On Memorials

 It's Not Bronte It's Brontë

   Many public memorials and statues have been destroyed or removed in the past few years, if it was felt that the subject displayed should be "cancelled." In Mulcahy's Miscellany such destruction has been opposed. See, for example, the post about "Brock's Monument", or the one about the Vietnam War Memorial, in "Speaking of Statues", and especially the one that suggests a British solution to the problem, which is "Retain and Explain", found in "Simple Solutions." 
  Such a simple solution has been applied to the stone plaque found in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey which was installed about 85 years ago. Apparently those involved may have been in a bit of a rush since in 1939 there were other things to worry about. Diaereses have now been placed over the "e" and readers will know that they are the Bront-tay sisters not the Bronts.

Source:

  I know about such things because I read this morning this article: "Westminster Abbey’s Brontë Plaque Had a Typo for 85 Years. It’s Fixed Now. Punctuation delayed, but not denied: A memorial to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë at Poets’ Corner in the celebrated London church finally gets its accent marks," Lynsey Chutel, New York Times, Sept. 27, 2024.

Post Script:

  The reason they are the Brontës and not the Bruntys is an interesting one.
   "But the accent mark was actually the result of some poetic license by the writers’ father, Patrick Brontë. Originally Patrick Brunty, he made the change upon arriving at Cambridge University as a student, in an effort to indicate a higher social standing and eschew prejudice against his Irish roots, said Sandie Byrne, a professor of English at the University of Oxford."

    Problems with statues and memorials continue to be a vexing issue for those easily vexed. A new, very plain one erected in Belfast displaying the late Queen Elizabeth, has been criticized because Her Majesty looks too much like a "Polish Washerwoman" or "the lady behind the counter at a "Fish and Chips Shop." 

Time Out For Trump

 "The Dangers of Donald Trump, From Those Who Know Him"
  If you are like me, you may be disillusioned and reading less and less about the American election. No matter the outcome, there will be a massive amount of regret about the enormous amount of time everyone wasted on a man like Trump. Still, it is worth taking a look at what follows.
  The quotation above is the title of an "Opinion" piece by the Editorial Board of the New York Times (Sept. 26, 2024.) Do not discount it for that reason if you are a Trump supporter since they present the opinions of those who know and worked with Trump and who also have a low opinion of him.
   Ninety-one of them are provided and the quotations are arranged in five categories.  A half-dozen are offered here and they were not chosen because they contain the worst things said about him. Look at the paper itself, if you can, since an array of such awfulness is very impressive. 

1.  Administration Leaders 

BILL BARR

BETSY DEVOS

2. The Trumps & Trump INC.

FRED TRUMP

3. Republican Politicians

LINDSAY GRAHAM

4. Conservative Voices

GEORGE WILL

5. World Leaders (even some CANCON)

JUSTIN TRUDEAU

Olde Posts Addenda (3)

     More "Breaking News" to add to the older news items already provided in Mulcahy's Miscellany. 

New Dead Fish
  Back in June 2023, I offered you many "Dead Fish Headlines" (too many) which I suggested were, "More Signs of the Times." I will offer only one more now, but it is a big one:
"Iowa Fertilizer Spill Kills Nearly All Fish Across 60-Mile Stretch of Rivers: Officials in Iowa and Missouri estimated that nearly 800,000 fish had died in waters that flow into the Missouri River," By Mitch Smith and Catrin Einhorn, NYT, March 29, 2024.
   “I refer to this one as ‘the big one,’” said the official, Matt Combes, an ecological health unit science supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation. He added: “Calling something a near-total fish kill for 60 miles of a river is astounding and disheartening.” The latest die-off started, Iowa officials said, when a valve was left open over a weekend on a storage tank at NEW Cooperative, an agricultural business in Red Oak, in southwestern Iowa. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which learned of the spill on March 11, said this week that 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen fertilizer spilled into a drainage ditch and into the East Nishnabotna River, which flows into the Nishnabotna River and then the Missouri River."

What Were the Odds?
   That a lot of people would lose a lot of money when gambling was legalized, wagering made easy over the Internet and actively promoted on your TV. People here in Ontario seem more worried about the selling of six-packs in the 7-Eleven which bothers me not at all. I think, however, that rather than betting you start investing in gambling treatment centres.
  In MM, this subject was discussed in "On Betting" and raised again under the heading "Don't Bet On It" in "Beyond the Palewall (8). Now, in support of my suspicion that things are not going to go well see: "Sport's Betting is Bad for America's Financial Health: New Data Shows It",(sic), By the Editorial Board, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2024. Here is the first paragraph:

"The new National Football League season will see plenty of records set on the field — and it’s expected to hit new heights off the field, too: specifically, the American Gaming Association projects that legal wagers on games will reach $35 billion, a 30 percent increase over last season. Most of that betting will involve online betting apps. In part, the growth reflects the fact that three new states — Maine, North Carolina and Vermont — have legalized legal sports betting, raising the total to 38 states and the District. And partly the projected growth reflects new incentives sportsbooks are offering gamblers: in-app live-streaming of games, platform upgrades to allow faster in-play betting, digital wallets and the ability to make multiple bets simultaneously. X is awash with sites offering tips and techniques for increasing the odds."
Here's more:
"In short, legal sports gambling is creating a pathway to financial distress for vulnerable individuals. States that legalized sports betting were often instructed by their legislatures to set aside some funding from the tax receipts to deal with problem gambling and addiction. But reporting and research show a huge disparity between how much states tax the betting industry....
Legal sports gamblers have had their fun for half a decade now — and some have paid a high price. Congress should draw on that experience, and the new data, to design guardrails."

Censorship On Campuses 70 Years Ago
   I gather that if I was to wander up to the campus close by, that I would have to be careful about what I might say, unless it sounded very much like what everybody else is saying. In a post about "Academic Freedom & Free Speech" I indicated I was in favour of both.
   On another occasion, I wrote about an episode at the University of Western Ontario way back in 1953 when the students heckled and interrupted a speech by (are you ready), the Very Reverend, Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury. Back then the students didn't like the "progressive" views of the "Red Dean." (See, "Free Speech & Ontario Universities.")
    I thought of this because I just read about a Republican defending free speech during that same year in the United States. Things have changed. Now, both the conservatives and the progressives want to restrict the expression of ideas with which they do not agree.

"In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower — a Republican — told graduating students at Dartmouth College, “Don’t join the book burners.” 

Referring to Americans drawn to communism, Eisenhower added, “Even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn’t America.”

   The above was written in relation to "Banned Books Week" in the United States which is about the promotion of banned books rather than the burning of them. It was found here: 

"Banned Books Week Begins on Sunday,  With draconian laws jackbooting across the country to suppress books, intimidate librarians and muzzle teachers, this annual commemoration of our freedom to read has never felt more vital. (A Florida school district banned a book about banned books.)"
From: "The Book Club Newsletter," Ron Charles, The Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2024.
For more olde posts that are related to free speech:

"Cowards in Coventry"
"S.W.I.N.E."  "Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything"

"Dawkins Not Talking"

Beyond the Palewall (13)

 That Sinking Feeling
   If you are heading to the capital of Indonesia, don't go to Jakarta which is rapidly sinking. The new capital is Nusantara which is located in the jungle on another island. There are around 30 million people in the Jakarta metropolitan area, so it is pretty heavy. Although the Dutch left in the last century, they will likely be blamed."Why Indonesia Moved Its Capital to a Jungle Hundreds of Miles Away: The New City Nusantara, Comes as Jakarta Continues to Sink at a Record Pace," Bryan Pietsch, Washington Post, Aug. 17, 2024.
  It is not the only city that is sinking and if you plan to move to Miami, pick one of the higher floors in the condo.
"Venice is Sinking. So are Rotterdam, Bangkok and New York: But no place compares to Jakarta, the fastest-sinking megacity on the planet. Over the past 25 years, the hardest-hit areas of Indonesia’s capital have subsided more than 16 feet. The city has until 2030 to figure out a solution, experts say, or it will be too late to hold back the Java Sea."
 "The World’s Fastest-Sinking Megacity Has One Last Chance to Save Itself: Parts of Jakarta are subsiding at unprecedented speed,"  By Sheryl Tian Tong Lee and Grace Sihombing, Bloomberg.com. Dec. 6, 2023.

These stories just arrived: Last week, another house just collapsed in Rodanthe in the Outer Banks, "See the Latest House in This Outer Banks Town to Fall Into the Ocean," The Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2024.
People are still buying condos on the Texas coast, but, "since 2010, Galveston has experienced a burst of sea level rise, which has added a staggering 8 inches to the ocean's height here, according to federal data analyzed by The Post," The Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2024.

The Rich Are Different From Me
   The rich are buying some items that would not be very valuable to me. Apparently others agree since in this article it is mentioned that "there was zero rationality to the valuations" for "celebrity-adjacent objects." Freddie Mercury's mustache comb went for almost $200,000 at Sotheby's, no less, and “In 2015, the cardigan that Kurt [Cobain] wore during Nirvana’s appearance on “MTV Unplugged” sold for $137,000; four years later it went for more than twice than that” (even though it “had a small amount of something brown and crusty, possibly dried vomit, in a pocket.)”
See: "The Place to Buy Kurt Cobain’s Sweater and Truman Capote’s Ashes: As the art market cools, Julien’s Auctions earns millions selling celebrity ephemera—and used its connections to help Kim Kardashian borrow Marilyn Monroe’s J.F.K.-birthday dress," Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, March 18, 2024.

Current Fiction and "The Piety Problem"
   I don't read much current fiction, but from the reviews of some of the novels, one gathers that there is considerable pedagogy buried in the prose and that the category in which the author falls is as important as the fiction written. The following is from this interesting piece in the NYT: "An Acerbic Young Writer Takes Aim at the Identity Era: Tony Tulathimutte is a Master Comedian Whose Original and Highly Disturbing New Book Skewers Liberal Pieties," Giles Harvey, Sept. 13, 2024.
   “The years since Donald Trump announced his first presidential bid have hardly been a heyday for American fiction. “Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty,” Lionel Trilling wrote in “The Liberal Imagination” (1950), but 75 years later, amid the rise of a homegrown authoritarianism, these qualities can start to look expendable, like mere literary trinkets. At least that’s the sense you get from a recent tranche of worthy social novels, books that may as well come with colorful stickers proclaiming, In these pages we believe Black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal and so on. Such commitments, however well-intentioned, can sometimes come at the expense of a nuanced moral vision and tend to lead to writing that’s effective neither as politics nor art. “There is definitely a piety problem,” Tulathimutte told me, summing up the state of today's publishing business.”
[If now you are interested, Tulathimutte's new book is Rejection.]

DETECTIVE FICTION - CANCON

   We often learn about Canadian things from American sources. I learned recently, for example, that a new TV mystery series is soon to launch on an American network. It is based on the work done by Laurali Wright who was born in Saskatchewan and lived and died (2001) in B.C. where the settings often involve the "Sunshine Coast." Canadian lovers of the mystery genre may wish to tune-in and they will likely already know about Ms. Wright and the "Alberg & Cassandra" mystery series. I did not, but found from these sources that more needs to be known about Laurali Wright and it is better to learn from them than me.

Sources:
   Start with the official web site of L.R. Wright. You will find there a trailer for the new series, "Murder in a Small Town which starts on Sept. 24.
   The Wikipedia entry is interesting and provides other sources: L.R.Wright
   The Canadian Press did write about the series at the end of last year. See: "Fox Picks Up B.C.-shot Crime Drama: "Murder in a Small Town, For Upcoming Fall Lineup," CBC News, Dec.14, 2023.
   I read about Ms. Wright here:
“Murder in a Small Town” debuts Sept. 24 on Fox (trailer). The mystery series is based on “The Suspect,” an Edgar Award-winning novel by the late Canadian writer Laurali Wright (1939-2001). Rossif Sutherland plays police chief Karl Alberg, and Kristin Kreuk is Cassandra, the town librarian who becomes an integral part of his investigation. If the show catches on, it could run for years; Wright published nine Alberg & Cassandra mysteries." From: "The Book Club Newsletter," Ron Charles, The Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2024.
   The images of the books above are all from Felony & Mayhem, which was started by a woman and deserves a post of its own. 

Post Script:
   If you wish to borrow rather than buy the books by Ms. Wright, I don't think you will have any luck at the London Public Libraries since I didn't find any, using various search strategies. 
  Oddly enough, the libraries up at Western do have some Wright books, but they are either in storage or in ARCC where they seem to have been acquired as part of the "William French Collection of Canadian Literature."
  I don't think I can be accused of shameless self promotion, since this is buried at the bottom of this post and I have rarely mentioned it before, but a couple of years ago I wrote a book about another Canadian mystery writer who is generally unknown in Canada. Like Ms. Wright, Hulbert Footner, wrote more than detective fiction and should be better known. For about a buck you can read the ebook and for about ten of them you can have the book printed near you and delivered in a few days. Or if you just click on this link, you can read a good summary for free.
Hulbert Footner: Author of Adventure Novels, Detective Novels and Historical Nonfiction...  Or you could borrow a copy from either the London Public Libraries or Western.
Or you could stop by and see me and I will give you one.

Darwin's Library

 

READ WHAT DARWIN READ
     I have presented other "private libraries", but this one is different, in that you can actually read the works in it, from the comfort of you own. Simply visit, Darwin Online. 
   The two libraries associated with Darwin, the one at Down House, his home in Downe, and the other at Cambridge, hold only a very small percentage of the books he read over his lifetime. In 1875, Darwin composed a "Catalogue of the Library of Charles Darwin", but many of the items listed on the 426 pages had been lost. Over 18 years, scholars have tracked down everything he read. "Darwin Online" now provides access to thousands of volumes and there are virtual links to over 9,000 of them. The leader of the project notes that:
“This unprecedentedly detailed view of Darwin’s complete library allows one to appreciate more than ever that he was not an isolated figure working alone but an expert of his time building on the sophisticated science and studies and other knowledge of thousands of people. Indeed, the size and range of works in the library makes manifest the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.”
   This 'new' Darwin library contains novels and philosophical works as well as books in languages other than English. It even contains the works he had with him on the Beagle. See, "Charles Darwin's Beagle Library."
   As an example of the exotica to be found, here is one from Audubon taken from the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. It relates to buzzards, but it is so interesting, I have included the link. 
Audubon, John James. 1826. "Account of the habits of the Turkey Buzzard (Vultura aura), particularly with the view of exploding the opinion generally entertained of its extraordinary power of smelling." Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 2 (October-December): 172-184.

Sources: 
   Darwin Online is all that most of you will need and here is a press release about it from the National University of Singapore. 
   See also: "Researchers Reveal Lost Library of Charles Darwin For the First Time,"Ashley Strickland, CNN, Feb. 11, 2024 or "Contents of Charles Darwin's Entire Personal Library Revealed For First Time" by Mark Brown, The Guardian, Feb. 11, 2024.
   You can visit Darwin's home in Downe, Kent where there is soon to be a Halloween Celebration. 

Post Script: Private Libraries

  Since Mulcahy's Miscellany has no index, here are some of the other posts related to personal/private libraries, as opposed to, say libraries with people's names on them.

   You could start with "The Old Card Catalogue" which provides the catalogues of several private libraries.
Jefferson's Library

Stalin's Library

Mark Twain and Libraries
Oscar's Library
Library Furniture (the library at Althorp in Northamptonshire.)

Edward Gorey's Library
Professor Macksey's Library 
Professor Macksey's Library (Again)
The Talented Mr. Towles  (Amor Towle's Library)
Boys With Books (The libraries of Norman Mailer and Colin Wilson.)

Nature Writing (3)

 

The Wainwright Prize
   It is still much too nice outside to be blogging, so I will simply mention here some books which will be good to have once we have to retreat to the great indoors.
   Since Mulcahy's Miscellany has a small audience, I will cater in this case to the very small one that consists of the declining number of those in London,Ontario who maintain an affection for nature and Great Britain. The Wainwright Prize is a literary one, awarded for writing about nature and the outdoors in the now, not so United Kingdom. Here are some of the books.

Late Light, Michael Malay (the top prize.)
The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works , Helen Czerski (a winner in the conservation category.)
Foxlight, Katya Balen, ( a novel for your grandchildren.)

Some others listed:
Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging, Jessica J. Lee
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, Olivia Lang.
Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain's Wild Boar, Chantal Lyons. 
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future, Oliver Franklin-Wells.

And even some CANCON:
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, John Vaillant. 

Additional Reading For Nature Lovers:
   The number "3" in the title above indicates there are others and here they are:
"Nature Writing (2) - British Version," discusses the Wainwright winners back in 2018.
"Nature Writing: Books That Have Won the John Burroughs Medal."
  Also back in 2018, this post provides the winners of an American Prize - "The John Burroughs Medal For Distinguished Nature Writing." 
For some other related books see, "Environmental Books" from the University of Washington Press.

More CANCON:
  The painting above is by Paul Peel and it depicts a natural setting in London, Ontario, known as "The Coves." It was displayed recently at a meeting of those who are trying to protect the area. For more see: "Friends of the Coves."

The Ig Nobel Prizes

 STEM Can Be Fun!

   It is still too bright out to be blogging. I need to post something for paying subscribers, however, and for those who stay inside because they are worried about UV rays, or because it is Friday the 13th.  Although I won't have to do much work, this post will keep you busy, especially if you watch the attached video which will take you a couple of hours. I wouldn't post anything that long if it wasn't funny.

   To learn about the Ig Nobel Prizes see my post from seven years ago about "The Nobel Prizes."  Cleverly concealed, along with the "Igs", you will find information about such things as, The Annals of Improbable Research and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. As well, make sure to check the bonus, "The Order of the Golden Fleece."
   This week, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held at MIT. One of the winners from 2021 is pictured above. He was hung upside down in a study designed to see how rhinos reacted when hung upside down. This year some of the winners include: 
"Demography: Saul Justin Newman, for discovering that people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death record keeping.

Biology: Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk."

    B. F. Skinner finally won an award for a paper done in the 1960s on “the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight paths,” (let's hope the folks at Boeing read it.) The award was accepted by his daughter, who threw her cap into the crowd.
   If you still need more incentive to read my old post, I will add that it also included a short review of the book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond. If it is CANCON you are looking for, see the chapter in that book which is on "Farting and Belching." 
   The video of the ceremony is found here. I forgot to mention that the winner receives 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

P.S.
As mentioned, the ceremony was hosted by MIT. If you are still trying to avoid the sun, or something else, see the post in MM about "MIT Press" where you can read something from their "Essential Knowledge Series," to make up for the time you squandered here.

   

Light Reading for Labour Day

 Or "Labor" Day if you are from farther south and prefer shorter spellings. It is a nice day here in London, but before I go out to enjoy it, here are a couple of short items in case it is not nice where you are. 

Curious About the Curtis Cup? 
   It is highly likely that you missed this sporting event since there are many others at this time of year and you probably aren't interested in golf anyway. The Curtis Cup is for girls, what the Walker Cup is for guys. That is, they are golf events where the best amateur players from the U.S. compete against those from Great Britain and Ireland. This year, the GB&I team defeated the Americans at Sunningdale in England. 
   About the Cups, you can easily learn more by reading the sporting news from last weekend or consulting Wikipedia. I was curious, however, about the composition of the GB&I team and was willing to wager that most of the players on it had been playing their golf in the country which they defeated. My hunch was correct.
   If you don't watch much golf you may not know that golfers with the most exotic of names mostly seem to have attended universities located in the sunnier areas of the United States (I am speaking here about White players with foreign-looking names, not Black ones with unusual ones.) One assumes that foreign golfers don't have to take the usual tests required, because they are clearly smart enough to realize that getting a free, expensive university education while playing golf in a warn place is a good deal.
   Eight of the players on the GB&I team are listed below, along with the universities they attended. Only one went to a British university and, unsurprisingly it is one of the few in that country that offers financial support. I did not check the universities of the American players, but assume that most did not go abroad. 
   Here are the players. To make it a bit more challenging, I have provided the names of the teams, not the universities. For example, one of the Rhodes sisters, Euphemie, became a Deacon, while Patience became a Sun Devil. 

Lottie Woad - Seminole

Sara Byrne - Hurricane

Aine Donegan - Tiger

Hannah Darling - Gamecock

Beth Coulter - Sun Devil

Patience Rhodes - Sun Devil

Euphemie Rhodes - Deacon

Lorna McClymont - University of Sterling

*** Speaking of unusual names, Asterisk Talley beat Lottie Woad in the last match. She is 15. 

Al Pacino and Me
   There is a chance that you are more interested in Al than me, so that is Al pictured above. It is that picture that led to this post. It was noticed in a recent issue of the New Yorker which offers a portion of Pacino's new biography ("An Exclusive Excerpt From Al Pacino's Memoir, Sunny Boy: Personal History, Early Scenes," August 26, 2024. 

   Given that you are not interested in me, I will point out that I am dressed as Hopalong Cassidy in the picture above and he is marginally more interesting. I think I received the costume from an aunt and there was plenty of Hoppy memorabilia available for purchase. 

  Although Al was from the very urban South Bronx in New York and I was from the more rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, you may have noticed that we were both armed. Those were different times.

  If it was not such a nice day, I would go on about kids and guns and whether children should now be allowed to pretend and play with them - even Nerf guns or water pistols. Instead, read up about old "Hoppy" or wait a bit for Pacino's book.

  That is my picture, as I am now. Since not much of interest has been presented, here are a couple of tidbits you can read without much labour. 
  Pacino is older than I am, but he is much more active. At the age of 83, he just produced another child. Perhaps he is just trying to stay ahead of his old pal De Niro who had one at 79.  Pacino's partner, by the way, is more than 50 years younger than he is and he has other children, but has had no wives.
  He also has a better memory than I, since he recalls events that happened when he was four.