environment, research

Effect of Earth’s Slowing Rotation

Leave a comment

The earth has a 24 hour day, right?

Not so fast. We know that earth’s rotation isn’t exactly 24 hours. It’s a little less than that. That’s why we have to add 397 leap days every 400 years. Yet, even that isn’t quite accurate enough to keep our solar-year-based calendar exactly aligned with a true solar year.

The world recognized the inexactness of the 24-hour day to measure a year. The Julian Calendar was produced during the reign of Julius Ceasar, creating the concept of a leap year and leap day. A long time later, mankind found that wasn’t accurate enough, and the Gregorian calendar was created, tweaking the Julian and getting us enough into alignment for, it was thought, a few millenia.

Now, however, we have scientific instrument so accurate that they have found that not only is the Gregorian Calendar off a little, but the earth’s rotation is not a fixed amount. It changes regularly, and can change with each rotation. So one day, it might be 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds. The next day it might be 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.11 seconds. Or some such variation.

A while back I studied this. I wondered: Is it possible that the earth’s rotation is slowing, and what impact would that have on climate. I found data showing that the earth’s rotation is slowing. Every now and then, those that keep the atomic clock announce that they will add a “leap second” at such and such a time. Somehow all these electronic clocks we have get the message and the second is added, or they are manually reset. Maybe that’s why our analog clock in the kitchen keeps running fast.

The current info on Wikipedia’s “Earth’s Rotation” page is that earth’s rotation seems to be slowing about 2.3 milliseconds per century for the last 15 centuries. Except, in 2020, scientists noted a change, an infinitesimally longer rotation. Whether this is a trend of just an anomaly is too early to stay.

What would the effect be of a slowing rotation of the earth on earth’s climate? You would have longer consecutive daylight and longer consecutive dark. It seems like this would result in more weather extremes. Over time, the climate should exhibit more extremes.

But, how much difference can a few seconds over a milenia or two make? Surely, you will say, I’m over-emphasizing this potential factor as a potential natural cause of currently observed climate change. Maybe so. But I think we have several factors to consider. One is that we don’t know that this slowing has been at this same rate forever in the earth’s life. What if it slowed at a faster rate for a billion years and is now reaching some kind of steady state? The other is what if the cumulative effects of slowing rotation have just reached some kind of critical mass, and the climate is showing the effects of thousands of years of slowing?

I looked for answers to these questions, and didn’t find them. Possibly it’s like with volcanic activity—articles not available in 2018-2019 when I did my studies didn’t exist but they are out there now. Someday I’ll repeat my studies, but not now. For now, I see no mention of the earth’s rotation as a factor in climate change, only pat dismissals.

environment

Volcanic Ash and the Climate

Leave a comment
Remember the oil wells set afire by Iraq? It really happened. Here’s Lynda in June 1991 when she went back to Kuwait as a Red Cross nurse.

In my first post in this series on climate change, I mentioned the amount of volcanic ash in the atmosphere as a possible cause of global warming. I asked if global warming was in part caused by a reduction of volcanic activity over some period of time. I looked for an answer to that back in 2018-19 when I did my studies into this topic, and found nothing about it.

You might wonder why this came on my radar. The answer is what I observed in Kuwait in 1991. Those old enough will remember that Iraq, as they realized they were losing Kuwait and about to withdraw, set Kuwait’s oilwells on fire. When the US moved into the just-liberated country, they found an environmental disaster in progress. As soon as the country was secured, oil fire fighters from around the world, but especially from the USA, went to work on the fires in Kuwait. But within a couple of years, the ash was gone, the temperatures were back to normal.

The fires started around Feb 25, 1991. I went back to Kuwait in early July 1991. Some of the fires had been put out at this time, but many, possibly most, were still burning. I noticed that the ambient temperature was much lower than during my previous years in Kuwait and the Gulf region. Maybe as much as 10-15°F. Why? The ash in the atmosphere was clearly the reason.

I paid attention to this for a while. The plume of smoke was blown southwest by the dominant winds, though sometimes to the south. Areas downwind also experienced lower than normal temperatures. It took months to get all the fires out, and the lower temperatures persisted even beyond the time the last fire was out.

I’m sure we track the incident of volcanic activity. Finding info on that was harder than I expected it to be.

This stayed in my mind. The global warming (later rephrased as “climate change”) debate was just getting started at that time. As the debate built over the years, I read what I could about it. Those most vocal were, in general, people who I didn’t think very highly of. This made me skeptical of their arguments.

However, as I said in the first post in this series, it is intuitively obvious to me that mankind’s activities today produce heat compared to mankind’s activities, say, two or three or ten centuries ago. The question becomes, how much of the global warming is being caused by mankind and how much, if any, is being caused by natural causes that mankind has no control over?

As I gave this a lot of thought, I also took note of the “mini-ice age” that was observed in the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time of colder than normal temperatures in the USA and elsewhere. That ended somewhere in the first half of the 1980s, and average temperatures going up. Don’t remember the mini-ice age? You should be able to find out something about it by a simple internet search.

To me, the cause of the mini-ice age and the eventual end of it were obvious. The cause was particulates emitted into the atmosphere by industrial activity. The end of it was the result of changes in emissions brought about by the Clean Air Act (and similar actions in other countries). Passed in 1969, it took a while to retool our industrial infrastructure to reduce emissions. That began to take hold more and more each year after we began to address our crass treatment of the world we live in and the air we breathe.

Sometime in the early 2000s, these different things came together in my mind. Dump a bunch of pollutants into the atmosphere from smokestacks, lower the temperature. Stop doing that, raise the temperatures. Dump a bunch of oilwell fire ash in the atmosphere, lower the temperatures. Put the fires out, raise the temperatures.

That led me to think about volcanic activity and I wondered, are there different periods of increased and decreased volcanic activity, and might that be a contributor to climate change as the activity increases or decreases? In 2018-2019ish, I began to look for answers to this question, the internet being my main library.

Great reductions in worldwide temperature were experienced after major volcanic eruptions. 1815, 1883 (Krakatoa), 1991 (Mt. Pinatubo) were all major eruptions that resulted in global cooling. The effect lasted for years.

What about the less major eruptions? Have we tracked those, and do we have a database that shows the amount of volcanic ash disgorged into the atmosphere? And can this activity be correlated to changes in the climate? I looked for this information, even perusing the website of the organization of the organization that vulcanologists belong to, and couldn’t find it. As I said in the first post in this series, perhaps the information was available and my research techniques were at fault.

But thanks to a cousin, who posted about an article by the University of Cambridge (England), I now have access to a scholarly article about this. It was posted 12 Aug 2021, so after I did my searching. I’m quite glad to know that others are thinking about this.

This is a long, long article, filled with technical language that I’m wading through. It’s going to take me a while to digest it and be able to post about this. I’ll make other posts in the series, I think, before I get back to this.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

July Progress, August Goals

Leave a comment

First of the month. Time to review progress last month and set some goals for August. That means return to my environmental series will be delayed one more post.

First, the goals I set at the beginning of the month. They were not ambitious goals.

  • Get back on the two Bible studies I’ve set aside to complete other things. I’d love to set a goal of finishing them by the end of the month, but I think that’s too ambitious. Let me instead say to work on them in at least 10 writing sessions. I believe I worked on the Bible studies only one day. Life circumstances and changed writing interests resulted in my not being able to focus on this.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in-person. Did this. They were three good meetings.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. Might be a challenge with the grandkids here. Did this. Maybe a couple of posts weren’t the best.
  • Work on the programming of the next Bible study. I’ll post about it at some point. I did manage to have a couple of good sessions on this. I’m not as far along as I wanted to be, but at least I made progress.
  • Not originally a goal, but something I worked on was the next book in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled The Key To Time Travel. I did this because the grandkids were here, and they were interested in getting started on it.

What about this month? I’m still dealing with some health issue for me and my wife. We were going to take a long road trip this month, but that’s up in the air right now due to health. I will decide on that sometime this week. I’m going to establish goals as if we won’t be making the trip.

  • Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
  • Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I hope to work on that some today.
  • Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella.
  • Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me.
  • Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this.

I’ll leave it at that. This is really a tough month to plan anything, given uncertain health issues.

America, family, History, memories

Disaccumulation Is Hard: Finding a Home for the “Stars & Stripes”

2 Comments
Dad’s headline in the VE edition, Marseilles, France.

Dateline 26 July 2022

The day is surely coming when we will sell this big house and downsize into something smaller. Dis-accumulation is in progress. The next big item to go will be my collection of Stars & Stripes newspapers from World War 2.

It’s a lot of newspapers. Maybe as many as 200-300. I haven’t yet counted them.

The collection is mainly newspapers that my dad, Norman V. Todd, set type on as a G.I. during WW2 in Africa and Europe. Dad gave them to be in 1990 and I brought them home in 1997. There they sat. Twenty-five years and I’ve done nothing with them. I had such plans to read them, research them, and come to a better understanding of that war from the perspective of the men fighting it. Alas, that never happened.

I always thought these would be good to research the “fog of war”. How much printed as the war was in progress would be found to be inaccurate or untrue under the scrutiny of history?

Seven years ago I arranged to donate them to the World War 2 museum in Natick, Massachusetts. My first trip to RI since making that arrangement is coming up next month. I e-mailed the museum to confirm they still wanted them. Not receiving an e-mail in response, I called them this morning. The phone was not in service. A quick check on-line revealed that the museum closed in 2019. Bummer.

A wartime portrait, probably 1944. HIs “Stars & Stripes” insignia shows.

I’ll make this story a short one. Where could I donate them? Or was this a sign I should keep them, do that research that eluded me? I had already checked with the big WW2 museum in New Orleans, and they said they didn’t want any S&S. I checked with the S&S seven years ago, and it seems they didn’t need them.

I thought of three possible places: the University of Rhode Island, which has a special collections center at the university library; the University of Chicago, where our son works; and the Newberry Library in Chicago, an independent research library.  This morning I reached out to all three.

The University of Rhode Island got back to me first, and said they would be happy to take the collection. They often have students researching WW2, and this seems to be of value to them.

The trunk is a family heirloom. At least it will stay in the family for another generation, maybe two.

So the deal is complete. Next month these newspapers will find a new home. From 1943 to 1945, they went from Africa, Italy, and France to East Providence, then to Providence. Then in 1950 to Cranston. Then in 1997 to Bentonville Arkansas. Then in 2002 to Bella Vista Arkansas. All this time they have been in a steamer trunk that my grandfather, Oscar Todd, brought with him when he emigrated to the USA in 1910. The trunk will soon be at a different home in a cousin’s family, and the newspapers will be in Kingston RI.

In some ways, this feels like a betrayal, not to keep them in the family. I’m trying to look at it as solidifying Dad’s legacy in a permanent way, but it’s hard to do, and I’ve shed more than a few tears this afternoon on the realization that this piece of Dad will soon be gone.

Ah, well, when Dad first showed me them in 1990 (I had wondered, as a kid, what those trunks in the basement held; I learned then what filled one of them), he said he hadn’t looked at them since that trunk went into the basement in 1950. If they will now be in a place where maybe someone will make good use of them, where they will be protected and preserved, I guess that’s a better outcome. And my children won’t need to make a hard decision one day.

environment

Clarifying My Last Post

Leave a comment
Next post will be more on volcanic activity as a potential contributor to global warming.

My last post, the first of a short series on the climate change debate, generated a little debate of its own. Not here, but on Facebook. Before I go on to the next post in the series, I’ll clarify a couple of points. That’s easier than going on to the next post and, given that I’m dead tired today after three busy weeks with almost no break, I’m glad for this diversion.

I am NOT saying that climate change is occurring devoid of man-induced causes. In fact, I’m saying just the opposite. It’s clear to me that mankind is doing things to put heat into the world. To me that’s intuitively obvious without a lot of reasoning or studies.

What I’m saying is that the climate is changing as a result of a combination of man-induced causes and natural causes. Or rather, the observed changes MAY BE the result of a combination man-induced and natural causes. I am not, at this stage in my studies, convinced that scientists have studied all possible natural contributors to climate change and ruled them out. In my last post I mentioned two natural contributors that come to my mind for which I’ve looked for refuting data/studies and can find none: volcanic activity and gradual slowing of the earth’s rotation. As I stated in my last post, I could find nothing on those two possible causes.

Why can’t I find that? Perhaps the one doing the searching is deficient in researching abilities. Maybe the studies and data are out there, posted or referred to on the internet, and my searches just haven’t found them. That’s entirely possible. But is it also possible that those studies haven’t been done? If not, why not?

It has been suggested that scientists have no agenda. That they are without the natural human trait of having beliefs and coming to conclusions before they have completed all needed studies. I reject that. Scientists are just like the rest of us and can base their work on false premises resulting in false conclusions. They are not more “pure,” if that’s the right word, in their motives.

In a couple of future posts, I will further explain why these two possible natural factors and why I wonder if they are contributing to climate change. I’ll also add a couple of other factors I’m wondering about. Given my Monday and Friday posting schedule, this will take several weeks to play out.

My prior studies have shown that some possible natural factors do not seem to be contributing to climate change, something I planned to discuss later in the series. One of those was the wobble in the earth’s rotational axis. In fact, the current direction of that wobble would suggest that the earth should be cooling slightly. Another is the earth’s elliptical orbit, which also seems to not be a contributor to the warming observed in the earth.

A cousin provided a link to an article from the University of Cambridge, England, which discusses volcanic activity in relation to climate change. I’ve opened the article but have not yet read it. I note that it was published 12 August 2021, which was a couple of years after my studies. I’m glad to see this, and will read it as soon as I catch up from my three weeks of extreme busyness. The same for the other linked article, which was published Feb 27, 2020, also after I did my searching. I had, however, seen a similar discussion in an earlier article and learned what the scientists had concluded about these two possible natural causes.

So, it’s good to know about this article on volcanic activity and that someone else has thought about this. I don’t like the term “shaming” to describe my thoughts on this. When you can’t find any scientific discussion about what you think is important, you naturally wonder if you are alone in your thinking. That’s not shaming. And I hate that buzzword—as I hate most buzzwords.

Friday, if all goes well this week, I’ll bring up why I first began to wonder about volcanic activity, and hopefully will be able to summarize what the U of C article has to say on the subject. Depends on how much catching up I get done.

Engineering, environment, Politics

Some Environmental Thoughts

2 Comments
Progress is being made in the USA at reducing greenhouse gases. Is the situation really as dire as the media would have us believe?

Nowadays, when the media mentions “climate change”, the assumption is it’s human-caused. You never hear anthropogenic—i.e. human-caused. It’s just assumed that it is all human caused. No debate is tolerated.

Now, it’s obvious that human activities generate heat. If you rub two plates together or drive a piston up and down through its place in the motor, you will generate heat from friction. Consuming energy to move the plates or piston will also generate heat. Those who say that human activities have no impact on the plant aren’t really thinking clearly.

But I’ m not convinced that natural processes don’t have a bigger share in the changes taking place.

Some years ago, I dug into the data that says the climate is changing. That’s the first step: to verify that a change is taking place. Using only on-line sources, I was able to learn a lot, but I wasn’t able to learn the one thing I felt I needed to know: the placement of the climate measuring stations and the distribution of them around the world. I wanted to assure myself that the measuring stations aren’t placed in such a way that the aggregated data is skewed. Alas, I couldn’t find this information on-line.

Not that I think these stations are purposely placed to guarantee an outcome that someone wants, but the principle of due diligence requires that you determine this.

I then wanted to see what I could learn about any natural causes that might be adding to the climate change. It turned out that it was impossible to find any discussion or links to—or even reference to or citations of—scientific papers about natural causes of climate change. It seems to be a taboo subject.

I must say here that the internet is a vast library, and that maybe those papers are out there and can be found. But I couldn’t find them despite trying. What kind of natural processes? Well, what about decreasing volcanic activity resulting in less ash in the global atmosphere that prevents sunlight from reaching earth’s surface? What about the gradual slowing of the earth’s rotation? What does that do to the climate.

“Now you’re just being silly and disingenuous,” you say. “The slowing  rotation of the earth? Is it happening? And how could that result in climate change?” Well, yes, it is happening. Every now and then the official keepers of the atomic clock announce that a “leap second” will be added. This has been going on for a while. The length of a day has increased by a minute or two over the last 100 years. Before you say this is silly, that is 1/10th of 1 percent added to the length of a day. Small? Perhaps. But that means whatever part of the earth is in sunlight has sunlight 0.1 % longer than it used to, and the same for the part in darkness. What would be the result? Greater extremes, for sure. Longer sunlight means more heating, and longer darkness means more cooling. What is the net result?

And what if it is shown that, though the slowing of the earth’s rotation is small, after a few billion years some kind of point of no return has happened in how this impacts the climate? Let’s be sure of that before we ask people to make drastic changes.

One other thing I never see, and haven’t been able to find online, is life-cycle environmental impacts of different measures proposed. The current administration is really pushing electric vehicles. Sure, they don’t emit the type of greenhouse gases that internal combustion engine vehicles do. But power is being generated somewhere to charge the EVs. New transmission mains, even a whole new electrical grid, is needed to power these cars. What is the environmental cost of the vehicles themselves, the distributed charging infrastructure, and the distribution system upgrades necessary to make it all work with some reasonable similarity to the society we now have? This isn’t discussed.

I bring all this up because those who preach man-caused climate change want us to change our habits so as to reduce or, preferably, reverse these manmade effects. They frequently want to bring about this change by taxation. A carbon tax is most often proposed. In other words, if you can’t get people to change their behavior voluntarily, make it more expensive to maintain the old way of doing things rather than change to the new ways. Taxation is proposed to achieve this end.

Before these massive expenditures of a whole new transportation infrastructure happen, how about we do a lot of study and computer modelling on a macro, world-wide level to rule out every possible natural cause? Volcanic action. Earth’s slowing rotation. Probably some other things. Let’s have that public discussion, laying all the data on the table. Let’s prove through comprehensive studies what the environmental footprint is of those infrastructure changes—cradle-to-grave footprints brought back to an easily stated standard.

I’m going to have a couple more posts about this. They may not be consecutive, however.

family

Time With Grandchildren

Leave a comment
The first night family was here was a major blackberry picking event.

It’s about time for my post this morning, but I have only 8 minutes before I go upstairs and wake my oldest grandchild, Ephraim, and his friend Carter.  Ephraim, 14 and a long-distance runner in school, wants to run a timed mile this morning (actually, every morning), so I’ll drive the two of them to a high school track and watch. Possibly I’ll walk a 1/4 or 1/2 mile. We’ve doing it early because the forecast temperature today is over 100°.

All the time wasn’t spent on screens.

Last week, we had the three youngest grandchildren with us, and had a good time with them. I meant to do a couple of posts about that, but haven’t. They played and read and spent time on screens. A trip or two ago I established a rule: 30 minutes reading in a book each day (each morning) until they could get their screens. All but the 5 1/2-year-old, who can’t read yet, seem to embrace this rule well. Ezra, the second oldest, does a lot of reading in books without being prompted. He found my book, The Kuwait Years In Letters, and found pleasure reading in it. Elise did too. Of course, they both laughed at their mom’s juvenile letters, at spelling and grammar errors. But, hey, their mom wrote letters as a 7-year-old, and they don’t. End of story.

Only one of the grandkids, Elijah, is still young enough to require help bathing.

Last week we had the three youngest. This week the oldest and his friend. We made the switcheroo on Saturday, driving halfway to their home in West Texas and meeting up with their dad. That was a lot of hours in the car, but time well spent.

So this post is a bit short today, and not focused at all in writing. I have a longer post planned for Friday. We’ll see if the week allows for completing it.

Meals with grandkids can be entertaining.
Christianity, family, memories

100 Years of Life-Giving Community

Leave a comment
A century of life-giving community completed, ready and looking ahead to the next.

Last weekend, over a year and a half of work came to fruition as our church celebrated its Centennial. Actually, it was our 101st anniversary on July 8. We delayed the celebration a year due to a combination of the pandemic and adjacent construction.

We didn’t sell out of the book, but we sold a lot.

I joined the centennial committee in November 2020 at the request of our pastor, mainly to write the church history. But I got involved in other activities. Brainstorming. Planning. Seeking people whose ancestors had roots in the church. The history was written, printed, and issued for sale on May 22nd.

We did the setup for the Sunday banquet on Thursday. I found out then that the special choir for the Sunday service had some people drop out, and the director asked if I had choir experience. I decided I had just enough experience to help them out. One more thing added.

It’s always good to catch your daughter in a candid shot.

The activities started midday Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony for our re-established food insecurity ministry, reopened in recently constructed quarters and now called the Community Table. The Chamber of Commerce ran this event. I enjoyed finally seeing the building and how the ministry is stocked and managed.

Friday afternoon our daughter, son-in-law, and four grandkids came for the weekend. By that time I was more or less exhausted, so we had a nice meal out for supper. Meetings and events remained.

Good worship with music mostly unfamiliar to me. Lots of energy.

Saturday morning was choir rehearsal. It was kind of nice to sing after a 25-year hiatus from choir. Saturday afternoon was a concert by Remedy, a band from Southern Nazarene University that included two college students from our congregation. It wasn’t my type of music, but the Holy Spirit was present, and worship happened. This took place in our newly constructed space for youth and Hispanic ministries.

David and Pranathi, among the many who helped out.

Sunday was the big day. Choir rehearsal at 9 a.m. To help with transportation (transporting 8 people in two vehicles, our daughter volunteered to sing with the choir and came with me. We were done by 9:45. That gave me time to greet visitors, signed books and helped direct people, especially to Centennial Hall.

Many visited the diorama in “Centennial Hall”.

The service was magnificent. It included special music from the Mitchell family, the choir number with two soloists and great live backing music. We *nailed* the choir special. I was thankful for the strong tenor from the Mitchell family being next to me. There was a time for introducing some out-of-town visitors who attended because of their family connection to the church. And we had a wonderful, apt message from Dr. Jesse Middendorf, former General Superintendent of the denomination.

Dr. Mark Lindstrom, our former pastor/now district superintendent, brings greetings.

Immediately after the service, we had a congregational photo taken in our new sanctuary. Then it was to the gymnasium for a BBQ lunch, with the Mitchell family. We had nearly 300 people for that.

Dr. Middendorf brought the Centennial message.

The final event of the weekend was the dedication of the youth/Hispanic worship space. It turned out to be a 45 minute service, with music in Spanish, responsive readings, scripture readings, the actual dedication, and brief messages from our pastor, district superintendent, and Dr. Middendorf.

They opened the Community Table for anyone who wanted to go through it, and our daughter and granddaughter did (the rest of the family having gone home). We got away at 2:45 pm, a full day.

The final congregational song.

All in all it was a great weekend. Bentonville Community Church of the Nazarene is 101 years old. We actually spent more time looking forward rather than backwards. That was an emphasis I tried to put in the history book as well, making it a Centennial book rather than a strictly history book.

Some of the family had gone home before we thought of the photo booth. And don’t give me grief about not smiling—that IS me smiling.

It’s now time to unwind a little. This week I don’t have to attend any special events. No weekly history post to write. No committee meeting to attend. Instead, we have the three youngest grandchildren with us this week and the oldest grandkid and his friend next week. Time to get back to writing. Ezra and I began work on The Key To Time Travel today.

book reviews, C.S. Lewis, Christianity

Book Review: “C.S. Lewis: His Life & Thought”

Leave a comment
If you don’t know much about C.S. Lewis but would like to, this book is a good place to start.

When we traveled to Meade Kansas for an event at my wife’s home church, we discovered the library there had a sidewalk sale of surplus books going on. Naturally we had to go to it and look for bargains. I bought two books. One of them was C.S. Lewis: His Life & Thought by Terry Glaspey. I read this in about eight sittings in June.

It’s hard to get a bad book by or about C.S. Lewis. The eminent scholar and Christian apologist has had a major influence in the world and in my life. I try to always be reading a book of his or about him. This is the third or fourth I’ve read this year, and I’m reading in the second volume of his collected letters currently.

This book is in two sections. The first is a summary of his life, in short chapters covering brief periods or episodes. This is less than a biography, more of a series of vignettes.

The second half covers Lewis’s beliefs, again in short chapters, about various Christian doctrines and practices. These include quotes from Lewis’s writings as well as commentary by Glaspey. This section is well done, well worth reading.

The book includes a third section: C.S. Lewis: His Legacy. This is only ten pages long. Like the first two sections, it is also well done.

The entire book reads as a summary of Lewis’s life and beliefs, and a good part of his works. If you are looking for an introduction to C.S. Lewis, this would be a good book to start with.

book reviews

Book Review: Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson”

Leave a comment
This isn’t the version I read. Mine was hardback, printed in 1946, with some good illustrations, both b&w and color.

It seems that whatever British author I read in the 1800s and 1900s, reference is always made to The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. Obviously, this is an important book. As a result, some years ago, I picked up a used copy somewhere and put in in the reading pile.  Sometime in May, I was looking for a book to read, preferably a book that I would read and then get rid of. I saw this on my closet bookshelf. The 631 pages sort of turned me off, but I thought, why not?

It took me over a month to read this. Wikipedia says “It has often been described as the greatest biography ever written.” Would it prove so?

I had often heard of Johnson. Carlyle and McCauley wrote essays about him, or about this biography. C.S. Lewis frequently made references to him, or at least to this book, in his letters. Johnson was a writer. His most famous work was an English dictionary. I’m not sure if it was the first one published, but for sure it was an early and influential one. He also published The Rambler for three years, followed by The Adventurer.

Johnson’s works span essays, pamphlets, periodicals, sermons, poetry, biographies, criticism, the dictionary, and a novella. Sounds like he had the same writing malady that I do, Genre Focus Disorder.

Boswell had befriended Johnson, who willingly accepted the younger man into his circle of friends. Boswell kept a journal that included summaries of their conversations, recorded shortly after they had taken place. After Johnson’s death in 1784 at age 75, Boswell got to work on the biography. Published in 1791, it took England by storm. Boswell worked in many of those conversations. He also quoted extensively from his and Johnson’s correspondence, as well as of letters between Johnson and others. That resulted in a work that was varied in contents and made this biography much different than biographies published to that date.

Since then, this book has come under criticism for being less than a true portrait of Johnson. Boswell himself came in for criticism. McCauley said he was:

“Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London[;] … such was this man, and such he was content and proud to be”.

Of course, knowing how opinionated McCauley could be, I would not accept this assessment at face value. Thomas Carlyle also wrote about Johnson and this biography, one of Carlyle’s works I haven’t read yet, but will soon.

So I have now read this book. I’m glad I did so. Am I enlightened? Do I agree it is “the greatest biography ever written”? Is it a keeper.

Yes, I am enlightened, or perhaps I should say educated, about Johnson’s life. I had heard of him, but really didn’t know anything about him except his era and his general works. Now, I am more enlightened about the man, his life, and his works. I don’t know that I would classify this as the greatest biography ever written by modern standards. But, then again, I don’t know that I would hold any bio I’ve read head and shoulders above others. Biography is great and I enjoy reading them. This is a good one, but, in my opinion, not “the greatest”.

And, it is NOT a keeper. Now that I’ve written this post, out to the donation/sale shelf in the garage it will go. I just took a load of books and other stuff to a thrift store on Wednesday, so Johnson and Boswell might sit there awhile, gathering dust. Perhaps I’ll have a visitor to the house who will want this, and I will gladly give it to him or her.

Author | Engineer