All posts by David Todd

book reviews

Book Review: Cup Of Gold

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Originally published in 1929 and selling few copies, “Cup Of Gold” was republished after Steinbeck’s huge successes with later books.

I have enjoyed all the John Steinbeck books that I’ve read. So when I found Cup Of Gold by John Steinbeck on a bookshelf in the house, I put it in a reading pile. Before too long it rose to the top. A little research showed it was published in 1929, though only 1537 copies sold. A second edition in 1936 by a different publisher sold even fewer. My particular volume is a Tower Books Edition, Second printing, April 1944. How this book came into my possession is a mystery to me. I don’t think I bought it, and it has a marker in it suggesting I’ve had it a long time. It must have been Mom’s, or possibly a book Dad picked up from a flea market.

The subtitle is A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History. It’s almost a biography, almost a novel. Today we would classify it, I think, as creative non-fiction. Of, perhaps it would be shelved under historical fiction. Either way, I’m quite glad I had this, found it, and read it.

My 1944 edition is more than a little worn. The title is just barely visible on the spine. Though old, it’s not a collector edition.

Pirates in the Caribbean are the rage now, aren’t they? Maybe not quite as much as a few years back, but they are in an almost mythical era, men who did incredible feats of daring. In America we tend to think of Englishmen who stole treasure ships from the Spaniards. Some worked with the blessing of the British crown and some freelanced. Henry Morgan was, according to Cup Of Gold, one of the latter.

He went to the Caribbean as a teenager, intent on becoming a buccaneer because of the stories he’d heard in his native Wales. He spent time as an indentured servant to pay for his passage, then entered his pirate life. After many successes, he led a raid on the city of Panama, a successful raid, and became a hero to the English.

I read this without distraction, in a comfortable setting.

I read this 269 page book in 18 sittings in July-August 2020, out in the sunroom, at cooler times during the summer days. Here’s what I wrote on little sheet I used as a bookmark and reading record: “What a good book! The death scene is wonderful. If I had not thousands of books to read in my few remaining years, I should like to read this again.”

Steinbeck does a great job (as we would expect, based on his other, later works) of weaving the story. He mixes historical facts with dialog. The dialog seems very faithful to the time. The mix of dialog and narrative is good. Steinbeck chose to focus on a few episodes in Morgan’s life, not try to give us every year and every event. Not surprisingly, the raid on Panama takes up a good chunk of the book.

I can see the excellence of Steinbeck’s writing even in this early book. I’m not a “literary criticism” person, so I’m not going to analyze is. I’ll just say it’s an excellent and easy read. If you like Steinbeck but didn’t know about this early work of his, by all means pick up a copy.

Is this a keeper? Alas, I think not. It’s not a collector edition as it’s a reprint after Steinbeck’s fame with other works. I’m at the point in life where I need to be getting rid of things, not saving them. That includes books. I can’t keep all the authors I like, and Steinbeck, alas, doesn’t make the cut. So, Cup Of Gold is going out to the garage today, to the sell/donate bookshelf out there, awaiting either a sale of a trip to the thrift store.

America, American Colonial History, Genealogy, History, Politics

Self-Determination: A Defining American Characteristic

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My first characteristic of what makes the United States of America different than most other nations is the concept of self-determination. In other words, we chose our own form of government and our own leaders, and have maintained that for over 230 years. Actually, the choosing of our government goes back much further than that.

The residents of Waterville Vermont wrestled with choosing leaders and setting the tax rate in the mandatory annual town meeting. How interesting it was to read those records.

From the moment that Europeans came to these shores in the early 1600s, selection of leaders through voting has been a part of our nature. The form of government was at first based on what the colonists knew back home, or what was imposed on them by the terms of the charter by which the colony was established. However, slowly, the form of government changed and settled into a pattern.

First it was pure democracy at the local level, with a fledgling republic at the colony level. By the time of the revolution, when the colonies considered themselves states, republican form of government was well-established. At the local level even, a mini-republic had mostly replaced democracy. Some vestiges of democracy remained, but for the most part the form of government was a republic.

Of course, a republic requires active participation of its citizens in terms of voting. At regular intervals, from as short as six months to as long as two years, the people chose their leaders. In doing so peacefully, the people were saying, “We are satisfied with this form of government. All we are doing now is choosing those who will lead us, either returning those already in leadership or voting new ones in.” Election after election, for more than a century before we were a nation, this process took place from New Hampshire to Georgia. Those eligible to vote chose new leaders and kept their form of government.

The colonies did well governing themselves, until the King of England tried to impose new government on them. Resistance to that became the seeds of the American Revolution.

Self-determination. We will govern ourselves. How different this was than in the Europe they had left! England had a monarch, a king or queen, who ruled. In the 17th Century the parliamentary system was flexing its muscles and growing in importance. England went through three revolutions (one bloody, two peaceful) and one counter-revolution. All other European nations had much the same. The monarchy was a coercive power. The people didn’t choose it so much as the king ruled by “divine right”. France, in a bloody revolution that would eventually lead to a worse dictatorship than the kings ever were, would throw off that monarchy thirteen years after the American Colonies declared their independence. Other nations would eventually follow suit. But it was the bloody American Revolution that set much of that in motion.

As I researched my first genealogy book, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West, I had occasion to look into town records of Waterville Vermont, where Seth was born and raised until he was 13. It was interesting to see the notices of the town meeting on the last Saturday in March (right in the middle of maple sugar harvest no less) and having all voters required to attend. I read how they set the tax rate: “Voted to establish the rate at $X” or “Voted a rate of $Y to construct a fence around the cemetery.” These people were governing themselves at the local level, deciding big issues as a democracy but electing representatives to lead the municipal republic the rest of the year. I “watched” as new towns were formed, Waterville carved out of Bakersfield because the Waterville residents couldn’t cross the snow-covered mountain in March to attend the town meeting. Self-government in action, the form of government chosen by the people and maintained year by year, decade by decade, century by century.

As I researched my second genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich, I saw the same thing from a much earlier period, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1647 to 1710. I actually went back earlier than that, as I was simultaneously researching an earlier ancestor in the Cheney family, the subject of a future book. I saw the same thing with the town, and more so at the county and state level. One rabbit-hole I went down with my research that took place during Stephen’s and Elizabeth’s lives was the change in colonial charters forced upon the colonies by the king of England. This did not go over well. In fact, the seeds of the American Revolution were sown right here, as people, who had chosen and maintained a form of government they liked—self-determination—had a form of government and leaders forced on them—a coercive power—who served at the whim of and benefit of the monarch, not the people. Ipswich was a hot spot about this and some consider it to be the cradle of American independence.

Now, in 21st Century America, we have a hard time conceiving what the world was like during our colonial days. Oh, we know from studying our history what the colonies were like, and may have a vague understanding of England, from whence most of those settlers came. But I think we need more study of just how different the government was in our world. And to what extent the people had, not just the right, but the obligation to maintain that government through votes and taxes. We had our faults back then, and took far too long to address those faults. Compromises would eventually be forged that would keep us as one nation rather than several regional federations, compromises that later would almost tear us apart.

Yes, I believe self-determination is a defining characteristic of the United States of America. Other nations now have it. Yet many other nations only dream of it. It defines the USA. How long can we keep it?

book reviews, non-fiction

Book Review: On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection

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Alas, this book is falling apart. Tonight it will go into the trash.

Several decades ago I read the book Origins by Irving Stone, checked out of a library. It’s what we now call creative non-fiction, not quite a novel and not quite a biography of Charles Darwin. I liked it a lot. It presented Darwin in a sympathetic way. I learned a lot about him.

Flash forward three decades. I saw Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection at a thrift store, I grabbed it and put it on my reading pile. It sat there for several years, until May this year. Having finished another book, and ready for something new, I went searching for this book in my downstairs, storeroom library. It took a couple days of looking but I found it, exactly where I remembered seeing it a couple of years ago. I began reading it on May 14, 2020 and finished on July 29, 2020 in approximately 50 reading sessions.

Did I enjoy it? Not particularly. Did I learn for it? For sure. Do I recommend it to others? I’m not sure. It was a difficult read. The language, being from the 1850s, is somewhat archaic. Sentences are long and convoluted. Paragraph breaks sparse. It’s not exactly old English, but it’s not modern either. In addition there were lots of scientific terms, and lots of partial references to other experts Darwin consulted.

Over 40 reading sessions for 460 pages indicates how difficult this was to read.

Reading it was a struggle for me. I wanted to read for comprehension, but often I found myself skimming, or reading the same paragraphs two or three times trying to understand it.

Why did I read it? I wanted to get Darwin’s theory directly from him, rather than filtered through a science teacher or science textbook. What exactly did Darwin say? Does it seem plausible? Where should I go next in researching the topics he wrote on—would there be hints in OOS that would allow me to do this? An inquiring mind wanted to know.

Alas, after reading OSS, I can’t really say I know more about Darwin or the theory of evolution. I read the book slowly, away from the television and other distractions, so I can’t blame lack of concentration. I’ll blame the other things I mentioned a few paragraphs back. I think I understand what Darwin was saying, but, by today’s standards, I don’t think it develops the theory very well. It certainly has no references. Many times Darwin says something like, “Dr. Smith informed me of his research into….” The reader, unless a contemporary of Darwin in the science of that day, has no idea who Dr. Smith is, what his field of study is, and why he should be trusted. That’s not to say it’s wrong. It’s simply impossible to know the correctness of what Darwin is saying from Darwin’s book alone.

The subject matter in the book is far ranging. Darwin covers not just the gradual change in species from what they are to completely new species over thousands (or tens of thousands) of generations, but also the concept of mutations and hybrid species.

Still, I wasn’t very satisfied by the book. I think I would have to read this at least three times to understand it. Will I ever do so? Not with this book. It was somewhat damaged when I bought it as a used book, and started falling apart as I read it. It starts with a 70 page introduction, and the first 80 pages of the book have fallen out. It was a cheaply made, mass-market paperback. It’s not worth trying to sell at a garage sale nor donating to a thrift store. No, this particular book is going in the trash—not because of what it contains, but because of its physical condition. And, if I ever do want to read it, I can access it as a free e-book at Project Gutenberg.

Documenting America, goals, Health, home improvements, reading, Writing

Weary Once More

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My plans for today’s blog was a book review. But it would be an intense book review, and I don’t know that I have the strength of mine for it at the moment. So I’ll write about weariness.

Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors.

After having written about the Kuwait years letters in a recent post, I did a little more searching in the storeroom and found a few more items and transcribed them. The collection is now up to 143 items, the computer file running to 152 pages and 89,000 words, maybe 300 of which are commentary I’ve begun to add. I think I’m done with it. I hope I’m done with it. The Saudi years will be some time from now, after I get the Kuwait years into published form.

The last two days have been full, though in some ways I wonder exactly what I accomplished. In the evenings I worked on saving e-mails to Word documents for my letters file. I also collated five notebooks of printed correspondence, a task that’s not quite complete. Wednesday morning I worked outside for an hour. I intended to yesterday, but rain quashed that notion.

Then I’ll get to correct this one in the same way.

I attended a writing group meeting via Facebook live stream and Zoom conference on Wednesday. On Thursday I attended a writing workshop on improving books for getting noticed on Amazon. Much to consider.

A writing task I’ve been planning to do was to correct and republish my original Documenting America book, updating the works by this author section all versions, and correct the running heads and locations for page numbers for the print version. I then will republish it, then do some Amazon ads for it. I originally published this in 2011, and I don’t think I ever updated it.

And, this one will also need some updating.

Alas, I found my computer files in a mess. I had files here, files there, folders inside of folders, duplicates and triplicates. I couldn’t tell for sure which was my latest file. So, while listening to the webinar yesterday, I multi-tasked by creating a good file structure and move files into it from their scattered locations. I found that work mentally exhausting, and I was good for nothing after doing that. Except I did figure out which was the latest print book file and began working on it.

That came after Thursday normal stock trading work, a Wal-Mart grocery and meds run, and getting a roast started for supper, adding the veggies after the webinar. Then it was off to the sunroom and reading in a David Morrell novel. Then to the living room and more work on e-mails. I eventually dished up supper, and store-bought pie for dessert, and went back to e-mails.

Then, I was exhausted. We had The Curse of Oak Island re-runs on, which are easy to tune out and do other things. Then it was read aloud in an Agatha Christie mystery. Now, Friday morning, I’m doing trading, and work on the book revision. Soon we’ll head on a 45 mile drive for some medical tests for Lynda.

And I’m weary. Weary in well-doing. Weary in from doing too much. Getting my book corrected and re-published has to be my top priority. I hope, when we get back from the distant lab, to get back to the print book. I could finish that today and get on to the e-book. I’m hoping some energy will return.

America, American Colonial History, History, Politics

Three Traits that Mark the USA

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When the time came for a new form of government, American traits were well-established. This series of blog posts will explore those.

What is it that differentiated the United States of America? What separates us from all other nations? Or is there anything? Are we the same as the other nations, but we became wealthy and powerful by chance of time and location? Did we just happen to find the right combination of population and resources?

Many talk of American exceptionalism. When did that kick in? Were we exceptional at the beginning, or did we develop into an exceptional people and nation in response to circumstances?

These are difficult questions. I’ve been pondering them for a while—at least ten years, since I’ve been writing the Documenting America series. I’m learning more and more as I do the research on this. In addition to that, I do a lot of research into genealogy—American genealogy. My first genealogy book dealt mainly with the years 1830-1910, long after American traits would have been established. My second genealogy book dealt with the years 1640-1710, right in the foundational period. As I wrote that genealogy/family history book, my thoughts began to focus on that question: what differentiated the USA from other nations?

As I researched to finish this work, I came upon some Massachusetts Bay Colony documents that led me to concluding one of the characteristics I’ll discuss in this series.

Added to researching my books is a love of history and an ability to self-study and learn. I love to read, and history is about my favorite topic to read. Since I started writing history books it’s difficult to read history for simple enjoyment or personal learning. Still, I try.

I don’t know that I’ve finished my thought process on all of this, but I believe I have identified three items that are in our nature that made a difference in our journey to exceptionalism.

  1. The consent of the governed. Another explanation for this is self-determination. We decide what type of government we want and establish it.
  2. The common man as a landowner. A big difference in the USA is everyone—just about everyone—owned land. This gives a huge change in perspective on government.
  3. Peaceful transition of power. When we change leaders—with two notable exceptions—the transition happens easily and peacefully.

These are probably not the only things that have contributed to making the USA into the nation that it is, but I see them as critical components.

In three posts coming soon (maybe not next, but soon), I’ll cover these three factors. By the time I finish them, I may have another one or two posts to make in the series. I hope many will read these posts, and consider how these helped to make us what we are.

expatriate life, family, letters

The Kuwait Years In Letters

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It may not look like 129 letters, but they are all there, collated by date after transcription. Now I need to figure out a better way to store them.

As regular readers of this blog know (all two or three of you), I love letters. I have a sizeable collection of published letter collections, and from time to time I pull one out and read it. Right now I have Volume 1 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis on my work table in The Dungeon, and am trying to get in the habit of reading one or two of his letters every day. In fact, having not read one yesterday or today, I’m going to interrupt writing this post and will read a couple, then come back…

…okay, letters read, and I’m back. I’ve never understood this fascination of mine with letters, but it’s there.

As it turns out, my own house is littered with letters—letters that I’ve sent over the years. When we moved to Saudi Arabia in 1981, we had no telephone in our flat. Using the phone at the office was not terribly convenient, so we wrote letters: to my Dad, to Lynda’s mom and dad, to grandparents, and a few to siblings or friends. When we moved to Kuwait in 1988 after four years back in the States, at first we didn’t have a phone, so again we wrote letters. We got a phone at some point, perhaps nine months after we got there, but, with international calls being very expensive no matter which side of the ocean they originated on, we still wrote letters to the same people. The recipients of those letters, our parents at least, kept them, and later gave them back to us (or we found them in their possession upon their deaths).

The Saudi letters will be an even bigger challenge. For now they can stay in their bin, awaiting my attention at some future date (measured in years, not months).

Now we have those letters. When we moved to this house in 2002, with some space to lay things out and organize papers, I began to “gather” these letters into boxes and bins. They all went into a plastic bin at first. I started transcribing a few of the letters from the Saudi years, but put it aside and have no idea where that computer file is. Perhaps I’ll find it. But no matter because I didn’t have more than ten of them transcribed.

Two months ago, when I began going through my mother-in-law’s papers, looking to downsize/declutter after her death, I found a plastic sack with some letters we had sent her. These were a surprise. That caused me to find the bin and put them in it. Then I thought, perhaps I should separate the Saudi years letters from the Kuwait years letters. So I did that. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be neat to get back to transcribing these? Since I didn’t know where my Saudi years computer file was, I decided to do the Kuwait years.

So on July 19, 2020, at 11:07 a.m., I created a computer file and transcribed a letter. Before that, of course, I had pulled them out of the bin and collated them by date. I’ve read enough letter collections by now that I knew pretty much what to do. The next day I transcribed another, and the next day another. This went on for a while. Occasionally I might do two letters a day, or even three, if they were short (as many of mine were to my dad).

Then, somewhere around mid-August, finding myself enjoying the transcription, I decided to just make that my work for a while. I began typing for all my time in The Dungeon that wasn’t taken up by stock trading or book marketing or promotion. I spent several hours a day transcribing. As I did, I saw holes in the letters for some month and people, especially to my wife’s dad. I know we wrote more to him than the number I found. I went hunting in the house. He tended to discard the envelopes and put letters into notebooks. I found them in a box, and found another ten or so letters we’d written to him. I think many to him are still missing, and perhaps with a little more digging I’ll find more.

Most of the letters I found around the house are ones we sent back to the States. I did, however, find a few letters we received. Since we returned to the USA for vacation right before Iraq invaded, we were able to go back only after the Gulf War. Our villa was a mess, we had many things to ship back more important (so I thought at the time) than letters, so we must have trashed most of the incoming letters. I don’t remember any of that, but the lack of having them makes me think that’s what happened. The incoming letters that I did find I also transcribed.

This box has other letters and miscellanies, not necessarily from overseas years. Yet, I need to go through it. Maybe I’ll find the missing Kuwait years letters in it.

Tuesday morning I typed the last two, incoming letters just after the Iraqi invasion from my father-in-law. The record is now as complete as I can make it. It’s 129 letters and postcards, 145 typed pages, just under 84,300 words—then length of a medium-sized novel. I have some editing out to do, and I think the final word count will be around 82,000. To this I will add commentary, footnotes, historical perspective. We have numerous photos with which to illustrate this, probably covering all the events mentioned. For the most part the photos are all in one place in the storeroom in a clearly marked box.

So what’s next? At some point I hope to add the commentary and perspective, and to illustrate this with photos. I hope to turn it into a book (‘t’will be around 300 pages, I think), not for publication, but to print off a few nicely-bound copies via my Amazon KDP account, and present them to our children and grandchildren. I wouldn’t offer it for sale. Who would want to buy it? Very few people are like me and love letters. And my lack of notoriety works even more against it ever being in demand. No, I’ll have the copies printed, pull it back to draft status, and leave it there should I ever need a few more copies.

As for the letters from the Saudi years, they will have to wait. I really need to get back to my regular writing and publishing schedule.

Bible study, book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: “More”

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Two—or at most three—stars is the most I can give this.

Some time ago, in early in 2020, our church did an all-church study of the book More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure (2016, Zondervan) by Todd Wilson. The pastor preached on it and adult Life Groups were to study it. We were in the midst of the study of my book, Acts Of Faith, but decided to interrupt that and do the all-church study instead. I can’t be specific on the dates, as I can’t find all my teaching notes nor the little sheet I recorded my reading dates on. Maybe I saved all I had.

The book stemmed from conversations Wilson (who was a nuclear engineer who entered the pastorate and currently is an author of Christian ministry books, and a speaker) had with with a successful business man who didn’t feel fulfilled. That man wondered “Is this all there is? What is my purpose? What should I be doing to have the biggest impact?’

I found the book to be tedious. Wilson presents a formula, complete with diagrams. Those diagrams concern our “Be-Do-Go”. “Be” is our identity/design. “Do” is our mission/purpose. “Go” is our mission field/position. For each of these we primary or general calling and a secondary or unique personal calling. The general calling is something common to all Christians, and the unique calling is what God as specifically called each of us to do on earth in His kingdom.

Each week we were to do certain exercises and fill in a chart as we gained understanding on the general calling and tried to figure out our unique calling. I found those charts almost juvenile and had trouble asking our Life Group to fill them out. Consequently, I told them what the book wanted them to do and suggested the see if it worked for them. It didn’t work for me, though I’m not sure why.

With Wilson being an engineer I can understand why he reduces his teaching to diagrams. I kind of do the same. And you would think I would embrace his approach and love the book. But I don’t and didn’t. I won’t say I hated it, but for some reason it came up short with me. It was nicely organized and well written. You knew where he was going and he got there in a reasonable amount of time. It’s a fairly easy read. It’s just not my kind of book, that’s all I can say. I haven’t reviewed it on Amazon, and may or may not. If I do, I’ll give it only two stars, or maybe three.

Yet, it will stay on my shelf, for the possibility exists that I’ll read it again in a few years. Perhaps in a second reading it will seem better to me.

construction, Engineering, home improvements, miscellaneous, The Teachings

Can’t Get In A Rhythm

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Here it is Saturday afternoon. Yesterday was my regular blogging day. I like to post by 7:30 a.m. Obviously I’m not even close. It seems that life is conspiring against me, with task after task that must be done pushing out the tasks that I’d like to do.

The biggest thing coming up, aside from important medical appointments, is the distribution of the physical effects of my mother-in-law’s estate. Just two weeks ago we finished distribution of her remaining financial assets. There weren’t many left, but we had waited to make sure another bill didn’t come in.

The physical estate consists of odds and ends of furniture, linens, books, photos, letters and cards, knickknacks, and decorations. Some of these were hers from her first marriage, some where her second husband’s, and some they acquired together. Her second husband has two daughters by his prior marriage, my wife’s step-sisters who we used to see regularly and had good relationships with. We told them we were finally ready for the physical distribution. So they are going to drive here next Saturday, spend the afternoon going through things, and drive home again—thus minimizing coronavirus exposure.

Getting ready for it has started. Last weekend I did some organizing and took an approximate inventory of the more major items. We also got a letter out about it by e-mail and Messenger to the step-sisters and Lynda’s brother. He lives farther away and won’t be making a trip here. He gave us his desires on the phone.

Meanwhile, Thursday I had a full day of work for my former company, consisting of a final inspection, site visits, luncheon, and former meeting. Some reports were due, and some edits to City drainage standards. That work spilled over to Friday morning. As I worked on that the fact that I had a blog to write escaped me. I was going to do a book review. I’ve finished three books I haven’t yet reviewed but want to. I wasn’t sure which one to do next, so I had some thinking to do before I could write the review. I suppose that will be Monday’s post.

Meanwhile, I continue transcribing letters from our Kuwait years into a Word file. With six to go, I’m up to 77,700 words and 138 pages. When formatted for a book that will be well over 250 pages, especially if illustrated with photos as I would like to do. I will finish those around Tuesday. I say “finish” because I don’t know for certain that I’ve gathered all letters from those years. We have a large gap in correspondence with Lynda’s dad, and a three month period in 1989 with no letters at all. Her dad may not have kept all our letters (accounting for that gap; or they could be in another notebook or box), and the time gap includes some travels during which we wouldn’t have sent letters. Still, I will hunt some to see if I missed any before I declare the transcribing “done”. Lynda said, “This didn’t have to be done now, you know.” Yes, I know. But if not now, when? Will live be any less crazy, less hectic, less busy once the pandemic ends and rioting in our urban areas subsides? I think not.

This week, as of this morning in fact, I’m caught up on yardwork. That’s not to say I don’t have more to do, but both front and back yards are back to a maintainable point with normal effort. Next week I’ll clear away some logs left from other clearing, and begin carrying posts across the street to the fort. But I feel good about the yardwork.

Friday I go to the hospital for an echo-cardiogram (my third), a stress test (my first), and something else cardio related. The will be a whole day gone. Meanwhile, my weight is down (5 lbs. this month), my blood sugar readings are in a good range even after the doc reduced my insulin dose from 25 to 10 units. I’ve been reducing it gradually and will finally hit 10 units tonight. So health is good.

Get the estate distribution behind us, get this transcribing behind us, get these tests behind me, see a reduction in workload for my former company, and then and only then will I be able to concentrate on my novel-in-progress. I read a little for research in it now and then, but not much new writing, and I won’t have any this week. Get these major items behind us, and hope no more come up.

Oh, yeah, our new roof is in and looks good. But the gutter covers they shipped were the wrong size and the worker installed them anyway while I was gone Thursday. They look like you know what. Some of our gutter is damaged. I got on a ladder, took photos, texted them to the superintendent, and said, “Are you proud of this work?” He said he sent them to corporate and will take care of it. My evaluation of the company depends on them making good on that promise.

book reviews

Book Review: Ten Little Indians

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My version, a paperback from the 1960s, has a sanitized title, which was changed at least twice from the original Christie published it as.

As I finish reading one book and look through the thousands of books in the house to choose the next one(s) to read, of late I’ve been looking for books I not only want to read but that I can discard (through sale, donation, or trashing) when I’m done. A couple of months ago I found one of those in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. I wouldn’t have known where this book came from or how I obtained it had I not found in it a Christmas gift tag with my handwriting. I gave it to my sister some years ago, probably when we were teenagers. This particular printing was November 1964. It is a student copy, which suggests I bought it during my sister’s high school years.

I admit to this being my first Christie book to read. I’ve see a number of movies made from her books, but had until this never picked one up to read. That is now rectified, and the enjoyment I found from this volume guarantees I will read more of her writing.

Originally published in Christie’s native Great Britain in 1939 with a different title, a very vile title (that I won’t enter here) by today’s standards, it has sometimes been published in the USA with the title Ten Little Indians. Like Christie’s main writing, it’s a murder mystery. In this case, however, you don’t know if the murders are really murders, until the denouement.

Ten people are lured to an island off the southern coast of England named Indian Island. Ownership of the island is in question and the ten, as they are making their way there, have lots of questions about who owns it now. They are invited by a person they don’t know: U.N. Owen. Seven men and three women arrive on the island within a day or two of each other. Eight are guests, two are servants. All expect their host, Owen, to arrive soon. As they head towards the island, we get some backstory on several of them. For others, backstory comes out as the novel progresses.

In each guestroom is a poem, framed and hanging on the wall, titled “Ten Little Indians”. It’s a childhood diddy at least some of the guests recognize. On the table in the dining room are ten Indian figurines. The ten people meet for their first evening meal. After it the butler, following written instructions from Owen, who he’s never meant, puts on a phonograph record. It turns out to be a surprise, someone speaking (not music), who indicts each of the ten with a death they have caused in the past, saying that they would have to pay for it.

How each character pays for it comes out chapter by chapter. The first happens that night, as one of the guests dies of poisoning. Murder? Or suicide? The remaining nine speculate. An elderly judge who is a guest takes charge and “holds court,” trying to work the problem logically and find out what evidence they have. The guests all become suspicious of each other. Meanwhile, one of the Indian figurines disappears.

By the time Christie wrote this, standards for detective novels had changed in, say, the forty years since Doyle had given us Sherlock Holmes. Then, the means of solving the case wasn’t given in the writing. Since then, by Christie’s time it was expected. So in the novel should be the means for the reader to solve it, if you read closely.

I was close. As the ten, one by one, meet their untimely end, I came to the conclusion that one of the dead wasn’t dead but was really alive, but was only thought to be dead by the other guests/servants. I had a candidate, but it turned out I was wrong. I suspect, however, that if I read it over again, slowly, I would see that the right clues were there from the start. That’s probably impossible to do, given that I’ve read the Epilogue that explained it all. Re-reading it would be an interesting exercise.

I never will do it, though. The story and plot were good, the writing was good, it was an easy read, and I highly recommend it. But I have too many books in the house, too many I want to read, and thus have to be very picky about the ones I will re-read. No, this one will go to the get-rid-of pile as soon as I post this. Very glad I read it—actually I should say “we” read it, as my wife and I read it aloud together, the 183 pages plus some of the 32 page reader’s supplement in ten sittings—but it’s goodbye, ten little Indians. I hope another reader someday acquires you and derives the same pleasure from you that I did.

Politics, Racism

Combatting Racism: Effectiveness of Protests

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My series on racism is drawing to a close. I’ll have this post and, depending on how wordy I am with it, possibly one more. I think I have made a convincing case that combatting racism requires looking at two things: racist acts, and racism that gives rise to racist acts. You can legislate against racist acts but you can’t legislate against racism.

Further, I believe I made a case that the role of any given person in this fight will be different than everyone else. Not everyone can or should be shouting “Black lives matter!” on Facebook or other social media every day or every hour.

Now I come to the matter of protests. How do you combat racism? A segment of the population is doing that through protests. The protests seem to be mainly gatherings in public places with much talk, repeating of slogans, denunciations, etc. Sometimes this involves blocking public places to prevent access. We have seen that where protesters block highways, preventing all vehicles from passing, including emergency vehicles.

In the speeches I’ve seen—which admittedly has only been on television and not so many there—have a “death to America” ring to them. The protesters seem to not just want change, but want to tear down our government and…do what? Start over with a different form of government? Have anarchy instead of government? The rhetoric seems not to be designed to solve the problem, but only to define it. The autonomous zone established in Seattle, later abandoned, seemed one of these types of protests.

Complicating the protests has been the violence. In certain major cities around the nation, violence, destruction of property, and looting have taken place. Again, the goal doesn’t seem to be to fix the problems in the system, but merely to rage against it.

I say that because the combination of protests and violence seem to be causing people to turn a deaf ear against the protesters. “Oh, you want to burn police cars, smash storefronts, loot businesses, and prevent free access on public streets? The heck with you and whatever it is you’re protesting.” That’s what I see happening. The protests have turned counterproductive. The very people the protesters need to change the system are turning against them. As a result the nation is going backwards in race relations, not forward.

Surely there is a way to protest racist acts in a way that will bring about positive change. That will help those in power at public institutions and at businesses to see how racism has crept in and caused racist acts to occur. Those can be changed. But will they ever be changed when all that we see is violence and looting? I fear not.

It is now close to three months since the death of George Floyd, the last in a line of acts that appear to be racist, where black men, for minor infractions, have wound up dead at the hands of police. Protests have been taking place daily in major cities around the USA. For a while they took place in smaller cities as well. Some changes have been made in how policing is done and how much policing these cities will have. Policing is in part being replaced with social working. How effective this will be in improving conditions for racial minorities in the cities will play out over time, time that will have to be measured in years before we will know the effectiveness of new procedures.

The protests—peaceful protests—have perhaps done some good in terms of racist acts. As a nation, we understand a little better how racist acts happen, and are making some changes. But as to racism, I think we are going backwards. White people look at the violence and pull away from admitting that racism exists. Hearts of men and women are not being changed, or, if they are being changed, it is to become more racist.

I never want to state or define problems and stop there. I want to develop solutions and state them clearly in a way that will convince people of the correctness of those solutions. In this case, however, I’m not sure what the solution is. There is a way to protest against racist acts and bring about improvement, and that doesn’t include violence. There is a way to change people’s hearts and help them to see that their racism, latent or open, is real and that they can change, and that doesn’t include violence. You can’t loot a store and say “Looting is reparations for slavery” and expect racists to turn into non-racists. Maybe you feel better having done the looting, but you have made the world worse, not better.

One of the reasons the civil rights protests of the 1960s were so effective is because they were non-violent. People could see the difference between the mostly black protesters and the white racists who committed violence against the protesters. The morality of one side and the immorality of the other was obvious. Progress was made as a result, and legislation was passed to put an end to a wide array of racist acts. At the same time, I believe we saw some hearts changed, and people who were racists came to the realization they were being stupid, that skin color didn’t matter. Not as many as needed to be changed, but some.

Violence now is being committed, not by those who want to preserve a racist system, but by those who want to change it. Or, perhaps, much of the violence is by those who seek to benefit without even trying to change what they see is a racist system.

End the violence. Protest peacefully. Show the world that your grievances are real, that you want honest change. As you do, also speak out against the violence. Denounce the looting and the violence against people and property. Help others to know that isn’t you, isn’t your group, isn’t your aim. I think that combination, ending the violence and maintenance of peaceful protests, will go a long way to achieving a less-racist system.