, these authors explored the everyday problems of everyday people.

That literature unfolded in diners, automobiles, and living rooms with the writing about modern-day people in believable situations. But eleven years into this new century our literary culture has undergone a change. A group of writers have fled this place we call "real life”. Literature shelves now commonly feature: zombies, werewolves, vampires; and space aliens.

Colson Whitehead is just one example of a good writer going rogue. Zone One is his crack at the zombie mythology. In Whitehead's story, a plague disrupts civilization in the very near future, spreading rabidly and transforming victims into cannibals. In the course of one long and blood-drenched night, civilization as we know it ends.

Raymond Carver, he isn't yet Zone One was heralded with equal eagerness in "serious" venues such as New York Magazine. How did we get here? The seeds of realist discontent can be seen in two recent genre-bending fiction anthologies, published by McSweeney's that included work from both Michael Crichton and Aimee Bender. In his introduction to McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, Michael Chabon argues that "serious" fiction had become sterile through too much inbreeding. He called for a new American literature that would "haunt the boundaries and secret shelves between the sections in the bookstore."

Then, the Pulitzer was awarded to works of fiction with strong genre overtones. Cormac McCarthy's The Road unfolds in the ash pit of a nuked-out future. In Junot Diaz's The Brief Wonderous Life Of Oscar Wao, geekdom reached new heights. This is the first Pulitzer-winning novel to take its epigraph from a comic book.

One book in particular helped break the genre barrier. By now, everyone has heard of Justin Cronin's fantasy smash The Passage, which combines an apocalypse and bloodthirsty vampires with complex characters and top-flight prose. The book sparked an unprecedented bidding war between publishers and the movies. The era of the literary-genre hybrid novel has undeniably arrived:

Our are day-to-day lives are becoming more science-fictional

The world of personal computing makes leaps forward with every passing month. Dick Tracy's two-way video wristwatch—unfathomable in the 1950s—is now no further away than somebody's iPhone. If you look at what's been on bookshelves since 9/11, there's been an abundance of apocalyptic narratives. All of them have to do with our fear of disease, our fear of environmental devastation, our fear of nuclear annihilation. Maybe because the end of the world has never seemed so possible."

Pop culture influences are now important literary influences

Previous writers took their cues from the past. But now our literary landscapes are unprecedented vast and various. Not only that, but appropriation has become an important artistic currency. We define our cultural moment in terms of media consumption. We are seeing the first tremors in a seismic shift of influences. Novelists and short-story writers are no longer afraid to embrace the pop cultural influences that excited them as kids. Culture has changed. Look at the phenomenon of the blockbuster like Indiana Jones, or something like Star Wars and Star Trek. You're exposed to that pretty early. It's just one of many influences that makes the writer of today.

Literary tastes are becoming increasingly global

American literature has diversified in a broader pool of voices. Latin American magical realism, as well as Japanese horror and science-fiction have already had substantial effects on American art. The increased availability and viability of contemporary works in translation also opens up new avenues for exploration.

Stories with mythic dimensions are timeless

We've been telling monster, science-fiction stories, superhero, horror and apocalypse stories for a long long time. Perhaps the appearance of modern myths in mainstream publishing is just a return to form. Cronin insists that this is good for literature, and that the best mythic archetypes will continue to appeal..

Financially and aesthetically; genre pays.

It would be naive to say that modern writers aren't aware of the financial gains of embracing genre. What starving artist hasn't at least once looked at J.K. Rowling's massive royalties. But there was a vampire soap opera on television in the late '60s called Dark Shadows that everybody went home and watched after school. Vampire comic books, the original Bram Stoker, this stuff has never gone away. It never will.

In the worst of today’s genre fiction, you see hollow characters, you see transparent prose, you see the same themes and archetypes occurring. But if you look at the best of genre fiction, you see this incredible desire to discover what happens next. Genre will always have its critics. An original review of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five acknowledged, "You'll either love it, or you'll push it back into the science-fiction corner." This is a matter of taste; some audiences will bristle at the strange or otherworldly scenarios that other readers instinctively seek out. The same can be said for any book that contains readily identifiable character archetypes: detectives and spacemen, cowgirls and zombies.

If widespread genre cross-pollination results in a new breeds of literary chimera, our literature will benefit. Establishment writers will open up new worlds of possibility, and gain an ability to explore myth and magic. And genre writers with undeniable talent will earn a place in the annals of literature.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/how-zombies-and-superheroes-conquered-highbrow-fiction/246847/?single_page=true

Prominent families usually when they have a problem, secretly bringing in advisors to help them resolve their issue. The families convince themselves that their problems are somehow so unique and rare that only outside consultants can help. They wind up spending a small fortune in the process.

But this “needed” wisdom can be had for much less money. Consider the low price of Pantheon’s The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a lovely translation of the “Brothers Grimm” published in 1944. It is beautifully illustrated by Josef Scharl and includes commentary by the late, Joseph Campbell.

Take the issue of family succession. It is perhaps the most painful of all family businesses. How do you train your kids to take over your business? How do you decide which of the kids gets handed the keys? “The Three Brothers” tale is only two pages long yet passes on all the wisdom any family could need to solve their succession issues. Here’s a recap of the story:

There was a man with three sons and he had only a small house to give away at his passing. All the sons wanted the house, but he loved them equally. He could sell the house and divide the money among the boys, but this was the house of his father and he couldn’t bear to dispose of it. Instead, the man turned to his sons and said, “Go into the world, and each of you try to learn a trade, and, when you all come back, he who makes a masterpiece shall have the house.”

The three young men thought that was a fair arrangement and went out into the world. The oldest son found a master who turned him into a skilled blacksmith. The second son learned the barber trade. The third became a fencing-master. Each was convinced the house would be there’s as such was the skill they acquired.

At the appointed time they returned to their father. As they were sitting and trying to figure out how to demonstrate their skills, a rabbit darted across the field. The barber instantly took his basin and soap and lathered up, and as the hare dashed by, he shaved off its whiskers while it was running at top speed, never once cutting the animal’s skin.

“Well done,” said his father. “Unless your brother can do better, the house is yours.” Right then a nobleman came clattering through in his carriage, and this time the blacksmith jumped up, and changed all four shoes on the horse as it was galloping. The father was again suitably impressed, and told his blacksmith son he was a “fine fellow and as clever as your brother. I don’t know to which I ought to give the house.”

The third son asked if he could take his turn, just as it started to rain. He flourished his sword backwards and forwards around his head, at such speed, not a single drop fell on him, no matter how hard it rained. When his father saw this he said, “This is a masterpiece, the house is yours.”

His brothers agreed with their father’s decision, “because this was agreed beforehand, and as they loved one another very much, they all three stayed together in the same house, followed their trades, and they earned a great deal of money.” When one brother died, the others mourned so hard they quickly followed, and they were “laid to rest in one grave.”

The moral of this tale is to be clear, to be fair, and a house will remain harmonious. Kids should be clearly made to understand the that family house will only be their’s on the basis of merit. Instead of letting children go directly from college to a position in the family business, this tale suggests they should first make their way in the “real world” where the family name is meaningless. One prominent family we know, already following this practice, has further stipulated each kid must get at least one promotion before they can return to the family business.

Furthermore, make it clear to your children that the child ultimately given the keys to the kingdom will be chosen not through favoritism, but through an open process that fairly evaluates each kid’s talents. If all the children know from the outset that merit will win the day the sort of bad blood that accompanies so many botched succession plans will probably not become an issue.

Time to dust off your Grimm’s fairy tales? This is just one example of the priceless wisdom of the ages found in the book that should be in every family’s library.

http://blogs.barrons.com/penta/2011/10/24/penta-on-books-grimms-fairy-tales/

Which author sells the most books around Tehran. Everyone seems to want a copy. It's not Ahmadinejad. It's not the Ayatollah. It's Gabriel García Márquez who hasn't published a book in years. But back in 1996 he wrote News Of A Kidnapping. [Paperback: ISBN-10: 0140267832]. Iranian bookstores are sold out. You might be able to find a bootlegged version for three times the cover price. What in the world is going on? Mir Hossein Moussavi is an opposition leader here. He's been under house arrest since February. In a recent meeting he compared his detention to Márquez's account of abductions by a drug cartel in Colombia. The word spread. And just like that, News Of A Kidnapping went viral.

Hundreds of activists, journalists and students have been imprisoned in Iran for taking part in demonstrations since 2009. More than 200 executions have been announced this year. Barring China, no other country metes out the death penalty more often. So why aren't we seeing any pushback? After all, it's the year of the Arab Spring. Where are Iran's famous protesters? The Iranian regime has learned its lesson in 2009. Now it crushes the first signs of dissent and it won't let hundreds of people gather in public places.

But the likes of Libya and Syria tried that too. What's different here is that Iranians are not Arabs. They're a great civilization with a political system that seems to have failed its people. Iran arouses suspicion in the region and around the world. Iran is subject to the most stringent international sanctions. There is clearly suppression and discontent, but even if Iranians were to revolt once more - what is it they want instead? They are wary of revolution. What is the alternative? And will it be any better? There's isn't a simple answer.

Clearly some Iranians support this regime for reasons of religious loyalty and belief and because of tangible material rewards. Others fear it. And still others are waiting for the opportunity to reform or even replace it. The people who can read Márquez are surely a signs of a county where people are gasping for freedom.

Tehran's unlikely bestseller

From Library Journal

Garcia Marquez, Latin America's Nobel prize-winning novelist, turned his hand for the first time to nonfiction to explain the widespread kidnapping in Colombia. The author captures the political intricacies and strange, deep involvement of drug dealers in Colombian life, turning what as easily could have been an imagined story into a fascinating exploration of contemporary culture, politics, and drug lords.

From The New York Times

The cocaine boom was born sometime in the 1970's, by Carlos Rivas, a former automobile parts smuggler. He took to importing cocaine, and, using the old methods of smuggling emeralds or orchids, he grew vastly rich. The rest is very bad history. Before long a number of cartels were exporting refined cocaine to the USA. The original cartel operated out of Medellin. There were others, one based in Cali and one in the capital, Bogota.

American pressure put the Columbia authorities in a very difficult situation. Let us imagine that we have a President who carries five bullets in his body as the result of an assassination attempt. Let us imagine that Lady Bird Johnson and Amy Carter have both spent time in the hands of kidnappers, living on tortillas, in fear of their lives.. Two popular Attorneys General, have been gunned down, as has several heads of the FBI and the DEA, as well as numerous Congressmen and Senators. All over the country, prosecutors and judges are being offered the choice of being rich or dead. This is the situation underlying the story that Marquez, tells in his nonfiction book. The object of these kidnappings was to pressure the Government from sending drug lords to the prisons that awaited them in the USA. The drug bosses were on the receiving end of a few kidnappings themselves, carried out by rebel groups like the M-19. The cartels dealt with them by forming a Death to Kidnappers organization. And by a series of murders and tortures, they discouraged the practice by their enemies. And the dignity of their office did not prevent the police from employing brutal and fatal methods in their treatment of those associated with the cocaine distribution.

Marquez wrote ''News of a Kidnapping'' to document the suffering bravely endured and to alert the world to Colombia's crises. Mr. Marquez is a former journalist, and his book resembles good newspaper journalism, with a quick eye for the illuminating detail and facts. The horrors and absurdities, the touches of tender humanity and the stony cruelty are all part of this story. Both the head of Colombia's Department for Security, and cartel leader Pablo Escobar, were trying to kill each other. Both believed they owed the preservation of their lives to the Holy Infant of Prague. This inflicted a woeful conflict of interest on the tiny Savior. Other kidnappers almost come to blows over their respective opinions of the Pope. In keeping with his role as objective journalist, Mr. Garcia Marquez makes very little comment on these and other conditions that underlie the intense pathology he describes.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/970615.15stonet.html

Early manuscripts had no punctuation at all, and those from the medieval period suggest haphazard innovation, with more than 30 different marks. The modern repertoire of punctuation emerged as printers in the 15th and 16th centuries strove to limit this miscellany. Many punctuation marks are less venerable than we might imagine. Parentheses were first used around 1500, having been observed by English writers and printers in Italian books. Commas were not employed until the 16th century; in early printed books in English one sees a virgule (a slash like this /), which the comma replaced around 1520.

Other marks enjoyed briefer success. There used to be a clunky paragraph sign known as a pilcrow; initially it was a C with a slash drawn through it. Similar in its effect was one of the oldest punctuation symbols, a horizontal ivy leaf called a hedera. It appears in 8th-century manuscripts, separating text from commentary, and after a period out of fashion it made an unexpected return in early printed books. Then it faded from view.

Another mark, now obscure, is the point d'ironie, sometimes known as a "snark." A back-to-front question mark, it was deployed by the 16th-century printer Henry Denham to signal rhetorical questions, and in 1899 the French poet Alcanter de Brahm suggested reviving it. More recently, the difficulty of detecting irony and sarcasm in electronic communication has prompted fresh calls for a revival of the point d'ironie. But the chances are slim that it will make a comeback.

In fact, Internet culture generally favors a lighter, more informal style of punctuation. True, emoticons have sprung up to convey nuances of mood and tone. Moreover, typing makes it easy to amplify punctuation: splattering 20 exclamation marks on a page, or using multiple question marks to signify theatrical incredulity. But, overall, punctuation is being renounced.

How might punctuation now evolve? The dystopian view is that it will vanish. I find this conceivable, though not likely. But we can see harbingers of such change: editorial austerity with commas, the newsroom preference for the period over all other marks, and the taste for visual crispness. Though it is not unusual to hear calls for new punctuation, the marks proposed tend to cannibalize existing ones. In this vein, you may have encountered the interrobang [often represented by ?! or !?] which signals excited disbelief. Such marks are symptoms of an increasing tendency to punctuate for rhetorical rather than grammatical effect. Instead of presenting syntactical and logical relationships, punctuation reproduces the patterns of speech.

One manifestation of this is the advance of the dash. It imitates the jagged urgency of conversation, in which we change direction sharply and with punch. Dashes became common only in the 18th century. Their appeal is visual, their shape dramatic. That's what a modern, talky style of writing seems to demand.

Punctuation arouses strong feelings. You have probably come across the pen-wielding vigilantes who skulk around defacing movie posters and amending handwritten signs that advertise "Rest Room's" or "Puppy's For Sale." People fuss about punctuation not only because it clarifies meaning but also because its neglect appears to reflect wider social decline. And while the big social battles seem intractable, smaller battles over the use of the apostrophe feel like they can be won.

Yet the status of this and other cherished marks has long been precarious. The story of punctuation is one of comings and goings. The use of the semicolon is dwindling. Although colons were common as early as the 14th century, the semicolon was rare in English books before the 17th century. It has always been regarded as a useful hybrid—a separator that's also a connector—but it's a trinket beloved of people who want to show that they went to the right school.

More surprising is the eclipse of the hyphen. Traditionally, it has been used to link two halves of a compound noun and has suggested that a new coinage is on probation. But now the noun is split (fig leaf, hobby horse) or rendered without a hyphen (crybaby, bumblebee). It may be that the hyphen's last outpost will be in emoticons, where it plays a leading role.

Graphic designers, who favor an uncluttered aesthetic, dislike hyphens. They are also partly responsible for the disappearance of the apostrophe. This little squiggle first appeared in an English text in 1559. Its use has never been completely stable, and today confusion leads to the overcompensation that we see in those handwritten signs. The alternative is not to use apostrophes at all—an act of pragmatism easily mistaken for ignorance. Defenders of the apostrophe insist that it minimizes ambiguity, but there are few situations in which its omission can lead to real misunderstanding.

The apostrophe is mainly a device for the eye, not the ear. And while I plan to keep handling apostrophes in accordance with the principles I was shown as a child, I am confident that they will either disappear or be reduced to little baubles of orthographic bling.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576641182784805212.html

By Franz Lidz

I read in the paper that, at the precocious age of 95, Harold Herman has died [October 8, 2011]. From 1964 to 1983, he was proprietor of the Whitman Book Shop. Later he owned Penn Center Books. He was Philadelphia's premier bookseller. A man of few words, most of them names. During the half-century I knew him, he always addressed me by my last name. In fact, we had entire conversations that consisted of that one word. Yet somehow he managed to say it with great affection. I was 9 when my family moved from New York to Philadelphia. Mr. H's son was one of my classmates in elementary school. As a kid, I loved to sit at the Hermans' kitchen table while Mr. H slowly enunciated the remarkable names of unremarkable ballplayers: "DOO-ley WO-mack." "JOHN-ny HERRN-stein." "COOK-ie RO-jas."He was a gruff, intimidating presence.

Mr. H may have been the first Philadelphia Jew to dab margarine on his bagels instead of cream cheese. Indeed, he may have been Philly's first foodie. In his case, though, taste took a backseat to color. "Pass the blue," he'd tell his wife, Flossie, pointing to a bottle of salad dressing. Or, "Flossie, you know I don't eat green Jell-O!" Actually, that would have been one of Mr. H's longer dinner conversations. Over the course of a one hour-long meal I attended at the Herman home in 1967, Mr. H muttered exactly three words from behind a copy of the Philadelphia Bulletin: "Salt." "Pepper." And "Flossie!" With the exception of my parents, Mr. and Mrs. H were the only married couple of my youth who, in their own daffy way, actually seemed to enjoy spending time with one another.

When my mother's cancer started to spread and she was spending more time in the hospital than out, I became a near-constant presence at the Herman house. I was playing football in their backyard on what turned out to be the worst day of my life. I still remember Flossie waving me into the house. "Your father is coming to pick you up," I knew that my mother was dead, because there wasn’t another word said. I went out front and stood watching for my father hoping he would never come. He waited until I got in the car before saying, "Your mother died this morning." He said nothing else during the short drive home. He looked straight ahead. I couldn't speak, and he couldn't speak. Our love for my mother had made us dumb. At the funeral, Mr. H shuffled over to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and murmured, with grim finality, "Lidz." That was all he said, and all he needed to say.

Mr. H had given me Webster's Third International Dictionary. It's the only bar mitzvah gift I still have. I like to think the Hermans were the first people to envision a future for me as a writer. I still recall Mr. H's instructions: After looking something up, leave the dictionary open to “M“. He explained, tersely, that leaving the book open to any other letter would ruin the spine. I checked this morning. Fittingly, it was open to the page that begins with the word maraschino, the kind of bottled cherry that always reposed on the top shelf of the Hermans' refrigerator.

The only wedding present my wife and I still have is a copy of Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler that Floss and Harold gave us. The novel, which remains one of my favorites, has a character who doesn't read. "They teach us to read as children," he says, "and for the rest of our lives we remain the slaves of all the written stuff they fling in front of us. I may have had to make some effort myself, at first, to learn not to read, but now it comes quite naturally to me. The secret is not refusing to look at the written words. On the contrary, you must look at them, intensely, until they disappear." My mother used to say: that the most important lessons lay not in what you need to learn, but in what you first need to unlearn. She and Flossie and Harold showed me that the difficulty is not in new ideas, but in escaping the old ones. The philosopher Lao Tzu once divined, "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things."

Somewhere in the coiled scrolls of the Talmud is an adage that says you are not required to finish studying, but you are not allowed to stop. The critic Judith Shulevitz observed that life, unlike fiction, has neither crisp beginnings nor redemptive endings. It endures, as Mr. H did, it endures until it doesn't. If there is an afterlife, Harold Herman’s passing makes it seem much more attractive. It will be a kick to hear him slowly enunciating: "Jer-e-MI-ah." "I-SAI-ah." "E-ZE-ki-el."

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20111021_A_bookseller_of_few_words.html