Dancing With The Stars finale
Missing in America Memorial
Madison Commencement
Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2009 > July
July 2009
Teenager sues Amazon.com…
We haven’t heard the last about Amazon.com’s recent deletion of books from their Amazon Kindle wireless reading devices. Now one teenager has sued Amazon for deleting a book from his Kindle.
According to an article from the CBC:
“A Michigan teenager is launching a class-action lawsuit against online book retailer Amazon, alleging the company rendered his study notes on George Orwell’s 1984 useless when it deleted the novel from his and other customers’ Kindle e-book readers earlier in July.
Justin D. Gawronski, 17, “now needs to recreate all of his studies,” alleges the complaint filed Thursday in Seattle by the law firm KamberEdelson, LLC.
To read the rest of the story about how Amazon ate his homework click HERE:
Vick Mickunas
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Mail a letter today…
The United States Postal Service is in trouble. Billion dollar deficits are the result of a combination of factors; a down economy, the internet, you name it.
I’m a big fan of the Postal Service. Six days a week they fill my mailbox with good stuff. 44 cents to mail a one ounce letter first class anywhere in the USA is still a great bargain in my view.
In another life, I worked at the Post Office. I have fond memories of my days sorting the mail. I fell in love with postage at an early age. I still have the stamp collection that I began putting together when I was in kindergarten.
The problems facing the Post Office are our problems. I know, e-mail is easier and cheaper. When was the last time you got a handwritten letter from somebody who really cares about you? When was the last time that you sent one? Think about it. Then write one. Then write another. Mail it. Make it a daily habit. That is what I’m doing.
If every single one of us sent a few extra letters each week the Postal Service would be in better shape financially.
Back in the days when I worked the graveyard shift at the Main Post Office in Des Moines I used to always bring a good book with me to work. During coffee breaks I would pull out my thermos of tea and my book and spend 15 minutes enjoying fine literature and fine caffeine. There was nothing quite like it.
When I was working there I discovered the ultimate book about the postal experience. Post Office (Black Sparrow Press) is the definitive book on the joys of going postal. The author, Charles Bukowski, was a postal clerk who worked for the PO in Los Angeles. In the book he describes driving a mail truck filled with mail out into suburbia and getting so lost and frustrated trying to find his destination that he ultimately abandoned the truck and all that mail in some cul de sac in southern California. Ah, that brings back so many memories!
E-mail is so temporary. Letters are forever. They can be…
Imagine a world without the Post Office. Mail a letter today. I’ll be glad that you did!
Vick Mickunas
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Hi-jacked by Congressman Steve Austria…
I just came home and was astonished to hear a broadcast coming out of my telephone answering machine. Puzzled, I listened to try to figure out what manner of obnoxious entity had taken over my telephone.
The fellow who was speaking finally identified himself as Congressman Steve Austria. He was hosting his live town hall meeting. I’m outraged.
Figure out the technology Mr. Congressman. Stop abusing my answering machine.
Sincerely,
A constituent who will not soon forget your telephonic intrusion.
Vick Mickunas
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Having a beer: the Prez, the Prof, and the Cop…
Thursday night. the Harvard professor, the Cambridge cop, and the President of the United States are getting together at the White House for a beer. If you don’t know the reason why, I can’t help you. You must live in a cave.
I think it it pretty cool, though. According to The Boston Globe:
“Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. told the Globe earlier this week that he prefers Red Stripe, which is brewed in Jamaica, or the German beer Beck’s.
Blue Moon, a Belgian-style beer brewed by Coors, seems to be the choice for Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley. That’s what he was seen sipping at Tommy Doyle’s Irish Pub in Kendall Square on Friday when the president called to invite him to Washington, according to the New York Daily News.
But the White House, which has long been known to favor domestic beer at functions, has hinted that Obama likes Budweiser, which bills itself as “The Great American Lager” (despite its 2008 purchase by Belgian-Brazilian brewer InBev).”
So, what kind of beer do you think they will be sharing?
I pick Michelob.
Vick Mickunas
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Tanning beds might cause cancer?
Who knew?
According to an article in The Guardian (UK):
“A report by Dr Fatiha El Ghissassi and colleagues from the IARC in France published tomorrow in The Lancet Oncology said: “The use of UV-emitting tanning devices is widespread in many developed countries, especially among young women. A comprehensive meta-analysis concluded that the risk of skin melanoma is increased by 75% when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age.” Several studies had also linked sunbed use to a greater likelihood of developing a rare eye cancer called ocular melanoma, they added.”
This is another example of an activity that is clearly stupid and hazardous and it takes scientific research studies to perhaps convince people that it is an idiotic and dangerous pursuit.
I’m sorry. Just like we don’t need studies to prove that talking on cellphones while driving and texting while driving is hazardous and idiotic.
When I was just a small boy and my dad would puff on his Winstons and blow smoke in my face I knew that that smoke was bad for me. Common sense, people.
Tanning beds. Texting while driving. Smoking cigarettes. Eating DDT. Sticking metal objects in electrical outlets.
Come on people. We know these things are stupid, right?
I used to wash my clothes at a laundromat that was adjacent to a university. One of the amenities they provided were tanning booths. I would observe the giggling coeds who frequented these carcinogenic pleasure palisades and I always made the same observation: your vanity will be rewarded. Skin cancer will be the prize. And you did it to yourselves.
That was a long time ago. I didn’t need any research studies to make my evaluation. I wonder how those women are doing these days? Still tanning? Still living?
I feel the same way when I see young people smoking. I never say anything but I always think: it’s your funeral.
Sad.
Vick Mickunas
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Republicans scramble to oppose Sotomayor…
With each passing day more Republican US senators are announcing their opposition to the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to become the newest Justice of the Supreme Court.
The Des Moines Register reports that Senator Chuck Grassley is the latest senator to vault on to the anti-Sotomayor bandwagon:
“Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said today he planned to oppose the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court when the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on her nomination Tuesday.
The vote, which Grassley announced to The Des Moines Register, marks the first time Grassley will have opposed a high-court nominee in his 29 years on the committee.”
While the Republican opposition to Judge Sotomayor will probably not be sufficient to prevent her from being confirmed it is fascinating to observe it. Judge Sotomayor is of Hispanic descent. I wonder how these anti-Sotomayor Republicans can assume the ever expanding Hispanic vote won’t become crucial for sustaining their survival as elected lawmakers? They don’t seem too concerned about possibly disenfranchising an entire generation of Hispanic voters.
Right now I’m reading a fascinating new book about the Supreme Court. Packing the Court - the Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court (The Penguin Press) by James MacGregor Burns offers a sobering assessment of how these “politicians in robes” are no longer just interpreting the law, they are making it.
And Burns makes a radical suggestion; that “a president could declare that there is no place in a modern democracy for unelected judges to veto twenty-first-century laws.”
You might be wondering, what might that mean? Well, it means that a president could say that the Supreme Court’s verdicts are unacceptable because “the power of judicial emasculation of legislation was not - and never has been - in the Constitution.”
Vick Mickunas
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Sayonara, Sarah Palin…
She’s gone. Sarah Palin kept her promise. She resigned. Today was her final day as governor of Alaska.
According to the BBC:
“Although Mrs Palin’s next steps remain unclear, reports say she is working on an autobiography and could host a television chat show. But a spokeswoman for the Palin family earlier dismissed the claims.”
OK, so she’s writing a book. I’m not sure why her family was dismissing that particular claim. It’s a done deal.
What else will she be doing? Do you have any predictions that you would like to make about Sarah? Where will she go? What will she do? Where will she end up?
Vick Mickunas
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Take your Piqua…
Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko have been friends since grade school in Piqua.
Burned out on careers providing tech-support for Dayton area computer users, they set out in Romeo’s rattletrap car for Florida.
As “Ravens,” the new novel by George Dawes Green, opens the friends are headed south. Romeo is driving “when a raccoon or possum ran in front of the car. The impact was disturbingly gentle. No thud — just a soft unzipping, beneath the chassis. Still, it tore at Romeo’s heart. He braked and pulled over.”
This is our first clue that Romeo is the sentimental one. Green flashes back to their days growing up in Piqua. They have an unequal relationship. Shaw is in charge — Romeo’s the willing accomplice.
Their clunker car makes it to Georgia and “Shaw was roasting to death. So feeble the a.c. in this ’91 Tercel that he had to leave the windows open or die. Though the air that came in was as hot as jet exhaust, so he was dying anyway.”
Romeo is fast asleep. Shaw notices the car pulling to the left. He exits to find a gas station. Is it a faulty bearing? Shaw hopes “maybe they could ignore it. Just nurse it as far as Key West and then sell it (the plan was to hire out on fishing boats and work their way to Trinidad 
and never return to their zombie jobs at Dayton Techworld).”
This stop in Brunswick, Ga., changes the plan. Shaw overhears a convenience store clerk on the phone. Did a local family just win a huge lottery jackpot? He hears her saying “nobody even knew this was the store! It hasn’t been announced yet! And they buy tickets here all the time.”
Shaw’s eavesdropping piques his greed — he hears enough information about the lottery winners to take action. They check into a cheap motel. Shaw does research on his laptop. He Googles the winning family. Bingo — jackpot.
Meanwhile the Boatwrights, the lottery winners, are playing it cool, laying low. Their winning ticket is locked away and they have not filed a claim yet for their winnings. This gives Shaw time to hatch his plot to steal half of the jackpot of more than $318 million.
“Ravens” is a marvelous yarn. Green has created a cast of characters that is truly memorable. Mr. Boatwright is deeply religious. Mrs. Boatwright is an alcoholic with fantasies of spending their prize on a mansion in Malibu. Their young son is a brat who spends all day playing computer games.
The Boatwright’s daughter Tara becomes the central character — she holds the story together. The real scene stealer is Nell, Tara’s widowed grandmother. As Shaw’s dark extortion plot unfolds it is Nell who provides welcome comic relief.
“Ravens” poses the question: How far would you be willing to go to steal $100 million (after taxes)? These boys from Piqua give it a shot. Fasten your seat belts.
Vick Mickunas
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The best wedding video ever…
Have you seen this? It happened in Minnesota. Check it out by clicking HERE:
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Someone stole his nose ?
I think I’m going to be sick. I didn’t want to write another word about Michael Jackson but this guy’s life and death were stranger than fiction.
According to Fox News:
“Michael Jackson wore a prosthetic nose, according to a report — and it was missing from his surgically mangled face as he lay in an LA morgue.
Left behind was a small, dark hole surrounded by bits of cartilage, Rolling Stone magazine said, citing witnesses who saw the King of Pop’s body on the autopsy table.
Jackson, who was notoriously shy about his appearance, wore the prosthetic to mask the effects of decades of plastic surgery, according to the magazine, due to hit newsstands today.”
I think I’ll wait for the book…maybe the missing proboscis will turn up on eBay?
Vick Mickunas
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Facebook…
Should have been in this book. It is not…
“The Accidental Billionaires - the Founding of Facebook - a Tale of Sex, Genius, and Betrayal,” by Ben Mezrich, (Doubleday, 260 pages, $25).
In a mere five years Facebook has become the dominant social networking site on the internet. What began as a prank on the campus of Harvard University is now a worldwide sensation. Mark Zuckerberg was the prankster who had the original idea. Today, at 25 years of age he is probably the world’s youngest billionaire.
So how did this wildly successful enterprise get started? Ben Mezrich explores the foundations of Facebook in “The Accidental Billionaires - the Founding of Facebook - a Tale of Sex, Genius, and Betrayal.” It has already been optioned for a Hollywood film.
It is the story of two friends. Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin met at Harvard. Bright kids - Saverin had already made 300 thousand dollars trading oil futures. Zuckerberg invented a device for MP3 players when he was still in high school. Microsoft offered him over a million dollars for it. He turned them down.
Zuckerberg was the computer nerd. He had a hard time finding dates. The idea for Facebook originated in a prank he devised - he hacked into various computers on campus to create a website with photos of every female student on campus.
So who is this genius? That’s what I wanted to know. What makes Zuckerberg tick? The author had access to his friend Eduardo. On page 241 Eduardo realizes” maybe he’d never known Mark Zuckerberg.” Oh, great.
That’s the fatal flaw in this book. Zuckerberg refused to talk to Mezrich. The author claims to have had access to “numerous inside sources, though these sources have asked to remain anonymous.” Apparently they didn’t know any more about Zuckerberg that his former friend Eduardo did.
This becomes mostly the story of how Zuckerberg turned his pal Eduardo’s 30% stake in Facebook into nothing. Eduardo is clueless. He seemed to lack the maturity and legal savvy to understand the contractual sleight of hand that forced him out of the company. Apparently, he’s still trying to recover the billions he believes he deserves.
“The Accidental Billionaires” has another serious flaw; it’s non-fiction but is mostly written like fiction. The author imagines what happened, the conversations, the facial expressions, the reactions, and the clothes. Here’s a typical example of what I mean:
“We can picture what must have happened next: Eduardo spinning through the revolving glass door of a midtown Bank of America office, his face a mask of pure determination, his oxford shirt soaked with sweat from either a subway ride or twenty minutes trapped in a traffic-bound cab.”
We learn about the origins of Facebook. The founder, Mark Zuckerberg remains an enigma. At one point someone observes that “worse yet, Mark was Mark - hard enough to read in person, but on the phone he was a complete mystery.”
The central figure behind Facebook is a mere shadow flitting across these pages. In the end, Facebook became all about the billions it might be worth. This lightweight history of Facebook seems to be all about the millions this book is supposedly worth.
Vick Mickunas
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Do you have any of this stuff?
Amazon.com has millions of customers. I just obtained a list of the 50 most searched for books on Amazon that are out of stock. It is a fascinating variety of stuff that Americans are looking for and cannot find on Amazon right now. Check it out:
1. The Mystery Method - Revelation 8 DVD and 13 Audio CD
Dr. Seuss Books Beginning Readers and Bright and Early Books 25 Book Set…Cat In The Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Are You My Mother…plus more classics
- Dr. Seuss Beginning Readers and Bright and Early Books 12 Book Set: The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, Mulberry Street, Fox in Socks, Wocket in M
Cirque Du Freak Boxed Set #1
Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment
B002B9TBXK , Biology 8th International Edition 2008
The Sports Illustrated Marisa Miller 2009 Calendar
Cop Without a Badge the Extraordinary Undercover Life of Kevin Maher
Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Certification Study Question Book
Dancing the Dream
Structura: The Art of Sparth
A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire)
Understanding David Foster Wallace (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)
14.The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted
Odd Thomas Series (Volumes 1-4)
The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability
Original Planner Refill, Two Pages per Day, 5 1/2” x 8 1/2” (FDP33975)
Crime Tells: Cole’s Gamble
A Reporter’s Life
Complete Exercises
McDougal-Littell Algebra 2 Teacher’s Edition
Baby and Toddler 411 Gift Set
Moonwalker
Legal Muscle: Anabolics in America
Fast Facts for Adult Critical Care
Sports Illustrated Superbowl XLIII Commemorative Pittsburgh Steelers, 2009
Paper Tube Zoo
Dutch 3: The Finale By: Kwame Teague (Teri Woods) (Dutch III: The Finale By: Kwame Teague (Teri Woods), Dutch I, II, III)
Wonderland: A Fairytale of the Soviet Monolith
The Descent of Man
Millionaire REO Real Estate Agent: The Secret of REO’s, BPO’s, and Short Sales
Shut Up and Live! (You Know How): A 93-Year-Old’s Guide for Living to a Ripe Old Age [SHUT UP and LIVE]
101 Worry - Free HCG Diet Recipes Plus Hints and Tips From Experts: Great Taste Yet Strict Adherance to Dr. Simeons / Trudeau HCG Protocol
The Complete Greeks and Romans (Penguin Classics Complete Collections)
Flags of Our Fathers
World Civilizations: The Global Experience, Ap Edition
Human
38.The Vault Guide to Top Internships, 2009 Edition
Fast Track to Free Money Cd! Debt Cures
Lift Off: Air Vehicle Sketches and Renderings from the Drawthrough Collection
Vitamins and Minerals from A to Z With Ethno-Consciousness
Biblia Completa: La Palabra de Dios Hablada (Version Reina-Valera) (Spanish Edition)
The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing
Sports Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation
The Titanic Book and Submersible Model
Fallout 3: Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide
Sabiston Textbook of Surgery Board Review
Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Deluxe Edition (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (Deluxe))
Geronimo Stilton Set, Books 1-32 (Lost Treasure of the Emerald Isle; The Curse of the Cheese Pyramid; Cat and Mouse in a Haunted House; I’m Too Fond of My Fur!; Four Mice Deep in the Jungle; Paws Off,
Free Money
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Former Daytonian takes Obama to task…
The author and political cartoonist Ted Rall wrote a hard hitting opinion piece today for his syndicated column. Rall went to high school in Kettering. Here it is:
Obama, Losing Jobs, Soon to Be Shovel-Ready
Pro-Obama political cartoonists have drawn variations of the same cartoon: the president, in the role of badgered parent on a family trip, is driving a car labeled “The Economy.” The American public, depicted as Uncle Sam or Joe Average, whines: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
With official unemployment approaching 10 percent and underemployment at 16.5 percent, Americans are running out of money—and patience. Obama’s approval ratings are down between 15 and 20 points, meaning that he has lost one in six Americans. His biggest weakness: the economy.
“I think the public knows three things: We inherited a total mess; we’re working hard on it; and we’re not going to get out of it overnight,” says Chief White House propagandist Rahm Emanuel. That part is true.
The trouble for Obama is that people don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. “The key to what this year is about is rescuing the economy from falling off the cliff and trying to put in place the building blocks of recovery”—i.e., bailing out the banks, insurers and automakers, says Emanuel. That’s what 2009 has been about for Obama. But for ordinary Americans, 2009 is about keeping or finding a job.
Creating jobs, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be an Obama Administration priority.
Were the bailouts necessary? Economists won’t know for years. What we do know is that the Administration’s approach won’t give the American people what they want and need more than anything else: jobs.
What’s the point of being patient? Even Obama admits help isn’t on the way.
Obama’s plan is Reaganomics redux. Give trillions of dollars to big corporations, he argues, and they’ll use it to capitalize new ventures, hire workers, and unclog the credit markets. Eventually. “We must let it work the way it’s supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity,” he says.
But even Obama admits it won’t unfold “the way it’s supposed to.”
Obama says his plan “was not designed to work in four months. It was designed to work over two years.” But if current trends continue, if everything goes the way he hopes, it will never work. We will have lost 14 million jobs by 2010. That would leave us up 4 million at most—a net loss of 10 million. That’s a disaster.
And that’s why Joe Public is so antsy. “Are we there yet?” isn’t the right question. People think: “We can see how this is going to end: we’ll be upside down in a ditch, plucking safety glass from our scalps.”
Obama’s approach won’t work economically, and it won’t work politically. Setting bailouts aside, what the United States needs right now—what it needed over a year ago—was a ginormous federal jobs program.
What happened to the infrastructure construction projects, like high-speed rail, that attracted so much enthusiasm during the campaign? Right-wing economic czar Lawrence Summers and a bunch of wimpy Democrats trashed them. “Transportation spending was gutted by Republicans who insisted on more tax cuts—none of whom voted for the measure anyway—and by Obama advisers who shifted priorities to advance policy goals,” reported the AP.
Earlier this year the American Society of Civil Engineers said the nation’s long-neglected highways, bridges and tunnels require $2,200 billion in repairs just to get them up to basic safety code—not including high-speed rail. Obama’s stimulus plan included a mere $42 billion (less than two percent). Rail got $2 billion out of a needed $25 billion. Unless Obama does something soon, nothing is going to get built and unemployment will continue to soar.
Now that Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs are reporting record profits, it’s time to “claw back” the bailouts, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and direct federal dollars where we need them most: jobs. Give tax breaks to employers who add new workers, direct federal agencies to grow in size, and create zero-interest lending programs to laid-off would-be entrepreneurs. And let’s build some friggin’ infrastructure. Every $1 spent on infrastructure generates a $1.59 payback in the form of increased tax revenues—and creates a lasting legacy.
Speaking of cartoons, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt recently came under fire for trying to hire a cartoonist to “discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress.” A Democratic Senator nixed the idea.
Too bad: at least Obama could have taken credit for creating one job.
(Ted Rall, President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, is author of the books “To Afghanistan and Back” and “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?”)
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
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The electronic book wars…
The market for e-books which can be read on mobile devices and computers is one of the few segments of the book publishing industry that is actually growing with almost 5% of the total market.
The shakeout in the e-book biz is yet to come as completing platforms duke it out. Consumers can choose from a variety of delivery systems such as the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle, cellphones, laptops, even downloads from Google.
Now the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain has fired the latest volley in the e-book wars. To read about it click HERE:
Vick Mickunas
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Don’t mess with Ernest Hemingway…
A number of years ago I was visiting a friend in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. While this leafy community is probably better known for all the Frank Lloyd Wright houses that were built there, Oak Park was also the childhood home of the legendary writer Ernest Hemingway.
I wasn’t aware of the Hemingway connection until late one evening when I accompanied my friend on a walk with his dog. My friend’s normal routine consisted of a stroll around their rather large city block with his hound, Homer.
My friend Bill would puff on a Rocky Patel cigar while Homer would go about his doggy business. As we turned the corner I observed as Homer made a moist tribute. I noticed that he was anointing an engraved plaque that was set into the lawn in front of this house at the corner.
I peered down to peruse the inscription and was astonished to learn that it was a marker to commemorate the fact that the lovely house there had been the boyhood home of Ernest Hemingway. (note-Homer, of blessed memory, died years ago, ending this tradition).
When I asked my friend about it he chuckled and explained that Homer paid a tribute to Hemingway each night in this doggie fashion. I had a vision of Ernest Hemingway looking down (or up) from wherever he might be and thinking that Ernie was probably perfectly OK with Homer’s doggie ablutions. He liked dogs.
I was reminded of this anecdote as I read the newspaper this morning and learned about a book by Hemingway that has just been significantly altered by one of Hemingway’s descendants. One must imagine that the ghost of Papa Hemingway would not be very pleased about this current development.
To read the article click HERE:
Vick Mickunas
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Remembering Frank McCourt…
Frank McCourt, the author of Angela’s Ashes died today. Here’s a remembrance from the New York Times:
July 20, 2009
Frank McCourt, Author of ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ Dies at 78
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned his miserable childhood in Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular, Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,” died Sunday. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Conn.
The cause was metastatic melanoma, said Mr. McCourt’s brother, the writer Malachy McCourt.
Mr. McCourt, who had taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as “a modest book, modestly written.”
In it he a childhood of terrible deprivation. After Mr. McCourt’s alcoholic father abandoned the family, his mother — the Angela of the title — begged on the streets of Limerick to keep him and his three brothers meagerly fed, poorly clothed and housed in a basement flat with no bathroom and a thriving population of vermin. The book’s clear-eyed look at childhood misery, its incongruously lilting, buoyant prose and its heartfelt urgency struck a remarkable chord with readers and critics.
“When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,” the book’s second paragraph begins in a famous passage. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
“People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”
“Angela’s Ashes,” published by Scribner in 1996, rose to the top of the best-seller lists and stayed there for more than two years, selling four million copies in hardback. The next year, it won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Two more installments of his life story followed: “ ‘Tis” (1999), which described his struggle to gain a foothold in New York, and “Teacher Man” (2005), an account of his misadventures and small victories as a public-school teacher. Both, although best sellers, did not achieve anything like the runaway success of Mr. McCourt’s first book, which the British director Alan Parker brought to the screen in 1999.
Not to be outdone, Mr. McCourt’s younger brother Malachy, an actor, brought out two volumes of his own memoirs: “A Monk Swimming” (1998), which also made the best-seller list, and “Singing Him My Song” (2000). Then, when it seemed that the McCourt tale had been well and truly told, Malachy’s son Conor gathered the four brothers, got them talking and filmed two television documentaries, “The McCourts of Limerick” and “The McCourts of New York.”
It was “Angela’s Ashes” that loomed over all things McCourt, however, and constituted a transformative experience for its author.Speaking to students at Bay Shore High School on Long Island in 1997, he said, “I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.”
Francis McCourt was born Aug. 30, 193o, on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn, where his Irish immigrant parents had hoped to make a better life. It was not to be, largely because his father, Malachy, usually spent his scant laborer’s earnings at the local bar. Beaten, the family returned to Limerick when Frank was 4, and the pattern repeated itself.
Three of Mr. McCourt’s six siblings died in early childhood. The family’s circumstances were so dire, he later told a student audience, that he often dreamed of becoming a prison inmate so that he would be guaranteed three meals a day and a warm bed. At home, the staple meal was tea and bread, which his mother jokingly referred to as a balanced diet: a solid and a liquid.
When Frank was 11, his father went to work in a munitions factory in Britain and disappeared from the picture. Frank stole bread and milk, which became the family’s principal means of support. After dropping out of school at 13, he delivered telegrams and earned extra income writing letters for a local landlady.
In 1949, Mr. McCourt, at 19, gathered his savings and boarded a ship for New York and a new life, which began unpromisingly. At the Biltmore Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, he was put in charge of the 60 caged canaries in the public rooms. Thirty-nine of them died, whereupon Mr. McCourt taped the lifeless bodies to their perches. The ruse did not work.
A series of laboring jobs followed, interrupted by the Korean War. Drafted into the Army, Mr. McCourt served as a dog trainer and later a clerk in West Germany.
Despite his lack of formal schooling, Mr. McCourt won admission to New York University, where he earned a degree in English education in 1957. A year later he began teaching at McKee Vocational High School on Staten Island, an eye-opening experience that he recalled, in often hilarious detail, in his third volume of memoirs, “Teacher Man.”
In his first week, an unruly student threw a homemade sandwich on the floor, an act that astonished Mr. McCourt not so much for its brazenness as for the waste of good food. After appraising the sandwich with a connoisseur’s eye, he picked it up and ate it.
Mr. McCourt developed an idiosyncratic teaching style that found a somewhat more receptive audience at Stuyvesant High School, where he taught creative writing after earning a master’s degree in English from Brooklyn College in 1967. He had students sing Irish songs to break down their resistance to poetry. After discovering a sheaf of written excuses from past years, he recognized an unexplored literary genre and asked students to write, say, an excuse letter from Adam or Eve to God, explaining why he or she should not be punished for eating the apple.
He even had students test themselves. “When they wrote their own tests, they asked questions they wanted answers to and then they answered them,” Mr. McCourt told the journal Instructor. “It was grand.”
On the side, Mr. McCourt made fitful stabs at writing. He contributed articles on Ireland to The Village Voice. He kept notebooks. But at the Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village, where he became friends with Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, he felt like an interloper, he said. They were writers. He was just a teacher. “I had no idea he had the ambition, much less the ability to carry it off in such spectacular fashion,” said Mr. Hamill, who first met Mr. McCourt at the Lion’s Head in the 1960s.
In 1977, Mr. McCourt and his brother Malachy, who was acting and bartending in New York, cobbled together a series of autobiographical sketches into a two-man play, “A Couple of Blaguards,” which opened Off Off Broadway at the Billymunk Theater on East 45th Street. They performed a revised version at the Village Gate in 1984 and again at the Billymunk in 1986 and took their show to several other cities.
This excursion into the past, along with his nagging sense that a writing teacher should write, motivated Mr. McCourt to undertake his childhood memoirs after he retired from teaching in 1987. An early attempt, when he was studying at New York University, had fizzled out, but 40 years later, he said, he had worked through his awkward, self-conscious James Joyce phase and gotten beyond the crippling anger that darkened his memories.
“After 20 pages of standard omniscient author, I wrote something that I thought was just a note to myself, about sitting on a seesaw in a playground, and I found my voice, the voice of a child,” he told The Providence Journal in 1997. “That was it. It carried me through to the end of the book.”
Still, his plans were vague. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I had to write it anyway,” he said in another interview. “I had to get it out of my system.”
A persistent friend demanded to see what Mr. McCourt was writing, then turned the pages over to a literary agent, Molly Friedrich, who submitted the incomplete manuscript to Scribner. It was bought immediately.
Critics, enchanted by Mr. McCourt’s language and gripped by his story, delivered the kind of reviews that writers can only dream of. But the book was ultimately a word-of-mouth success.
An instant celebrity, Mr. McCourt did his utmost to resist becoming the designated spokesman for all things Irish, “from agriculture to the decline in the consumption of claret in the west of Ireland,” as he once joked.
In Ireland itself, the reaction was mixed. “When the book was published in Ireland, I was denounced from hill, pulpit and barstool,” he told the online magazine Slate in 2007. “Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother’s name and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost.”
Time healed at least some wounds. Mr. McCourt was awarded an honorary doctorate by Limerick University, and curious tourists can now take “Angela’s Ashes” tours of the city.
In 1999, the British director Robert Parker translated the memoir to the screen, with Emily Watson as Angela (who died in 1981), Robert Carlyle as Malachy Sr. (who died in 1985) and three actors in the roles of Mr. McCourt as a small, medium-size and grown boy.
For the Irish Repertory Theater, Mr. McCourt devised a history lesson disguised as an evening of storytelling and singing, titled “The Irish … and How They Got That Way.” It opened in 1997 to less than rapturous reviews. His second volume of memoirs, “ ‘Tis,” which began with his arrival in New York, also encountered rough weather from critics still giddy from the memory of “Angela’s Ashes.” Although his storytelling gifts were in full evidence, Mr. McCourt seemed bitter and self-pitying, a marked contrast to the stoic tone of “Angela’s Ashes,” putting off many readers.
With “Teacher Man,” Mr. McCourt rallied. Although criticized as lumpy and episodic, the book was praised for its humane inquiry into the role of the teacher and the possibilities of education.
Mr. McCourt’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In 1994 he married Ellen Frey, who survives him, as do Malachy, of Manhattan, and his other brothers, Alphie, of Manhattan, and Mike, of San Francisco; his daughter, Maggie McCourt; and three grandchildren. “I think there’s something about the Irish experience — that we had to have a sense of humor or die,” Mr. McCourt once told an interviewer. “That’s what kept us going — a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.
“And it did help because sometimes you’d get desperate,” he continued. “And I developed this habit of saying to myself, ‘Oh, well.’ I might be in the midst of some misery, and I’d say to myself, ‘Well, someday you’ll think it’s funny.’ And the other part of my head will say, ‘No, you won’t — you’ll never think this is funny. This is the most miserable experience you’ve ever had.’ But later on you look back and you say, ‘That was funny, that was absurd.’ ”
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Reading 1984 when (poof!) it vanished…
Amazon.com is my favorite on-line retailer. They sell millions of books and all kinds of other stuff. I shop there all the time. I just bought a new grill from Amazon. It arrived within two days.
I’m impressed by Amazon’s efficient operation. Their website is incredible.
But nobody’s perfect-even Amazon makes an occasional blunder.
For example, you might recall that I did an interview on National Public Radio where I talked about Amazon’s top customer reviewer, a woman named Harriet Klausner. I continue to be puzzled by the fact that Amazon allows this person to be their #1. As of today, Harriet claims she has read and reviewed 19, 529 books. The number two reviewer has read and reviewed 6,665. Harriet has read three times as many books as the second place reviewer. Impossible. Read some of her reviews and you’ll see what I mean. They tend to be very poorly written. So practice doesn’t make perfect after all.
Harriet is just one small public relations nightmare in my view. Amazon just stumbled into another PR mess. The headline in today’s New York Times is very embarrassing for Amazon. Here it is:
Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle
You know, the Amazon Kindle, their proprietary wireless and paperless reading device? You can order books to be delivered by Amazon to your Kindle in less than a a minute. Well, according to the article, Amazon customers who purchased books like 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell got a little surprise. Apparently, these Orwell books were sold through Kindle without having the copyrights properly in place. When Amazon found out they simply pressed a few buttons and went into all the Kindles that had downloaded those Orwell books and deleted them. Poof! Gone.
How embarrassing. The article states:
“In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”
On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.
In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.
An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.
Customers whose books were deleted indicated that MobileReference, a digital publisher, had sold them. An e-mail message to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference, was not immediately returned.
Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.
An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version of “Animal Farm.”
People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”
Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of “1984” appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said.
Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.
Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”
To read the entire article click HERE:
What a public relations disaster for Amazon. They just lowered the price on the Kindle but one can imagine that the enthusiasm of some potential buyers will be reduced when they learn that Amazon can just go in and delete stuff whenever they feel like it. Hmmm, I thought I had that book in my Kindle? Poof!
Vick Mickunas
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Were the lunar landings staged?
As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing we are also hearing from some skeptics. One of our most frequent commenters has posed this question:
“How many of you guys think the lunar landings were staged?”
Well, what do you think? Was it all a hoax?
Buzz Aldrin is in town. He has a new memoir, Magnificent Desolation - the Long Journey Home from the Moon.
Buzz was the second person to step out on to the lunar surface. He reportedly once took a swing at a doubter…
Do you believe that it actually happened? Or, is this another topic for the skeptics, like global warming?
Vick Mickunas
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She is Dave Chappelle’s mom….
There is a superb article by Brooke Bryan in today’s edition of the Yellow Springs News. This is an article about an amazing woman, Yvonne Seon. She is an author, an educator, and she is also the comedian Dave Chappelle’s mom. Her famous son is certainly not the point of the article. In fact it helps to explain why Dave chooses to reside in the Yellow Springs area; because folks around here leave the man alone. While the article alludes to the three Chappelle children, Dave’s first name is not even mentioned. If you didn’t know, you might never even make that connection.
To read about this fascinating woman who just happens to be Dave’s mom, click HERE:
Vick Mickunas
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The Dan Brown countdown…
It has been six long years since the mega best-selling The Da Vinci Code was published. The author Dan Brown’s follow-up novel is finally set to be released on September 15.
The hype is swirling- his publisher is tossing out wee tidbits of detail about the plot of The Lost Symbol…
Check out the hype and the countdown by clicking HERE:
Vick Mickunas
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New book alleges Michael Jackson was gay…
The book Unmasked-The Final Years of Michael Jackson was published today. In this controversial book the author Ian Halperin makes the shocking allegation that Michael Jackson was (get ready for this) secretly a gay man. Gasp!
I’m so shocked. I’m stunned. If this is true he concealed it so well. Can you believe this? I’m speechless…
Vick Mickunas
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Price slashing on the Amazon Kindle…
The Amazon Kindle is a wireless and paperless proprietary electronic reading device that was created by internet book selling behemoth Amazon.com.
Since Amazon rolled out the Kindle right before Christmas 2008, it has already gone through some changes. Initially the device was apparently is such high demand that Amazon had it on back order. It’s really hard to tell since sales figures for the Kindle are not made public.
We can assume that somebody is buying them, right? Do you know anybody who has one? A couple of months ago Amazon rolled out an upgraded version of the Kindle. One of the complaints that I kept hearing about this device was that it was too darned expensive at 359 dollars.
Well lo and behold, Amazon recently cut the price on the new upgraded Kindles by 60 dollars. Kindles are on sale now for 299 dollars.
That’s a smart move on Amazon’s part. One would suppose that the previous 359 dollar price tag was becoming a more difficult sale in this flagging economy. The price cut right after the device was upgraded seems to indicate that demand was dropping. Again, it is hard to make that determination because Amazon won’t release sales figures on the Kindle.
The more Kindles Amazon can get activated the more profitable the device will become. The real money will be generated by Kindle customers paying to download books, magazines, and newspapers.
I can’t imagine that transmitting these files through the ether to their customers costs Amazon very much. Kindle customers press down a key and their reading matter is transmitted in less than a minute. Amazon’s astoundingly efficient web presence performs the sale.
I’m a book lover. I cannot imagine ever wanting a Kindle. I can comprehend the attraction for others but for me the physical presence of real books with actual covers, pages and those distinctive book scents is just too attractive to give up.
In ten years I’ll still have a library filled with books that I need to read. I wonder if they will still be selling Kindles then?
I have a closet filled with 8-track tapes, VHS tapes, and 78 RPM records that speaks to me. Their message? In 10 years the Kindle will be like one of these forgotten formats; obsolete.
What do you think?
Vick Mickunas
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When it gets too hot in the kitchen…
“Cooking Dirty - a Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen,” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 355 pages, $26).
Jason Sheehan is a food writer for a Denver newspaper. He knows his cooking, having labored as a cook in 30 some restaurants before becoming a writer.
“Cooking Dirty - a Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen” is his memoir about life in those kitchens. He got his start in the business as a dishwasher at a pizza place in his hometown of Rochester, New York when he was still in high school.
That’s where he caught the cooking bug. He spent the next dozen years working his way up the ladder to become a full fledged chef. It was a slippery slope. He kept sliding back down it.
“Cooking Dirty” is a no holds barred, profane, and hilarious account of a passion for food and cooking that almost killed the author. He describes working 16 hour shifts in kitchens that were infernos. Temperatures would rise to 140 degrees. Cooks would collapse, then be hauled outside to recover while another one jumped into their vacated spot on the line.
The author worked in an all-night diner. At midnight the orders would come pouring in. The kitchen crew would fill hundreds of orders over the course of a few hours. They made it through each night fueled by adrenaline, hard rock music, coffee, beer, cigarettes, and marijuana.
These tales read like war stories. Each night was the same battle with new casualties. Sheehan explains: “It was the pressure that did it. The grind: same menu, night after night after night. It was the proximity - four or six or ten men jammed into a space not much larger than a prison cell, baking in the heat, listening to the incessant clacking of the ticket printer.”
Burned out in Buffalo, Sheehan fled to Florida where “on the day we arrived it was 170 degrees with 900 per cent humidity.” He needed a job. He got one at Jimmy’s Crab Shack. His humor here is as finely honed as the expensive knives he carries with him to each new job.
At Jimmy’s “no one seemed to care that the daily special never changed. This was likely because Jimmy’s Crab Shack had never in its long history seen a repeat customer. And no one ever complained, because anyone smart enough to know good food from bad would’ve taken one look” at the decor and “run for their lives.”
Sheehan descends into his culinary underworld with morbid good cheer. He reflects that “it was an act, sure. But what job isn’t? Just on the other side of the swinging doors there would be bedlam, fire, blood and harsh language; twenty guys who, in another life, were maybe the guys who’d stolen your car or your credit-card numbers, who worked two jobs or three jobs under two or three different names to keep their own families fed…”
For an industry that employs millions “Cooking Dirty” pays loving tribute to what really goes on behind those “swinging doors.”
Vick Mickunas
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Remembering John Cougar…
John Cougar Mellencamp played last night in Dayton on a bill with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. I wasn’t there. Hearing about it reminded me of my own encounter with Mellencamp years ago.
He went by the name John Cougar then. He had put out an album back in the late 1970’s on MCA under the name John Cougar. It didn’t sell. He seemed to be a David Bowie clone at that point in his career.
Then in the early 1980’s he put out a second album under the name of John Cougar on a label called Riva. That was the record that put him on the map.
I was managing a record store. That John Cougar album had just come out. The radio hits were still in the future. Nobody had heard of John Cougar then.
His label sent him out on tour as the opening act for, you might not believe this, Kiss. I’m not making this up.
Cougar and his band came to Des Moines as the opening act and since I had heard the album I was ready. Cougar put on a fabulous show. The crowd had no idea who he was and since they were all there to see Kiss they could care less. Cougar’s superb performance barely elicited polite applause.
The guy from Polygram Records was there. Polygram had put together this unlikely pairing of Kiss (on Casablanca Records) and Cougar. The guy from the label asked if we wanted to go have a beer with Cougar and his band. Of course we did.
We went over to the Howard Johnson’s where Cougar was staying. There he was in a booth in the bar with the guys in his band. They were drinking beer. We sat down with them. (note-I never saw Cougar drink alcohol).
There was nobody else in the bar besides a waitress who clearly wished she was elsewhere. No groupies. No fans. Nobody.
We sat there and listened to Cougar whine about how his career was going nowhere. It was stalled. He was angry.
The band invited us up to their rooms to continue the party. I had had enough of listening to Cougar’s whining. I declined the invitation.
Over the years as I observed Cougar’s rise to fame and his recovery of his actual last name I have always recalled that depressing night in Des Moines.
Mellencamp, eh? He’ll always be John Cougar to me.
Vick Mickunas
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Meet Coach Jim Tressel
A new book about Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel has just been published.
David Lee Morgan, Jr. has written More Than a Coach: What It Means to Play for Coach, Mentor, and Friend Jim Tressel (Triumph Books).
Tressel and Morgan will be autographing copies of the book one week from today in Columbus at the Borders Book Store located at 4545 Kenny Road. That’s Friday, July 17 at 12 noon.
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Did Michael Jackson fake his own death?
The guy was 400 million in debt. Think about it. If you owed 400 million would you consider faking your own demise?
Is Michael living in Argentina now? The memorial service just happened. Was the coffin sealed? I’m just asking…
What do you think? Is Michael hanging out now with his former father-in-law? You know, Elvis.
Think about it. 400 million dollars. That’s a pile of coin. Enough, to fake it? Right?
I can’t wait to read the book…
Vick Mickunas
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Is more gambling going to fix this mess?
Yesterday’s post about our embattled Ohio public library system elicited some good comments. This comment from “Scout” got my attention:
“I’m also sympathetic to library funding - BUT I’d rather see library budgets tighten than see gambling in Ohio. I’m not sure about Yellow Springs, but in Centerville there is much money wasted on nonessential items like video games, first run DVDs, too many employees, glossy ads sent to everyone, etc. There are many ways to tighten the budget without hurting patrons.”
I hadn’t thought of any direct linkage between allowing more gambling in Ohio, video slots, etc, and funding our library system. Is that something that Ohioans would support? I searched for news articles about this ongoing budget discussion and I came across a recent editorial in The Cleveland Plain Dealer that really takes Governor Strickland to task.
The title of this editorial indicates that this writer is preparing to lash out. The headline reads Gov. Strickland is doing an appalling job for Ohio.
It goes on to state:
“This library funding fiasco will get worked out. But that a governor actually advocated a reckless policy that would destroy Ohio’s fine system of public libraries shows how completely clueless he is about the state he’s lived in pretty much all his life. The head of the Dayton library system put it best, saying Strickland’s proposal made him “want to puke.”
Sure, Strickland got dealt a bad hand, being governor during the worst meltdown of the world economy in 75 years. Yet at a time when Ohio desperately needs a governor who thinks first and foremost of the state’s future, Strickland acts as if that future begins and ends with his 2010 re-election campaign.
As a result, his administration operates on an inexcusable double standard. Nothing else can explain why a governor would rather punish Ohio’s youngest, oldest, poorest and most challenged citizens rather than raise taxes on snuff, cigarettes, cigars and alcohol products, or other “user” fees. Nothing else can explain a governor whose major contribution to the disastrous budget process wasn’t a thoughtful casino plan that would maximize state revenue. No, this governor’s visionary way of expanding gambling is to put slot machines in Ohio’s decaying and struggling racetracks. How visionary!
To read the entire editorial click HERE
What do you think? Do you want more gambling to be allowed in Ohio?
Vick Mickunas
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As library use is soaring…
Funding for our Ohio libraries is being cut back.
A recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times explains why the demand for library services is increasing:
” Here’s a silver lining in the economic recession — Chicago Public Library circulation has spiked 30 percent in the past year.
“People are realizing, ‘Why should I buy my books, my CDs — I can get it free at the library,’ ” Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey said Saturday, speaking at the dedication of a new library in Beverly.
Dempsey said the use of online holds — reserving books online to pick up at a local library — has increased 100 percent in the last year.
Increased library use is being reported around the country, as people decide not to spend on books and the unemployed seek out computers and other job-hunting resources.”
In these hard economic times we need our public libraries more than ever. We need all those books and CDs and computers. We need those bookmobiles. We need our librarians. We need our libraries to be open longer.
Sadly, in Ohio the library situation is deteriorating. Hours are being cut back. Pay cuts are being mandated. Bookmobiles are not going out where they are needed.
Does this concern you? Write a letter. Make a phone call. Call your elected representative. Let Governor Strickland know in no uncertain terms that getting the economy turned around is important and our public libraries need to be open to expedite the recovery process.
Vick Mickunas
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For dog lovers everywhere…
Millions of Americans enjoy relationships with companion animals. Dogs and cats are the most common nonhuman family members. For those of us without children of our own, these wonderful companion creatures can be almost as dear to us as any child could be.
Jill Ciment’s latest novel, “Heroic Measures,” is the story of one such family. Alex and Ruth have lived in the same New York City apartment for 40 years. The apartment cost them $5,000 when they moved in. Those five flights of stairs are making them consider finding another building with an elevator.
Their realtor has convinced them they might be able to sell their place for $1 million in Manhattan’s overheated real estate market. They never had children. Their special friend is Dorothy, a 12-year-old dachshund. She is getting a wee bit long in the tooth herself.
Dorothy is the center of their universe. Alex continues to create art in his studio. Ruth has retired from teaching school. This childless couple lavishes their affection upon Dorothy and that little wiener dog trusts them completely.
“Heroic Measures” takes place during one exciting weekend. Alex and Ruth are nervous about the open house their realtor has scheduled for Saturday morning. As they scramble to make their apartment presentable, they fail to notice their little dog is in some pain.
When they observe Dorothy has lost her ability to use her back legs they rush her to the animal hospital. Traffic is a mess. The congestion is being caused by an accident. A fuel tanker truck has jack-knifed and blocked a tunnel.
They carry Dorothy across town on a breadboard, fearful for her and also for their chances of selling their apartment. As they pass through the city, they get a stream of updates about this tunnel incident. Was it the work of terrorists? Nobody seems to know.
This sweet story is told from three viewpoints, that of Alex, Ruth, and of course, Dorothy. The vet informs them Dorothy will need expensive surgery and there is no guarantee this procedure will help. They have to make some tough decisions. Do they love her enough to try to save her?
“Heroic Measures” operates on a couple levels. It is the story of how a marriage has succeeded. At one point, Alex notices Ruth is asleep. He observes that “he has loved her for so long he can no longer distinguish between passion and familiarity.”
And it also is the story of Dorothy’s unconditional love. She endures her ordeal with undying faith. And like those canine companions so many of us know and cherish, when Dorothy is reunited with her people, she is always happy to see them. Dorothy trusts they will return for her.
“She curls up as best she can, but she can’t find a comfortable position; she’s too despondent. She misses her spot on the big bed, Alex in the middle, she and Ruth on either side.”
Vick Mickunas
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Sarah Palin bombshell…
Sarah Palin has announced that she is not going to run for another term as governor of Alaska. Bizarre.
She recently inked a deal to write her memoirs but that cannot possibly explain this sudden decision to exit politics and diminish her power base.
For someone who was supposedly in the thick of the thicket of probable contenders for her party’s presidential nomination in 2012 this move seems rather odd. Or is it?
With each passing week another potential Republican presidential nominee seems to get bumped from the fray. Senator Ensign. Governor Sanford. Now, Sarah Palin.
Since the McCain-Palin team went down to defeat last November Sarah Palin has been a constant in the news. The tabloids have been raking the coals, stirring up flames whenever possible.
Palin’s recent kerfuffle with David Letterman was just another act in this circus sideshow.
What do you think? Is there even more weirdness ahead? She’s walking away from her job as governor effective this month. Is Palin still a contender for the White House?
Vick Mickunas
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Is Google trying to cash in on the orphans?
Orphan books that is. According to an article today in the New York Times, internet behemoth Google has attracted the notice of US authorities.
Here’s why:
SAN FRANCISCO — “The Justice Department confirmed on Thursday that it was conducting an antitrust investigation into the settlement of a lawsuit that groups representing authors and publishers filed against Google.
In a letter to the federal judge charged with reviewing the settlement, the Justice Department said it was reviewing concerns that the agreement could violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.
“At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition,” William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general, said in the letter. “However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry.”
The $125 million settlement agreement, which was signed in October and is subject to review by a federal court, was intended to resolve a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google. In the suit, the authors and publishers said Google’s plan to digitize millions of books from libraries and make them available in its Book Search service amounted to a violation of their copyrights.”
The key issue here is the so-called “orphan books:
“Antitrust experts said the letter was the latest indication that the Justice Department is seriously examining complaints that the agreement would grant Google the exclusive right to profit from millions of so-called “orphan works,” books that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.”
Google is trying to profit from all those books that are out there without anybody to protect the copyrights. That represents a lot of books and boatloads of potential to profit….
To read the article click HERE
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Come down and see me!
I’ll be introducing a couple of bands Friday night at the Cityfolk Festival in downtown Dayton. I’ll be at the Dance Pavilion. The bands are Afromotive followed by Son del Caribe. Stop by. Say hi…..
Vick Mickunas
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How many were tortured to death?
During the Bush/Cheney years the United States government authorized the use of torture. Have you ever wondered if anybody was tortured to death?
How many died after being tortured by the C.I.A. and those other entities authorized by the US to do so? One? Ten? 50? 100?
Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece yesterday for Salon.com that indicates that there might be many instances where our people tortured their captives to death. That they went too far and killed them. Dead.
Greenwald, the author of books like Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics clearly has an agenda. If it is true that numerous captives died from being tortured does Greenwald’s agenda make it somehow OK that they died by our hands? I don’t think so.
We’ll know soon enough how many died. The CIA Inspector General’s Report is being released.
To read Greenwald’s article click HERE
Vick Mickunas
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