Revelatory New Book About Prime Minister Trudeau

 

"April Fools!" 
   There is not a new book about Trudeau. The one above is neither new or revealing. It was published a couple of years ago and says nothing at all about either Trudeau's greatness or his skill at leading. The book consists only of pages which are completely blank. Dr. Henry Maple may not exist as such.

Of Nothing There Is No End
   The blank pages in this book were copied from many others that came before. Whether that constitutes plagiarism, I will let you decide. Before you do, you should read my post on this subject, where the issue is discussed and a brief history of books about nothing is presented. 
See: Much Ado About Nothing.

The Bonus: 
For more substance see my: The History of Everything. 

On Golf Balls

   It is snowing here today and golf will not be played for a while. The subject can be broached, however, and I will begin broaching by considering the colour of golf balls. As well, for those readers who prefer the serious over the frivolous, I will make the subject more timely by also mentioning gender, which one is required to do these days.

   Men prefer white balls. I haven’t done any research on the subject, but it is likely that even Black men do as well and I am sure Harold Varner III does, but you would expect him to do so because of the III. Even with the III and a name like “Harold”, he probably would not have been allowed into most country clubs a while back and in those days it is also likely that even a white club member would have  been blackballed if he chose to use a ball that was not white. But, this is about gender, not race, so consider this quote: “Female golfers have long accepted balls in a variety of hues.” 

   That quotation comes from an authoritative source: The Wall Street Journal. It is even more authoritative in this instance, given that most readers of it, and likely the writer of the article, are golfers and, more importantly, members of country clubs. Just as they know more about hedge funds, they are more likely to have accumulated wisdom related to poa annua grass and know that it should not be allowed at their clubs.

   Statistical evidence is provided by the WSJ: "At Whispering Pines Golf Club north of Houston, the pro shop tells me that less than 10% of men purchase colored balls, while nearly 60% of women do." That proves, among other things, that women are smarter than men, since colour, unlike, say compression, has no effect on ball performance and the brightly coloured ones are easier to find in the deep grass, or for that matter in the deep snow outside today. 

   Even tennis players are smarter than male golfers and the International Tennis Federation, more liberal than the PGA, since they made yellow balls the official ones back in 1972. Wimbledon went yellow much later, in 1986, but it is greener over there. 

    I should mention that Bubba Watson is also smarter than most other male golfers since he used a pink golf ball at the Masters a few years ago. I am surprised that they allowed him to do so, but by then I think they had also agreed to allow Condoleezza Rice to become a member. 

Sources:

“Gender Gap on the Golf Course,” Peter Funt, WSJ, April 15, 2021.

If you are heading out to Golf Town, are male and feel sufficiently masculine, here is a guide that will be useful: “10 Best High Visibility Golf Balls in 2022,” by Carroll Ball. Kansas Golf.

Post Script:

Readers who are attentive and who read my post about Aptronyms, will appreciate the name of the author of the article above: Carroll Ball.

The Bonus: 
Srixon is introducing a two-toned one.

 

Working Wonders With Wood

 

   It is rather incongruous that one would receive these days, via email, information about how to buy a woodworking book written in 1949. It came from Lee Valley which, by the way, is Canadian and that allows me to fulfil my Canadian content quota. It is also family owned, and finely named when you think about it. 

   The book reminded me of how ill-suited I was for the “trades” (even more so now) and that we should not be so dismissive of them. A skilled one like woodworking reminds me also that I was generally incapable of handling higher intellectual endeavours ( even more so now.) That is, I did not have the surgical skills required to deftly construct wooden contraptions and would not have been smart enough to calculate area, construct geometric shapes and determine miter angles, and do many of the other things which the Woodworker's Pocketbook explains. 

John Muir - The Woodworker

   I can at least recognize the talents of others and, in the case of working with wood, told you about the tremendously complicated objects constructed by the naturalist John Muir. That is one of his, pictured above. I will point you to a historical site where you can see more illustrations and learn about Muir’s inventions. He created one machine that booted him out of bed. He created another that allowed him to light a fire in a school house far away so it would be warm when he arrived!!??

The Clocks of the Bily Brothers

   I told you far too much about Muir earlier in this blog, but did not say anything about the Bily Clocks when I passed through Spillville, Iowa a while back. There is a museum there devoted to them. When the Bily brothers weren't busy farming, they were carving intricate and elaborate clocks like The Apostles' Parade which is almost ten feet tall and includes the twelve apostles. 

   Your day will be better spent looking at these wooden works of art, rather than reading what I have to say about them so I will provide what you need below.

Sources: 

For Muir, the place to begin is at the Wisconsin Historical Society where you will find, in the link provided, a good essay and other images. 

You know Muir's wooden inventions are interesting since they are included in both:

Mental Floss - "Conservationist John Muir’s Youthful Hobby: Inventing Amazing Alarm Clocks"

and

Atlas Obscura - "John Muir's Alarm Clock Desk"

   I provided a good description of Muir's fire-starting device which was taken from his, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth.  See the section on his inventions in "School Days and Labour Days."  If you want to read a novel-length post about Muir's wood working days in Meaford, Ontario see, John Muir. 

My cryptic reference to Spillville relates to the book review I did of Zoellner's The National Road. He is the one who actually went to Spillville and that is where I learned that Dvorak also visited and it was where the Bily boys did their work. They even 'manufactured' a Dvorak clock.

 The Bily museum can be learned about here: https://www.bilyclocks.org/

  A couple of hundred miles away in Libertyville, IA, you can learn more about the Bily clocks and many other kinds. See: The Well Made Clock. 

  The Bily clocks also made it into Atlas Obscura. 

  If you want to see them in action (the clocks, not the Bily brothers) see footage from the Bily Clocks Museum in this YouTube video. 

The Bonus:

  There is even a Dvorak clock. 

"Without nails or screws or training, and with homemade glue, the most unexpected and marvelous thing happened. Frank and Joseph Bily, a pair of bachelor brothers, carved and crafted some of the most beautiful, unique, intricate timepieces ever designed by untrained hands. For almost forty five years, from 1913 to 1957, when they weren’t busy running their family farm in northern Iowa, they carved and carved.

What you’re going to hear next, though, is what makes their story, not just unusual, but also stirring, heartening and thought provoking. They never sold their clocks, not even one, not even in 1928 when Henry Ford, the automaker who had an affinity for clocks and music boxes, upon hearing about their eight foot, five hundred pound American Pioneer History Clock, had offered them an astounding million dollars! Instead, they wanted to keep the collection in tact and stored in their barn."

[From The Wellmade Clock]

Movie Posters

 

Better Than The Oscars

   The Oscars are on tonight and it seems as though many people are not enthused and are more likely to watch reruns of Schitt’s Creek up here in Canada or Gunsmoke below the border. I offer another option - movie posters - which were always, mostly better than the movies. They are found in a research library, but you can view them from home.

   I have lamented the fact that many university libraries are getting out of the library business, but that is not true of The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Ever since the oil money started pouring into their budget, they have been accepting, collecting and buying just about anything of value, and many things that most Texans would agree are not valuable at all. Like old movie posters. 

   Although the Ransom Center has been digitizing words and images for many years, the movie poster project began in 2018 and there are 10,000 available, of which about half are now online and viewable and searchable. More are coming.

   To learn more and view them go to the Movie Posters Collection, where you will also see a link to the other Film Collections at Ransom. I told you they had a lot. For just one example in this genre, you can have a look at all of the material they have about and from the actor Peter O’Toole. 

The Bonus:
   The Harry Ransom Center probably has more Canadian material than any Canadian library. They have, for example, the papers of a chap who passed through London a few years back. Perhaps you have read one of his books or seen the movie, The English Patient. 
See: "Archive of Michael Ondaatje, Author of "The English Patient"", Acquired," Suzanne Krause, Ransom Center Magazine, Sept. 25, 2017. 

James Oliver Curwood

    James Oliver Curwood was a very popular Michigan author who wrote a large number of outdoor adventure novels about "God's Country", which was basically Canada. He was for the coureurs de bois, what Zane Grey was for the cowboys. In the early part of the 20th century, the image that many people worldwide had of Canada, was the one painted in prose by Curwood. This is all summed up in the very long title of a Maclean's profile of Curwood in 1954:  

                  "The Man Who Invented God's Country: Being a True Account
                   of How James Oliver Curwood Gave the World, in 27 Spine-
                   Tingling Novels Devoured by Kings, Presidents and
                   Commoners, The Electrifying But Slightly Inaccurate Idea
                   that CANADA Was and Always Will Be a Heroic Land 
                  Peopled by Stalwart Mounties, Noble Indians,
                  Lonely Loons and Virtuous Maidens!" 
                  by Stephen J. Gamester, Our Intrepid Reporter, 
                  Whose Amazing Correspondence, Begins Overleaf,
                   Maclean's, Feb. 22, 1964.

The Curwood Festival

   I am telling you all of this because Curwood will be honoured again in Owosso, Michigan, which is due west of here, on the weekend of June 2.  He is honoured annually unless germs interfere. To avoid dying, you have been masked up and indoors and are probably dying to get out and go somewhere. I will be your trip advisor on this one and recommend that you enjoy the parades, tours, old homes, and particularly Curwood's castle on the banks of the Shiawassee River. I will provide the pertinent links below and by clicking on the first one, you will learn all you need to know.

The Curwood Collector

   Once again, you are amazed that I know such things and wonder why. This is the case, I admit, of another abandoned project. It relates, oddly enough, to my "Periodical Ramblings" and to those periodicals that are dedicated to one, specific individual. Curwood is such an individual and The Curwood Collector was dedicated just to writing by and about him. When I saw the title, I wondered who this Curwood was and looked him up. He turned out to be almost a neighbour. 

   This all was learned about forty years ago and the reason I am only telling you now is that I just discovered the notes of a trip taken to the Curwood Festival back on a fine summer day in 1981. Apparently I enjoyed it, but I will provide below a reference to an account by a writer more accomplished than I. He enjoyed the Festival in 1992. Before you pack your bags, do note that these endorsements are from the last century, not this one. Things may have changed, but those Pure Michigan ads are always enticing.

Curwood Actually Went to Canada

    He knew about what he wrote about and often spent months alone (or with his attractive wife) in campsites or cabins they constructed. Part of the time, he was even on the Canadian government payroll as a promoter of God's Country. Here are some photos:

  

The author and his first wife on their honeymoon in Ontario, 1909

  Such endeavours were successful, which is how he was able to construct the castle in Owosso.

The Curwood Festival:

    To learn more about the man and the events, see these links.

The Owosso Historical Commission
This site tells the whole story and has great photos in the section about Curwood Castle.
Historic Views of Owosso and Corrunna, Michigan
See this sub-section which contains a short profile, pictures of the castle being constructed, lists of his books and movies and his grave in the Oak Hill Cemetery. 
The Curwood Festival 
This is the official site with a countdown clock telling you how many days before the festival begins. It does not offer much else right now, but more will be added.

Sources:

   For the account of the Festival see: "Why, O Why, O Why O, Do They Ever Leave Owosso?" Thomas Mallon, The American Spectator, June 1992. 
   For a more recent one: Claire Moore, “Author-adventurer’s Castle in Unlikely Place: Owosso,” Spartan News Room, Dec. 11, 2020 - a description of JOC and the town by a reporter who lives there.

More information about his books is provided below.

The Bonus:
   Curwood died in 1927 at a young age. Some think it was from the bite of a spider. Here is what one biography notes. He was returning from Florida during the spring: 

“The route home from by way of Washington was fortunate for Jim. Wearing waders, he’d been hunting water moccasins near Englewood and a snake - or something - had bitten him on the upper thigh. It had been a pricking sensation, like that of a needle, and he’d not thought much about it then, but now it was giving him trouble and he stopped by to see a doctor.” [he stayed five days for treatment - this was early in 1927 - he died in the fall.]

From: Eldridge, Judith A. James Oliver Curwood: God's Country and the Man. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993.

Post Script:

   I never did do anything with old Curwood. I did, however, publish an article about journals like The Curwood Collector and have written about them in MM: "Single Author Journals" Periodical Ramblings (8)

   If you think you would like to give him a shot, all my materials relating to Curwood, the Festival and Owosso are available until Friday which is garbage day here in London and I do need to get rid of some of this detritus. If any of you get an Owosso postcard from me, now you will know why since I still have a few from that trip in 1981.

  As for those other "Abandoned Projects" I mentioned, one was about Charcoal Fueled Automobiles, a minor endeavour, and the other, A Dance to the Music of Time, which simply involved reading rather than writing.

Selected Curwood Books

A full list of his books is found in the Wikipedia entry for James Oliver Curwood. Most of them are now available to read for free. A convenient way to access them

is from the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, under "External Links."

Provided below are those found in the Western Libraries at Western University. Also

provided are some sample reviews from the New York Times.

The Alaskan : A Novel of the North

The Ancient Highway : A Novel of High Hearts and Open Roads

Back to God's Country, and Other Stories

Baree, Son of Kazan.

The Black Hunter; A Novel of Old Quebec.

The Country Beyond : A Romance of the Wilderness

NYT, Aug 6, 1922 "The popularity of James Oliver Curwood is so positive, his novels have such a surprisingly wide sale, that it is of interest to note the ingredients of his most recent book". The sales are surprising for the reviewer because he thinks the ingredients are banal.

The Courage of Captain Plum.

NYT, Nov. 7, 1908

Favourable review. The subject is a breakaway colony of Mormons on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. "Mr. Curwood is to be congratulated upon having utilized an insignificant crumb of national history for the making of a well-constructed and interesting tale."

The Courage of Marge O'Doone.

NYT, Feb. 24, 1918.

Curwood's picture is provided and he is described as a born narrator and story teller.

The Crippled lady of Peribonka

The Flaming forest : A Novel of the Canadian Northwest

Flower of the North : A Modern Romance

NYT, Mar. 31, 1912.

The title is "A Good Adventure Tale", although the reviewer does complain of some

stale devices.

A Gentleman of Courage

The Gold Hunters

God's Country and the Woman.

NYT, Jan. 17, 1915.

A sole survivor of an expedition discovers a beautiful woman in the far north. Although barely credible, the plot is ingenuous according to the reviewer.

God's Country; The Trail to Happiness

NYT, April 3, 1921.

"It you are a lover of nature, you will enjoy this book..."

The Great Lakes, the Vessels That Plough Them : Their Owners, Their Sailors,

and Their Cargoes; Together With a Brief History of our Inland Seas NYT. June 19, 1909.

The reviewer is very enthusiastic. Although a work of nonfiction, it reads like a novel.

This book is now very expensive on the used book market.

The Grizzly King, A Romance of the Wild. NYT, Sept. 17, 1916. About hunters in the Rockies who learn to care about animals rather than hunt them.

The Honor of the Big Snows

The Hunted Woman

Nomads of the North; A Story of Romance and Adventure Under the Open Stars.

NYT, April 27, 1191.

The adventures is about animals and the reviewer finds it entertaining.

The Plains of Abraham

The River's End; A New Story of God's Country.

NYT, Oct. 12, 1919.

The reviewer thinks this one may have been written in haste and for the movies,

but finds it interesting, if overly sentimental. Good descriptions of the Saskatchewan River.

Steele of the Royal Mounted : A Story of the Great Canadian Northwest

The Valley of Silent Men

NYT, Nov. 7, 1920.

A postive review of "a corking good adventure story." The Wolf Hunters : A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness

NYT, Dec. 19, 1908. Notes that it is full of adventure and shows real knowledge of the north.

Stalin's Library

   Apart from occasionally writing about university or public libraries, I have sometimes considered  private ones. See, for example, the essays about the libraries of Mark Twain, Edward Gorey and, more recently Professor Macksey. In the post about old card catalogues, I mentioned that scholars had gone through the library belonging to Adam Smith to try to figure out why he approached economic matters the way he did.  

   The basic idea is that we might be able to learn what people thought by examining what they read. Someone has now looked into Stalin's study since it may be that, "Through an examination of these books," Mr. Roberts writes, "it is possible to build a composite, nuanced picture of the reading life of the twentieth century's most self-consciously intellectual dictator." In the case of Stalin, such an examination could be useful since he left little behind in terms of biographical material or personal papers and diaries. 

   One reviewer cautions that "a person's library can tell us only so much" and "Roberts warns against reading too much into Stalin's decision to underline a line attributed to Genghis Khan, "The death of the defeated is necessary for the peace of mind of the victors."

   Currently Putin is inflicting a lot of damage on Ukraine, just as Stalin did. Let's hope he didn't read the line by Khan. As well, we should remember that "to be well-read is in itself no guarantee of a humane approach to politics and life." 

   

   Stalin had a large library of approximately 25,000 books. "The central feature of a dacha built for Stalin outside Moscow in 1933-34 was a 30 sq m library with four large bookcases, each with shelves deep enough to take two rows of books. So large was Stalin’s collection that many books were stored in a separate building and brought to him as required." He even employed staff to classify them. His pometki, or what we call 'marginalia', are not unlike those we have seen in books from our university libraries.  "Using red, blue and green pencils, he scribbled expressions of disdain or disagreement: “ha ha”, “hee hee”, “gibberish”, “nonsense”, “rubbish”, “fool”, “bastards”, “scumbag”, “swine”, “liar”, “scoundrel” and “piss off”.

 Yale University Press has published Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books, by Geoffrey Roberts. Here is the accompanying promotional material: 

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics.
Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more.

Sources:
  "Stalin's Library by Geoffrey Roberts Review- The Marks of a Leader: Joseph Stalin Owned About 20,00 Books, Many With Jottings in the Margin: Does His Library Hold the Key to His Character?", Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian, Feb. 16, 2022. The image above is from this article.
   "Stalin's Library," by Geoffrey Roberts - Stacks of Power," Tony Barber, Financial Times, Jan. 31, 2022.
   "Stalin the Intellectual: The Dictator Cast in a New Light," Nigel Jones, The Spectator, Feb. 5, 2022.

A Library is Lost at Leceister

    I have written about university libraries and noted that many are now getting rid of books and materials since they wish to be seen as much more than storage sites. Space is highly valued on most campuses and one can understand how various areas can be colonized by factions with more prestige and power - those in the administrative wing, for example.  Here is a case to consider. 

   Jillian Becker was born in South Africa and now, almost ninety years later, resides in California. During that period she wrote, Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang and The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization. She also was a co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism which became the home of the books, papers and research material which had accumulated over the years. In 1993, the archive was bought by the University of Leicester. More recently when someone inquired about the collection, it could not be found. 

   Ms. Becker raised this question in an essay to which I will provide a link: "How Did the University of Leicester Manage to "Lose" the Institute for the Study of Terrorism's Archive? Her remarks are reasonable as are the replies from Leicester, which basically indicate they don't know what in the hell happened to the material. 

   There is probably no mystery involved. Priorities may have changed or space was needed and a clerk was told to dispose of all those papers in the stacks on the third floor. But, Ms. Becker does raise an interesting point in her concluding paragraph which is bolded below:

The loss of an archive, whether by negligence or decision, is a calamity. To lose it by negligence is barbarously callous. To discard it deliberately is an act of intellectual vandalism, the equivalent of book-burning. If, in either case, a university is responsible, the disgrace must leave a permanent stain on its reputation.

   I would have assumed in the past that such things were lost simply because no one cared much about them. Now one wonders if sometimes people care too much and choose to get rid of items they find distasteful, or which could be 'hurtful' to those who might stumble upon them. Becker also wrote a book about Sylvia Plath. Had she donated Plath material, might it still be around?

Source:
   The essay above is found on the website of  The Freedom Association which is a right-leaning, libertarian-type and Ms. Becker is a member. I don't think that matters in this case, but I thought I should mention it. 
The Bonus:
   Some more cheap advice. If someone from an "Advancement Office" at a university takes your money in exchange for your name being affixed to something on campus, or if a librarian agrees to accept your books, papers or artworks, don't assume they will be there a decade from now.

Women Running Around

 

   A few days ago, I mentioned the  "Wonder Woman", Camille Herron, who is an ultrarunner.  She holds the world record for the 100 mile run (160km) and she has run 167 miles (270km) in 24 hours. I thought of those numbers when I read this:

"When Kathrine Switzer, a twenty-year-old journalism and English major at Syracuse University, set out to run the Boston Marathon in 1967, women were barred from it. Switzer registered under her initials and showed up anyway, only to be outed by reporters shouting, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl!” The race director tried to eject her physically from the course. Switzer and others later appeared on television to promote female runners, and the seventies jogging craze attracted women, too. President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments into law, promising female athletes equal access to facilities and funding in schools. In 1984, the Olympic Games held a women’s marathon for the first time. Today, more than half of all marathon runners are women."

   Apparently in the radical '60s, running for women was a radical endeavour, rather unfeminine and likely to cause damage to the undercarriage. Even if one was  only running  a marathon (26m or 42k). Some things for women have changed. 

Sources:
   The quotation is from a review of this book and a few others: Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman. The review is by Margaret Talbot, "Muscle Memory: Is Fitness Culture Our Friend," The New Yorker, Mar. 22, 2022, p.69.
   The photo above is from: "Women Are Better Than Men at Marathon Pacing, Says New Research," Kate Carter, The Guardian, Jan. 20, 2015.

The Bonus:
   During "March Madness" it is worth mentioning that now women can even play basketball like men. When I was in high school, the girls could only dribble three times. Now there are 68 teams of women running full tilt in the NCAA tournament. 
   One female basketball player who is not running is Brittney Griner, who was playing professionally in Russia and is now in detention there. See: "Brittney Griner, Star, W.N.B.A. Center, Is Detained in Russia," NYT, Mar. 5, 2022. 

Libraries As Cabinets of Curiosities

 

   I have not said much about libraries lately, largely because there has not been much to say, especially about the university variety. The one in which I used to work is being emptied of books to make room for students and for other activities. There are many places to see active students on campus, but for books you may be better off going to the bookstore. Years ago the main library used to be full of both books and things and I think it was a more interesting place to visit, even for the students. 

  I thought about this at year's end and you will easily see why, from reading the headline and the few paragraphs provided:

"A Cabinet of Wonders Opens Wide: A Coco Chanel Ballet Slipper, Beethoven's Hair, Andy Warhol's Painted Ticket: Treasures at the New York Public Library Showcases Delights From Its Collections," NYT, Dec. 28, 2021. If you are not enticed by those objects, there are more:

"The exhibition, supported by a $12 million gift from the philanthropist Leonard Polonsky, is the culmination of more than three years of shopping the library’s epic closets, which hold more than 45 million manuscripts, rare books, prints, photographs, audio and film clips and other artifacts. Covering 4,000 years of history, it mixes big-ticket items (a Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio) and who-knew delights, like Andy Warhol’s painting of a Studio 54 ticket (inscribed “To Truman,” as in Capote).
Look through a display of the conductor Arturo Toscanini’s batons, suspended in space, and you catch a glimpse of a spotlighted case across the room holding “Political Prisoner,” a 1971 cedar sculpture by the African American artist Elizabeth Catlett. From the front, the figure — a woman with a Pan-African flag cut into her torso — looks exhilarated, regal. From behind, you see that her hands are chained.
The library, Kiely said, is really a “collections of collections,” whose own history is traced through the show. The core sections are heavy on treasures donated by the 19th-century philanthropist James Lenox, like an early 16th-century copper globe that includes one of the earliest cartographic representations of the Americas. (It’s also one of only two surviving Renaissance or medieval maps with the inscription “Here be dragons.”) 

UC DAVIS - Wine

  Some university libraries continue to collect and store and I was pleased that the Library at the University of California (Davis) is aspiring to be the "Greatest Wine Library in the World." The image above is from their "Amerine (Maynard) Wine Label Collection."

UC DAVIS - Food

  To choose the proper food to go with the wine there is now the "Chef Martin Yan Legacy Archive" at UC Davis. The archive "will include World-renowned celebrity chef Martin Yan’s collection of nearly 3,000 cookbooks, his first wok, thousands of photographs and other media." As well, there was a monetary donation to digitize and preserve the collection." Lest you think that UC Davis is only concerned with eating and drinking, you should know that it also has a well-ranked School of Veterinary Medicine. The daughter of a neighbour of ours went to the Equine Performance and Rehabilitation Center after graduating from Guelph. 

   If you are interested in research collections related to food and drink, revisit my long FOOD HISTORY post where you will find menus, recipes, cookbooks, etc. some of which are housed in Canadian university libraries (e.g. UBC and Guelph.) 

Some Canadian Content:

   The Ubyssey (the student newspaper at UBC) often runs stories about "Hidden Treasures" and the picture above is from one of them.  It is from the Chung Collection in one of the UBC Libraries: 

In the basement of the Irving K. Barber (IKB) Learning Centre, tucked in a corner behind multiple glass doors and a security desk, is a dim backroom that is curiously colder than the rest of the building. This is the Chung Collection, just one small portion of UBC’s vast Rare Books collection. With more than 25,000 items in this room alone, the Chung Collection fits more than a century of Canadian history into its tightly packed drawers and display cases.The walls of the Chung Collection gallery are lined with Canadian Pacific Rail advertisements ranging 1924 to the mid-1950s, most of which are the work of Saskatchewan-born Peter Ewert. Ewert’s stylized paintings of iconic Canadian sites, like this one of Lake Louise, gave tourists an idyllic image of the Canadian adventure they could embark one with CP rail. This 1942 ad for the Chateau Lake Louise depicts bathers lounging lakeside, in the shadow of the blue-tinted mountains.

Post Script: 
  There may still be a few items of interest to be found in the few remaining libraries up at Western, most likely in the "Archives and Special Collections" in the D. B. Weldon Library. I recall there were displays, in massive cabinets,  of the large "Jeffrey Stamp Collection", which still may be there and I did do a post about the "Gregory Clark Piscatorial Collection" which is in the Archives. See: Angling Books. Otherwise, you will now see mostly students when you visit the libraries, or empty spaces during the summer months.

The Bonus: Libraries as Kindergartens

   The situation could be worse. In one of the libraries at the U of T, you might see mainly kids. Providing "childminding" and space for students are not bad things, but they can be provided by others. This is what is going on in Toronto according to College and Research Libraries News:

"Time of one’s own: Piloting free childminding at the University of Toronto Libraries,"Jesse Carliner, Kyla Everall
Abstract
In March 2018, the University of Toronto (UT) Libraries opened its first family study space, which was very well received. In the years since the family study space opened, there has been a growth in research about student parents and how academic libraries can best serve them.In response to an increased awareness about the student parent population and their needs, the libraries piloted programming for student parents during the 2019-20 academic year, including free childminding sessions. We will discuss how we developed and launched the service, areas for improvement, and other considerations for libraries planning a similar program. Although in-person programming is currently paused at UT due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we anticipate further growth in services for student parents once we can resume regular operations."

Aptronyms

 

   There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about tree planting. It indicated that the tree planting now being done, may not be a good thing unless trees of different types are planted. Diversity in all things. 
   One of the people mentioned in the article has a name that is suited to his profession. Forrest Fleischman is a professor of environmental policy at the University of Minnesota. I knew that there was a name for such nomenclature, and it is 'aptronym.' I had to look it up, but I shouldn't have had to do so. 
   Apart from learning about tree planting and aptronyms, I learned that this blog is not working as it was supposed to - as a memory aid for me.  As I read up on aptronyms (again) I slowly began to remember that I was an authority on this subject back in 2018.  You should learn from this that, not only should you read this blog, you should also read the Post Scripts when provided. If you go back and look at my long disquisition about SPARROWS, you will find at the bottom a very interesting discussion about aptronyms and inaptronyms and a bit more relating to nominative determinism  and even nominative contradeterminism. In my defence the Post Script was not really a digression, since two of the people writing about our feathered friends were, Leonard Wing and George Bird Grinnell. If you are still not interested in going back to the sparrow story which contains good stuff about aptronyms, I will just say that in it I mentioned Anthony Weiner. 

Sources: 
  The article: "Tree Planting is Booming. Here's How That Could Help, or Harm, the Planet," Catrin Einhorn, New York Times, , May 14, 2022.
   The Wiki entries for both aptronyms and nominative determinism are very good and if you click on this link to learn about the latter, you will see that I am using a version called Wikiwand. 

The Bonus:
   There is an article in this month's Atlantic written by someone with a name that is perfectly suited, as you will see from the title: "Margaret Atwood on Envy and Friendship and Old Age," by Jennifer Senior.

Birds and Bugs

First, The Bird

 Two new books have been published and they relate to subjects covered in Mulcahy’s Miscellany. Considering the posts and the books together may be useful for both the readers of the books and of this blog. 

The Bald Eagle

   This book just came out and I have not read it. I have read two reviews of it, however, and both indicate that Davis deals with a question which is typically put this way: Could eagles snatch children and carry them away? That question is the first issue raised in the review found in The Atlantic, March 2022.  The author of the book does not think it possible.

"Jack E. Davis wants it very clearly understood that a bald eagle cannot, in fact, pluck an infant girl from her carriage, carry her clenched between its talons to its nest, and feed her to its eaglets. Okay?

If Davis’s plea seems especially plaintive, that’s because it contradicts centuries of personal testimony and expert accounts. Alexander Wilson, in his foundational American Ornithology (1808–14), described a bald eagle dragging a baby along the ground and flying off with a fragment of her frock. The naturalist Thomas Nuttall wrote in 1832 of “credibly related” accounts of balds abducting infants, and the 1844 edition of McGuffey’s Reader, a primer in most American grade schools, told the story of an eagle that deposited a girl in its aerie on top of a rock ledge, amid the blood-spattered bones of previous victims. As recently as 1930, an ornithologist with the Geological Survey refused to rule out baby snatchings in congressional testimony. Davis’s defense rests on the finding that a bald eagle’s maximum cargo capacity is five pounds. Although he acknowledges that eagles do fly off with chickens, the five-pound limit puts most newborns out of range. Still, in fairness to Wilson, Nuttall, and McGuffey, it should be noted that the average female birth weight in the 19th century was barely over six pounds."

   Dr. Davis has both a Pulitzer and a Ph.D and hardly needs my assistance. I am sure he is a very good and diligent researcher, but I doubt if his references include Mulcahy's Miscellany.  That is not his fault, but if google had located my post relating to the subject, it could have saved him a lot of time. Apart from my blog being un-promoted and unknown, there is the fact that searching for the two words with such ubiquity - 'eagles' and 'children' - yields results numbering in the many millions. The eagle is both a bird and a symbol and there are thousands of teams, streets and products containing the word. It is likely that the 'eagle' in Mulcahy's Miscellany was overlooked.

    "Eagle Attacks Child" is the post that examines the question raised above. Apart from the basic post, there is appended to it, an over 50 page pdf which includes annotated accounts of over 100 reports covering the period from 1825 to 1990. Appended to those reports are three appendices: Appendix 1: Eagle Sizes;  Appendix 2: Eagle Lifting Capacities (including a sub-section on "Owl Lifting Capacities;" and  Appendix 3: Other Victims of Eagle Attacks (which includes such victims as deer, dogs and even a kangaroo.)

I conclude that it is unlikely that children were carried away, but that it is highly likely some were attacked.  The link to the post is provided above and at the bottom of it you will find a link to Avian Abductions. 

   My interest in eagles has passed, but I am interested in how my references compare to his. If you read the book, please let me know. 

Sources: 

   In addition to the review in The Atlantic, here is one from the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 19, 2022, with the portion relating to 'eagle snatching', and to the Montreal incident which was what led me to do the research about the subject:

"One of the enduring myths around the bald eagle is the notion that it routinely snatches defenseless animals -- and not only lambs, pigs or calves. From time immemorial there have been stories about eagles carrying off human babies. An early silent movie, "Rescued From an Eagle's Nest" (1908), feeds this ancient fear, depicting a bald eagle, flapping its wire-controlled wings, as it steals an infant and hoists it into the sky. The heroic father in the film (played by D.W. Griffith, who would go on to fame as director of the racist epic "Birth of a Nation") eventually bludgeons the prop eagle to death, throwing it off a cliff before joyfully reuniting with his child.

More than 100 years later, a 2012 video created by animation students in Canada showed much the same scene. That video was quickly exposed as a hoax, but not before it garnered two million hits on YouTube in its first 24 hours. Mr. Davis is unable to find any variation on this myth that stands up to examination. The problem is that the real bird maxes out at about 14 pounds (for a very large female, which, on average, is 20% larger than a male) and can't lift more than half its weight. An eagle's bread and butter is fish, although there are stories of eagles carrying off small cats." [article author, Bill Heavey.]

The Bonus:

   In 2020 I did an Eagle Update which involved an account in Chatham, Ontario where it had been reported that an eagle lifted a teenage boy from a golf course. Have a look and then also read about Canada's very own Eagle Man - Charles Broley. 

Now, the Bugs

   Having just answered the eagle question we will now turn to a question relating to insects: "When Did You Last Clean Bug Splatter Off Your Windshield?" That is the title of a review of a new book which answers it: The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, by Oliver Milman (the review by Thor Hanson is found in the NYT, March 5, 2022.)

   Mulcahy's Miscellany has already dealt with this subject so I will say little more about it.  For another book and more references relating to the "insectageddon" see in MM: Insect Elegy, 2017 and Insect Apocalypse, 2018. For newcomers to this issue, I will provide some information about this new book.

"Anyone with a car has gathered data on insect declines. Entomologists call it “the windshield effect,” a relatable metric neatly summed up by a question: When was the last time you had to clean bug splatter from your windshield? This ritual was once an inevitable coda to any long drive. Now, we’re far more likely to watch those same landscapes pass by through unblemished glass, mile after empty mile....

Those concerns lie at the heart of the environmental journalist Oliver Milman’s gripping, sobering and important new book. He, too, delves beyond the headlines, refreshingly willing to embrace the complexity of the issue....

Blame for the crisis falls on broad biodiversity threats like habitat loss and climate change, as well as insect-specific challenges from light pollution and the rampant use of pesticides. But Milman draws particular attention to the way industrial agriculture has transformed once-varied rural landscapes into vast monocultures. Devoid of hedgerows or even many weeds, modern single-crop farms simply lack the diverse plant life necessary to support an insect community."

The Bonus:

   While revisiting this subject, I learned that there is yet another book about the loss of insects. It is: Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, Dave Goulson. 

A terrific book…A thoughtful explanation of how the dramatic decline of insect species and numbers poses a dire threat to all life on earth.” (Booklist, Starred Review)

In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival, and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.

More self-promotion. See my related post about crickets and London - Entomophagy. 

Post Script:

   I am sure that if you attempt a search for information about 'neonicotinoids', you will first get 'hits' about 'neocolonialism.' Perhaps we should shift some of our concern to the future rather than the past. 

The History of Everything (Revisited)

    Just about a year ago, I provided to you a list of books to get you through the pandemic. It included books about a wide range of historical subjects, to which I appended a sub-list that cleverly offered suggestions for every letter of the alphabet. I will now add a few more since it is snowing. 

The Prostate

   I will begin at the bottom. There is a new book about the history of the prostate. Male readers who are still reeling from my post about the Castrati, may want to wait a few minutes (or weeks) until I come up with something else. 

   I have often posted about university presses and this book is from one of them: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book is by Ericka Johnson and the title is The Cultural History of the Prostate. Here is what it is about, which is more than just the gland:

"What contemporary prostate angst tells us about how we understand masculinity, aging, and sexuality.

We are all suffering an acute case of prostate angst. Men worry about their own prostates and those of others close to them; women worry about the prostates of the men they love. The prostate—a gland located directly under the bladder—lurks on the periphery of many men's health issues, but as an object of anxiety it goes beyond the medical, affecting how we understand masculinity, aging, and sexuality. In A Cultural Biography of the Prostate, Ericka Johnson investigates what we think the prostate is and what we use the prostate to think about, examining it in historical, cultural, social, and medical contexts.

Johnson shows that our ways of talking about, writing about, imagining, and imaging the prostate are a mess of entangled relationships. She describes current biomedical approaches, reports on the “discovery” of the prostate in the sixteenth century and its later appearance as both medical object and discursive trope, and explores present-day diagnostic practices for benign prostate hyperplasia—which transform a process (urination) into a thing (the prostate). Turning to the most anxiety-provoking prostate worry, prostate cancer, Johnson discusses PSA screening and the vulnerabilities it awakens (or sometimes silences) and then considers the presence of the absent prostate—how the prostate continues to affect lives after it has been removed in the name of health."

   These days I should quickly add that I am not at all, in the very least, upset that Ericka has appropriated a male subject. If you are, here is a review of the book by a male. He is also a primary care physician in Edinburgh and he has fingered more than a few prostates. He recommends the book and some others and I recommend his review since, among other things he describes the damn thing and lets us know what it does, or is supposed to do, until we get old:

"You can feel the prostate through the thin wall of the rectum, about a finger’s length inside the anus. Visualizing it isn’t easy: imagine a tiny doughnut that sits just under the bladder. Urine passes through the hole in the middle. The usual size comparison (for a young man’s healthy prostate) is that of a walnut. I count the prostate as normal when it’s soft, smooth, symmetrical, with a groove running vertically down the middle, and not jutting back into the rectum.

The gland has a variety of functions. It secretes between a quarter and a third of the fluid that constitutes semen—most of the rest is produced in the seminal vesicles—and its muscular elements contract at ejaculation to expel semen into the urethra and out of the body. It operates as a kind of junction box or valve that controls the flow of fluids, ensuring that urine doesn’t pass out to the testicles during urination and that semen doesn’t go up into the bladder during ejaculation. It helps protect against urinary tract infections, and for some men it’s an erogenous zone.

The tissues of the prostate are sensitive to circulating levels of testosterone, which stimulate it to grow, and so the prostate increases in size throughout life as long as the testes continue to produce that hormone. Prostate cancers, because they’re made of prostatic tissue, usually grow in response to testosterone as well. By the age of seventy, up to three quarters of men have prostatism (some degree of prostatic obstructive symptoms), which in its more severe forms entails poor urinary flow, difficulty initiating urination, dribbling after urination, and nocturia (having to get up at night to pee). These can all be caused by the gradual growth of prostatic tissues and resultant pressure on the bladder, as well as the tightening of the space through which urine has to pass. To widen this channel and improve flow, a surgical procedure called transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) is commonly carried out on older men."

From: "Intimate and Invasive," Gavin Francis, The New York Review of Books, Feb. 10, 2022.

The Bonus: 
   If you are interested in the history of a related subject - Underwear - head to Kenosha which was the home of the Kenosha Klosed Krotch design which "had a seat design of two pieces of fabric overlapping in an "X" to allow access for sanitary and hygienic purposes and not requiring the use of buttons or ties.” More can be learned at Jockey.  Since that is not much of a bonus, I will mention that Orson Welles was born in Kenosha and that it used to be the home of the Society For the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (now located in Nashville) and that Nashes used to be made there. Remember that I told you about 268 new ones that were lost in a shipwreck: The Lost Nashes of Halloween.

The History of Surgery
  If you would prefer to no longer focus on the prostate, you can learn about surgical procedures more generally in this new book written by a surgeon which "reveals the fascinating history of surgery’s evolution from its earliest roots in Europe through its rise to scientific and social dominance in the United States." Here is a review of it, but the title may put you off a bit: "Boiling Oil, Red-Hot Irons, 26-Second Amputations: How Surgery Evolved- Ira Rutkow's Empire of the Scalpel is by Turns Fascinating and Ghastly," Henry Marsh, New York Times, Mar. 4, 2022. Some of the "ghastly" is evident from this paragraph:
Perhaps this explains why progress in surgery has sometimes been erratic. Rutkow quotes surgeons in the mid-19th century who argued against anesthesia on the outrageous grounds that pain was necessary for healing. But many others adopted anesthesia very quickly, including Robert Liston, a leading surgeon in London. In order to minimize the suffering of his un-anesthetized patients, he had perfected the art of amputating a leg in minutes. It is said — although this might be apocryphal — that he had once accidentally severed his assistant’s fingers along with the patient’s leg, both the assistant and the patient dying afterward from postoperative sepsis (as well as a spectator who died from shock).

The History of Sweat

 Our last addition to the "History of Everything" is this book by Bill Hayes: Sweat: A History of Exercise. In it, 
"Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time and dissecting the dynamics of human movement." 
The review from the Guardian is positive:
“Libraries, like gyms,” he writes, “have always been a refuge for me, just as gyms, like libraries, have always been places of learning.” There is a playfulness in Hayes’s writing, which reaches from a rich topsoil of endearing wordplay (“pas de dads”, he calls the sight of two middle-aged men playing squash) to the deepest layers of curiosity and empathy. He takes a profound, historian’s pleasure in tropes that echo across centuries – “The ancient Greek word for ‘gym rat’… literally translates as ‘palestra addict’”, to build an enthusiasm it’s impossible not to share."
"Sweat by Bill Hayes - A History of the Physical That Gets Personal," Zoe Williams, Jan. 28, 2022.

It has stopped snowing so I had better move on.