Ron's Log

Children Protected From The Horror, Oh, The Horror!

The schoolboard of the Annville-Cleona School District (midway between Palmyra and Lebanon, Pennsylvania) voted 8-0 to remove the book The Dirty Cowboy from its elementary school libraries. "The book received numerous awards, including the International Reading Association award in 2004, the Parents Choice Gold Medal, and the Bulletin Blue Ribbon from the Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books." It's about a cowboy who entrusts his clothes to his dog while he takes his annual bath in the river. His dog doesn't recognize him when he's clean and will not let him have his clothes back. Hilarity ensues, appropriately masked by birds, a boot, the dog's tail, and a cloud of dust. One pair of parents objected to the book saying that "Children may come to the conclusion that looking at nudity is OK, and therefore pornography is OK."

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 4-After finding 32 fleas in his hair and tumbleweeds in his chaps, a freckle-faced cowboy decides that it's time for his annual bath. He mounts his horse, calls for his old dog, and heads for El Rio. There he disrobes and commands his companion to guard his duds. After frolicking merrily with a bar of soap (the amusing illustrations show many views of the naked cowboy bathing, while still keeping a G rating), he emerges thoroughly scrubbed and puckered "like a prickly pear." The dog does not detect his owner's familiar "wild boar-like smell" and stubbornly refuses to relinquish the garments. A dust-stirring brawl ensues that leaves the man as dirty as when he started, ultimately restoring his usual aroma. Unfortunately, the togs do not survive the tussle, and the cowboy heads for home, "bare as a shorn sheep." Told in descriptive language that rolls off the tongue, this story makes the most of a humorous situation. Filled with the dusty reds and sundown bronzes of the New Mexico setting, the paintings have a gritty, sinewy look that matches the earthy tone of the tale. Clever touches abound, as the artwork offers framed close-ups of the cowboy's uninvited vermin, a map of his route to the river, and whirling views of the wrestling match. The hangdog expression on the pooch's face when he realizes his mistake is priceless. A fun look at life on the range.

From Booklist:

K-Gr. 2. A cowboy decides to take his yearly bath, so he heads to a nearby river, where he orders his scruffy dog to guard his clothes. When the cowboy returns from the river, he's so clean that the dog doesn't recognize him. The two get into an extended fracas, leaving the cowboy as filthy as ever and the clothes in tatters. Naked and dirty, the cowboy finally returns home, the dog trotting beside him. For some children, the appeal of this story is in the clever composition of the pictures that manages to conceal the cowboy's private bits. Rex's rich paintings add sparkle to the story's dramatic telling with the attention to detail and humor that may remind some grownups of Norman Rockwell's early work. A simple, slapstick tale that is sure to elicit some giggles.

The book has been around since 2003. There are 20 positive reader reviews of it on Amazon and only a single one-star review which comes from a reader in Orem, Utah.

Amazon says this book is recommended for 4-8 year olds. I don't think so. This book should only be sold in the "adult only" section of the bookstore. I wouldn't want any of my children reading this book, ever. It's books like this that get kids curious about what's "under the dust cloud", something which they can easily find out with one simple google search.

So I Googled 'what's "under the dust cloud"." I was shocked - shocked, I tell you. The top hit had to do with a tech meeting in India where they discussed COBOL and Microsoft! To make it worse, there are photos!

Here's a link to some of the illustrations in the book, provided by the publisher, MacMillan.

This week the schoolboard refused to reverse its decision.

Barbara Jones, director of the ALA [American Library Association] Office of Intellectual Freedom, wrote: "Like many books, it may not be right for every student at Cleona Elementary. But the school library has a responsibility to meet the needs of everyone in the school community — not just the most vocal, the most powerful, or even the majority."

"If a parent thinks a particular book is not suitable for their child, they should guide their children to other books. They should not be given the power to impose their beliefs or preferences on other people's children," Jones said.

Author Amy Timberlake responded:

"I think it's kind of silly," Timberlake said of the ban. "Norman Rockwell has more showing in his paintings by far than this."

"[The cowboy] is completely covered — nothing is showing, there's not even a hint of anything showing," she said. "Everyone takes their clothes off to take a bath. We all know how bathing happens."

There's an online petition here that seeks to reinstate the book.

The Russian Front, From The German Viewpoint

While I was away, one of the books I read was Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjäger on the Eastern Front, 1941-43. It's the translation of three journals kept by Hans Roth, a German soldier, during the invasion of Russia. The last entry is dated May 6, 1943. It is likely he kept a fourth journal, but he was reported missing in June 1944 and no fourth journal has ever surfaced. The journals contain his explicit description of battles - the sort of material that he could not write home to his family about.

The journals have been published by Hans Roth's grandson and granddaughter who became aware of their existence in the 1970s when helping her mother move. It is not explained how these three journals made it home to Germany to be preserved, but it seems possible that he would have mailed them with instructions not to read them. The impression one gets from the journal is that his German wife would have obeyed that instruction.

Roth participated in the taking of Kiev and then moved on to fight in the Stalingrad area, but he was not with the Sixth Army and was far from the encirclement that destroyed that army. Much of the book reads like any other soldier's journal might. You could forget you were reading a WW2 German soldier until you are jarred back to reality by a random bit of praise for Hitler. A lot of the book expresses that war is confusing, boring and uncomfortable. A big chunk is the classic "war is hell." But when the Russians (or the "Asiatics", as he sometimes refers to them) finally push back it becomes something more like "war is way worse than any searing hell you could imagine." I felt some sadistic pleasure at his painful descriptions of the Russians' unbelievably vicious assaults as the Germans could only cower, retreat and freeze.

Here's a part that could be written by almost any soldier in any war:

Here on the front, we who proudly bear the name "Frontschweine" have become an inseparable brotherhood of men who have been hardened, who have been welded together by death and blood into a close community. And all that these guys, full of dirt and lice, have to hold on to in order to persevere is one thing: love—the depth of which nobody at home can ever imagine—a boundless love and adoration for everything that says "home." I truly believe that only those who encounter death breathing down their neck every day—be it in hand-to-hand combat or in the heaviest drumfire—are capable of such an unconditional love. Each and every one of us would gladly sacrifice his life for you at home. These are the troops who bear the brunt of it all, who stand at the very front line—this is what we think.

And, like most soldiers, he's patriotic and loyal, mostly accepting what the government tells him without much critical examination. He is convinced that the invasion of Russia was a defensive operation. He never considers the Poles, Russians, or Mongols to be anything better than sub-human (and he doesn't especially like the Italians, either).

Close to the Reds' customs house lies a large mound of fallen Russians, most of them torn to shreds from the shelling. Slaughtered civilians lie in the neighboring house. The horridly disfigured bodies of a young woman and her two small children lie among their shattered personal belongings in another small, cleansed house.

I am compelled to think of you Rosel and Erika, when I witness such horrible images. How wonderful it is that we are able to exterminate these murderous beasts. How good it is that we have pre-empted them; for in the coming weeks these bloodhounds might have been standing on German soil. It is inconceivable what would have happened then!

After the Germans take Kiev, he considers it a fine thing that within 24 hours the SS moves in to begin rounding up Jews. While attacking the city, he views the defensive forces as Russians and "Asiatics." When the city falls, the German army discovers that the entire city is packed with booby traps and remote control explosive devices. He considers these especially horrible and immoral, attributing them not to Russians or "Asiatics," but to the Jews. A couple of times he refers to the politics of the USSR as "Judeo-Bolshevism."

And then one day he is given the opportunity to witness the ultimate conclusion of Nazi thought:

I have a long conversation with a young SS soldiers of this "kill commando." They "freed" all the larger cities which were touched by our advance of the Jewish population. They understand their butcher job well; these boys are experienced killers, I am astonished. We soldiers in the first attack wave have never thought about the stuff that happens behind us in the cities we leave, as we're chasing further after the enemy.

The perspective of the front soldiers is forward, towards the enemy. He tells me about the holocaust of Zhitomir. "At that time we were bloody beginners," says the 19-year-old (with an emphasis on "bloody"). "For two days they had to dig 50-meter-long trenches; each trench was calculated for 250 Jews. We killed a total of 1800 Jews in Zhitomir, 5000 somehow died before.

"Then, on the third day the trenches are ready, everybody, from baby to oldest senior had to strip naked. The first 250 have to step to the edge of the ditch, the throaty barking of 2 machine guns—the next ones are herded forward, they have to climb into the ditch and position the dead bodies nicely next to each other, no room must be wasted—the larger spaces are nicely fitted with the dead children—forward forward, more than 1500 must fit! Then the machine guns rip the air again, here and there somebody moans, a short re-shooting of the machine guns: next! and this continues through the evening. We have so little time, too many Jews inhabit this country!"

First I cannot speak at all. This young man talks about it as if he was on a casual pheasant hunt.

I cannot believe all this and tell him so. He laughs and says I should have a look.

We are riding our bikes to the outskirts of the city, to a steep gorge. I will cut this short; the food in my stomach is curiously loose. What I see there is terrible, this horrible picture I will never forget in my entire life. At the edge of the gorge there are Jews standing, the machine guns are whipping into them, they fall over the edge, 50 meters.

Whatever stays at the edge is "swept" down. When the one thousand quota is filled, the heap of dead bodies is detonated and closed up.

"Well, isn't that a great idea, the detonation?" asks the blond with the smiling boy-face.

My God, my God. Without a word I turn and run more than walk back to the city. This boy is 19 years old! All this does not only leave traces on the clothes; what will happen when these people return into the homeland, back to their brides and women?

Ten Bucks For The Taco Bar With Walter Luce Thrown In For Free

Imagine my surprise to learn that the Monday night taco bar at Mission Lakes Country Club is only $10. But then you get Walter Luce with that. You may recall Mr. Luce as one half of the Mayer-Luce team. (I did not know until I read that linked article that Robert Mayer is descended from the founder of Oscar Mayer!)

One obvious question is "Author? Of what?" His website (where the only mention of Desert Hot Springs is to say "I was the 2004 Business Person of the Year, Desert Hot Springs, CA.") says that he is the author of two books, but only one, Eva Marie Pennington, is available from Amazon. It's available for Kindle only, and is published by Oak Tree Press which seems not to be a vanity press.

Author: Walter Luce
MLCC Pool & Recreation Committee
Presents an Author's Night

Monday, April 23rd

6:00 PM Taco Bar
$10.00 Per Person Plus Tax & Gratuity

Dinner Reservations Required
No Host Bar

7:00 PM Author: Walter Luce

Cookies, Coffee and Tea Will Be Served

The phone number for reservations is (760) 676-4422.

Hugo Award Nominees For 2012

The complete list is here. The final winners will be announced Labor Day weekend.

The novels:

• Among Others by Jo Walton
• Deadline by Mira Grant
• Embassytown by China Miéville
• Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse) by James S. A. Corey
• A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) by George R. R. Martin

Encyclopaedia Britannica Ceases Paper Publication

Britannica has announced that it "will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools." Their online edition is free this week, they say. The N.Y. Times article says the usual fee for that is $70/year. Let me give you a sample article from the online edition:

Coachella Valley, valley, part of the Colorado Desert, extending northwestward for 45 miles (70 km) from the Salton Sea (a shallow saline lake) through Riverside county to the San Gorgonio Pass, southern California, U.S. It is 15 miles (25 km) wide and lies between the Little San Bernardino Mountains (east) and the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountains (west). Irrigation, notably from the Coachella Canal, has created a productive agricultural region, specializing in date gardens and also supporting citrus fruits, truck crops, cotton, and alfalfa. The city of Coachella sprawls in the heart of the valley and is a shipping point for its produce. In the northern part of the valley are popular desert resorts, including Palm Springs. The valley had two names before 1900: Cahuilla, after the Cahuilla Indians who inhabited the vicinity, and Conchilla (Spanish: “Little Shell”), which referred to the existence of fossil shells in the area. A misspelling of the latter name on an official map resulted in the current name.

That's a bit less information than I'm used to getting when I look something up online. Only two cities in the valley are identified. No demographic information. No map. Compare the Wikipedia article on Coachella Valley.

The last paper edition of Britannica was published in 2010. They produced 12,000 copies. 8,000 have been sold. The full price is $1,395.

I once knew a radiologist in Brookline, Massachusetts, who was reading his Encyclopaedia Britannica in alphabetical order, article by article. He was not fun at parties.

Convicted Of Library Book Felony

Maria Carmen Nater of Vista, California, has pleaded guilty to one count of commercial burglary. Bringing her shopping cart into public libraries in Orange and San Diego Counties, Ms. Nater has stolen and sold about 2,000 books "and numerous DVDs." When she was busted, about 1,000 books were found in her home.

The felony will probably be reduced to a misdemeanor, with 18 months probation, and restitution of $7,600.

The silver lining in this story is that the demand for physical books is still high enough to support a black market.

Apparently there is still money to be lost...

...and people to lose it. Official press release that Atlas Shrugged 'Part 2' will be produced. Shooting will begin in April 2012. The press release doesn't mention anyone being beaten, beheaded or disappeared, so one is left to assume that those who perpetrated Part 1 are going to do it again: Paul Johansson, director; John Aglialoro, producer; and Brian Patrick O'Toole, screenplay. This time, however, they're adding Duncan Scott who seems not to have done anything since 1983 when he was the "additional second assistant director" on Zelig. Unless his responsibilities include firing everybody and starting over from scratch, I am not optimistic about chances for improvement.

"Oh, The Places You'll Go"

Your shoes are full of feet!

Ticket lottery window opens tomorrow.

Into The Wild

I saw the movie some time ago. Now I've read the book, or at least listened to the unabridged audiobook which you can borrow from the Desert Hot Springs public library. The main differences are these:

• The book is non-chronological, so you know right at the start that Chris McCandless died in that bus in Alaska.
• The book spends a lot more time talking about the McCandless family. I recall a public radio interview with Jon Krakauer, the author, when the movie came out in 2007. During the time that the story went from an article in Outside magazine, to a book, to a movie he ran into some resistance from the family. Very little of that is in the movie, but you get a lot more of the story in the book. They're no more monsters than 99% of American families, but who wants the details of their family life laid out in a bestseller?
• The book spent more time theorizing as to what actually killed Chris McCandless (AKA Alexander Supertramp); a theorizing that continued on to the making of the movie and still today.
• And, finally, a big part of the book that simply vanished from the movie were histories of other lone individuals who have walked into the wild and died or just disappeared. This includes Krakauer's attempts to challenge the Alaskan wilderness himself when he was 23.

One of the things that drew me to the movie in the first place was that part of McCandless's journey included time spent at Slab City and around the Salton Sea. Here's a clip from the movie where he's out in the desert with "Ron" - the book tells us this is not his real name - who lived in Salton City. That sure looks like it was shot on location, and they were shooting at Slab City, so it seems likely they would shoot the Anza Borrego scenes in the area, too.

Here is a Google satellite view with Bus 142, the Magic Bus, at the center. Zoom in and you can see the bus. Zoom out and you can see how close to civilization it is. That's a subject that gets covered extensively in the book. McCandless couldn't cross over the Teklanika River in midsummer due to flooding, but within a few miles of him were cabins where he could have gotten food. It appears that he never hiked far from the bus after he got there. The cabins were badly vandalized that summer, and some people theorize that it was McCandless who did that, but Krakauer believes otherwise.

In the book Krakauer seems to suggest that McCandless had no map by choice. Here's an article by Ron Lamothe that says he did have a map. He had his ID with him too, but the Alaska state troopers who recovered his body overlooked it, so it took a few weeks to identify him. The map he had was not a good topo map, but the Ron Lamothe says the map was good enough to show a Denali park service road that would have gotten him across the river. A good topo map would have shown a gauging station on the river not far from the bus. The gauging station had a basket on a zip line that McCandless could have used to cross the river. Krakauer points out, too, that if McCandless had hiked only about a mile upstream he would have seen that the river broadens out and becomes potentially crossable on foot even in flood.

Why did he die? No clear answer is known. In the original magazine article Krakauer offered the theory that he confused wild potatoes (he was eating the tubers) with wild sweet pea, which was thought to be poisonous. Turns out the wild sweet pea is not poisonous. When the book was published, he theorized that McCandless had gone from eating the potato tubers to eating its above-ground seeds, not knowing that there are many plants with edible roots and poisonous seeds. The tests on the potato seeds were not complete at the time of publication, but Krakauer thought there were preliminary indications of swainsonine, an alkaloid, the primary toxin in locoweed. Turns out, according to Ron Lamothe, that there is no swainsonine in wild potato seeds. Krakauer then theorized that the potato seeds were moldy and the mold contained a hallucinogen.

McCandless's body, BTW, was cremated in Alaska before his parents got there (but presumably with their consent). There was no autopsy probably because it seemed obvious that he had starved to death. There's nothing to exhume.

Ron Lamothe thinks there is no need to develop a theory of a satisfactorily dramatic cause of death that would support a bestselling magazine article, book and movie. He simply starved. Unable to consume sufficient calories to support his level of activity, his body weight would have dropped to about 90 pounds giving him a BMI of less than 14 in early August 1992, according to Lamothe's estimates. A BMI of less than 15 is an indication of starvation and a BMI of only 14 means death is near. His death is believed to have come on August 18.

The last self-portrait of Chris McCandless. He is holding his SOS note`.

Lamothe puts forth the idea that rather than simply sitting there, ignorant of his options, and starving to death, McCandless had injured his right shoulder, making it more difficult for him to hunt or swim the river.

In the iconic photos above, Lamothe points out that McCandless's right shoulder appears to slump, and possibly isn't even in the sleeve of his shirt.

Lamothe has made a documentary entitled The Call Of The Wild (IMDB).

Here's a theory from a non-expert that McCandless was schizophrenic.

McCandless's parents have published a book called Back To The Wild.

Going out to visit Bus 142 seems to have become almost a cottage industry. Here's a ten-minute video showing a trip via ATV down the Stampede Trail to the bus. If you want to do it yourself, here's a website that tells you how.

Plenty of photos on Flickr:

Photo by Anthony Vargo.

Photo from a set by Jenna 1/2acre.

Photo from a set by DuckShepherd.

Photo from a set by ErikHalfacre.

Photo from a set by RichardWagnerAU.

Photo by mannieb.

Photo from a set by Heather Horton.

There's also a Flickr group for the Stampede Trail, which is more than just Bus 142 and Chris McCandless.

Here's a web page with a lot of photos of Chris McCandless from throughout his life.

Where's Dagny Taggart When You Need Her?

"California's proposed bullet train will need to soar over small towns on towering viaducts, split rich farm fields diagonally and burrow for miles under mountains for a simple reason: It has no time to spare." Apparently, some people in Sacramento think this is a bad thing.

"In the fine print of a 2008 voter-approved measure funding the project was a little-noticed requirement that trains be able to rocket from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to San Francisco in no more than two hours and 40 minutes" the L.A. Times says. It certainly didn't escape my notice when I wrote about Prop 1A in October 2008. For me, that requirement was essential, after having watched the lofty promises of Amtrak's Acela gradually compromised until it became nothing more than a really pretty, sorta fast, very expensive train. I also pointed out that Prop 1A required engineering so that "Trains will not be forced to slow down when passing stations." Did nobody in Sacramento read this? It all is obviously very expensive and very desirable (IMO).

And speaking of Dagny Taggart, the Blu-ray version of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 is available at Netflix now, so I got it and watched it, and I have this to say: it is not nearly so terrible as all the reviewers said. OTOH, it's not good. I've never made a movie, so I don't know where to lay blame for actors who rush woodenly through their lines. Are they bad actors? Were they being encouraged to pick up the pace to keep the movie under 1½ hours? Were there scowling Objectivists lurking in the shadows behind the cameras making them nervous?

The novel needs to be made into a mini-series, which would give it the breathing space it needs. The smart producer would make John Galt's speech one full episode in the mini-series. This would allow those who are not fans of Objectivism or Ayn Rand to easily skip over that. Heresy, I know. But how many people who bought the book do you think actually read every word of that speech?