a penny saved is twopence dear

I learnt of a gem of non-canonical, being that it’s not part of his main body of writing—like Poor Richard’s Almanack of proverbs and other achievements, both genuine and attributed, wisdom discovered in the correspondence of statesman Benjamin Franklin, writing to a friend from his diplomatic post in Paris. In his golden years, Franklin recalled a fundamental episode from his early youth. The story Franklin tells and the aphorism it lends itself to—paying too much for one’s whistle (in reference to an impulse-buy that ended up bringing more post-shopping regret than pleasure)—is as memorable and astute as any. One can read the letter in its entirety here with Franklin’s inventory of poor souls whose vanities have cost them dearly. I do suppose, too, it is easier to recognise such folly of others rather than to confront it in ourselves.

five-by-five

autochrome: beautiful gallery of some of the earliest colour photography

fungus among us: newly discovered poisonous humanoid mushrooms

g-money: roots of the Masonic/Illuminati conspiracy theories

may the fourth be with you: fun miniature parade on the streets of New Orleans for Star Wars Day

lol: Time magazine once featured as its cover-story how cats were the next big thing

barnevernet

Though the comparison is surely disparaging, like the taint that clings to the Autobahnen, Volkswagen and Hugo Boss by dint of association, but the dispositioning of the Norwegian child welfare agency makes me think of the Nazi-era policy and programme called Lebensborn, the fount of life.

Authorities promoted rampant breeding among the racial elite though coercion, assault, violence and sometimes kidnapping to ensure that the future generation would be afforded all the best of both nature and nurture, sometimes removed from parents deemed incapable of indoctrinating their children with Nazi ideology. The Norwegian practise does not have any openly xenophobic overtones, of course, and the way its characterised in the media may not be accurate, but the intent is essentially the same. Government agencies monitor immigrant families and if the children’s cultural, assimilated development is found to be lagging, the children are placed in foster-care. Even if everything is going swimmingly, the children are treated to a mandatory retreat monthly with a native Norwegian family to instruct them on proper and becoming Norwegian mannerisms. Maybe it is obtuse to take this contrast any further but it does strike me as ironic that outside of Germany, most Lebensborn children grew up in Norway and have become (to a degree) a generation of stigmatised war-babies (Krigsbarn med norsk mor og tysk far). This method of integration and screening is probably a very civic-minded and ultimately helpful—if assessed without the confounding historicity that bespeaks maybe a little arrogance. Other places have a longer history of immigration but also generational isolation and ghettoization. What do you think? Is Norway’s model a good one for furthering harmony?

elegant variation and the stratemeyer syndicate

Back when most children’s literature was either solely educational or moralising, one publisher and producer saw them for the potential entertainment market they’ve become. In the early 1900s, Edward Stratemeyer got the notion to package or bundle books into serials and employed a winning formula to create many classic mystery and adventure books, appealing to different demographics: The Rover Boys, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, The Dana Girls, The Bobbsey Twins, etc.
The syndicate, as it became known as Stratemeyer after establishing the characters and the tone only wrote outlines for the continuing perils and a pool of secretaries and editors limned in the plot and the authors with the by-lines were ghost-writers and surrogates of Stratemeyer’s many nom de plume or house-names, produced over thirteen hundred books and sold over the years more than half a billion copies. Despite the consistency and quality-control Statemeyer exercised over his publications, sometimes individual personalities and quirks did shine through for these anonymous copy-writers. One such affectation was the purple-prose of one of the authors of the Tom Swift series. Seemingly unable to allow direct speech to just pass with a “said” and bracketed with quotation marks—he or she developed a penchant to insert colourful adverbs to punctuate and re-enforce the dialogue, often resulting in a pun. “Quick—let’s get out of here!” Tom exclaimed swiftly was probably where these off the garden path sentences originated. Concocting Tom Swifties became a past-time and some turned out quite elaborate—funny or painfully so. “Hurry up and get back to the boat,” Tom ordered sternly. “I forgot to bring flowers,” Tom mourned lackadaisically. “Be careful with that chain-saw,” warned Tom off-handedly. I think we don’t need further examples but would love to hear yours.

suburbia or go to bed old man

With the exception of our feisty Pope and a few others only paraded-out on special occasions with due pomp, I find myself groaning at the appearance of news anchors and their avatars, those manipulative boorish cosmopolitan figures that are the subjects of their reporting who seem more and more shameless about their intent to run us all into the ground.
 Lately, I find it an off-putting challenge to organise my thoughts around anything contemporary without feeling weary and a bit vain over it. The tragedy of the eleventh arrondissement of Paris over a caricature, the near-miss in Oberursel, a suburb of Frankfurt, when police laudably foiled a potential terror-attack, and the latest shooting in a satellite of Dallas, I think however, triangulate tensions with a peculiar and rending precision. The demographic milieux, attitudes and relations could not be more different, contesting a mind-set shared among the perpetrators.
The decision of Garland, Texas to host a draw the Prophet competition is a tacky and misguided memorial at best, which ostensibly provoked retaliation (never justifiable), but looking more closely into the sponsors and the community suggest something far darker and more devious than the tactless message of unwelcome. Fighting the droning fatigue of these daily petitions of terrorism is something to take to task as well.

honest abe

It’s a fact: without the senatorial votes (before the odder system of the electoral college was rigged) of the applicant organised territory of Nevada, who were Republican and staunchly Unionist, Abraham Lincoln would not have secured a second term as president of a divided nation at war.
The fledging state had satisfied all other requirements, except that in order to formalise ascension, Carson City had to send an plenipotentiary to the national capital, a journey that could not be undertaken in time to met statutory deadlines prior to the election. Thus, Orion Clemens, one and only secretary of the territory and brother of one who went by the nom de plume Mark Twain, negotiated what was taken to be an acceptable alternative at the time, though now the use of the auto-pen raises controversy, in the form of the new-fangled telegraph. At considerable effort and expense, the Nevada constitution and articles of confederation was sent painstakingly by Morse code via the wires. One can learn more about this crucial improvisation and other bits of profound and challenging curiosities on the brilliant Futility Closet, which treats all trivia with appropriate and due awe. This seems to me to be quite a story and at the very least would have deserved the treatment of a Star Trek episode or two, like when Mister Data meets Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and Mark Twain in old New Orleans and preserves the time-line as we know it. At minimum, it strikes me as one of those epic cross-over episodes with special guest-stars, like the Harlem Globe-Trotters on Gilligan’s Island. Learning of such an unlikely chain of events (plus thinking about how any detail might have been out of place) makes me wonder if there are not some journeymen-embellishers correcting history. Let’s do celebrate this tweaking. What event do you think is too well orchestrated to be left up to contemporary-hands?