The Bat-Poet

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The Bat Poet

Randall Jarrell. Maurice Sendak, illus. Harper Collins, New York. 1964. (reprinted, 1992)

They just don’t write ’em like this anymore. Or if they do, I haven’t found them and that’s too bad.

As you know, I’ve been spending a lot of my life in the last year or so looking at children’s literature. Contemporary kid lit is junk food. I say this as someone who has no problem indulging in a bag of Lays plain potato chips washed down with a can of soda; as someone who’s go-to mid-afternoon snack in the winter is old fashioned Kraft mac & cheese; as someone who just adores Swanson’s chicken á la king from a can.

But I guarantee (said in your best Justin Wilson voice) that I eat better than that 95% of the time. Well, 90%. I’ve been on a chip binge lately. I think it’s the salt.

A steady diet of junk makes you fat and stupid. Likewise, a steady diet of, for example, The Spiderwick Chronicles is bound to make kids… well, fat and stupid to start, and then we’ll tack on mean, unimaginative, ungrammatical, and unread.

Highly recommend The Bat-Poet. I’m not a kid, but I fell in love with it.

True

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From the Infallible Source:

James Brendan Patterson (born March 22, 1947) is an American author and philanthropist. Among his works are the Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women’s Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch and Wizard, and Private series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction, and romance novels. His books have sold more than 300 million copies, and he was the first person to sell 1 million e-books.[1][2] In 2016, Patterson topped Forbes‘s list of highest-paid authors for the third consecutive year, with an income of $95 million.[3] His total income over a decade is estimated at $700 million.[4]

In November 2015, Patterson received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, which cited him as a “passionate campaigner to make books and reading a national priority.[5] A generous supporter of universities, teachers colleges, independent bookstores, school libraries, and college students, Patterson has donated millions of dollars in grants and scholarships with the purpose of encouraging Americans of all ages to read more books.”[6]

The Ace of Spades Headquarters Sunday Morning Book Thread

Kip-kip-kip

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For your amusement, a few (draft) lines of a scene from

Miss Missy’s School Days

Book II of the Miss Missy’s School series

I know. You’re wondering how in the world Lawyer wound up at the Farm, aren’t you? Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait for Book II!

Miss Missy’s School Days
Published through Old Schoolhouse Road Publishing

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. [applicable only to works of fiction.] All rights reserved
Copyright © 2021 by Marica Bernstein

Southern Charm

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We wound up at a B&B in Columbus, Mississippi recently. The house was originally built in 1846, and there have been three subsequent additions, all done in keeping with the original architecture. The home is owned by a widow whose husband was an antique dealer. She gave us a guided tour. She loves silver. We had lots to talk about!

After the tour, Mr. Big Food and I had a lovely supper on the expansive back porch– low country boiled shrimp, mussels, corn, and potatoes. Just perfect.

Like an idiot, I didn’t take my camera, so all I have are phone photos. You’ll get the idea, I think.

Gentlemen’s Parlor, Ladies’ Parlor, Dining Room. The painting, our hostess explained, is a “mystery painting.” Once finished, the artist steps back and realizes he has painted elements which he did not intend. This particular one has a wolf’s head and Jesus’ face. Can you find them?

Breakfast, of course, was in the Dining Room.

Lovely trip.

It’s Disqus is Down Thursday

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As found during our recent Delta Day Trip to Belzoni, Mississippi

The comments section is down at my early morning favorite blog. Fortunately, we have a back up Gab group. But @DaveinMA doesn’t think we should be taking any chances.

1943 miles

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You’re probably already sitting down. Good. USPS is at it again.

I ordered a book. The seller, In Elk grove Village, Illinois, shipped the book on July 1. That is to say, the seller, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, gave the book to the United States Postal Service, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, which transported the book to a Unites States Postal facility in York, Pennsylvania, which in term passed it along to another facility in Austell, Georgia, which passed it to yet another in Jackson, Mississippi, which– the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, will pass it along to my local post office, and then my carrier. The book is expected to arrive Wednesday, July 14, 2021.

I know how far it is from Elk Grove Village, Illinois to my local post office but to be fair, I also know that my mail goes through Jackson– unless, of course, it gets lost in Memphis. From Elk Grove Village, Illinois to Jackson to my local post office it is about 880 miles.

Guess how many miles my book will have traveled if and when it gets here. HINT: I gave it away.

Why?

“The Strength of Words”

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Jose Alberto Gutierrez doesn’t just turn trash into treasure—he transforms it into a free education for neighbors. As The Telegraph reports, the middle-aged garbage collector in Colombia has spent the past two decades collecting discarded books he finds while on the job in Bogota, the country’s capital city. Thousands of titles later, Gutierrez has an enormous library, which he and his family lend out to the community for free.

Gutierrez’s library is called La Fuerza de las Palabras, which is Spanish for “The Strength of Words.” The collection fills several rooms in his home—and thanks to donations, it continues to grow. (So much, in fact, that the Gutierrez family can no longer squeeze reading groups for children inside their house.) Today, the family is expanding their public literacy mission—and getting rid of extra books—by delivering titles to Colombia’s poor and rural areas.

Ace of Spades Headquarters Sunday Morning Book Thread

#Mooreeffoc

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Tolkien On Fairy-stories (2008; 1st 1947)

This is an essay based on an invited lecture Tolkien gave at St. Andrews College in early 1939. The Andrew Lang Lecture was, and still is, an annual lecture In honor of the famous “Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales” (that infallible source, which I note says nothing about Lang’s contribution to Homeric scholarship).

Tolkien had just published The Hobbit (1937) and was beginning to work on LOTRs. He was keenly aware of the flaws in The Hobbit, and the lecture was a first stab at working through what it means to be a fairytale, and what qualities an excellent tale had to embody.

This is not a light-hearted, Once Upon a Time, essay. It is deeply serious and worth it if you have an interest in the history or story-telling, or the perils of academic literary analysis.

Normally, I prefer the original versions of such works. But this edited volume is excellent for the background and notes it provides, especially if you’re not an expert on the history of fairy-tales.

Recommended.

Grievances Survey

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reposting today.

Happy Independence Day! Grievances Survey

Originally published on July 4, 2019 by Marica

An annotated Declaration of Independence is here, complete with what prompted the inclusion of each Grievance. As I could not figure out how to embed a real survey, we will do this the old fashioned way. Please use the Comments to answer the following three questions. Thanks!

  1. Which of the Grievances is your favorite?
  2. Which of the Grievances is do you think is still relevant nearly twenty years into the 21st century?
  3. Which of the Grievances do you think is irrelevant today?

Past 10 years or so

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Reposting today.

If you’ve been following along for the past … 10 years or so

Originally published on June 30, 2020 by Marica

You know that I really really like Independence day.

Drawing to a Close
I’m Naming Names: 56 of Them to Be Exact
Because you can never have too many copies of the Declaration of Independence,

For the Sake of Men

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Reposting today

Crappy Old Quote of the Day | NO. 138

Originally published on July 4, 2020

Cato’s Farewell

John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon

The London Journal, Saturday, July 27, 1723

“SIR, As I have with a success which no man has yet met with (if I regard the number of my readers, and the sale of these papers) carried on a weekly performance, under this and another title, for near four years; in doing which, it was impossible that I could have any other view but the good of my country and of mankind; by shewing them the advantage and the beauty of civil and ecclesiastical liberty, and the odious deformity of priestcraft and tyranny: As I have vindicated Almighty God, and the religion which he has taught us, from the superstition, follies, and wickedness of men, who would prostitute it to ambition and avarice, and build a visionary empire upon the plain and simple precepts of Christianity; and have endeavoured to remove all the rubbish, grimace, and pageantry, with which it has been long stifled and oppressed, by shewing to the world, and I think proving, that true piety consists only in honouring the deity, and in doing good to men, and not in postures, cringes, and canting terms, and in barren and useless speculations: As I think I have unanswerably shewn that civil governments were instituted by men, and for the sake of men, and not for the pride and lust of governors; and consequently that men have a right to expect from them protection and liberty, and to oppose rapine and tyranny wherever they are exercised; and have thereby vindicated our present establishment, which can pretend to no other title.

“As I have done all this openly, and in the face of the world, and have defied and called upon all the merciless and detestable advocates for superstition and slavery, to shew that I have transgressed the rules of morality or religion, or the peace and happiness of society in any respect; and no one has yet dared to enter the lists against me; from whence I may reasonably hope that I have removed many of the prejudices imbibed by education and custom, and set many of my countrymen free from the wild, wicked, and servile notions, strongly infused and planted in their minds by craft and delusion: I shall now with cheerfulness lay down this paper… .”

Cato’s Letters, Vol. IV Sixth edition [my emphasis]

A time of dedication to the ideals

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Reposting today

Crappy Old Quote of the Day

Originally published on July 6, 2020 

Today we return Cato’s Letters (1720-1723) to the fourth shelf of the big bookshelf in the living room. It was a good run. Hope you enjoyed it.

This is a bit late– I missed it entirely until just now as Lines of a Layman had been piled on by several other stratum of crappy old books.

“FOR ME AS A BOY the Fourth of July was very much the same from year to year. There was little money to spend on fireworks. If the family had one bunch of firecrackers, it was a great event. Each member of the household watched most carefully to see that every cracker went off. Even the town as a whole could not afford to make much of the anniversary. About four in the morning on the Fourth, the blacksmith in the village would put powder in the anvil and the explosions that were produced made our celebration.

“The Fourth of July, as the anniversary of the nation’s birth, has grown upon me. I am glad that now it has less noise and more of the deep emotions that prompt us to revere the patriots who purchased our freedom, and to honor the public servants who have enriched our national life.

“The Fourth of July, to be properly celebrated, must be more than an explosion of powder and a flare of lights. It must be a time of dedication to the ideals of our free government and to the purposes of universal brotherhood.”

–J.C. Penney, Lines of a Layman, 1956

The Grievances

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Reposting today.

The Grievances

Originally published on November 2, 2020 

These are the original. I think we could come up with some new variations on the theme– He/She has endeavored to keep us thinking that our individual safety was more important than our individual liberty.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.” These would be the State Karens who decide how many people you can have at Thanksgiving Dinner.

This is not a political blog, but I’m an American and so from time to time, I recall our history in light of the day.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the highseas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.