Thing-Finder

Here's a useful little site for finding the nom-de-plume of an author or, alternatively, the real name.

Mentioned in the July/August edition of Archaeology Magazine, (which I would recommend to any of you with 10 year olds or older, who are very interested in archaeology), is a site, Ancientscripts.com, with a lot of information nicely, organized. As a ten - twenty year old I was fascinated by language and alphabets. I don't know why I am using the past tense. I still am, other things just crowded in the way. Anyway, neat resources to feed an interest in writing, alphabets and language.

Those cheery academicians at Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest maintain an archive of past winners for the worst opening sentence.

Charles Bayless was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1950's but grew up around the world as father's career in the oil business took them to Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya, the UK, and Sweden. Returning to the US his career for twenty years was in management consulting as a Partner at Ernst & Young and then as a Vice President of Capgemini. He is the co-founder of Through the Magic Door and, as might go without saying, an avid reader.

Which books did you read (or were read to you) as a child that you remember best and why?

There were many stories and books but there were a handful that standout in my memory. The Little Engine That Could was certainly one of these and I recall why. I liked the story, but somehow what kept me coming back were the illustrations; all those toys and fruits and handsome engines just captured my young eye. Other picture books included The Night Before Christmas, an edition of a children's illustrated Bible, and a book at my grandparents house about a wild chipmunk. I can't remember the title but it was realistically illustrated and captured the romance and hardness of wildlife in a fashion that frightened, stirred and inspired a small child without frightening him off.

Walter Lord's A Night to Remember, books by Paul Gallico, Jules Verne's Mysterious Island and Ballantine's Coral Island, and Alfred Hitchcock anthologies were favorites at the Independent Reader level. Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, The Great Escape, Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, Daphne DuMaurier's short stories were all favorites at more of a Young Adult level.

Which books had the most influence on your thinking and character?

I have got to believe that that illustrated children's Bible has got to be right up there. I have a much greater knowledge of the Bible than I can attribute to adult reading and I think it must have been acquired at that young age.

While I read it only a couple of times and wouldn't necessarily say it was a favorite, I was fascinated by Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and the whole idea of not being bounded by unacknowedged conventions. Also around the Independent Reader level were a whole series of science or reference books: Guiness Book of World Records, Can Pigs Swim?, Time-Life reference books, Horizon Junior Library. There was just a raw pleasure at acquiring interesting information that helped make sense of the world.

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror opened my eyes to how a gifted historian can recreate a world far removed in time. It was also one of those books that make the connection that, no matter that my visceral sense was of the Middle Ages being almost an unimagenably different time, people are people across the ages. You can't underestimate the differences that stand between your life and theirs but you can't deny that there is also a recognizable commonality.

Are there any books related to your profession or calling that you think children ought to consider reading?

I can't really think of any for younger children related to management consulting other than those books about doing science experiments. There is always a solution: it might not be easy, you might not like the choice, but there is an outcome that you can accomplish. Any books on risk or on world history are good foundations for management consulting. There is nothing new under the sun and the more history you have read, the more likely you are to see patterns with the issues and problems clients face to day.

What books are you reading and enjoying today?

I always have twenty or thirty books going at the same time. In the past year I have been on a classic mysteries kick - Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, Georges Simenon, and the like. Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes, and Constant Battles by Steven A. LeBlanc have each been real pleasures to read in the past year but also fascinating for their information and ideas.

In 1771, Thomas Jefferson was requested by Robert Skipwith to prepare a list of books: "I would have them suited to the capacity of the common reader who understands but little of the classicks and who has not leisure for any intricate or tedious study. Let them be improving as well as amusing and the rest let there be Hume's history of England, the new edition of Shakespeare, the short Roman history you mentioned and all Sterne's works."

Skipwith asked that the total list be constrained by a purchase estimate of twenty-five pounds sterling. Like any good book lister, Jefferson set out to prepare such a list, overshot the price estimate by double, couldn't stop adding to the list and finally suggested "therefore it might be as agreeable to you have framed such a general collection as I think you would wish and might in time find convenient to procure. Out of this you will chuse for yourself to the amount you mentioned for the present year and may hereafter as shall be convenient proceed in completing the whole." See below for a transcript of the correspondence and book list.

For the past week or so I have been working on book lists of one sort or another, both creating them as well as examining what makes for a useful list. As part of that process, and as part of a reality check, I collected book lists from twenty-eight randomly selected libraries, these lists being compiled by librarians. The nature of the lists were not so much the best of the best (I am working on that as a separate exercise) but rather lists of recommended books based on the experience of those librarians.

Some of these lists were just a couple of dozen books for a single grade, some lists reaching to a hundred or more titles and covering several grades. I am still in the process of cleaning up the data but have completed infant through Grade Three. I thought you might be interested in some of the initial observations, allowing for the fact that this is not a particularly rigorous analysis; while randomly selected, these lists were the ones that were readily available.

I may have been aware of them before but the coincidence of coming across their exploits twice in a week has caught my attention. I was aware that the US military in World War II was a segregated institution. I might have been aware, but never focused on the fact that there were segregated engineering battalions and regimeents building the far flung infrastructure for fighting the war.

At the beginning of the week I was watching a documentary on the History Channel about the building of the Alaskan Highway from Dawson Creek, Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska (a distance of some 1,500 miles) in WWII as part of the effort to improve the ability to defend Alaska from attack by Japan. The construction was an amazing feat performed by about 11,000 troops from several engineering regiments, a third of whom were segregated black engineering regiments. Construction started from both ends in April, 1942, and met up 1,500 miles of road later in October, an astoundingly brief seven months after beginning.

So that was pretty impressive. The fact that a third of the troops were part of segregated engineerings units is an interesting historical fact but somewhat incidental to a hugely impressive engineering feat. They collectively accomplished an amazing outcome.

A couple of days later I am reading Time-Life's Bombers Over Japan, part of their World War II series. In January, 1944, the US B-29 bombers are just beginning to show up in India and China where they will be based for the initial bombing raids on Japan later that year. However, before they can be deployed, airfields and supply routes have to be built to service them and progress has been slow and beset by problems. Army General Wolfe has been dispatched to untangle the mess and starts in India.

Wolfe flew to General Stilwell's headquarters in the Burmese jungle and borrowed a batallion of black American construction engineers who had been working on the Ledo Road, the land supply link between India and China that Stilwell was building through Burma.

Using this batallion, Wolfe quickly completed the construction of a B-29 airfield in Calcutta, India.

I had never heard of this before and am fascinated by the idea of black American troops pulled from the segregated cities and countryside of the US, laboring through the jungles of southeast asia building these huge and hugely critical infrastructure projects. I am particularly intrigued by what their experience might have been in India, a country with its own complex history of caste and race segregation and at that time with the further complexity of being under British colonial rule.

There must be some stories in there somewhere. I know the Alaska Highway story has been told in a couple of books but have never seen anything about the experience of black engineering batallions elsewhere in the world.

And what a coincidence to come across both these incidents in the same week.

The Reading Mother
Strickland Gillilan

I had a Mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath

I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Celert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each mother of boys were such.

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a Mother who read to me.

Last week, one of the national papers in the US asked readers what were their favorite books from their childhood. They received more than a thousand responses. The top ten favorites by number of mentions were:

Nancy Drew by Carolyne Keene

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Little Women by Lousia May Alcott

Tom Swift by Victor Appleton

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

An article in the New York Times this weekend describes the reading habits and book collections of CEOs of several major companies.

Readers are everywhere. Thank goodness.

Boy Wanted
by Frank Crane
Boy's Own Paper
February 1921

A boy who stands straight, sits straight, acts straight, and talks straight.

A boy who listens carefully when spoken to, who asks questions when he does not understand, and does not ask questions about things that are none of his business.

A boy whose fingernails are not in mourning, whose ears are clean, whose shoes are polished, whose clothes are brushed, whose hair is combed, and whose teeth are well cared for.

A boy who moves quickly and makes as little noise about it as possible.

A boy who whistles in the street but not where he ought to keep still.

A boy who looks cheerful, has a ready smile for everybody, and never sulks.

A boy who is polite to every man and respectful to every woman and girl.

A boy who does not smoke and has no desire to learn how.

A boy who never bullies other boys or allows boys to bully him.

A boy who, when he does not know a thing, says,"I do not know"; and when he has made a mistake says, "I'm sorry"; and, when requested to do anything, immediately says, "I'll try".

A boy who looks you right in the eye and tells the truth every time.

A boy who would rather lose his job or be expelled from school than tell a lie or be a cad.

A boy who is more eager to know how to speak good English than to talk slang.

A boy who does not want to be "smart" nor in any wise attract attention.

A boy who is eager to read good, wholesome books.

A boy whom other boys like.

A boy who is perfectly at ease in the company of respectable girls.

A boy who is not a goody-goody, a prig, or a little Pharisee, but just healthy, happy, and full of life.

A boy who is not sorry for himself and not forever thinking and talking about himself.

A boy who is friendly with his mother and more intimate with her than with anyone else.

A boy who makes you feel good when he is around.

This boy is wanted everywhere. The family wants him, the school wants him, the office wants him, the boys and girls want him, and all creation wants him.

I have always loved fooling around with maps; tourist maps, gasoline station maps, huge Times Atlases, historical atlases, fine old NGS maps from the thirties, ordinance maps - they are all grist for the mill. I especially like maps that provide comparisons (size on the map relative to GDP or population for example) and that measure things other than geographical (religion, language, colloguilisms for example).

And now, courtesy of Coyote blog via Instapundit, I have come across a site that should thrill any map lover - strange maps. My hat is off to the creator of the blog which should entertain all map lovers out there. Take a look at the world from a whole new angle.

Garner just came in to afflict me with his most recent riddles. Some of which are good and some of which are bad, and some of which are good-bad.

What starts with an E, ends with an E, and only has one letter in it?

We're at the beach this week. I have two reading customs when going to the beach. First I bring a canvas bag of many of the books I have been wanting to get to all year and haven't found time for. Despite the idea of all that time to read at the beach, of course it doesn't work out that way and most return home unread but the thirty or forty books come every year anyway.

Second, I indulge in mysteries. Most my life, my preferred reading has been basically factual. History, Science, Exploration, Military, Maritime History, Poetry (OK that one is not non-ficiton per se). The exceptions have primarily been P.G. Wodehouse and in recent years, mysteries. P.G. Wodehouse I'll read anytime in the year. Mysteries are mostly a beach indulgence.

Georges Simenon's Maigret has been with me to the beach a number of times but never been read. I just finished Maigret Sets a Trap and found that I quite enjoyed the book. I especially enjoyed his evocation of Paris in the heat of late summer and Simenon's attention to the little observations that powerfully evoke the scene.

"Before long they sat down to dinner. It was a hot evening, but toward the end of the meal it started to rain, a light gentle rain, and its rustling sound outside the open windows formed an accompaniment to the rest of their talk."