Brazelton's mom

I was pleased to read on the wires that influential pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton is still going strong, age 88. I met Brazelton and interviewed him for the News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., in the late 1980s, and I liked him a lot. What I did not know before this profile was published was that his mother founded perhaps the first abortion clinic in Texas. A 1996 profile in the alumni publication at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center says the year was 1940. It also says Mrs. Brazelton was the first woman elder in the Presbyterian Church. There are two resume items you don't often see side by side!

In her blog at I'mNotSorry.net, Patricia Beninato says that in a talk in Richmond several years ago, Brazelton said:

If a baby isn’t going to be born to parents who will be passionately in love with it, then it has a right to be aborted.

To get to the quote, click here and search for Brazelton's name. I can't find online the write-up of the talk that Beninato is quoting, but I'd be keen to read the whole thing.

"The Chief Designer" on CD

I was pleased to receive in the mail today two copies of the new audio edition of my story "The Chief Designer," a two-CD set in the Great Science Fiction Stories series from AudioText Inc. The exterior of the package shows the real-life Korolev (pictured); inside, on the CDs themselves, are photos of Korolev, Gagarin and Sunrise One. The copy on the box reads:

This story, an alternate history masterpiece, is told from the viewpoints of Korolev, the 'Chief' who managed the most crucial years of the secret Soviet space program, and his assistant and eventual successor, Aksyonov. The story spans from World War II, when Korolev was released from a prison camp to design rockets, to 1997 and the Mir space station. This endearing story is many tales in one: an historical story that captures the true mood of the period; a science fiction story that resonates on multiple levels with plenty of technology and cosmonaut bravado; and finally, a ghost story as the tale fades away.

This 132-minute "unabridged reading by Jared Doreck" is the first audio edition of any of my stories. On our next car trip, I look forward to popping this into the dash and, in effect, listening to myself.

The woolly bear watch

Dr. Phil Kaldon writes:

We get woolly bears migrating across our driveway here in West Michigan. They tend to look like our cats, some are more orange and some are more black. The greater the number of darker ones you see, the more you know you are about to be screwed by the Gods of Winter.

Phil, did you see mostly dark ones this season, or mostly orange? We've had a mild winter so far, for what it's worth. And I haven't seen woolly bear One, but I haven't gone looking, either ...

In the buttocks, Bob

My hero Bob Devney -- eight-time Hugo Award nominee in the Best Fan Writer category, and author of the best convention reports ever written -- writes:

One of my favorite headlines is a golden oldie (though perhaps a falsie), supposedly from a British paper during World War II:

Eighth Army push bottles up Germans

Ha!

You remind me, Bob, of the marvelous headline all of us at the Greensboro, N.C., paper so enjoyed circa 1990, mainly because it was published by one of our bitter rivals, the High Point, N.C., paper. During a drug bust, as the offenders scrambled to ditch or hide or otherwise distance themselves from their illegal goods, one brave fellow who had been smoking cocaine in its crystalline form shoved the "rocks" up his own rectum. The police, however, had brought along rubber gloves in anticipation of this ploy, and their search of each suspect was thorough indeed, so the contraband ultimately was found. The newspaper headline read:

Police find crack in buttocks

I can't say how the staff of the High Point paper reacted, but at the Greensboro paper this headline occasioned daylong merriment. Just as the newsroom had quieted down, some newcomer would walk in, be handed the headline, and everyone would erupt in laughter again. I'm surprised we got a paper out that day at all. Finally, after we settled down and got back to work, my colleague Stan Swofford stood, hitched up his pants and muttered: "I don't know what we're laughing about. Greensboro police couldn't even find that." And we all howled anew.

Ah, journalism!

Fun with headlines

My hero Gwenda Bond had a good response to my confusion over this headline:

I think "mad" here is being used in the sense of wicked cool.

To which Dr. Phil Kaldon replied:

Why... YES!

Dr. Phil

"Everything is Physics"

Sharing my fascination with headlines is Charlie Ewers, who teaches journalism at Frostburg State University; he clips and passes me gems from time to time. For example, this:

It's a Hard Rock life

In reply to my post about the heyday of the Hard Rock Cafe, Jason Lundberg writes:

I was also caught up in the whole Hard Rock furor of the 80s and early 90s. It almost got to be like collecting baseball cards or comics among my friends: "You went to the one in Florida? Cool!" "Aw, man, everyone's got the New York one." "Dude, how did you get one from Bangkok?!"

I went on a marching band trip to Florida when I was in high school, and not only did we stand in line for over an hour just to get into the restaurant, we stood in line for another hour just to get our t-shirts. I think I had five of them at one point; I know that some lucky customers of Goodwill have them now.

While you kids were standing in line for T-shirts, I felt very smug and adult and aloof from the whole thing, being all of 26 -- an inexplicable attitude, since at the time I was spending most of my paycheck on Doctor Who T-shirts. I even referred to my Ford Escort as my "Tardis," as in: "I'll be right back, folks; it's raining, and I need to roll up the windows in my Tardis." My friends should have beaten me to death.

Multiplying rabbits

Regarding our family superstition that "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" must be said as one's first words on the first day of the month, Jeremy Tolbert writes:

In my family, we say "white rabbit" three times when smoke at a campfire is blowing your way to "make it turn away." I wonder if the superstitions are related?

I'm sure they are, like all the other good-luck superstitions involving rabbits, the proverbial "rabbit's foot" being the most famous.

Could the old superstition be one of the reasons that Lewis Carroll has Alice encounter the White Rabbit first, among all the denizens of Wonderland?

Why should rabbits be associated with good fortune, I wonder? Must be their reproductive skills.

For a very different take on rabbits, read Kelly Link's brilliant story "Stone Animals" in Magic for Beginners.

Dick Cavett's "death episode"

On the subject of on-air deaths, my hero Jeffrey Ford writes:

Do you remember the old guy who died while Dick Cavett was interviewing him on TV?

I did not know about that, Jeff, so I looked it up. Thanks! Publisher and organic-farming advocate J.I. Rodale did indeed die on the set of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. According to the invaluable Snopes website:

While Cavett was discussing politics with journalist Pete Hamill, Rodale's head dropped to his chest and he was heard to let out what sounded like a snore. "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?" asked Cavett. There was no response — Rodale was dead. The show was never broadcast.

In the Peter Jackson version of this scene, Cavett's quip would prompt Rodale's ghost to swoop down from the rafters and bellow, "Yes ... bored unto DEATH!"

The Snopes people have a grim but fascinating page devoted to others who died -- or were fatally injured or stricken -- on the air, on camera or onstage. Though several of the deaths involve radio broadcasts, I count only one on-air death of a disc jockey: Jack Spector on WHLI in Garden City, N.Y., in 1994.

FSFS

Of the on-air death of local disc jockey Chazz Offutt, my fellow Frostburg resident Jeremy Bruno writes:

Do we ever get any good news in this area (aside from the foundation of FSFS, that is...)?

By FSFS he means the Frostburg Science Fiction Society, which I declared into existence on New Year's Day. So far there are three members: Jeremy, Sydney and me. There will be others.

I guess "FSFS" would be pronounced "fiss-fiss," but maybe a better short form would be (FS)², or FS squared.

(Thanks to undergrad math major Tricia Shore and her engineer husband for pointing out my mathematical typo earlier.)

Death on the air

Veteran Cumberland, Md., disc jockey Chazz Offutt died on the air, during his morning show, the Tuesday after Christmas. A listener told Michael Sawyers of the Cumberland Times-News:

He had just said the time, 20 minutes after 8, and all of a sudden I heard a noise and then there was just nothing. The mike was open, and I heard somebody say "Chazz," then I heard them say "Call 911."

How many times has this happened in live radio, or live television, I wonder?

Hail, cannons?

California farmers, desperate to ward off hail, are buying hail cannons again.

The best recent newspaper article on hail cannons is by Joe Garner in the July 10, 2006, Rocky Mountain News. Garner writes, in part:

The October 1919 edition of Popular Science magazine had a cover story on "Hail Fighters and Their Strange Devices," complete with an illustration of cannon barrels pointed skyward.

"By 1919, hail cannons had been discredited, but people intent on changing the weather refuse to give them up," the magazine headlined almost 90 years ago.

Today, Mike Eggers Ltd., based in New Zealand, is the principal manufacturer of hail cannons used in the United States for "horticultural protection." The sticker price is $50,000 a unit to provide coverage over a radius of one-third of a mile, would-be purchasers said. Eggers declined to talk price.

Ultimately, Eggers is selling hope, which history has shown is more potent than any cannon ...

Spreading out

The federal government, expecting the worst, is beginning to move out of Washington, D.C. We were talking about this at the 2002 Campbell Conference at the University of Kansas: The less centralized our government, our economy, our electrical grid, our population, etc., the better off we are. Why haven't we been doing more of this, the past five years?

A boy and his sword

You may have read about the lawsuit filed by the high-school senior in Rhode Island who wants his yearbook portrait to depict him wearing chain mail and carrying a sword. (He's a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.) What you probably haven't read is that the decision not to publish the photo was made not by the principal's office, but by the student staff of the yearbook. Thanks to the invaluable Student Press Law Center for pointing this out.

Had this been a case of the principal overruling the student editor, I'd have sided with the editor. As it's apparently a case of the principal backing the student editor, I still side with the editor.

I can't understand why the American Civil Liberties Union is representing the chain-mailed teen. Going to court to force journalists of any age to publish or not publish anything is downright ... medieval.

Rabbit rabbit rabbit

One of the Giles County, Va., superstitions that Sydney inherited from the Stafford side of the family is the good-luck custom of saying "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" as your first words on the first day of the month. Most months, we forget to do this until we've said several hundred other words, and upon realizing we've forgotten "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" yet again, we get annoyed and say another word.

I'm pleased to say, however, that we did start Jan. 1, 2007, by saying "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" at midnight, before we even said "Happy new year," because Sydney's mother had reminded us earlier in the day. We missed the actual Times Square ball drop on television because we were watching the tail end of the Absolutely Fabulous marathon on BBC America (while snacking on the excellent Gouda cheese made at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Crozet, Va.), but remembering "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" is the important thing. And now it's the first thing I've "said" on the blog this month, too.

As for where "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" came from, and why rabbits, who knows? More on the superstition here.

The most vigilant Sentinel of all

I can't find the item online, but according to the Christmas Eve edition of the Cumberland Times-News, Dave Christopher of Cumberland, Md., has not missed a single Fort Hill High School football game in the past 50 years. For more on Sentinel football, click here -- or just ask Dave.

Tree Christmas O, Tree Christmas O ...

Check out the upside-down Christmas tree in the home of Patty and Joe Hess of Augusta, W.Va. "This is my hardest tree to decorate," Patty Hess told the Cumberland Times-News. "I'm on a step stool most of the time."

Maryland's greatest spy

Are schoolchildren in Maryland taught about the exploits of Allied spy Virginia Hall in occupied France during World War II? I hope so, and not just because she named her wooden leg Cuthbert.

Teddy Roosevelt on the estate tax

From Teddy Roosevelt's message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1906:

I feel that in the near future our national legislators should enact a law providing for a graduated inheritance tax by which a steadily increasing rate of duty should be put upon all moneys or other valuables coming by gift, bequest, or devise to any individual or corporation. ... The prime object should be to put a constantly increasing burden on the inheritance of those swollen fortunes which it is certainly of no benefit to this country to perpetuate.

From Roosevelt's speech on "The New Nationalism," Osawatomie, Kan., Aug. 31, 1910:

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered -- not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective -- a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

Well, I swear

That the election of a Muslim to Congress -- a Muslim who, naturally enough, wants to swear his oath on the Quran, not the Bible -- should be controversial is a pretty sad thing in a free country, but the controversy has had a couple of beneficial effects. For one thing, a lot of people have been prompted to read, for the first time, the unequivocal Article VI of the U.S. Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

For another, we have been usefully reminded that not even all U.S. presidents have sworn their oaths of office on a Bible. John Quincy Adams swore his oath on a law volume, bless his Unitarian, contrarian soul.

Another win for Harry

A year's supply of butterbeer to the Georgia Board of Education, which sided with the Gwinnett County school board against anti-Harry Potter crusader Laura Mallory, a.k.a. the Professor Umbridge of Loganville, Ga.