The Knight Foundation has provided startup funding for the Appalachian Independent, a fledgling online newspaper with the ambition of covering Allegany and Garrett counties in western Maryland via a network of "citizen journalists."
The hurdles are many and obvious, but the thing will never get off the ground if lots of folks don't submit work to it, so I took the plunge and contributed an article about a recent Cumberland get-together of the International Fortean Association, which the Independent has published here.
One of the links within the article doesn't seem to work, but I copied that URL into a new browser window, and it worked just fine, so go figure. I'm not involved in the HTML coding; I just hope to submit stuff occasionally. If you know anyone in the vicinity who might be interested in doing the same, please spread the word.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Quote this, G-men
I admire without reservation this ad for the MAFIA, a.k.a. the Mollie A. Fearing Insurance Agency in Manteo, N.C., which we saw in Real Estate Outer Banks magazine during our May vacation. Fearing must have seen Big Bad Mama at a formative stage, but that's true of many of us.I wonder who the cartoonist is.
Fearing's online presence, alas, is considerably more demure.
A cameo by the 15th Street Diner
You can't tell from the crop in this online version of the article, but I was pleased to recognize immediately, in the May Southern Living profile of Rick Bragg, where Mary Margaret Chambless snapped the photo. "Hey!" I said aloud. "That's the 15th Street Diner."
Many a meal I've eaten at that Tuscaloosa, Ala., establishment, often in the very booth where Bragg is sitting. In this scanned and cropped image from the print magazine, you can read part of the logo, backward, on the window behind the headline:
Such is the profusion of good Southern cooking around Tuscaloosa County that the 15th Street would not even make my Top 10 list of favorite local eateries -- a list headed by the incomparable Brown Bag in Northport -- but if I had even the 15th Street here in Allegany County, Md., I'd be grateful.
Many a meal I've eaten at that Tuscaloosa, Ala., establishment, often in the very booth where Bragg is sitting. In this scanned and cropped image from the print magazine, you can read part of the logo, backward, on the window behind the headline:
Such is the profusion of good Southern cooking around Tuscaloosa County that the 15th Street would not even make my Top 10 list of favorite local eateries -- a list headed by the incomparable Brown Bag in Northport -- but if I had even the 15th Street here in Allegany County, Md., I'd be grateful.
Crunch!
I share this ad for Claussen's pickles in case you missed it in the Sunday newspapers a few weeks ago. Once you're done wincing, squirming in discomfort, etc., note the photo in the corner, and how the angle emphasizes the jar's steadfast erectness.Side note: Isn't it annoying when you go looking for an official Claussen's pickle site and can find nothing closer than the portal site of the behemoth parent company, Kraft?
Baseball, hot dogs and lethal injection
I support Maryland Citizens Against State Executions (MD CASE), which opposes the death penalty, but I nevertheless was startled to receive this postcard in July. None of the images exactly shout "death penalty" -- but what image does, these days? One of the many reasons states opted for lethal injection over the electric chair in the first place was the chair had become too loaded an image, like the noose, the guillotine, the stake and the cross; it was no longer the property of the executioners alone. Now there is no loaded image for execution in the United States -- a syringe, after all, could represent so many things, good and bad -- which helps keep execution out of people's minds, which helps the status quo, and so the executions continue.
Not so many in Maryland, though. According to the invaluable Death Penalty Information Center, Maryland has executed five people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, and the first one wasn't until 1994. Six prisoners currently are on Maryland's death row, all men. (What's their racial and socioeconomic breakdown, I wonder?)
I wrote my story "The Executioners' Guild" (I thought) in a hot haze of righteous anti-capital-punishment anger. After it was published, dozens of people came up to me and said: "I loved the story. By the way, what do you think about the death penalty?"
Does revulsion sell?
I once thought that Ollie's Bargain Outlet had the most moth-eaten mascot ever seen in retail, but that was before Elmer's House of Bargains & Good News Outlet opened in Cumberland, Md. Yikes!
Friday, September 12, 2008
Bless you for asking
I recently was mailed an offer to subscribe to The Christian Century at the "professional clergy discount" of $39 for the year. "I am confident that you will find the magazine an invaluable partner in your ministry," says the insert.
From what alternate timeline was this mailed?
From what alternate timeline was this mailed?
The Living Dead
From my Aug. 26 "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" calendar:
Henri Christophe (1767-1820) of northern Haiti ordered his guards to prove their loyalty to him by marching over a 200-ft. cliff. Those who obeyed plunged to their deaths and those who refused were tortured and executed!Mad Henri figures briefly in my Nebula- and Stoker-nominated story "Zora and the Zombie," which just has been reprinted in John Joseph Adams' new anthology The Living Dead, published by Night Shade Books.
Boom! That was the sound of my Robert E. Lee cuckoo clock
Speaking of the Civil War: If you're wondering what to get the secessionists on your Christmas list, consider this item from The Bradford Exchange.
My second thought was, are the boys in gray picketing the Yankee headquarters of The Bradford Exchange (Niles, Ill., home state of Lincoln and Obama) for likening Robert E. Lee to a cuckoo?
My third thought was, there's no limit to the Civil War kitsch that people will buy -- if it's pro-Confederate kitsch, anyway.
Heck, I'd buy one of these myself, if Marse Robert himself popped out of the doors every hour to say, "Ah surrenduh!"
In the South's hour of need, a gallant soldier named Robert E. Lee won timeless glory for himself and the fighting men of Dixie. Now, you can be reminded of the enduring pride of the South with a timeless Civil War cuckoo clock ... At the start of every hour, miniature doors decorated with the Confederate flag swing open and a handcrafted cannon announces the hour with the sound of cannon fire.My first thought was, aren't the only truly "timeless" clocks the broken ones?
My second thought was, are the boys in gray picketing the Yankee headquarters of The Bradford Exchange (Niles, Ill., home state of Lincoln and Obama) for likening Robert E. Lee to a cuckoo?
My third thought was, there's no limit to the Civil War kitsch that people will buy -- if it's pro-Confederate kitsch, anyway.
Heck, I'd buy one of these myself, if Marse Robert himself popped out of the doors every hour to say, "Ah surrenduh!"
Civil War News trading cards
During my recent visit, one of the display cases in the Stockyards Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, included several examples of the gory Civil War News trading cards published by Topps in 1962, featuring the artwork of the great Norman Saunders, whose immediate follow-up for Topps was Mars Attacks. Apparently no one's parents got bent out of shape by the Civil War News cards, since they were "educational"; Mars Attacks, of course, was a different story.
The museum exhibit, presumably put together by a Confederate sympathizer, refers to them as "War Between the States" cards. The museum's offerings are "Death Barges In," "Dynamite Victims," "Painful Death," "Rebel Power," "Massacre," "No Escape," "Savages Attack," "Victim of the War" and "Deadly Defense."
Here's Bob Heffner's fine site full of information about the Civil War News series, though the artwork itself is seen to better advantage at the Norman Saunders website, or here.
The museum exhibit, presumably put together by a Confederate sympathizer, refers to them as "War Between the States" cards. The museum's offerings are "Death Barges In," "Dynamite Victims," "Painful Death," "Rebel Power," "Massacre," "No Escape," "Savages Attack," "Victim of the War" and "Deadly Defense."
Here's Bob Heffner's fine site full of information about the Civil War News series, though the artwork itself is seen to better advantage at the Norman Saunders website, or here.
The Palace light bulb and the Stockyards Museum
On my August business trip to Texas, I found myself in a town I never had visited before, Fort Worth. At first opportunity, of course, I went to the Stockyards Museum to see the 1908 Palace Theater light bulb, the second oldest still-working bulb in the world. (The oldest is in Fire Station 6 in Livermore, Calif.) I feel a kinship with the Palace bulb in its centennial year, as we share a birthday; come Sept. 21, it will be exactly 56 years older than me.
The bulb was all I had hoped for, but I was delighted to discover the museum's many other attractions, which included: a display of dozens of different patented barbed-wire designs, with annotations; a vintage "bad luck wedding dress" that seems to have inspired at least one novel (by Geralyn Dawson); copies of the meatpackers' newspaper The Armour Oval, featuring "News and Views of Armour Crews"; a years-old cast model of a proposed Fort Worth monument to the great black cowboy and rodeo star Bill Pickett, a monument that unfortunately seems never to have been erected; a giant framed movie poster for Pickett's 1921 "all-colored" Western The Crimson Skull, co-starring Anita Bush, Lawrence Chenault and Steve Reynolds, "the One-Legged Marvel"; a 19th-century washtub with a sign offering "First Water" for 15 cents, then cheaper rates for bathwater that already had been used once, twice, etc.; and a circa 1915 Meilicke Payroll Calculator, essentially a tabulated card catalog as long as my forearm. (The instructions note, for example, that "42¾ hours at 34c per hour is found on card tabbed 34, intersection of 40 and 2¾ -- $14.54.") All this is interspersed with signs that say things such as "Please don't lean on this creaky ol' case." In short, the Stockyards Museum is well worth your time.
The bulb was all I had hoped for, but I was delighted to discover the museum's many other attractions, which included: a display of dozens of different patented barbed-wire designs, with annotations; a vintage "bad luck wedding dress" that seems to have inspired at least one novel (by Geralyn Dawson); copies of the meatpackers' newspaper The Armour Oval, featuring "News and Views of Armour Crews"; a years-old cast model of a proposed Fort Worth monument to the great black cowboy and rodeo star Bill Pickett, a monument that unfortunately seems never to have been erected; a giant framed movie poster for Pickett's 1921 "all-colored" Western The Crimson Skull, co-starring Anita Bush, Lawrence Chenault and Steve Reynolds, "the One-Legged Marvel"; a 19th-century washtub with a sign offering "First Water" for 15 cents, then cheaper rates for bathwater that already had been used once, twice, etc.; and a circa 1915 Meilicke Payroll Calculator, essentially a tabulated card catalog as long as my forearm. (The instructions note, for example, that "42¾ hours at 34c per hour is found on card tabbed 34, intersection of 40 and 2¾ -- $14.54.") All this is interspersed with signs that say things such as "Please don't lean on this creaky ol' case." In short, the Stockyards Museum is well worth your time.
Tonight's gallery visit
Tonight en route to a milkshake at the Frostburg Freeze, Sydney and I dropped by campus for the opening reception of the latest Roper Gallery exhibition, this one dedicated to works by the art faculty at Salisbury University on the Eastern Shore. Our favorites were Sally Molenda's color photos of Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and two science-fiction-flavored bronzes by Jim Hill, "CrabKing's Palace" and "Skygate," the second of which you can see here and here. You can't tell from those photos, but "Skygate" is taller than 6 feet. We also liked Hill's bust of himself, which I think was titled "Creativity."
I'm on Facebook, too
After years of urging from Sydney, I finally created a Facebook page, during a spare hour in a hotel room during our July driving tour of the Hudson Valley and New England. So if y'all are on Facebook, Friend me now!
On the tenure track
Life has been a whirlwind since my last blog posting, in July. Shortly after Sydney and I got home from Readercon, I was offered a tenure-track teaching job in the English department at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Md., teaching professional writing -- including business writing, technical writing, journalism and editing & production. Yes, that's the same department where my wife, Sydney, teaches. I accepted, gave my notice at Overdrive magazine, "The Voice of the American Trucker," and then spent a hectic August trying to wind down one job (which involved a business trip to Texas for the Great American Trucking Show, among other things) and crank up the next one. I had exactly one week between my last day at Overdrive and the first day of fall classes, Tuesday, Sept. 2. This is the first night I've felt able to draw breath in weeks! But I'm delighted, of course, by how everything has worked out.
Here's my faculty Web page, what Wikipedia would call a "stub."
And how are y'all doing?
Here's my faculty Web page, what Wikipedia would call a "stub."
And how are y'all doing?
Sunday, July 06, 2008
The summit of Sharp Top
Sydney and I have been visiting her parents in Roanoke, Va., this weekend, and today we took a Sunday-morning excursion to the summit of Sharp Top at the Peaks of Otter, on the Blue Ridge Parkway north of town.
We briefly considered the 90-minute one-way hike to the summit from the parking lot:
But cooler heads opted to take the bus instead:
The bus takes you up a one-lane switchback road to a turnaround 1,500 feet short of the summit -- still a good half-hour's walk.
I became "Big Chief Bring-'Em-Up-Rear," as my father-in-law called me, and from time to time took a photo of the path behind:
This stone overlook was welcome, as it made a good resting place, but that was its only use this morning because the clouds surrounding the mountain hadn't lifted:
My father-in-law reminisced as we climbed about the weeks he spent in 1948 dismantling old barns on this mountain as a National Park Service summer employee.
The mist got thicker as we ascended:
This was a welcome sight:
We think the stone house at the summit was built in the 1930s by the same New Deal-era work crews that built the switchback road and most of the Blue Ridge Parkway:
The summit is all rock, so the stone house built upon it is downright biblical in its solidity. I wouldn't want to spend a winter in there, though:
My mother-in-law, age 83, was determined to make it all the way to the topmost point of the path, and did, but the gnats, wasps and other flying critters that beset her just after I snapped this photo made her reluctant to linger for a portrait at the summit:
We retraced our steps downward, back into the mist:
When we reached the stone overlook on the downward trip, we found that the folks ahead of us had been arrested by a deer grazing contentedly only a few feet away:
The deer kindly posed for some photographs. The deer in congested Eastern parklands have grown too tame for their own good, alas, as they've lost their necessary skittishness around highway traffic, and the "people food" they mooch hurts their digestion:
Another welcome sight, a few hundred feet downhill, was our bus driver, Mr. Ronnie Mitchen:
Mr. Mitchen enjoys his captive audience, stopping the bus a couple of times on the way down the mountain to tell stories:
He said his grandfather, who died this past Easter at age 98, helped build the switchback road we were traveling on. This was good for years of family comedy, as Ronnie would ask, "Granddad, how come you made that road so narrow?" and his grandfather would reply, "If we had known you'd be driving on it, we'd have made it as wide as U.S. 460."
On the way down, though I wasn't fast enough to get photos of them, we saw more deer, a group of wild turkeys (two adult females and a number of youngsters), and a male black bear that scrambled out of the road just ahead of us. Mr. Mitchen said he wasn't surprised by the bear, as he had seen a hawk that morning -- and on days when he sees a hawk, he always eventually sees a bear, too.
Back at the Peaks of Otter Lodge on the parkway for lunch, I took this photo of the mountaintop we just visited. Sharp Top isn't the tallest of the Peaks of Otter, but the starkly beautiful crag at the top has been a tourist draw since the 19th century:
This excursion was my idea, and I told Sydney later these photos are proof that I'll climb a mountain to get out of going to church.
We briefly considered the 90-minute one-way hike to the summit from the parking lot:
But cooler heads opted to take the bus instead:
The bus takes you up a one-lane switchback road to a turnaround 1,500 feet short of the summit -- still a good half-hour's walk.
I became "Big Chief Bring-'Em-Up-Rear," as my father-in-law called me, and from time to time took a photo of the path behind:
This stone overlook was welcome, as it made a good resting place, but that was its only use this morning because the clouds surrounding the mountain hadn't lifted:
My father-in-law reminisced as we climbed about the weeks he spent in 1948 dismantling old barns on this mountain as a National Park Service summer employee.
The mist got thicker as we ascended:
This was a welcome sight:
We think the stone house at the summit was built in the 1930s by the same New Deal-era work crews that built the switchback road and most of the Blue Ridge Parkway:
The summit is all rock, so the stone house built upon it is downright biblical in its solidity. I wouldn't want to spend a winter in there, though:
My mother-in-law, age 83, was determined to make it all the way to the topmost point of the path, and did, but the gnats, wasps and other flying critters that beset her just after I snapped this photo made her reluctant to linger for a portrait at the summit:
We retraced our steps downward, back into the mist:
When we reached the stone overlook on the downward trip, we found that the folks ahead of us had been arrested by a deer grazing contentedly only a few feet away:
The deer kindly posed for some photographs. The deer in congested Eastern parklands have grown too tame for their own good, alas, as they've lost their necessary skittishness around highway traffic, and the "people food" they mooch hurts their digestion:
Another welcome sight, a few hundred feet downhill, was our bus driver, Mr. Ronnie Mitchen:
Mr. Mitchen enjoys his captive audience, stopping the bus a couple of times on the way down the mountain to tell stories:
He said his grandfather, who died this past Easter at age 98, helped build the switchback road we were traveling on. This was good for years of family comedy, as Ronnie would ask, "Granddad, how come you made that road so narrow?" and his grandfather would reply, "If we had known you'd be driving on it, we'd have made it as wide as U.S. 460."
On the way down, though I wasn't fast enough to get photos of them, we saw more deer, a group of wild turkeys (two adult females and a number of youngsters), and a male black bear that scrambled out of the road just ahead of us. Mr. Mitchen said he wasn't surprised by the bear, as he had seen a hawk that morning -- and on days when he sees a hawk, he always eventually sees a bear, too.Back at the Peaks of Otter Lodge on the parkway for lunch, I took this photo of the mountaintop we just visited. Sharp Top isn't the tallest of the Peaks of Otter, but the starkly beautiful crag at the top has been a tourist draw since the 19th century:
This excursion was my idea, and I told Sydney later these photos are proof that I'll climb a mountain to get out of going to church.
Friday, July 04, 2008
The end of Justice Talking
I'm sorry to hear that the excellent National Public Radio show Justice Talking is no more, its nine-year Annenberg grant having run out.
To paraphrase the old Women's International League for Peace and Freedom poster: It will be a great day when National Public Radio shows get all the money they need and Rob Schneider has to apply for an Annenberg grant to make a movie.
To paraphrase the old Women's International League for Peace and Freedom poster: It will be a great day when National Public Radio shows get all the money they need and Rob Schneider has to apply for an Annenberg grant to make a movie.
The Fly on the opera-house wall
"I actually might get you to this opera," Sydney says, and she's right. It's an opera of The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg, music by Howard Shore, libretto by David Henry Hwang, conducted by Placido Domingo.
While set in the 1950s, the opera apparently closely tracks Cronenberg's 1986 movie, rather than the 1958 Kurt Neumann movie (starring David Hedison and Vincent Price) and the 1957 George Langelaan story in Playboy that launched the franchise.
Actually, Sydney got me to one opera already in this lifetime: Jerry Springer: The Opera in London, starring David Soul. It was a stitch, and I even bought the T-shirt.
While set in the 1950s, the opera apparently closely tracks Cronenberg's 1986 movie, rather than the 1958 Kurt Neumann movie (starring David Hedison and Vincent Price) and the 1957 George Langelaan story in Playboy that launched the franchise.
Actually, Sydney got me to one opera already in this lifetime: Jerry Springer: The Opera in London, starring David Soul. It was a stitch, and I even bought the T-shirt.
Metropolis found
The discovery of the only known copy of the complete three-and-a-half-hour cut of Fritz Lang's Metropolis is big news for movie buffs -- and science-fiction movie buffs in particular.
Thanks to Lokke Heiss for alerting me, via the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts listserv.
Thanks to Lokke Heiss for alerting me, via the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts listserv.
Jack Speer and "The Atheism Issue"
I was sorry to hear of the death of science-fiction fan Jack Speer. I commend to everyone his pioneering history of fandom, Up To Now, written for distribution at the first World Science Fiction Convention in July 1939, when the historian himself was all of 18. (That Worldcon concluded 69 years ago today, in fact.) Up To Now is a 35-page PDF at the invaluable eFanzines.com. Speer's chapter headings include:
The First Staple War.
The Decline and Fall of the Era.
The Nature of Wollheim’s Dictatorship.
The Crucial Period.
The Undertow.
The Situation in the West.
The Order Begins to Crumble.
The Decline and Fall of Wollheim.
Some indication of the pacing can be gleaned from the fact that "The First Months of 1938" is only the 17th of 28 chapters listed in the table of contents.
Today I'm most interested in the chapter titled "The Atheism Issue," which I briefly excerpt here:
Speaking of the first Worldcon, check out the contemporary coverage in Time magazine, which notes that the sf magazines of 1939 average 150,000 readers apiece and pay 1 cent to 4 cents a word.
Also, Speer's other major fannish writing project, the 1944 Fancyclopedia slang dictionary, is online here.
Some indication of the pacing can be gleaned from the fact that "The First Months of 1938" is only the 17th of 28 chapters listed in the table of contents.
Today I'm most interested in the chapter titled "The Atheism Issue," which I briefly excerpt here:
When the November, 1937, Cosmic Tales carried, as what was to be the last of [Donald J.] Wollheim’s Phantaflexion columns, an article later reprinted in the first Science Fiction Advance as “Science Fiction and Religion,” it seemed that another bombshell had been dropped into fandom from the hand of the genial W. Some months later appeared “Anent Atheism and Stf” in Imagination!, which debated the possibly question-begging proposition that scientifictionists were scientifictionists because they were atheists, rather than atheists because they were scientifictionists,as Wollheim argued. ... It became customary for new correspondents to inquire each others’ religious stands, or to state them without inquiry, as a natural part of getting acquainted. ...No, indeed -- though, in my experience, atheism is still taken pretty much for granted, in science-fiction circles. When I recently told a group of sf cronies, for example, about a Potlatch panel titled "Coming Out as Atheist," I got in return a half-dozen confused expressions. Many atheists in the field can't imagine the need to "come out" as atheist, since that's the default expectation -- and certainly can't imagine the need to defend the position, or risk suffering hardship for publicly taking it.
Curiously, it never became a red-hot issue. ... the general sentiment seemed to be to avoid religious controversies before fandom as a whole, as being unpleasant and getting nowhere ...
But perhaps the most important reason for the flat-falling of the atheism issue was lack of interest—lack of opposition! ... The only prominent fans known to acknowledge church beliefs were Catholic Baltadonis and Episcopalian McPhail, tho doubtless there were others. When the IPO got around to putting the question, agnosticism and kindred showed a definite, tho not overwhelming majority, with many
of those on the other side of the line doubtful, tongue-in-cheek, or indifferent.
In defense of religion little showed up. ...
There wasn’t enough opposition to give any thrill from attacking the churchmen. So atheism was taken pretty much for granted, and fandom rocketed merrily on its way. But there is no guarantee that the controversy may not blaze forth again.
Speaking of the first Worldcon, check out the contemporary coverage in Time magazine, which notes that the sf magazines of 1939 average 150,000 readers apiece and pay 1 cent to 4 cents a word.
Also, Speer's other major fannish writing project, the 1944 Fancyclopedia slang dictionary, is online here.
Is this StoryCorps account a bust?
In a StoryCorps conversation with her niece, recorded in Cincinnati and subsequently aired on National Public Radio, a 94-year-old woman recalls her inflatable brassiere exploding during an airline flight in the Andes -- which apparently happened at least 70 years ago.
At his urban-legends blog, David Emery wonders whether Betty Jenkins' experience was the inspiration for a half century's worth of unverifiable tall tales about exploding bras on airplanes, or whether it was merely one of the incidents that inspired those stories ("It may be that some urban legends grow from the seeds of the truth," says the NPR producer), or whether -- gasp! -- it maybe didn't actually happen to Ms. Jenkins at all. After all, when I'm 94, I'll probably have utterly persuasive memories of personally rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star.
At his urban-legends blog, David Emery wonders whether Betty Jenkins' experience was the inspiration for a half century's worth of unverifiable tall tales about exploding bras on airplanes, or whether it was merely one of the incidents that inspired those stories ("It may be that some urban legends grow from the seeds of the truth," says the NPR producer), or whether -- gasp! -- it maybe didn't actually happen to Ms. Jenkins at all. After all, when I'm 94, I'll probably have utterly persuasive memories of personally rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star.
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