In Fifty Years, This May Require a Footnote of Its Own

I've just finished reading the latest Flashman installment from George Macdonald Fraser. The 12th in the series, Flashman on the March is a story of the Victorian British expedition (invasion?) into Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

The Flashman books feature an almost unbelievably amoral rogue named Harry Flashman, a minor character that Fraser liberated from the 19th Century novel Tom Brown's School Days. Fraser places Flashman, Zelig- or Gump-like, into a variety of major historical events of the Victorian age. He's a coward, but through luck and bluster always manages to emerge a hero. The books are great fun, and I recommend this latest as well.

My eye was caught by the end of the Explanatory Note, which included an interesting echo of today's history.

This section is part of the conceit that Fraser is simply editor of the recently discovered Flashman Papers. Fraser, a British writer, sets up the historic context of the story -- an apparently insane Abyssinian monarch has taken the British envoy hostage and is massacring his people. The British send in a limited force to free the hostages and depose the tyrant. Not to stay, not to create a new democracy. A limited mission.

All of which [Flashman] records with his customary shameless honesty, and it may be that along with the light he casts on a unique chapter of imperial history, he invites a comparison with a later and less glorious day.

For Flashman's story is about a British army sent out in a good and honest cause by a government who knew what honor meant. It was not sent without initial follies and hesitations, in high places, or until every hope of a peaceful issue was gone. It went with the doubt that it was right. It served no politician's vanity or interest. It went without messianic rhetoric. There were no false excuses, no deceits, no cover-ups or lies, just a decent resolve to do a government's first duty: to protect its people, whatever the cost. To quote Flashman again, those were the days.

To steal a phrase from characters in another set of favorite books (the Aubrey/Maturin series), he can't say clearer than that.

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I'm Reading O'Brian Again

I do this every few years; I start reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series again. I ran out of library books to read during the pass-by of Hurricane Irene in late August so I went to my personal collection and grabbed Master and Commander. Again.

It may be the start of another run through the whole 20-book series. Maybe. Last time, it was May to October of 2006. That has been the only time I have read through the series start-to-finish. I've read most of the novels in the series at least twice, but usually in a disconnected, non-sequential way.

I enjoy sea-stories and stories from the Napoleonic wars. But what I love most about these books is the language. Writing like this:

...it would have been difficult to imagine a pleasanter way of spending the late summer than sailing than sailing across the whole width of the Mediterranean as fast as the sloop could fly. She flew a good deal faster now that Jack had hit upon her happiest trim, restowing her hold to bring her by the stern and restoring her masts to the rake her Spanish builders had intended. What is more, the brothers Sponge, with a dozen of the Sophie's swimmers under their instruction, had spent every moment of the long calms in Greek waters (their native element) scraping her bottom; and Stephen could remember an evening when he had sat there in the warm, deepening twilight, watching the sea; it had barely a ruffle on its surface, and yet the Sophie picked up enough moving air with her topgallants to draw a long, straight whispering furrow across the water, a line brilliant with unearthly phosphorescence, visible for a quart of a mile behind her. Days and nights of unbelievable purity. Nights when the steady Ionian breeze rounded the square mainsail -- not a brace to be touched, watch relieving watch -- and he and Jack on deck, sawing away, sawing away, lost in their music , until the falling dew untuned their strings. And days when the perfection of dawn was so great , the emptiness so entire, that men were almost afraid to speak.

I marked this passage as I read by it the other day and thought it might make a good blog post. In searching back through this blog for previous O'Brian posts I realized I've done this kind of post a few times before.

I finished Master and Commander yesterday. The library is closed, so I moved on to Post Captain, the second in the series. I don't know if this is the start of another run through all 20 novels. That would probably carry me into January.

Count Me in the "Reader" Column

The AP is reporting a poll that found that a quarter of US adults read no books in the last year.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

That's not good. In an era in which we worry about our nation falling behind others economically, this slide away from knowledge and culture can only hurt us.

I am a reader. It is an activity that has given me joy, comfort, knowledge, and peace for almost 40 years now. (Assuming I date the start of my reading to around First Grade.) And I am probably ravenous reader. I probably average about one book each week.

It works for me.

Book Preview: The Unfinished Twenty-First Novel in the Aubrey/Maturin Series

Great Scott, what a cruel tease this may turn out to be.

W.W. Norton this month is publishing the start of what would have been the 21st Aubrey/Maturin novel. Called simply "21", the book is three chapters left unfinished on Patrick O'Brian's desk at the time of his death. In 144 pages, it begins the next chapter of the series, with newly promoted Aubrey, now a Rear Admiral of the Blue, under orders to sail to the South Africa station.

I know I shouldn't, that it will not do justice to what O'Brian may have been able to do with the material had he lived longer, but I will likely buy it, and read it, simply because of the great pleasure I have had from the Aubrey/Maturin books over the years.

For the uninitiated, the first novel in this series was Master and Commander, which leant its name and some of its substance to the movie starring Russell Crowe. If you haven't delved into this set of books, start here. Read. Repeat.

By the way, I note that this is being published along with a new collection of the full series. Who pulled Matt's name in the Mahaffie family Christmas drawing?

Book Review: Prairie Nocturne

Prairie Nocturne is the latest "Two Medicine Country" Montana novel from Ivan Doig. I came across the novel in the "new books" section of the Lewes Public Library the other day. Doig is on my internal list of authors whose books I will check out, or buy, almost automatically (others are folks like the late Patrick O'Brian or Bernard Cornwell). I first found Doig through his novel English Creek and I have, I think, read most of his stuff.

Prairie Nocturne is not Doig's best. It's a fairly slow novel and I found it hard to follow in places. The story is a bit melodramatic. Still, Doig's great skill is in drawing strong characters and evoking a rich mountain and prairie landscape for them to people. As soon as I'd read his first, I knew that some day I would have to spend some time in Montana. I have not yet had a chance, but I know that I will.

Prairie Nocturne takes an interesting turn in exploring racism in the American west at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries. It also follows the process of schooling, rehearsing, and performance in the realm of theatrical singing that I found interesting.

In the end, the story resolution was strong enough to leave me feeling pleased with this book, and I can recommend it, though I also more strongly recommend several others, notably English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana all of which explore this place and these people over several sections of time.

Book Review: The Librarian

Larry Beinhart has come out with The Librarian: A Novel (Nation Books) which is another in his line of political thrillers. Beinhart was the guy who wrote American Hero, which became the movie Wag the Dog.

In The Librarian, a relatively hapless college librarian stumbles across a GOP plot to steal an election. The characters are thin washes over the players in our current election and the level of apparent prescience in this novel is astounding. His August Scott is clearly George W. Bush and Scott's minions are a familiar cast. The issues and arguments played out in this novel are troubling reflections of the 2004 election.

The publication date is September 2004, so it may be the case that Beinhart has been able, in last-minute polishing, to add recent color to his manuscript. This is no roughshod effort, however, so it seems more likely that he wrote these details some time back.

Bottom line: it's a good read. Your political leanings may color your reaction to this novel; it smacks the Bush people rather firmly. It is worth noting, as well, that Nation Books has rather a long line of Bush-bashing tiles.

I liked it, however, and I recommend it.

Annual Personal Metrics: 2012 Book List

I read just under 56 books in 2012. That's about the same reading pace that I maintained in 2011. Of the total, all but two were fiction. Most were borrowed from the Lewes Public Library.

Here is the list:

Odd: Family History For Sale, By a Stranger

I was doing some idle family-name searching this weekend and came across a person on Etsy selling illustrations by my grandmother from a book published in 1929.

This gorgeous double-sided plate features the work of the artist Isabel Cooper from specimens at the American Museum of Natural History. One side features seashells from tropical waters and the other American specimens.

Isabel Cooper was an artist and illustrator who provided paintings for a variety of publications, created murals for public buildings, and traveled to remote outposts with scientists where she fulfilled the role later filled by color photography.

As near as I can tell, these are plates cut from a book my grandmother did illustrations for in the years before her marriage to Charles Mahaffie. 

I'm not sure how I feel about this sort of thing appearing for sale. My grandmother was paid for her work back in the 1920s, so that's not an issue. But I hate to think of great old books being cut apart and mined like this. Also, I always thought of Etsy as a site for artists and artisans to sell things they created themselves.

Mid-Year Reader's Report

I have read 32 books so far this year. That is slightly ahead of last year's mid-year pace and about the same as at this point in 2008.

This year, I'm tracking my reading using a Google spreadsheet.

I finished book 32 -- A Lion Among Men -- last night. Seven of the 32 (about 22%) were purchased. The rest were from the Lewes Public Library (Yay, the library!). all but one -- Craig Furguson's memoir American on Purpose -- were novels. I read for escapism; I prefer fiction.

To get truly geeky, I have read 10,507 pages this year. That's an average of just over 328 pages per book.

I Thought She Looked Familiar

I've been watching the show Swords on the Discovery Channel. It's a documentary series about swordfishing boats and their crews working on the Grand Banks, in the Atlantic.

One of the Captains, Linda Greenlaw, has looked very familiar to me, but I could not figure out why.

Now I know.

My Alumni newsletter from Colby College in came in by e-mail today. The Out of the Blue newsletter for September 2009 includes a brief note that explained it to me:

Linda Greenlaw '83, author of The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey and five other books, is one of the captains on a new Discovery Channel series called Swords: Life on the Line, about swordfishing boats around New England.

She's an old school mate. I'm class of '84, so it's likely that I met this woman somewhere on campus a bit more than a quarter-century ago.

I had thought that she seemed familiar because of her New England accent. I had noted to myself that she reminded me of my college days and the sort of folks I new when I lived in Maine.

Turns out that I was right.

I Find Myself Listening To Phil Lately

Phil Lesh
Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid

I'm a deadhead. I got on the bus 27 years ago and have been listening to the Grateful Dead ever since; sometimes more and sometimes less.

When I was a young man, I tended to listen with my focus on Jerry Garcia. He played lead guitar and, as a guitar player, I wanted to study him. Then I started to pay closer attention to Bobby Weir, the young "rock star" and rhythm guitarist. I liked his style and songwriting and I began to see how complex and musically cool was his playing.

Some years back, I became a drummer. I had married a music therapist and through her started to learn more about the healing power of music. I read books on the subject written by Dead drummer Mickey Hart. I began to play in drum circles. As I listened to the band I heard more of the two drummers, Mickey and Billy Kreutzmann.

Of late, I find myself listing to Phil Lesh, Dead bassist. I'd played some bass in college, and had always kept an ear on Phil. But it seems lately that his playing is really coming through. It may be the fact that my eldest child plays bass. And it may have something to do with the increased amount of high-quality Dead live recordings I am able to listen to via the Sirius/XM channel The Dead.

My car stereo is pretty good, and the digital satellite signal is pure, so I am physically able to hear more of the bass range. And what I hear Phil Lesh play is marvelous. This holds true for the full historical span of the Grateful Dead, from mid-60s recordings of the band jamming behind blues preacher Ron (Pig Pen) McKernan through the jazzy 70s, the rock-n-roll 80s and 90s and today, as the band is reborn.

Don't get me wrong. I still listen to the whole wonderful beast that is the Dead playing live. But I am particularly enjoying Phil Lesh right now.

A Milestone

Though I did not realize this until a few days later, I passed a milestone of sorts as a blogger last week. My Monday, January 19, 2009, post about an echo of the "Dean Scream" found in a novel I was reading was the 1,000th Mike's Musings post I have written since starting this blog back in September of 2004.

As of the 19th, I had been blogging for 1,597 days. I calculate that over that span I averaged a blog posting every 1 and a half days. Obviously there were days of too many blog postings and weeks when I was away doing other things.

Of course this is not my only blog. Since January of 2006 I have been blogging for the National States Geographic Information Council on the NSGIC News blog. And during 2008 I mini-blogged the books I was reading. That is not to mention my new twitter addiction. All things considered, my desire to write has been well satisfied over the years.

And, as we move forward, I find satisfaction in the fact that the first posting of my next 1,000 set of Mikes Musings was about the start of Inauguration Day and the feelings of re-beginning that I was feeling.

I'm In Sync With Delaware Public Libraries!

When I started my 2008 Reading Log at the New Year, I had no idea that I was pre-joining a new program about to be offered by the Delaware Public Libraries.

The Delaware Division of Libraries' Center for the Book has announced "Between the Lines," a journaling program designed to help readers use journals to "help them direct their free-choice learning to achieve self-awareness, self-improvement and self-empowerment." The program includes hard-bound spiral notebooks that participants can use to record their reading and their thoughts about their reading.

That's pretty much what I've been doing with my Reading Log. I swiped the idea from Jessamyn West (a librarian), but it's a fairly standard blogging approach.

I plan to stick with my on-line journal, but I think I'll try to attend the workshop the Libraries folks are offering later this month at Lewes Public Library about Between the lines. It's one of a series they plan (PDF).

I'm a big fan of the public library, especially my library here in Lewes. It's where I find so many great books.

Damn You, Art Garfunkel (Shakes Fist)

I'm feeling very eclipsed by the singer Art Garfunkel just now. Not because he's a better singer than I am; that's been true longer than I've been alive. I'm pretty much used to that. No, what has me feeling beaten is Art's reading list, which puts my new Reading Log blog to shame.

I started a 2008 Reading Log to celebrate the new year. I plan to post the titles of, and a bit about, each book I enjoy his year. You may have noticed the Book Log RSS feed I've placed in the left side column.

This is not a new idea. I swiped it from the librarian Jessamyn West.

But today, reading the New Yorker magazine, I came upon a report on the Garfunkel Library, "a chronological index of the thousand and twenty-three books that he has read since June, 1968." Forty years of reading, recorded on loose-leaf paper, and now posted on the official Art Garfunkel web site.

That's some impressive obsessiveness, Mr. Garfunkel.

RIP (and Thank You) George Macdonald Fraser

I was saddened to learn of the death yesterday of the author George Macdonald Fraser. Fraser, a Scot, created the Flashman series of novels, which have given me a great deal of pleasure over the years. He was 82. The cause of death was cancer.

Fraser had served in India during World War and worked as a journalist in Glasgow before becoming an author and screenwriter. The original Flashman novel started that portion of his career in the late 1960's. In it, he took a minor character in 19th century literature and imagined him into one of the greatest cads in English fiction. His novels are great fun and feature well-researched and accurate historical people, places, and actions.

He also wrote a wonderful memoir of his military service (Quartered Safe Out Here), and a series of short-stories inspired by that period of his life (the "McAuslan" stories). He wrote a parody of pirate books (The Pyrates) and a handful of novels set in Victorian and Elizabethan England. His screenplays included several "musketeers" movies and Force Ten from Navarone.

George Macdonald Fraser was a fine writer. He has left us an impressive body of work. Thank you, sir.

In Troubled Times, Where Shall a Bruised Nation Turn for Soothing Ironic Distance?

I found myself drawn to this recent headline from The Onion: Nation's Crumbling Infrastructure Probably Some Sort Of Metaphor.

The satirical "newspaper" recounts recent infrastructure failures and notes that these failures are "forcing many to question whether the nation's rapidly deteriorating roads, contaminated drinking water and groundwater, and run-down schools could perhaps be a metaphor for something."

"Everywhere you turn you see improperly maintained railways, structurally deficient bridges—not to mention billions of gallons of untreated sewage flowing directly into our groundwater," said Adam Perry, a representative for the ASCE. "Is there an underlying message here? There are so many layers, and each one is so subtle and nuanced, that I'm hesitant to make any kind of blanket statement about what this means 'for America.'"

"I think our overstretched and increasingly obsolete infrastructure might symbolize something important," Perry added. "But what?"

I find myself missing that sort of irony-heavy satirical commentary now that the TV-writers' strike has darkened the nation's airwaves. I wonder where to turn for the acerbic commentary I once depended on The Daily Show to provide.

As it happens, commercial television is not the only place to find such content. As we turn away from reality-TV, we are rediscovering thoughtful, written cynicism in all manner of formats, from traditional printed books and magazines to on-line blogs and, for the more adventurous, personal conversation.

Aside from The Onion, there are other goofy-news sites such as ScrappleFace, McSweeney's and the (somewhat NSFW) Daily Mash over in the United Kingdom. There are sites featuring humorous writing in general, such as Francesco Explains It All. And the TV writers are creating new on-line video content in their own cause at Speechless.

So, as the writers' strike drags into a new year, and we resign ourselves to television without great wit, people around the nation are re-discovering the joys of literature, learning about alternate media, and indulging in conversation.

And some -- a brave few -- are starting to express their own, very personal, satire.

Delaware Photo Blogs

I've been thinking about posting an item about Kevin Fleming's Wild Delaware blog ever since I ran across it back in September. I did add it to my blogroll, but I am lazy and easily distracted and eventually other Delaware bloggers made note of Kevin's blog and started spreading the word.

Kevin is Delaware's premier photographer. His are the coffee-table books we give when we want to give the gift of Delaware-ness. I had the privilege of meeting and being photographed by Kevin back in the spring of 2006; I'm a fan.

But Kevin is not the only one taking cool photos in our state. I've collected links to at least eight other Delaware photography blogs and even more Delaware photography web sites. So I thought I'd present a selection of those sites too. In absolutely no discernible order.

Tony Pratt also photographs nature in this area. Tony is an old friend I worked with at DNREC many years ago. He works in beach preservation and spends much of his time on the shoreline, in the dunes, and working with property owners. He is also a former Lewes leader; he helped write the City's first comprehensive plan, which I have now been part of updating.

Remind me to tell you the story sometime about working down the Delaware Coast with Tony and Mike Powell early one morning in January, 1992, during a major Nor'Easter. We were taking pictures (pre-digital cameras, unfortunately) of storm damage. It was an adventure.

I ran into Tony at the Dover Safeway one day recently. There's a decent salad bar in there and I often see colleagues wandering through at lunch time. Tony told me he'd started his own photo blog. He has been joining Kevin for early morning photography visits to area marshes. I think he's had pretty stunning results.

There are several other professional photographers with blogs. Laura Novak and Lance Lanagan both have studios and specialize in portraiture and weddings and such. There's also a blog for, by and about the Delaware Professional Photographers group.

And there are semi-pros.

Photodee blogs about her "adventures in knitting & photography." I don't know anything about knitting, but her photography is pretty cool.

Dave Wolanski has both a personal photoblog, Things I See, and a new Dave's Photo Tips blog where he offers advice and guidance on shooting with digital cameras.

And So That Happened... was a photo-a-day blog that was active from late 2004 through this past spring.

There are also bloggers who, like me, making photography a part of what they post, if not the main focus. These include, and I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out, Delmar Dustpan, Elbert (with an "E"), and The Happy Hippie.

And finally, many of us also post Delaware photography to one of several flickr groups focused on the first state or to the Delaware.gov collection of photo collections.

''Oh, my god, the fan fiction.''

StumpJumper, over at Denied Intervention, points us to a story in the New York Times about the sexual orientation of a major character in the Harry Potter books: J.K. Rowling Outs Hogwarts Character.

At a reading and Q&A session, author Rowling was asked by a young fan whether Albus Dumbledore, the powerful and positive grandfather figure who leads the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Magic, ever finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

I don't think Ms. Rowling intended to imply that being gay precludes finding true love. She went on to explain that the great wizard had had a tragic love affair earlier in life. I think that puts him into the "only one great love" category of fictional folk.

My take on elderly deus-ex-old-guy characters like Dumbledore is that they exist beyond the age of any romantic entanglement. And for the span of time covered by the Potter that seems to be the case.

Of course, any good writer will know the back-story of all of her characters. And given that a percentage of any group of humans is gay, it makes sense that there should be some gay folks in Harry Potter's world.

This Makes Me Feel Good

There is an organization known as The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH). That makes me feel better about life.

I got an e-mail today asking for nominations for the 2008 AATH Book Awards. The awards are set up to honor authors of books that further the mission of AATH: "to advance the understanding and application of humor and laughter for their positive benefits."

I was tempted to scoff at this as simply self-evident. But, while laughter in itself is good for you, it is also the case that, with training, one can build therapies on that fact and enhance the power of the smile.

There is a similar therapeutic effect with music. The Lovely Karen is a trained and certified Music Therapist. Music Therapy appears to be a bit further along as a profession, but I see a role of Humor Therapy as well.

Our neighbors Charlie and Nancy were involved in humor therapy for many years. They volunteered around the community as the clowns Happy G and O Lucky; we would see them in parades and at street festivals. We always thought it was simply their way to have fun.

Colleen interviewed them for a school project one evening and they explained to us about the deeper work they were doing, visiting the sick and dying and bringing cheer into hospitals.

I think that's pretty cool.

Book Signing

I got to have an author sign his book for me this past week-end. Tom Starnes, a retired Methodist minister I know through Karen's church, has published a memoir, Through Fear to Faith. He held a book-signing down at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach on Saturday morning and I stopped by.

Tom filled-in at Epworth United Methodist in Rehoboth some years ago when they were between ministers. Karen enjoyed his sermons and I liked him the few times I attended. Since then, we've seen him around a fair amount; he's retired here. And I get to play golf with him every once in a while when the Methodists have a fellowship golf outing.

I've mentioned Tom here before. He writes occasional Community View columns for the News Journal that I always enjoy. I look forward to reading his memoir.