Plan your prom bedding now

If you're planning any prom bedding this year, this sign on Main Street in Frostburg is a reminder that a deluxe corsage can help your chances.

Pop fluency as a presidential trait

I like Dean Barnett's take, at The Weekly Standard, on the flap about Mitt Romney and his favorite book -- which Romney originally said was Battlefield Earth until that didn't play so well, whereupon he said it was the Bible and Huckleberry Finn. Barnett writes:

Since it would be too much to expect journalists to stop asking these questions, what the Romney episode points to is the need for a new subspecies of political consultant--one who will help candidates look literate when it comes to pop culture. Most of the candidates need a crash course on the things that ordinary people like. Desperately. Or do you think Hillary Clinton has a favorite NASCAR driver ready for the inevitable occasion when a plucky Edwards supporter demands to know if she's a Jeff Gordon or Dale Jr. kind of gal? ...

Picture a candidate who could effortlessly segue from paying homage to Dale Earnhardt's #3 to saying how much High Noon has always meant to him. Conjure up a contender who could unashamedly admit that if owning every George Strait record makes him a square, so be it, and then quickly pivot to the many times tears welled in his eyes when sports heroes like Curt Schilling or Willis Reed rose above pain to perform in an almost super-human fashion.

That guy wouldn't just have a lot of admirers who wanted to have a beer with him. He'd also eventually be known as Mr. President.

Mr. D-- asks a question

In Chapter 5 of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (specifically, on Page 54 of the U.S. hardcover), is this paragraph:

"You will not regret it, my dear sir!" cried Drawlight, "for three weeks ago I chose a set for the Duchess of B-- and she declared the moment she saw it that she never in her life saw anything half so charming!"

Eliding the name of a person or place, like the Duchess of B-- above, used to be commonplace in English-language fiction, and still is among writers going for a 19th-century effect. It lends an air of verisimilitude, as if the true identity of the real-life Duchess of B-- must be protected. But what is such an elision called? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Stephen Tyrone Williams and "The Big Rock Candy Mountain"

One of Sydney's former students at the University of Alabama, the actor Stephen Tyrone Williams, sends along this publicity shot and news of his New York-area productions this summer. Now through June 9, he's in The Jocker by Clint Jefferies, part of the Gay Plays Series in the off-off-Broadway Wings Theatre in Greenwich Village. "It's about a community of male hobos 1931 and their struggle to survive life on the rails during the Great Depression," Stephen writes.

Then in July, he's playing Claudio in the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey production of Measure for Measure. He's also in "Float," a short film playing June 1-2 as part of NewFest, New York's LBGT film festival. (Search for it from the "Events by Title" page.) "It's about two Bahamian men coming of age in a hostile environment," Stephen writes.

Theatergoers, whenever you see Stephen's name in a cast list, you should go. Sydney and I went to lots of student and community productions when we lived in Alabama, and Stephen was uniformly terrific. He did brilliant work as Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime, the Wolf in Into the Woods and Laertes in Hamlet. He has charisma to burn, and given half a chance will be a Big Name Actor one day.

I'm also pleased to learn, in the playwright's notes for The Jocker, that very early versions of the hobo song "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" had overt gay themes, and that the song may have begun "as a parody of the stories an older tramp might spin to a young farm lad to entice him onto the road -- and into his bedroll." Sample lyric:

There are no bees in the cigarette trees, no big rock candy mountains.
No chocolate heights where they give away kites, or sody-water fountains.
He made me beg and sit on his peg, and he called me his jocker.
When I didn't get pies he blacked my eyes, and called me his apple-knocker.

I sure wish I had known this when I wrote my own hobo fantasy, likewise titled "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" (in Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists, edited by Peter Straub and illustrated by Gahan Wilson). I'll have to re-read it now.

Spiders in his ear

At Halloween, a news story reminded me of an old Lights Out episode. Now a news story about a boy who discovered spiders living in his ear reminds me of a ludicrous (but memorable) old Night Gallery episode, The Caterpillar," with Laurence Harvey as a guy who suffers an earwig munching around in his head ...

Blowing in the wind

Anne Harris (this one, I believe) writes:

So what is the beef with wind farms? I'd really like to know, since my novel includes a community that is implementing them as a source of electrical power.

Just as the same question was forming in my mind, the other Anne, who began this conversation, wrote:

Yes, homeowners were displaced by the Meyersdale project. There is a CD available with residents from Meyersdale ... It is really difficult to sum up all of the issues about wind turbines in a blog entry. They are putting these within 500 feet of people's property. The manufacturer of many (GE) wrote a report that they are 10 percent efficient at best. It is hardly worth destroying people's quality of life. There are health effects, bird and bat kills, destruction of land (a non-renewable resource). They do not run without coal plants; they do not save any CO₂ in their lifespan. So much is emitted in the construction of the towers, the concrete to erect the towers, and the transportation from overseas to their destination. When they say they provide power for a given number of homes, they base it on 1,000 kilowatts ... this means that you can use 10 light bulbs. Most of us enjoy using our electric appliances and the like. The developer in Meyersdale refused to pay the property taxes levied on the wind farm. The town sued and the developer countersued. What are the economics involved? There are so many federal and state subsidies, it is incredible. They can all be found at www.dsireusa.org. You can follow the links to each incentive on the given government site.

Here are more real-life experiences living by wind farms:

No. 1
No. 2
No. 3

As far as jobs go, the projected project for my town, eighty 363-foot turbines, would provide four jobs. Is that worth it? Last year at the Tug Hill Plateau project, they picked up 6,000 dead bats and 2,000 dead birds (mostly raptors). This report is available online, done by an ornithologist that is paid by wind developers, so we suspect that the number is low. We also know a person who was employed collecting the dead, and they had buried some. They also only checked two transects at each of 120 turbines (Why did they omit 75 turbines?) and only once a week. Many must have been caried off by foxes and other wildlife. Feel free to email me, and we can discuss this further. There are so many negative facets that far outweigh any benefits of the wind projects. Hope this information gives you some understanding of my stand on "wind farms."

Most Passionately, Anne

Thanks, Anne, for writing. I'll check out those links. I'm still curious to know, however, what form of electrical-power generation you prefer to wind. Coal? Nuclear? Hydroelectric dams? Solar? Many argue that we're likely to need a combination of all of the above, that what society needs to talk about is the percentage to be obtained from each.

As for my earlier suggestion that a wind farm makes a better neighbor than a coal-burning plant, a nuclear plant or a hydroelectric dam -- assuming the artificial lake created by the dam inundates your land, as many once-thriving communities in the United States have been inundated -- I pass along this this post by Tobias Buckell:

I love wind turbines, I always try to stop and take a picture when I pass them. They’re just amazing, like lighthouses to me. Massive, and functional, and graceful. Screw it, built a house underneath a really big one and I’d live under it.

And I’m not a huge ‘wind power’ alternate power person. I don’t see most tech I’ve checked out as being workable. In a lower power usage, like on a boat, they’re barely marginal. For a power hungry US? I’m more liable to place my money on nuclear power, like France.

Yeah, I’m a nuclear power loving environmentalist.

New Scientist has well covered the wind-farm issue in recent years. Here are two examples: First, a stirring pro-wind farm editorial, by scientist David Suzuki.

The real risk to birds comes not from windmills but from a changing climate, which threatens the very existence of bird species and their habitats. This is not to say that wind farms should be allowed to spring up anywhere. They should always be subject to environmental impact assessments. But a blanket "not in my backyard" approach is hypocritical and counterproductive.

Second, a good article by Ed Douglas, from 2006, about the largely unknown environmental effects:

In the meantime, though, there is an alternative to building huge wind farms in vulnerable habitats. We could all install our own personal turbines on the roofs of our houses. ...

Shirley Jackson news

The new Philip K. Dick volume promped Sydney and me to think out loud about other authors who deserve Library of America editions, and we quickly reached agreement on one: Shirley Jackson. So I e-mailed the LoA this note:

My wife and I are enthusiastic subscribers to the Library of America, and a few days ago we got to talking about the fiction writer Shirley Jackson -- especially her great novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle and her great stories such as "The Lottery" and "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts." Is a Shirley Jackson volume in the Library of America pipeline, and if not, how would we go about recommending such a thing? Is there a formal petition mechanism, a postal address to which our fellow Jackson enthusiasts could write, etc.? Thanks for your time, and keep up the great work.

Within the week, I received an unsigned but personal reply:

Dear Mr. Duncan:

Thank you for your message. We are happy to take suggestions for the series via email.

Jackson is in development for inclusion in the series, but no publication date has been set.

So that's good news, eh?

The Presidents Climate Commitment

One of the first acts of the new president at Frostburg State University, where Sydney teaches, has been to sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment -- joining dozens of other campuses, large and small, that pledge to "address the climate challenge by reducing global warming emissions and by integrating sustainability into their curriculum." Here's the full text, and here's the list of signatories. Is your alma mater represented? Frostburg State is only the second campus in Maryland, after Mount Saint Mary's in Emmitsburg, to sign on.

Another odd job

"Trucking journalist/science fiction writer" may be, ahem, one of the oddest job descriptions in Allegany County, Md., but I think the oddest belongs to a woman named Tiffany Claus: "professional Angelina Jolie impersonator." She sends the Times-News occasional photos, for example this one from a recent gig at Madame Tussaud's in New York City.

A career first

Locus published five of my ICFA photos in the May issue and paid me $10 apiece -- the first free-lance money I ever made taking photographs.

Jamie Bishop

One of the slain in the Virginia Tech massacre this week was teacher and artist Christopher James "Jamie" Bishop, son of our friends Michael and Jeri Bishop, who was teaching a German class when he died.

His colleagues have set up a scholarship in his name for Virginia Tech students studying German. "Anyone who wishes to do something in memory of our son," Michael writes, "could give any amount to this fund." The address is:

Jamie Bishop Scholarship
Virginia Tech Foundation
University Development
902 Prices Fork Road
Blacksburg, Va. 24061

Already there have been standing-room-only memorial services for Jamie at home in Georgia -- one at LaGrange College, where Michael has taught for years, and one at the family's church, First United Methodist in Pine Mountain. Funeral arrangements in Georgia will be posted by the church as they are known.

The Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus, Ga., covered the church memorial service, at which the pastor read aloud the sermon that Jamie himself had written and delivered from the pulpit as a teenager in 1989, on "one of those Sundays a pastor turns his pulpit over to a teenager," in reporter Richard Hyatt's words. The excerpts Hyatt quoted were:

Be alert. Death comes without warning, any day, any time. ... Never give up. Don't think of turning back.

Of the many profiles of Jamie that have been published this week, one of the best was in Tech's excellent local paper, The Roanoke Times. The one in the Los Angeles Times was the first I saw. Here's the one in Time. NPR has done a couple of segments on Jamie as well.

Paul Di Filippo has posted an excerpt from Michael Bishop's essay "A Reverie for Mister Ray," about the experience of reading Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine aloud to Jamie, who then was 9:

I especially admired Jamie's outrage and indignation when three children in the first third of the novel tell seventy-two-year-old Helen Bentley that she was never young, never pretty, never blessed with a first name. Jamie could not comprehend these children's stupidity and rudeness ...

Here's more of Jamie in his own words and images, at his website.

"A fleecing of taxpayer dollars"

A reader who identifies herself as Anne writes:

Thank you for posting your experience by the Meyersdale wind farm that has driven many people from their homes which were unsalable and some sold for under 80% less than their fair market value. Also, bear in mind that the turbines they are trying to erect in PA, MD, WV, and NY are between 393' and 600' tall....closer to peoples homes. It is simply a fleecing of taxpayer dollars to ruin taxpayer's quality of life.

Anne, do you mean that homeowners were displaced when the wind farm took their land, or that people left because they didn't want to live near a wind farm, or both? And do you know how many households were involved? The area we drove through was mostly wooded hunting land interspersed with pastures, but the few houses we passed weren't vacant.

Also, if one must live near a power plant, doesn't a wind farm make a better neighbor than a coal-burning plant or a nuclear plant? And doesn't a wind farm displace far fewer people, with far less environmental impact, than a hydroelectric dam? Which form of electric power generation do you prefer?

I readily grant you that using taxpayer money to lure new businesses -- including new businesses that compete with existing businesses, or drive existing taxpayers from their land -- can be problematic, and at best is a difficult judgment call. Were such incentives offered the wind-farm company? Do you know how much money was involved?

Thanks for writing.

Another harsh truth

Paulina Porizkova tells People magazine about her first novel, A Model Summer:

I'm way too old and fat to model now. But for a writer, I'm pretty damn young and hot!

More on the Heimlich-performing golden retriever

The Maryland woman who says her golden retriever, Toby, saved her life -- by performing the Heimlich maneuver -- now is in the April 16 issue of People magazine, posing with the happy dog, of course.

Scott Goss of the Cecil Whig, which broke the story, has an interesting post on the media frenzy:

I’ve fielded literally dozens of phone calls and e-mails this week from nationally televised programs, radio stations and local news programs eager to declare Toby a hero. ... But somehow it seems like a shame that no one from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" or "Good Morning America" has ever called to ask about the paramedics, firefighters or police officers who risk their lives to help people every day. I can say with certainty that those heroes know exactly what they’re doing.

A union turns to Jeremiah

I was pleased to read that the newest United Steelworkers local is No. 2911, a reference to Jeremiah 29:11. In Today's New International translation, the verse reads:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

The International Club

The International Club at Garrett College in McHenry, Md., sent the Times-News this photo to publicize this year's International Dinner. I thought it was a hoot, far superior to the usual line-'em-up-and-shoot-'em photo, but the newspaper hasn't made it available on the website yet, so club adviser Judy Carbone was kind enough to send me this copy for posting here.

In front are Lasma Kanele, from Latvia; Breanna Eckley, from the United States; Sharon Sarowa, from Papua New Guinea; Unathi Mahlati, from South Africa; and Tihitina Gizaw, from Ethiopia. In back are Jerome Jack, from England; Hrvoje Muhek, from Croatia; and Bongani Dlamini, from South Africa.

The dinner is 4-6 p.m. Saturday, April 21. Tickets are $12 in advance or $15 at the door. For more information, e-mail Judy Carbone. Thanks, Judy!

Down on the wind farm

While taking the scenic route recently from Frostburg, Md., to Meyersdale, Pa., for the Pennsylvania Maple Festival, Sydney and I blundered into our nearest wind farm, the Meyersdale Wind Energy Center. Here is Sydney standing near the base of the southernmost windmill, the first of 20 that march along the ridgeline.

If these towers have the same dimensions as those in nearby Somerset, each is 210 feet tall, and their rotors are 231 feet in diameter, so their true height is something like 325 feet. They're visible above the trees from miles away, like Wells' Martian war machines.The morning we drove past, which wasn't windy at ground level, the windmills sounded like the world's largest slowly turning ceiling fans: rrrrWHUP rrrrWHUP rrrrWHUP. It was a weird sound, oddly musical, and not particularly loud, quite easy to talk over. On a really windy day, I'll drive back up there to see how the sound differs.

We discovered on the drive home that the best ground-level view of all 20 towers is from U.S. 219 between Meyersdale to the north and I-68 to the south. Here's a view from midair.

This wind farm is owned by FPL Energy, a sister company of Florida Power & Light, but the 30 megawatts it generates -- enough to power 12,000 homes -- is sold to FirstEnergy of Akron, Ohio.

Sideling Hill

This afternoon, on the drive home from Scott Edelman and Irene Vartanoff's place in West Virginia, we stopped at the Sideling Hill Exhibit Center, between Cumberland and Hagerstown, to get an up-close look at this remarkable artificial canyon where 10 million tons of rock was blasted out of the ridge in the 1980s to make way for I-68. The scree is the incline you drive on, for miles east and west of "the Cut." The rock walls are nearly 900 feet high and, as you can see, quite close to the highway on either side, but on the foggiest days you can drive through the Cut without seeing either one.

The Duncan family connection to Slaughterhouse-Five

My family owns about 80 acres of woodland in Saluda County, S.C., acreage on which -- I grew up being told -- U.S. Army troops performed battlefield maneuvers as part of their training before being shipped overseas in World War II. The cabin used as a command headquarters was still standing in my youth, and we'd stay in it for a week or more each summer.

I thought of this a couple of weeks ago, as I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's brilliant novel Slaughterhouse-Five. (And yes, James Morrow was right to ask me, when he saw it in my hand: "Do you mean you're just now reading Slaughterhouse-Five?") Vonnegut's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is trained as a chaplain's assistant during the war (which is to say, he is wholly untrained during the war), and at one point he is on maneuvers with his unit in South Carolina. This is from Chapter 2, Page 31 of the 1991 Dell paperback edition:

It was Sunday morning. Billy and his chaplain had gathered a congregation of about fifty soldiers on a Carolina hillside. An umpire appeared. There were umpires everywhere, men who said who was winning or losing the theoretical battle, who was alive and who was dead.

The umpire had comical news. The congregation had been theoretically spotted from the air by a theoretical enemy. They were all theoretically dead now. The theoretical corpses laughed and ate a hearty noontime meal.

Remembering this incident years later, Billy was struck by what a Trafalmadorian adventure with death that had been, to be dead and to eat at the same time.

It was a Trafalmadorian adventure, of course, because the Trafalmadorians -- the aliens who abduct Billy later on -- experience all events simultaneously: "All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist" (Ch. 2, Page 27). Anyway, I decided, reading this brief scene, that the otherwise unidentified Carolina hillside was on the Duncan farm in Saluda County, S.C. I have no evidence for it, but I'm convinced of it all the same.

The politics of justice

Paul Akers, editorial page editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., has a fine column about the news that Circuit City is laying off thousands of senior store workers so they can be replaced with cheaper, less experienced, less loyal hires. It concludes:

The politics of envy have little appeal to me. But, I swear, I wouldn't mind seeing more of the politics of justice.