Beginning on Friday, May 10, at 11 am, edt. It’s raining outside.
Now Saturday, 10 am edt, and sunny outside, temperatures are rising fast, past 70 deegrees, headed up another 10 degrees before midnight.
Rain has continued, off and on, for more than two days, not heavy, but there was sporadic lightning and thunder.
I found Erskine Caldwell’s book, All-Out 0n The Road To Smolensk on my bookshelves. It probably belonged to my mother, who saved some books by famous authors of the early 1900s. She seemed to favor Southern US writers, and had other Caldwell books, too.
This one, published in 1942, is a travelogue, of sorts, about Caldwell’s decision in early 1941 to visit the USSR, specifically Moscow, before the Germans began their attack on the Russians. He thought this would take place before the year was over.
Smolensk is a town in the northeastern arm of Russia, near the border with the country of Belarus. The Belarus capitol of Minsk has been in the news of late, with regard to the “Minsk accords”.
Saturday is Saturn’s day, in Roman mythology . At 6:40 am edt, the sky had lightened, and the first glow of sun glowed orange on hanging Spanish moss southeastward.
And Speckles crows, yet again . . .
I have uploaded photos of two book jackets by authors who contributed significantly to the gestalt of the 20th century.
Harry Browne died in 2006. I met him at the National Libertarian Convention in Atlanta in June of 2004. He had run for US president on the Libertarian ticket in 1995, when this book was published; but in 2004, Republican George W. Bush was incumbent and about to begin his second term in office.
I’ve never met Ralph Nader, but he lent his name to the book, The Water Lords, published in 1970, about the polluting paper industries along the Georgia coast, in Savannah and Brunswick. He spearheaded the Nader Raiders, a volunteer group of Harvard law students who launched investigations into the FTC and spurred the 1965 publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, that targeted Chevrolet’s Corvair and Ford’s Pinto.
My father had a Corvair, which he called “my little jewel”. After Nader’s book came out, Wally bought another Corvair, second hand. The cars ran well, but Wally died of a heart attack in 1979. Before his death, he complained how Georgia governor Jimmy Carter was bureaucratizing the Georgia health department’s network, where my father had worked since before I was born.
The time link between all of these incidences becomes more relevant as the US heads into a national election in November of 2024.
And, at 10:30 am edt, a sunny day and about 75 degrees outside.
Now on Sunday, May 12, 2024, at almost 10 am– Sunday, named for the sun, shining bright in the Here and Now, dispersing haze at the horizon.
Let the sun shine! I just read a post from Ralph Nader himself, dated March, 5, 2024, about the genocide in Gaza, which he says is far more devastating than anything reported so far. You can read for yourself at nader.org. I have said enough.
And now, close to midnight on Woden’s day, spelled Odin, or Wodan by the Scandanavians and Celts, for the fourth day of the week, Wednesday, this Geezer is about to post this blog and say good night.
Yesterday, Tuesday, May 7, 2024, I started tying together a number of blog starts saved as drafts. It is hot and humid here in the swamps of south Georgia, US of A, even at midnight, but at least the rain has desisted for a couple of days.
I’m recalling my last contact with Savannah’s Geezers’ group, officially the Senior Citizens’ Domestic Affairs discussion group.
I walked (some might say “stormed”) out of the group seven years ago. With attendance between 20-30 people, it is presumably open to all seniors. In fact, it selects for a specific group, primarily Democratic Yankee urban escapees who have moved to The Landings, a gated community accessed by three bridges over two rivers.
After four years of sporadic attendance at these meetings, I finally decided they are a waste of my time and effort.
I m a multi-generational Savannahian who grew up stomping in the marsh, swimming and boating in the rivers, camping on and exploring the formerly almost deserted islands along the creeks, crabbing and shrimping, before Union Camp paper company (now International Paper) got the county government to pass debt-obligation bonds to build those bridges to support conversion of its former island tree farm into a fancy real estate development.
I was here before the Clean Air Act of the 1970s, when Union Camp was still spewing hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere and dumping sulfuric acid into the Savannah River.
The Clean Air Act’s tentacles also reached into the waterways and “wetlands, so claimed our marshes as “wetlands” under jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers.
I know because I met some retired Corps engineers at a local coffee shop in 2008. They had moved to Savannah to work on the Savannah River harbor deepening project in their district office in the center of downtown, that inside-out bathroom that dominated two full blocks of primo real estate on Oglethorpe Avenue. As if to further insult Savannah, the Corps’ building was named for Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts in 1912, who was from Savannah. I was in the Girl Scout 50th anniversary parade in 1962.
This was before the US of A declared war on the world and started sending aircraft from Hunter Army Airfield over my house on regular deployments to the Middle East. And the helicopters from Hunter on otherwise peaceful afternoons, that hovered over the marsh; or Georgia police state helicopters, like from the Department of Natural Resources, looking for trouble and trouble-makers like me; The county and the Georgia Port Authority have a deal to share the mosquito problem between them, since the harbor deepening project scoops acres of toxic river bottom onto land. This has created the biggest mosquito nest in two states, and yet another real estate boondoggle, otherwise known as the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA). The state Department of Natural Resources patrols the rivers in high-speed boats and the county dumps various poisons by helicopter on our heads to kill mosquitoes.
So I’m an anathema to the Yankee invaders who scorn locals like me, raised across the marsh from their taxpayer-subsidized gilded prison. But International Paper, Union Camp’s sword swallower, is still busy polluting the Savannah River and air; lobbying for carbon credits to prevent them from razing Brazilian rain forests for junk mail; and exporting profits to Wall Street.
Now today is Wednesday, is named for Woden, the Norse god, ruled by the planet Mercury, in Greco-Roman mythology. Mercury, chemical symbol Hg, the metallic quicksilver in chemistry, is a heavy metal used in industry, thermometers, and river-bottom dredge material for creating real estate where marsh used to be. Mercury’s atomic weight is close to that of lead, another heavy metal that is still used in industry, like the manufacture of automobile and other batteries. Both are neurotoxins. My general chemistry book says mercury compounds are toxic to all animals. In 1970, mercury was detected in fish taken from the St. Clair River (between Michigan and Ontario, Canada), traced to industrial plants that were involved in electrolysis of aqueous sodium chloride (salt water) where mercury is used as an electrode.
I have also retrieved a book about the industrial polluters of the Savannah River and air.
I haven’t heard much about Ralph Nader lately, but he made quite a stir in the 1970’s with his environmental concerns. This book focuses on Savannah, but the Georgia coast is replete with industry devoted to pine tree growth and harvesting for paper and all the products pine trees produce.
Georgia ports (Savannah and Brunswick) are busy and getting busier exporting wood, wood products, and military equipment, personnel and defense contractors to hot spots around the world. Georgia ports also bring in cheap plastic junk from places where plastic is a byproduct of hydrocarbon distillate. We can thank science for inventing new uses for fossil fuels over the last century.
Unless something happens to stop it, the US of A will hold a presidential election this November. We don’t have clear choices about who will run or what their agendas might be. Geezers like me are beyond caring about the political posturing of the Mucky Mucks and hangers on vying for the limelight.
As a synthesizer of relevant factoids from a variety of sources, this Geezer finds it interesting that these heavy metal elements are showing up in wildlife, possibly from overconcentration of industry along rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans. They are working their way up the food chain, as the mass producers of toxins worldwide mix, merge, reproduce and change names. For instance, the herbicide Roundup is still sold in garden supply stores, but the original producer, Monsanto, has been sold to Bayer, which is a German company, spawned from IG Farben, which monetized the antipyretic and anesthetic use of willow bark in the 1850s to make the first aspirin.
This Woden’s (Odin’s) day afternoon, the sun set behind southwestern trees around 3 pm, edt, and temperatures started dropping from a high of 88 degrees Fahrenheit; the tide had gone out, breezes started blowing, and I surprised a racoon drinking from the planter base I use to fed birds, including my two chickens. Sunlight lingered on the marsh another couple of hours, and the air became still and muggy. Gunners continued blasting at the Club down the street until their dinner hour at 6 pm, and my chickens were emerging from under the building to look and listen to the awakening owls in the spreading shade.
So now, Woden’s day is over. Thursday is Thor’s day to the Celts, ruled by the planet Jupiter in European astronomy and folklore, Jove to the Romans, and Zeus to the Greeks. Jupiter, god of thunder and lightning, fiery storms, long distance travel, higher mind and law, as well as educational institutions. Thursday, in the Western hemisphere in the Here and Now, this Geezer bids all a good night.
Today, Wednesday, May 1, 2024 The Art of Strategy is on my mind and in my lap.
This 1988 paperback edition of the original 6th century BC writings attributed to Sun Tsu in China represents a shift from earlier translations into various languages and different cultures over time.
Also pictured here are examples of various games of strategy, like chess, jackstones, playing cards, and a golf ball. The telescope can be used for bird watching, and the scale is a multi purpose measuring device, for quantities of items in pounds or kilograms, depending on which of the measuring systems is used.
May Day is a term that has its own history. It is the anglicized contraction of the French m’aidez, meaning “help me”, but it is also celebrated in different cultural traditions as the blossoming of spring, dancing and revelry. Think “May Pole”.
And now Thursday, May 2, 2024, at a little after 9 am, edt, I’m once again reminded of the preciousness of time. I started this blog yesterday, but Real Life required my mind and hands to Do Things, like reassure Speckles and Tweety when they panicked at the sight of a large bird, maybe a heron, that swooped down over the place Speckles was settled on the lawn. It took Some Doing to calm Specs and Tweety down, but they are okay now.
The Art of Strategy suggests that the ability to shift sets instantaneously separates winners from losers. Both must plan for contingencies, but the winner has the flexibility to adapt to the unexpected in decisive moments, as Speckles did yesterday. That 12-year-old rooster showed remarkable ability to flee from potential danger, even though his bad foot makes it hard for him to stand or move quickly.
And, as the sunlight moves southwestward across the lawn, and clouds disperse, it’s time to Do Things that require my Whole Body and Mind’s attention, at 10 am, edt, in the US of A.
I was fantacizing about being begged to run for president.
“No way would I take a government job,” I would say.
“That’s why we want you,” people might respond. “You would downsize government.”
“Eliminate the presidency, then. That would downsize it in a hurry.”
“We need you to do that.”
“OK. I’ll tell you what. No government benefits. I’ll work as an independent contractor. I’ll need about $25,000/year, and double that for the vampire that bleeds me in taxes. So I’ll need about $50,000 the first year, until I abolish the Fed. That should cancel out the national debt, so we won’t need income taxes anymore. The second year, I’ll only need $25,000 for personal use, so we will save money there.
My second year, I’ll abolish all drug and alcohol laws, so we’ll no longer need the CIA, ATF, FBI, DEA, FDA, CMS, CDC, USDA, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, or the TSA. Then I will wait for the private sector to absorb the former government employees.
My third year, I’ll abolish Congress, the rest of the federal agencies, all government employee and pension programs, and Wall Street.
My fourth year, I’ll abolish the Supreme Court and cancel all government contracts. Then I’ll resign, because I can’t run the country by myself.
“Either side can terminate with 30 days’ notice, for any reason. The 30 days would give me time to move my stuff out of the White House, so I would not be expected to work as president during that time.
“These are my terms,” I would say. “If there is anything illegal about that, have the Supreme Court and Congress, and whoever is president now, change the law so I can run on my own terms.”
“Would you do that for us,” they might ask.
“No way,” I would reply. “Frankly, I think it’s a waste of time, because those dorks can’t agree on anything. Why should I do their job if I’m not getting paid for it? You want me to downsize government, so we need to find these clowns work in the private sector so they won’t continue to tax taxpayers
“Nothing against them, you understand, but I don’t believe in paying people to boss me around, or in having more stuff than I need. I have all the assets I can handle, and I just want to coast awhile.”
This is Tweety Pie, who is feeling better, thank you, even after spending almost all day Friday under the guest house with Speckles, because of the rain and cold. All our schedules were upended. I ran between raindrops all day, back and forth .
Today, Monday, April 29, 2024 at 8 am edt, birds are twittering outside. Sunlight is creeping over the southeastern segment of lawn, and the sky is hazily clear. At earth level, it smells like pollen, maybe privet pollen. Squirrels are talking, too, speaking a language I don’t understand.
I don’t understand much except tone. Animal chatter among the trees seems harmonious . . . and Speckles crows . . . insistent.
I’m having to adapt to changing circumstances as time leaves the past and moves to the Now and beyond. I wanted freedom and independence.
This I have now, sort of. My attachments to Humanland are minimal, but for brief encounters here and there. My range of action is smaller, but deeper, as I delve into the Whys of life. Strong winds Saturday afternoon gave way to calm yesterday. Why? I noted online that there were tornadoes in Nebraska, maybe some people killed. Columbia University is trying to contain student protests. The US Congress is moving towards further limiting speech to monitoring electronic communications for evidence of “extremism”.
We all need editors, a journalist once told me. Yes, we do, I believe, if only to note when we lose clarity. “What do you mean, when you use certain words or phrases? Are you trying to inspire thought or to provoke a reaction?”
The first of the US Constitution’s “Bill of Rights” was for “free speech”, a negotiated deal between delegates from the 13 states, to get ratification, in 1787. Now, “free speech” is under attack. What is allowed, in today’s noisy human world?
I read old books and find words that make me cringe in today’s politically touchy environment. I find wordiness and obfuscation, translations by those whose verbal gymnastics don’t extend to the nuances of both languages.
Animals don’t have that problem. After four years, Lollipop the stray cat and I have worked out a routine, of sorts, without words. The few times he has tried even to meow, his voice is scratchy, as though he has never learned to use it. But he showed up this morning for breakfast, for the first time in three days. That’s free speech.
Photo from the inside cover of The Velvet Doublet by James Street. Street was a Southern, American author and journalist who wrote several historical novels in the first half of the 20th century. He was born October 15, 1903 in Lumberton, Mississippi and died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on September 28, 1954.
Thomas B. Costain, who wrote The Silver Chalice published in 1952, was a Canadian journalist, and also an author of historical fiction. Costain published his first best seller at age 57, in 1942. He was born in Ontario, Canada May 8, 1885 and died in New York City on October 8, 1965.
I was introduced to these authors by my bookshelves, which hold assorted books collected by family members over a century. My grandmother, Kate, had books by both Costain and Street. She also gifted my father with educational books and atlases, like the Atlas of World History, from which I have gleaned maps and short summaries about people, historical events and geographical movements over time.
Around 6 pm edt, I photographed the Atlas. It is still Tuesday.
My copy of The Times Atlas of World History was published in 1978 in London and in Garden City, NYC, just after I had left for adventures westward. The book probably belonged to my father, and this photo of the jacket cover shows Handy Underfoot’s work, before Tweety got too sick to eat book jackets on my bottom shelf.
It is now dark outside, at midnight, edt, and temperature about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Tweety seemed okay after I rescued her from the carport trash bin, since it was almost full of sticks and branches for burning in the wood stove. She and Speckles are now resting peacefully in their coop. After a new wave of wanting to throw this cell phone into the river, I note that in 2016 or 2017, it was announced that Bayer and Monsanto were merging. Today I read farmers in the Northeast US of A are suing Bayer for cancers related to the use of Roundup, a weedkiller. Well, well, well. Never mind that the chemical industries are related to the agricultural industry; to the pharmaceutical industry; to the government industry; and to the bombs and weapons industries. Big Tech is on top of it, because Big Tech is an outgrowth of Little Tech, which started with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, when someone invented a pump for draining water from coal mines in the UK. Then, in the 1800s we had the railroads and the Robber Barons in the US of A for connecting the vast stretch of North American land mass east to west and west to east. In the 1900s, the world was interconnected by land, sea, air, and electricity, with the first transAtlantic and transPacific cables laid for telephone and telegraph communications. In the 2000s, we have satellite communications, with ever expanding opportunities to make peace or war via technology.
Both Costain and Street were born and raised in North America during the years before and after the first and second world wars. Costain, born earlier, died later, at 80 years old. During his life he worked in several areas of publishing. In 1920, he became a naturalized citizen of the US of A and worked as an editor at Doubleday, which published my copy of his book, The Silver Chalice, in 1952.
The Velvet Doublet, also published by Doubleday, in 1953, is a novel about Christopher Columbus, as journaled by Lepe, a seaman who joined Columbus’ crew aboard the fleet of three ships that ventured west into the unknown seeking the riches of Cathay.
LilOleMe began working at Doubleday in midtown Manhattan, NYC in 1975, as an assistant editor in the children’s books department. From the tall office building, I could see Grand Central Station, which at that time still hosted the Penn Central Railway. Outside, I could also see its large clock, which was right behind the two female would-be purse-snatchers who threatened me with an invisible knife on my lunch hour.
So over 40 years later, when I found these dated books, both published before I was born at a publishing house I remembered well, I felt as though the authors and I had a connection in time and space by our overlapping experiences. Both books are damaged by age and humidity, but they have helpful maps of the places encountered by seaman Lepe in The Velvet Doublet, or by Basil the silver artisan in The Silver Chalice.
Tweety has helped personalize the library, with her little Devil/Angel beak.
And at midnight edt I’m ready to post and recharge. Good night.
Nobody wins in a fight, except those who like fighting. Call me a coward, if you will, but I have been caught in the middle between others’ fights all my life. Choose any side, and all the weaponry turns toward me. Supposed allies join with supposed enemies in their joint retaliation against a spoiler of their fun.
Today, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, at almost noon edt, I’m saddened to see so much human energy and creativity misspent (according to me) on indulging hate and fear, when sun is shining, and birds are singing outside my open door.
I’m lucky to be in this position, knowing through media that mucky-mucks in other places around the world are contesting their relative powers to destroy things and people others have built, including their abilities to maintain what they have.
Life is terminal. I felt the loss last night on reading Mr. Flowers has died, of natural causes. This peacock I had never met lived on a farm in the midwestern US of A, and his caretaker has been posting blogs for years about the animals on her farm. Cecilia hails originally from New Zealand. She has led an exciting, multi-continental life, with offspring spead far afield, whom she visits when she can.
Ceci shows no need to fight. She is too busy taking care of her farm and animals, traveling, posting blogs, and doing human things that wend their way around all the wars perpetrated by mucky-mucks and their stage of limelight-seekers on the soapboxes of the world.
Did Mr. Flowers care? I think not. Why should I? I’m still walking, talking, breathing, and driving, challenge enough, given the unpredictable upsets in the HumanLand dimension.
So Tweety and Speckles are OK, for now. I have no need to fight. At almost 2 pm edt, on Tuesday, Mars’ day in astrology, Mardi in French, even the Gun Clubbers are taking a break. In my Now, all is peaceful.
Trying to find reality in all the Truth presented by human beings pretending to know it.
This is a collage I made by hand depicting my experiment with burning trash at the end of the spit of land that I pay property taxes on. I was burning paper trash (mostly junk mail), yard trash, and plastic trash (mostly packaging) to find out what becomes of CO2 emissions in the environment. The plastic was in a separate, composting bin; and it melted the metal. It also emitted toxic fumes that blew my way when the wind changed and the tide started coming in.
Considering that Monday, April 22, 2024 is designated Earth Day, with the theme geared toward plastics, it seems relevant to note how pervasive plastics have become, mostly in the form of packaging. True that the plastics industry–a major industry, with many products and potential products, given the “plasticity” of the source material–has blossomed since 1900, as has the human population of the planet.
Freinkel’s book, published in 2011, gives part of the story of plastics, and even she recognized in 2011 that plastic debris was creating huge “gyres” in the world’s oceans. The Pacific Garbage Patch, for instance:
On p. 129, she writes that a California-based sailor was returning home from Hawaii in 1997 and noted that for a full week, no matter what time of day he looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.
Freinkel then cites a Seattle oceanographer, who has made a career of tracking floatsam, debris, and the contents of cargo containers lost at sea, such as rubber ducks and sneakers, to better understand ocean movements. Debris from North America and Asia is caught up in the gyre currents, but some gets spun into the center. The technical term for this gyre is "The North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone." This ocean "garbage patch" is the size of Texas and "swimming with an estimated three million pounds of debris" says Freinkel's 2011 book. The book notes that this area is the feeding ground of the Laysan albatross.
My sporadic efforts to keep my own life running smoothly force me to contradict the human idiot on Facebook who claims I can't have a personal truth. Idiot says "Truth" is conditioned, apparently, by what I am told. Huh? Does Idiot want to haul away the plastic garbage that washes onto my burning experiment at spring and fall tides? Or the bits of shiny plastic dropped by crows onto my sandspur-infested lawn? Or riverside trees that blow over onto the roof of my house in high winds?
Are people really waking up? My personal life hasn’t changed much in the last couple of days, but the emergence of sunny days after a winter of rain and storms is bringing messages of universal love and compassion from unexpected points on the globe and in time.
Speckles crowing
Sunrise? Today, Saturday, April 13, 2024, shortly after sunrise on a blessedly clear day, the gunners are already blasting down the street. The Gun Club has been a fixture in the surround all my life, so their noise provides background to all the additional noises that the wave of new development has brought.
No. The hopefulness comes around and through the media-promoted messages of conflict, war, violence, disease, destruction, and despair.
Well known celebrities are talking about God, or showing their awe at the wonders of the cosmos. I’m seeing short videos about the abilities of multi-talented animals and their communications that need no words.
Unknown human beings have pieced together representations of their world experience, and have shared wondrous insights through sound and video. Creativity is flourishing everywhere. In Savannah, a place I can touch, feel, see, and smell directly, flowers are blooming, and the puddles are sinking into the ground.
Last night I listened to a YouTube discussion between Tucker Carlson and Naomi Wolfe. Tucker has been on a roll recently. Since leaving Fox News, he has interviewed several world-renowned figures, including Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary.
Tucker’s recent discussion with a Christian pastor in Gaza highlighted how Christians in Israel are caught between the Israeli military and its conflict with Hamas. He mentions that any of the weapons used, maybe on both sides, came from the US, either by intent, or through circuitous routes.
Nobody asks me, but I wonder why the US is funding war anywhere, especially since the US has such a dismal record of contributing to every conflict, including those within the nation’s Capitol and Capital (the building and the city).
But the talk with Naomi Wolfe enlightened me regarding old Biblical texts and the individual’s direct relationship with God. She said that texts modified over time and through different versions of the Bible have minimized this, but God’s instructions are simple and clearly repeated over and over. She cited the book of Jeremiah , which I’ve never read. This morning, I have pulled out my grandmother’s old Bible, which is losing its cover from age and this climate’s regular change from humid to more humid, to flooded with salty river water; and I began reading about Jeremiah.
Another of Kate’s books, Halley’s Bible Handbook, the 24th edition published in 1965, is in my lap, for reading about Jeremiah after I let The Screamer out to enjoy some sunshine. Continue reading →
Today, Friday, April 5, 2024, at almost noon, on the SE shore of coastal Georgia, US of A, I just photographed pages of my book Moby Dick that was on bookshelves, inherited from my mother along with all her other stuff. The books are valuable to me, because I have read many of them. This one was published in 1949 and contains a color photo or two along with some line drawings.
This is one of my all-time favorite novels, about a life at sea in the early years of the 1900s, when Herman Melville lived and wrote about New England whaling. Moby Dick is the white whale that becomes the obsession of Captain Ahab of the Pequod, the whaling vessel on which the narrator Ishmael escapes November “in my soul” by taking to the sea . . .
“Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be overconscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.”
In the Now, the sun is shining, and I must move to Do Things while the phone charges. It’s a beautiful day, about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Speckles and Tweety have been too quiet. The owls may be sleeping. Lollipop, the stray cat I feed, appeared at 3 am this morning, for the first time in three days, and must have slept indoors. He was still inside this morning after daylight.
More later . . .
And now, after 3 pm edt, the sun is shining bright and hot. Gunners are blasting at their club, and my chickens are undernesth the building where I sit, in the shade, out of the glare. Mr. Machine Noise, aka my brother-in-law, may have retired his blower or pressure washer or weed whacker, the loud power tool that adds to his supply of annoying outdoor Noise-makers.
Layers of time and circumstance converge on odd moments. My volume of the Moby Dick story was published by the Literary Guild of America, Inc. in Garden City, New York by the John C. Winston Company. It is also copyrighted in Great Britain and in the British Dominions and possessions. Another copyright in the Republic of the Philippines tells me how the the 20th, and now the 21st century wars, have rearranged maplines around the world.
And area noisemakers have resumed, and Speckles is making happy chatter with Tweety.
Melville’s writing style is amusing, if old-fashioned. “What of it, if some old hunks of a sea -captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hulks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave?”
At 4 pm on Friday I’ve looked again at the list of chapters in Moby Dick. It fuels my wanderlust through space and time. But Now I want to wander outdoors. The book will wait. They usually do.
katharineotto 