Happy New Year!

 

When I posted my last post, I happened to notice that it was the 99th one for 2022. That is not a cause for celebration since when I started blogging, my goal was a post a day. Even though I know that Georges Simenon wrote a lot (and fooled around even more), I know now that my goal cannot be reached, even though I do no fooling around. But, I will do this quick 100th one because that does seem better than 99. I might have been able to rattle off a few more, but the neighbours just invited us over for a drink. Among my resolutions will be one to lower my aspirations rather than increase my output, which means that it is one resolution I am likely to keep.

Have a good new year. 

Watch Your Mouth!!

 

   Six years ago in late December I began a post that stumbled into the new year and in it I warned that the language police were coming. I suggested that you needed to "Be Careful About What You Say" and even about "What You Sing." I also indicated that "Name Calling" would be canceled and that the Moniker Monitors would change the name of your alma mater. All of this valuable information was cleverly concealed under the mystifying title - "This is NOT About Mariah Carey." Many years have passed, but if you click on that link, you can be among the very few who have read it. 

We Will Begin With the Benign

   For many years Lake Superior State University has offered lists of words which should be banned. It is a semi-serious endeavour I support since it suggests eliminating words for linguistic/grammatical reasons, not because of a Directive from the DEI Department. Here are the top ten for this year and this is the opening paragraph:

Stop resorting to imprecise, trite, and meaningless words and terms of seeming convenience! You’re taking the lazy way out and only confusing matters by over-relying on inexact, stale, and inane communication!

The TOP Ten:

1.GOAT

2. Inflection Point

3. Quiet Quitting

4. Gaslighting

5. Moving Forward

6. Amazing

7. Does That Make Sense?

8. Irregardless

9 . Absolutely

10. It Is What It Is

For a full explanation go here: Lake Superior State University. 

For comparison, here is the list from 2022:

1. Wait, what?

2. No worries

3. At the end of the day [this one has made other lists and is still with us.]

4. That being said

5. Asking for a friend

6. Circle back

7. Deep dive

8. New normal

9. You’re on mute

10. Supply chain

[My suggestions for the next list: "speaks to", "unpack" (except when applied to luggage) and "intersections" (except when referring to streets.)

The Stanford Situation

  Elite institutions are more concerned about the words relating to identity than grammar. Stanford administrators have worked hard on the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI). To access the website for EHLI, one has to have a Stanford logon, but the rationale behind it is described here: "Introducing the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative Website." I found some of the words on the list, listed elsewhere and here are some of them, so you will know how to talk in 2023:

Among the verboten words cited on the "Ableist" master list along with the preferred substitutes are:

"addict," to be replaced with "person with a substance use disorder";

"addicted," to be replaced with "devoted";

"blind study," to be replaced with "masked study"; and

"walk-in," to be replaced with "open office."

Among the verboten words cited on the "Culturally Appropriative" master list along with the preferred substitutes are:

"Brave," not to be replaced but to be dropped from use altogether;

"chief," to be replaced with "the person's name"; and

"tribe," to be replaced with "friends, network, family, support system."

Among the verboten words cited on the "Gender-Based" master list along with the preferred substitutes are:

"'preferred' pronouns," to be replaced by pronouns — since "the word 'preferred' suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference";

"ballsy," to be replaced with "bold";

"gentlemen," to be replaced with "everyone";

"he," to be replaced with "person's name of 'they'";

"seminal," to be replaced by "leading, groundbreaking," and

"tranny," to be replaced by "non-gendering conforming folk."

Among the verboten words cited on the "Imprecise Language" master list along with the preferred substitutes are:

"American," to be replaced with "US Citizen" — since this term insinuates "that the US is the most important country in the Americas"; and

"straight," to be replaced with "heterosexual."

Among the verboten words cited on the "Institutionalized Racism" master list along with the preferred substitutes are:

"black hat," to be replaced with "unethical hacker";

"blackballed," to be replaced with "banned, denied";

"gangbusters," to be replaced with "very successful";

"master (v)," to be replaced with "become adept in";

"master list," to be replaced with "list of record"; and

"white paper," to be replaced with "position paper."

   Stanford won (indirectly) a Sidney Award for this effort. The Sidney Awards are awarded by David Brooks of the NYT for good "long-form journalism." They honour Sidney Hook and one of the purposes of the award is to publicize good articles which is what I am doing here. Stanford didn't actually win the Sidney, Ginerva Davis did for writing about Stanford. The essay is found in Palladium magazine and the title of it is - "Stanford's War on Social Life." Stanford has strong allies in the war and their administrative troops are much like others elsewhere. Ms Davis writes:

“Since 2013, Stanford’s administration has executed a top-to-bottom destruction of student social life. Driven by a fear of uncontrollable student spontaneity and a desire to enforce equity on campus, a growing administrative bureaucracy has destroyed almost all of Stanford’s distinctive student culture.”

Even the WWE Is Awake

    World Wrestling Entertainment has suggested that announcers need to be more refined and eliminate certain words. I found some examples in an article that may be (one hopes) a satirical one. Two examples:

Banned term: Western Lariat. Reason: The word “Western” shows implicit bias toward eurocentric value systems and colonialism. Suggested replacement: “Decolonized Lariat.”

Banned term: Camel Clutch. Reason: It implies violence against animals, and reinforces negative stereotypes about the Middle East. Suggested replacement: “The Humble Maker.”

I don't have time on New Year's Eve to investigate this, but I did quickly find this article in WRESTLETALK: "FULL LIST OF BANNED WORDS IN WWE" (UPDATED). Among the words:
War

Interesting

The Business

Feud

Fans

Crazy

Interesting (?), but I am not sure this is all legitimate, but it is very difficult to distinguish between parody and reality these days.

Progress to Report

  Almost a decade ago, those associated with the Liverpool Football Club were given language guidelines and words like the ones above were not to be uttered. Looking at it, one can say that some progress has been made and it is likely that now even hooligans don't say such things. It is predicted here that "hooligans" will soon be eliminated.

("Kick It Out Chairman Welcomes List of 'Unacceptable' Words Issued by Liverpool to Staff: Words Such as "Princess" and Phrases Like "Don't Be A Woman" Are Included in the Guide Issued By the Reds," Independent, July 31, 2013.)

The Bonus: 

When I referred above to "Begin With the Benign", you probably thought of the song "Begin the Beguine" which was written by Cole Porter. If you don't know what "beguine" means, here is the answer: 

The beguine (/bəˈɡiːn/ bə-GHEEN)[1] is a dance and music form, similar to a slow rhumba. It was popular in the 1930s, coming from the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, where, in the local Antillean Creole language, beke or begue means a White man while beguine is the female form. It is a combination of Latin folk dance and French ballroom dance, and is a spirited yet slow, close dance with a roll of the hips, a movement inherited from rhumba.

If you would like to listen and dance to "Begin the Beguine" on this New Year's Eve, here is a version performed by Artie Shaw. 

Last of the CanCon

   The two posts before this one contained Canadian content and this one will as well. Consider them, like my year-end monetary donations, to be tokens of gesture to our government. That this is important Canadian content will be obvious in that it was noticed in the United States. It is also the case that this content will still be relevant in the new year.

Mastriano in the Maritimes

   I should be reluctant to tackle this subject since Senator Mastriano was a career military officer who reached the rank of colonel and taught at the U.S. Army War College in the state of Pennsylvania where he is a senator. My rank was much lower and I left the service prematurely. Dr. Mastriano also had a successful academic career, during which he obtained four masters degrees and one doctorate. My academic career was far longer than his, but I fell far short of his accomplishments. To make up for my educational shortcomings I will, as usual, supply sources from the more credible.

   Senator Mastriano was the recent Republican candidate for governor in the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania. He lost, although 2,238,477 people voted for him. He would probably dispute that number, as he disputed the numbers associated with the recent presidential election which he thought was stolen. He was endorsed by the real president pictured above. Mastriano is described as a right-wing Christian nationalist and worse, or perhaps better, if you think as he does. For more, see Doug Mastriano's Wikipedia entry.

   We will now move to the Maritimes. That is where Dr. Mastriano received his Ph.D in 2013 from the University of New Brunswick. When questioned about some of his ideas during the campaign, he sometimes showed his authority by mentioning his doctorate. The issue now is that the dissertation upon which his doctorate is based, has been scrutinized and many think it would not pass muster at most universities. Naturally Dr. Mastriano is upset about this, as is the University of New Brunswick.

   Your natural reaction is likely that we have here is another example of extreme partisanship and assume that this is merely a case of left-wingers going after right-wingers during a political campaign. Although Mastriano does not typically talk to the Lamestream Media, he agrees and noted recently: 

“The left wing goes after our academic work on the right,” said Mastriano, whose hard-right platform has gained national attention since the Trump endorsement. “Of all the things I’ve done, it was brutal .? And I did have concerns that some of the left-leaning professors there would hold my politics or my military background against me.”

It should be noted, however, that problems with the dissertation were spotted years ago and that even a member of his advisory committee raised them back in 2013 when the degree was granted. (As an aside and in UNB's defence, I will say, I don't know how much time Mastriano actually spent on campus in Fredericton, but it is likely that the committee members would have been impressed by the colonel pictured below who already had four masters and would surely have been smart enough to be deferential to them. It simply may have been a perfunctory affair.)

   You are probably less interested in academic politics than American elections, so I will present a short summary of the "Mastriano Affair," followed by sources which you can use to see if the summary makes sense. If you don't want to bother, see the section on "Allegations of Academic Misconduct" in the Wikipedia entry for Mastriano. Or, go directly to the Wikipedia entry for "Alvin York" and look at the "Legacy" section where the controversy over Mastriano's dissertation is discussed.

   Alvin York you may recognize as "Sergeant York" and picture him as Gary Cooper. During World War I his actions were heroic and they may have been made more heroic by Mastriano. Some divine intervention also may have been involved. Mastriano has recognized that mistakes were made in his dissertation and corrected some of them. It is not unusual that mistakes are noticed in such manuscripts, but the volume of them in this dissertation has grown along with the seriousness of the accusations. They were noticed at the time by a member of the history department at the UNB and they have been compiled by a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma who is working on Sgt. York. James Gregory, the Oklahoma researcher, discovered them while doing his own research. They were submitted to the folks at the UNB and the gravity of the situation is now recognized and being investigated. 

   It took a while for the folks at the University of New Brunswick to become interested in all of this and it took longer than usual for the dissertation to be made available. The problems with the dissertation were evident before the American political election, but they became more important during it and the president of the UNB thought it best to wait until after the election to deal with them. They are being looked into as this is written and you will certainly be reading about them in 2023.

Sources:

   If you happen to be a serious scholar interested in military history you can read the actual dissertation. Or, you can read the book by Mastriano (pictured above) which is based on it and is published by the University of Kentucky Press. The folks in Kentucky are also looking into the matter. Perhaps the subtitle of the book suggests that Dr. Mastriano may have been inclined to glorify too much the actions of Sgt. York. 

   Much has been written about the "Mastriano Affair" and more will be. Here are some basic suggestions.

   The Associated Press raised the subject in early September: "Amid Campaign, Mastriano's Disputed Dissertation Made Public," Mark Scolforo, Sept. 9, 2022. 

    The University of New Brunswick responded a month later. Here is the response:

Newsroom - UNB Statement -"Recent Media Coverage Regarding Thesis Debate:"

Oct. 6, 2022:

"The University of New Brunswick (UNB) has a proud 200 + year history as an institution with academic integrity and exemplary educational programs. Recently questions have been raised in the media regarding a thesis by former student Dr. Douglas Mastriano. We recognize that for our students, alumni and the public, there may be some concern or confusion regarding the situation as they hear it portrayed in the media.

We want to assure individuals with concerns that allegations of this nature are taken seriously and investigated accordingly. UNB has a clear policy for dealing with any allegations of research misconduct, which we follow in all cases.

The Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act clearly states that we cannot discuss the personal information of our students, including educational information, whether the student is a public personality or not, without the student's consent.

As stated previously, UNB will review its internal processes and procedures to ensure our systems and policies around the awarding of PhDs remain of the highest standard. This review will be conducted by two qualified independent academics and will begin as soon as possible.

Our commitment to our students and the UNB community to continue to strive for nothing less than academic excellence in all we do has never waivered and will never diminish."

   The Canadian Press then followed up with two stories and there have been many more since:

"University of New Brunswick investigating how Trump ally was awarded PhD in 2013," By Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press, Posted October 18, 2022 

Among other things, there is this:

"Richard Yeomans, a PhD candidate in UNB’s history department, said students on the Fredericton campus want to know what the university is going to do to uphold its academic standards.

“I think that everybody is just shocked at the fact that the department has said nothing since this became an international news story,” Yeomans said in a recent interview. “The university has chosen to save face rather than come to terms with what this means. A certain level of trust has been breached.”

   This CP story was followed by another:

"New Brunswick University had to Remain Quiet About Mastriano Controversy: UNB Head,"  By Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press, Posted November 2, 2022:

"The president of the University of New Brunswick says he’s kept a lid on publicly discussing the controversy surrounding an American politician’s PhD because the institution did not want to be accused of interfering in U.S. politics.

Paul Mazerolle said that with U.S. midterm elections slated for next Tuesday, it was decided the university should refrain from commenting on allegations of academic fraud levelled at former history student Doug Mastriano, who is now running for governor of Pennsylvania.

“We have an allegation of academic fraud and it’s happening ? on the eve of an election,” Mazerolle said in an interview late Tuesday.

“In effect, we’re talking about a politicized process. If we undertake activities that could sway people’s views of any particular candidate, I think we have a responsibility to be very careful on how we could influence an election.”

Until now, members of the university’s administration have declined requests for interviews from The Canadian Press."

The Bonus: "Wrapping Up WIth Some Rappers."

  You deserve one after slogging through all of that. It will still have some Canadian content. 

   Back in July 2020, Megan Thee Stallion (pictured above) was shot at and hit by some of the many bullets fired at her. It is not unusual for rappers to be involved in gun fights. It is also not unusual in our gender complicated times, for a female to be referred to by a term usually applied to a male horse.

   The rapper who did the shooting (pictured above) is Tory Lanez and he was just found guilty on three felony counts in December, He faces 20 years in the slammer and will be sentenced soon. Tory Lanez was born as Daystar Shemuel Shua Peterson and he is Canadian. 

("Here's What to Know About Tory Lanez and Megan Thee Stallion," NYT, Dec. 23, 2022.)

Year-End CanCon Continued

   Here is some more CanCon which was found in an American source. It is taken from a piece by Dave Barry who is widely syndicated and hilariously humorous. It is very difficult to make 2022 funny, but in his rundown of that year, Canada gets a mention in February and here it is:

February

"… there is trouble in, of all places, Canada. The news up there is that the capital city, Ottawa (from the Algonquin word “adawe,” meaning “Washington”) is besieged by a massive protest convoy of trucks, clogging the streets, honking horns, blocking traffic and making it impossible for anybody to get anywhere. Granted, this is the situation pretty much every day in, for example, New York City, but apparently in Canada it is a big deal. As tensions mount, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a controversial move, invokes emergency powers enabling the government to freeze the protesters’ access to beaver pelts.

Ha-ha! We are poking some good-natured fun at Canada, which is actually a modern nation and an important trading partner that we depend on to supply us with many vital things. Celine Dion is only one example. In all seriousness, the Canadian trucker strike is a significant event that raises some important issues, which everyone immediately stops caring about because of the situation in Ukraine."

In a banner year for our country, it again gets a minor mention in October:

The verified drama on Twitter is interrupted, briefly, by the midterm elections. For weeks the political experts, relying on Scientific Polling Data, have been predicting a Red Wave, with the Republicans taking control of the House and Senate as well as large swaths of Canada. The outlook is so dire that the New York Times tweets out a list of five “evidence-based strategies” for coping with election anxiety, including — we swear we are not making this up — “Plunge your face into a bowl with ice water for 15 to 30 seconds.”

Covering the entire, very long year of 2022 results in a very long column, which also includes illustrations such as this one: 

   Mr. Barry has noticed Canada before and I pointed that out to you a couple of years ago in a post that you probably passed on since it is titled "On Worms." In 1993, Barry reported on the Canadian worm wars and the widely syndicated column had headlines like these: 

"We've Got One Really Slimy Problem Here"; "Worms on the Highway"; "Worms On the Road: Recipe For Disaster" and "CANADIAN IMPORT OPENS A WHOLE CAN OF WORMS." 

If I produced headlines such as those, perhaps I would have more readers. By clicking on the link above you can learn more about the worm battles along the 401 and, you must be a little curious. Since it is Boxing Day and you probably won't bother, here is a snippet from the post which should serve to make you even more curious. Mr. Barry quotes from a CP piece and then raised the important questions:

In May, the Canadian Press Service sent out a report that began: "GEORGETOWN, Ontario - More than 50 worm pickers beat each other with steel pipes and pieces of wood in a battle over territory." The story states that two rival worm-picking groups "arrived at the same spot at the same time" and started fighting over who would pick worms there. A number of people were hospitalized . . . and a van was set on fire.

You may have the same questions I did:

 

1. These people were fighting over WORMS?

 

2. Is there some kind of new drug going around Canada?

Mr. Barry is now 75 and is likely surprised given that he wrote this book:

I am not sure if he is allowing his daughter to date: 

Source: "Dave Barry's Year in Review: No One Cared How You Did on 'Wordle,' And Democracy Died At Least Three Times; (It's Time to Don Surgical Gloves, Reach Deep Down Inside the Big Bag of Stupid That Was the Past 12 Months, and See What We Pull Out." Washington Post, Dec. 25, 2022.

Year-End CanCon

    There are rumours that Bill C-11 may allow for the manipulation of algorithms so that searches done in Canada will yield more CanCon. Although some people and companies are upset about that prospect, I thought I had better throw in some Canadian items to satisfy the CRTC. As well, the attempt to make CanCon more discoverable may benefit Mulcahy's Miscellany which has yet to find more than a few readers from anywhere. Since I did recently offer a couple of posts about B.C., I will focus on the East Coast. 

Anne of Green Gables

   Every year for almost the last sixty of them (excluding the last couple of pandemic ones), one has been able to go to P.E.I. and watch "Anne of Green Gables - The Musical" in Charlottetown. Many tourists visited the Island for that purpose and then travelled on to Cavendish. A lot of them came all the way from Japan. When it was announced recently that the play would only be offered every second year, there were many complaints and they are still coming in. One couple from Vero Beach, FL., who have a summer home on P.E.I. wrote: “Anne represents the essence of P.E.I. to us and put P.E.I. on the global map,” the couple wrote. “Big mistake, folks.”

  I learned of this from this article in the NYT, Dec.3, 2022 by Ian Austen: "After Half a Century, Prince Edward Island's Musical Tradition Takes a Break." For Canadian content and the complaints see issues of Saltwire, starting with this one: "Commentary: Decision About Anne of Green Gables - The Musical, Based on Money, Alix MacLean, Nov. 29, 2022. 

  A Lucy Maud Montgomery industry is well-established on the Island and you can learn about it here at the L.M. Montgomery Institute. I have mentioned before in Mulcahy's Miscellany that entire journals dedicated to single authors are published and you can add to the list the, Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies. You can read issues by clicking on the link and this one explains why Anne is popular in Japan: "Red Hair in a Global World: A Japanese History of Anne of Green Gables and Prince Edward Island." For additional examples of such journals see my "Single Author Journals."

Some Books Are Still Valuable

 

 I have generally failed in my mission to convince university librarians to keep a few books in the place. I hope, however, they at least examine them carefully before discarding them. There are still some readers or, perhaps investors, who are willing to pay a lot for them. 

  I mentioned this back in November in "Very Expensive Used Books", when someone paid $25,000 for a copy of Gone With the Wind. It didn't even make the "Top Ten" list of the "Most Expensive Sales in 2022", which is now available on Abe Books. Click on that link to get more information. It is where the image above is found. Here is the basic list:

“I Quattro Libri dell Architettura” [Four Books of Architecture] (first edition, 1570), by Andrea Palladio: $57,750.

“Cook’s Voyages” (first edition, nine vols., 1773-84), by John Hawkesworth: $50,000.

“How to Trade in Stocks” (first edition, 1940), signed by the author, Jesse Livermore: $40,000.

“Cantique des Cantiques de Salomon” [Song of Solomon] (printed on vellum, 1931), wood engravings by Eric Gill: $35,000

“The Time Machine” (first edition, 1895), signed by the author, H.G. Wells: $30,500

“The Tour of the World in 80 Days” (1883), a copy once owned by Stephen King’s grandmother, with a note by the author, Jules Verne: $30,000

“Hinterlassene Werke Des Generals Carl Von Clausewitz” [The Surviving Works of General Carl Von Clausewitz] (10 vols, 1832-7), by Prussian general Carl Von Clausewitz: $27,750

“The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians” (1944), signed by the author, Aleister Crowley: $27,500.

“Hydrodynamica, sive De Viribus et Motibus Fluidorum Commentarii” [Hydrodynamics, or commentaries on the forces and motions of fluids]  (1738), by Daniel Bernoulli: $25,000.

“Les Vitraux” [Stained Glass] (1973), 24 loose color lithographs, each signed and numbered by the artist, Salvador Dalí: $25,000.

The Bonus
   The unappealing business book pictured, is not the first such book to be found among the most valuable ones. See my post from earlier in the year: "Valuable Business Books." 

The January 6th Report

 

   It may be January 6, 2023 before the Select Committee report is published in book form, so if you had planned to give one to a political junkie friend for Christmas, you better look for a bottle of scotch instead. It will take some time during this busy holiday season for the publishers to edit the 800+ page report and provide an introduction and some notes. The one being published by Random House will have an introduction by Adam Schiff (D-Calif), while the copy from the New Yorker will have a preface by David Remnick and an epilogue by Jamie Raskin (D-MD). If you want an unvarnished one, wait for the one being produced by Melville House. I am going to wait for a graphic one with Cassidy Hutchinson on the cover. 

   To console your political friend, send they a copy of the omnibus spending bill, the short title of which is the "Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023". If you click on that link you can read all 4,155 pp., which is how many it took to show how $1.7 trillion will be spent. "Trillion" is a word we will seeing more of in 2023. 

Canadian Content
   If you prefer a copy that is printed in our country, it is estimated one will be available in a few years. It has to be in two languages, after all, and that is true as well for the prefatory "Land Acknowledgement." Apparently the folks in Alberta are going to wait for one of the two versions being produced by Skyhorse Publishing - the one with the introduction by Darren Beattie who was a speechwriter for former President Trump and "who disputed his defeat in the 2020 election."

Source:
 "The Most Sought After Manuscript in Publishing? The Jan. 6 Report," Alexander Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris, New York Times, Dec. 23. 2022.

Newsprint

 

From the Washington Post

   "Newsprint" is the name of a feature provided by the Washington Post. I received an email about it at the end of November and it is from that email that the graphic above was taken. Now at least I know how I spent some of my time in 2022.  

   Apparently I am both opinionated and stylish, since the opinion and style sections were the top two consulted by me. Sports took third place, which surprises me since I would have thought it would have ranked well below "Entertainment", which is often the section I click on first, because it includes the reviews and articles about "Books." 

   The folks at the Post then suggested that those readers with tastes similar to mine also enjoyed the "Tech Friend Newsletter" and they provided me with some other articles I may have missed. It was indicated to me that I am a loyal reader of the pieces produced by Timothy Bella, whose name I did not recognize, and it was suggested that I might also want to check out Kim Bellware, of whom who I was also unaware.  I gather I will receive more information about my reading habits as our relationship develops.

   A purpose of all this is, I suppose, to encourage our relationship, and the data collected will probably result in me receiving more notes from the WP indicating there are other articles I have missed that will appeal to a guy like me. Unlike the old paper on newsprint, the publishers of it now know what is being read and how long we spend on each article. Knowing such things allows the editors to see what is really popular and to point that out so that the article becomes even more popular and, on some newspaper sites, remains on the "front page" for days. The bad news is that more froth is likely to be produced and rise to the top, while well-written, heavier items related to obscure subjects will sink and eventually disappear. 

Good News From the Washington Post

   There used to be newspapers which were printed on paper and, on Sunday in the United States, were massive bundles, helpful for those who had hangovers. I had many of those while living in the Washington area in the 1960s and relied heavily on the WP. Unfortunately I once took the paper with me on a bus trip to fulfill a military obligation in Norfolk and was wearing 'whites', the bottom portion of which was blackened by the ink. 

   There even used to be thick printed sections which were essentially mini-magazines, one of which was known as "Book World", but when the advertising started to disappear, so did the book review tabloids. Long essays about books were lost, along with those who could make a living reviewing them. In 2009, the Washington Post stopped printing "Book World" because, “The advertising in Book World didn’t justify the amount of space that we dedicated each week to books coverage,” Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Post, said in a phone interview."

   Well, that is really bad news, but there is some good news to note since this fall it was announced that, 

"Starting this week, we begin something new and revive something beloved. I’m thrilled to say that "Book World" returns in print after a long hiatus. In 2009, the print edition closed, and books coverage appeared in separate sections, "Outlook" and "Style." We are now reuniting our books staff to produce enhanced online coverage all week and a print edition on Sundays." ("Reintroducing Book World: The Washington Post's Books Section Starts a New Chapter, in Print Every Sunday and With a Refurbished and Revitalized Presence Online," John Williams, WP, Sept. 21, 2022.)

Part of the "revitalization" consists of an email which subscribers will receive each week from Ron Charles, bearing the title - "The Washington Post Book Club." Many of the 1400+ articles I read would have been produced by him or fellow critic, Michael Dirda.

Bad News From the Washington Post

   More recently the news is again bleak, although one would think that Mr. Bezos, the owner of the WP, would have the resources to host a grand Christmas office party for the staff. If there is an office party, there will be fewer staff to attend it and the mood on the 25th will be grim since that is the last day the WP's "Sunday Magazine" will appear. For this bad news see: "The Washington Post Will End Its Sunday Magazine, Eliminate Positions," Sara Ellison, Nov. 30, 2022. 

"The Washington Post will stop publishing its stand-alone print magazine, one of the last of its kind in the country and which has been published under different names for more than six decades, the newspaper’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, announced Wednesday.

The Sunday magazine has 10 staff members, who were told in a meeting that their positions have been eliminated, according to Shani George, The Post’s vice president for communications.

“We will end the print Sunday Magazine in its current form as we continue to undergo our global and digital transformation,” Buzbee said in a subsequent email to staff early Wednesday afternoon. She noted that “we will be shifting some of the most popular content, and adding more, in a revitalized Style section that will launch in the coming months.”

“We deeply appreciate the contributions this staff has made to our print readers over the years,” she wrote in conclusion.

The Post launched the magazine in its current form in 1986, though it had published a print Sunday magazine for the previous quarter century. The magazine is distributed with copies of the Sunday paper. Its last issue will publish on Dec. 25, Buzbee said.

  In this instance, popularity did not seem to matter since five of the forty most popular stories in the WP, are found in the magazine. Nor does the quality of the articles make a difference since the Pulitzer was won for some of them. There are now few such magazines left:

"Along with the Boston Globe and New York Times, The Post had been one of the few remaining newspapers to publish a weekly magazine. They were once popular features for major metropolitan dailies — “prime real estate for long-form newspaper features, especially as they were surrounded by gorgeous ads for expensive condos and watches,” said Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School and a former editor for the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal. “Those ads have largely disappeared from most newspapers, and so have the magazines.”

And although newspaper journalists once craved the opportunity to write at magazine length, “that’s less of a priority now, given the infinite space available online,” he said."

   About the situation at the Post there have been conflicting headlines, some positive and others negative. But, here is one of the latest ones and it is likely to best describe the mood of the employees: "Holiday Gloom at The Washington Post," Erik Wemple, Dec. 17. The "economic head winds" continue blowing across the news deserts and soon there will be few print newspapers left and likely no local ones at all. 

The Bonus: 

"The Washington Post recorded nearly 68 million unique visitors across its digital platforms in August 2022, up 7 percent month-on-month."

Christmas Book Shopping

 The main reason I am doing this is to avoid shopping and to keep cobwebs from gathering in my brain and on this blog. There is also a public service component involved, in that you may have discovered that it is difficult to find a list of good books for which to shop. I plan to help. Plus, reading even whatever I am about to write is better than going to the mall and it is warmer here. 

Blind Reviewing

   I realize that you have probably seen many, many "Good Books For Christmas" lists, but typically they include only books that are "topical" and the approved topics these days are very limited. The lists are also somewhat restricted in that it appears that they are carefully curated to include only certain types of authors and their inclusion is not necessarily related to the ability to write. I am offering here, a book list for readers who are interested in a variety of subjects, not just the popular or designated ones. I think there would be more of them (lists not readers) if there was more "blind reviewing", particularly of the "double-blind" type, where the reviewers don't know who the authors are. The appearance of such lists would likely change if the reviewer did not see the name of the author or what they looked like. 

Books For Those Interested in History

   I have done this before. In 2017, I offered "Christmas Shopping For Historians," and that was followed in 2019 by "The Cundill History Prize," and after that I discussed "F. Peter Cundill" last year. I know that you think these self-citations are simply a way for me to promote my work. That is not the case. Those posts and the lists within them are a way for you to locate older works which are cheaper. If you don't wish to appear cheap, the latest, more expensive hardbacks will be found at McGill on The Cundill History Prize website. 

   The book pictured was not the winner of the Cundill Prize, but it was one of the finalists for which the author received $10,000. The winning book was not shown because the winner won $75,000 and was also a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which is worth even more. She does not need my help. It is also the case that you will likely have already seen the book on one of those other lists because it is covers one of the preferred topics and the author passes muster. 

Books For Serious Readers

   You are now introduced to a series that will appeal to those who appreciate heavier tomes, or perhaps to those who are looking for a book that could be safely given to the grandchildren if they are of indeterminate gender, which they likely are. Although the books are ancient, they are not necessarily useless and this one has a recognizable utility for our times:

 

There are some titles that should not be considered for those who are university bound. 

 

All of these books and more are to be found in the series, "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers," presented by the Princeton University Press. 

  Readers of MM will have seen many posts about "University Presses" and all of them will have links to books bearing the imprimatur of a university, which will impress the recipient of such a book, even if the book itself does not. If this PUP series appeals, see also the one about "MIT Press - Additional Aids for Autodidacts."  If you are interested in the environment see the University of Washington Press.  Shop around. 

Some Books For the Rest of Us

   I think at the beginning of this post I suggested that book recommendations these days seemed to be based more on the identity of the authors than the content of the books produced. Now, to contradict myself, I will promote some books because of the author, not the books, none of which I have read - nor do I know much about the author. He has been chosen, not because of his identity, however, but because of the effort he has expended to produce the books he has written. He apparently does not sit alone in a loft gnawing on his pencil. 

   The author is Ted Conover and I learned of him when I read a review of his new book, Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge. He went off the grid himself and joined the outcasts who live in the remote San Luis Valley. He practices "immersion journalism" and this is not the first time he has done so, as the reviewer noted:

"For a book about modern-day hoboes (Rolling Nowhere), he learned to hop freight trains and spent months riding the rails; for a book about undocumented immigrants (Coyotes), he lived with Mexicans on both sides of the border, picking fruit in citrus orchards and travelling across the Sonoran Desert and the Rio Grande; for a book about the New York State prison system (Newjack), he got a job as a corrections officer and worked for a year inside Sing Sing.

She does not mention there, The Routes of Man... where, 

"In Peru, he traces the journey of a load of rare mahogany over the Andes to its origin, an untracked part of the Amazon basin soon to be traversed by a new east-west route across South America. In East Africa, he visits truckers whose travels have been linked to the worldwide spread of AIDS. In the West Bank, he monitors highway checkpoints with Israeli soldiers and then passes through them with Palestinians, witnessing the injustices and danger borne by both sides. He shuffles down a frozen riverbed with teenagers escaping their Himalayan valley to see how a new road will affect the now-isolated Indian region of Ladakh. From the passenger seat of a new Hyundai piling up the miles, he describes the exuberant upsurge in car culture as highways proliferate across China. And from inside an ambulance, he offers an apocalyptic but precise vision of Lagos, Nigeria, where congestion and chaos on freeways signal the rise of the global megacity."

A lot of subjects are covered in that one book and I think it is highly likely to be an interesting one. Even if it and the others are not, such dedication and hard work deserves our attention and that is why he has been chosen, not because of his identity.

Source: 

  The very interesting review of Conover's latest book is found here: "The Pitfalls of Immersive Journalism," Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, Nov. 28, 2022. 

   For more about Conover and his books see: Penguin Random House. For more about him and "immersion journalism", just see the Wikipedia entry. Or, go directly to his website.

The Bonus:

   If you are not satisfied with the selection so far, you will be glad to know that there is a new history of the ass out: Butts: A Backstory, by Heather Radke. I may have to do a new "History of Everything", which contains a 28 pp list of books about, well everything. You will find some more book shopping ideas there. 

On Somnolence

How Much Do We Sleep? 

   Perhaps too much. I know I waste a lot of time, a commodity I am running out of, but I never thought much about how many years I have slept. Yes, years! I am now thinking about it, because I have learned that Nikita Khrushchev thought we sleep too much and perhaps he is correct because I doubt that one can become the Leader of the Soviet Union by sleeping his way to the top.

   I am re-reading Charles Kuralt's, Life on the Road and he mentions that early in his career as a CBS News Correspondent he was in the Great Plains for a story about the death of family farms when 

the "Next thing I knew, I was chatting with Nikita Khrushchev in a silage pit on a farm outside of Coon Rapids, Iowa.

“You look a little tired,” I said to Nikita Khrushchev.

“No, no, he said. He put a beefy hand on my shoulder. “I do not sleep eight hours a night,” he said. “If you sleep eight hours and live for sixty years, that’s twenty years of sleep!” He waited for this remark to be translated. He shook a finger at me and repeated reprovingly, “Yes, twenty years of sleep!”

 
  Apparently old Khrushchev knew what he was talking about, but given that the arithmetic to determine such matters is somewhat beyond me, I gave the question to our guru Google and here are some of the answers they came up with:

"A good night’s sleep is vital for every human being to survive. Given that an average a person sleeps for 8 hours in a day, that means that an average person will sleep for 229,961 hours in their lifetime or basically one third of their life. That’s precious time which could have been spent watching Die Hard 105,325 times.

The average human spends just under 80 years on earth, so let's start with that number. Of those years, a mind blowing 26 years will be spent sleeping... but what's more surprising is that an additional seven years will be spent trying to get to sleep!

If the average night's sleep is eight hours (ie one third of a day), one sleeps for one third of one's life. If you live, say, 75 years, that's 25 years asleep, or 9,125 days."

Having confessed that I lack the arithmetic ability to calculate such things, I also admit to not being able to check those answers. I think they are likely correct, however, and I appreciate that one of them converted the sleeping hours to the hours one could have spent watching Die Hard, which I am sure has been listed on our TV guide well over 100,000 times. I don't know how, however, one can know how many years we spent just trying to go to sleep. But, surely we do spend a lot of time that way and if you add that number to the number of years we were dozing you get a substantial sum. Those of us who have not accomplished much can find some solace in recognizing that many of our years were spent sleeping.

How Much Time Do We Spend Alone?

   When I was not reading about the adventures of Charles Kuralt, I was often reading other things - and sleeping. From an article, I learned that many of us are now spending more time alone - not necessarily sleeping alone. At the beginning of this century Robert Putnam argued that there has been a decline in social engagement and that we are no longer participating as much in clubs or community organizations. The article just read does affirm that we are indeed, bowling alone, and that we are even spending less time with family and friends. Here are some of the numbers:

“The average American spent 15 hours per week with [friends] a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019, and only 10 hours a week in 2021. On average, Americans did not transfer that lost time to spouses, partners or children. Instead, they chose to be alone.”

No single group is driving this shift: men and women, old and young, rich and poor of all races and professions have shown proportional declines in time spent with others.

“These new habits are startling,” Ward writes, “and a striking departure from the past. Just a decade ago, the average American spent roughly the same amount of time with friends as Americans in the 1960s or 1970s. But we have now begun to cast off our connections to each other.”

and

"Thanksgiving was not spared. Americans spent 38 percent less time with friends and extended family over the Thanksgiving weekend in the past two years than they had a decade prior."

While these numbers relate to Americans, Canadians may have withdrawn as well. Some of the solitude may be explained by the pandemic, but the tendency to spend more time alone was increasing and "Our social lives were withering dramatically before covid-19."

Sources:

  The article is here: "Americans Are Choosing to be Alone. Here's Why We Should Reverse That," Bryce Ward, Washington Post, Nov. 23, 2022. 

   The question you are asking is "How in the hell do we know how much time people are spending alone?" 

The source used in the article is the American Time Use Survey which measures, among other things, the time people spend working and sleeping. "According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the average American spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline."

The American Time Use Survey can be viewed here: https://www.bls.gov/tus/

The Bonus:

More statistics for you. I also recently learned that large numbers of people are sleeping in the rough and many are alone. 

"There are close to 42,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, a majority of them unsheltered, according to recent county data."

"A Snapshot of Homelessness Policies Around the U.S. and the World, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2022. 

"Screwed the Pooch"

 

Headline of the Month

   Although I could not find a good Canadian image to illustrate our topic for today, the one above should suffice and, as well, indicate that variants of the phrase are widely used. It is an odd bit of slang, but it is found in this CBC headline on Nov. 22, 2022: 
" 'Your Guy Really Screwed the Pooch,' texts Kenney, Upset With Feds Over Coutts Blockade." The term is not really explained in the article, but it is clear that many people "screwed up" when the Emergency Act was invoked.

   Apparently pooch screwing is synonymous with blundering or making an egregious mistake, but the discriminating readers of Mulcahy's Miscellany will only be satisfied if a bit of philology is applied. Here is that bit.

   Readers of this blog likely first encountered the phrase when reading The RIght Stuff by Tom Wolfe. The rest of you probably heard it uttered in the film with that name back in the last century. More recently in this one, you may have been surprised when a CBS News correspondent  used the phrase on "Face the Nation" when discussing the Obama administration and the war in Syria. If one is travelling to outer space or navigating through the political milieu, there are lots of opportunities to "screw the pooch" and apply acronyms like SNAFU or FUBAR. 

"F****** the Dog"

  It is likely that "screwing the pooch" is a euphemism for the more vulgar "F****** the dog," which like SNAFU and FUBAR, originated in the military. The latter phrase has a different meaning and I thought of it when I first encountered a new one - "Quiet Quitting." It is likely most of us were aware of "QQ", before it was a thing, and had a colleague or two who were slacking off, being lazy, dogging it, or as we would say after work and a few drinks, "Jim was "f****** the dog" again today." 

Sources:

   The use of the less vulgar variant of the phrase is described in this article: "Review - The Week - The Word on the Street - The Pedigree of the Naughty Pooch," Ben Zimmer, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2014. Mr. Zimmer discusses the topic in more detail in a publication which allowed him to mention the more vulgar phrase: "A Reporter Said 'Screw the Pooch' on Face the Nation: Where Does That Phrase Come From?", Slate, Jan. 14, 2014. 

   Everything you need to know about the F-Word is found in the plainly titled book, The F-Word by the lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower. It is published by the Oxford University Press and a copy used to be found in the London Public Library. I suppose that someone f***** off with it. For more F information see: "Swearing & Slurring." 

The Bonus:

  In the longer article by Mr. Zimmer, this is noted: 

 "It’s not impossible, after all, for various military personnel to have independently transformed “fuck the dog” into “screw the pooch” on separate occasions. After my Wall Street Journal column was published, former Navy Lieutenant Commander Arthur P. Menard wrote in to say that he recalled “screw the pooch” being used to describe fatal crashes in 1959, when he was a midshipman aboard the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, and again in 1960 in flight school in Pensacola. He described it as “black humor in the Naval air arm for a very unfunny incident.”

  If the USS Oriskany rings a bell that may be because I mentioned it in my post about Senator John McCain where a review of the book, Over the Beach: The Air War in Vietnam is presented. It's easy to screw the pooch on an aircraft carrier. 

Old Beatrice & Uncle Tom

 

   It has been two weeks since I last posted and it is raining so I will attempt one now. It will be based, I think, on stories I just read in the Sunday papers. You will be relived to know that they are not "news" stories, since most such stories are rather bad these days.

  I will begin with the benign one about Beatrice. The picture above is from the North Sea off the coast of Scotland where the oil rigs, like the one on the right, are being replaced by the wind turbines on the left. There will be over 80 of them and the 50 square miles will be known as "The Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm." Her name was also on the old oil rigs. 

  You will not be surprised that I noticed the name "Beatrice", since I have written often about such names, mostly because they are being replaced. You will also know that I am not generally in favour of such replacements since the history behind them is often more interesting and illustrative than the monikers manufactured by the new toponymic totalitarians among us. 

  Although HRH Prince Charles of Wales reigned over the official opening of the "farm" in the Moray Firth, Scotland, old Beatrice is not British.  She was the wife of old T. Boone Pickens, who has his name all over the campus at Oklahoma State University. Old T. Boone was very rich and his story is more interesting than this post (see below for sources.)

  At this time I don't think anyone is suggesting that Beatrice be removed, but remember that the hummingbird "Anna" is being attacked for being named after the wife of a French naturalist. "Uncle Tom", as in "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"  is causing problems, even in Germany where "Onkel Toms Hütte" is the name of a subway station in Berlin. Blacks would be very much offended by being referred to as an "Uncle Tom" and the one pictured above objects to the station name as do many others. She is not alone and the naming authorities will probably have to re-name a Bauhaus housing development and the street, Onkel-Tom-Strasse. Just as I did not say much about T. Boone, I will say little more about the Uncle Tom controversy in Germany, since it is the type of  "news" story, of which there are already too many. If you can't figure it out, sources are provided, along with some other interesting bits.

Sources:
   For information about Beatrice see: "Giant Wind Farms Arise Off Scotland, Easing the Pain of Oil’s Decline," Stanley Reed, New York Times, Nov. 27, 2022.
   For Boone Pickens see the very interesting Wikipedia entry. The money he has given to OSU could save Laurentian U. and revitalize the entire industry of higher education in all of Canada. If you are a golf fan you will finally understand why so many of the foreign (and domestic) top PGA tour professionals ended up in Stillwater rather than, say in San Diego. 

  Information about the "Onkel Toms Hütte" controversy is found in this article, from which the illustration above was poached: "A Berlin Subway Stop is Called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ Some Black Germans Want Change," Meena Venkataramanan, The Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2022.

The Bonus:
   There is no doubt that you are still looking for something better to read on this dreary Sunday. Here is a suggestion, which allows me to plug some of my old posts. When discussing the various naming controversies, I have usually mentioned George R. Stewart. His name and book were mentioned in this article which also contains many other good book suggestions: "BY THE BOOK: Douglas Brinkley Would Like to Invite Thoreau to Dinner," New York Times, Nov. 27, 2022. Here is his answer to this question:
"What's the last great book you read?"
"During the pandemic I was transfixed by George R. Stewart’s “Earth Abides,” perhaps the most frightening doomsday thriller of all time. Most of American civilization collapses because of a strange disease, but a Berkeley ecologist is one of the rare survivors of the epidemic. Stewart wrote the book about 75 years ago, but his description of empty cities and the power of nature unleashed seem very contemporary in a world of Covid and climate change. It holds up well, and Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a fine introduction for the 2020 edition."
For more about Stewart and some of his other books see: George R. Stewart (1895 - 1980)
 My last post about geographic name changing is:  "British Columbia or Sasquatchia?" There are many more which surprises me.