Ian Hamet has become well known for his essays on the great movie directors; today he’s branched out a bit, and posted a lengthy and informative disquisition about the early 20th century drama critic and cultural observer Mortimer Brewster, whom he touts as a forerunner of our own Terry Teachout.

Much of Hamet’s essay is taken up with the disturbing scandals that plagued Brewster’s life, including his 1940 conviction for serial murder. Brewster never confessed to the crimes, and indeed was supported in his claims by his wife of two years, Elaine Harper. He was eventually released from prison in 1946, and disappeared–with Elaine–to lead a quiet life in the Far East.

I’m less interested in the various Brewster scandals, however, than in Hamet’s disturbing misrepresentation of Elaine Harper. As is well-known (he published no less than five books on the subject), Mortimer Brewster was no friend to matrimony; indeed, Elaine Harper was clearly an exceptional woman to not only catch such a confirmed bachelor and man-about-town, but also to keep him. Hamet says of her,

One gets the impression that she actually accepted Mortimer’s views and would have lived with him under any arrangement he demanded.

Now, I must say that this seems highly unlikely. For Brewster to marry, given his published views, was to expose himself to public ridicule. Surely if Elaine Harper had been willing to enter into some less formal arrangement, Brewster would have taken advantage of it?

It is true, I grant you, that the young Mrs. Brewster completed the unfinished manuscript of her husband’s fifth book on marriage, Mind over Matrimony, and saw it into publication; but what else could she do, with her husband being in prison at the time for a string of murders he may not have committed, and all the legal expenses to pay?

In short, I simply cannot buy Hamet’s portrayal of this loving, loyal minister’s daughter as some kind of potential libertine-in-waiting. Rather, I would prefer to think of her as an old-fashioned girl who stood by her man, right or wrong.

Beyond that, I found Hamet’s narrative to be both informative and compelling, and I commend it to anyone with an interest in the dramatic scandals of the 1930’s and ’40’s.

When you’re scheduled to have a new baby in the house in two days, one of the last things you want to hear your wife say is, “Honey, I think we have a plumbing problem.”

I came rattling downstairs with visions of the kitchen sink backing up, or perhaps water covering the floor, and was quite relieved when Jane led me outside; I figured it was some problem with the sprinkler system. We’ve had a lot of rain recently; I’d just turn off the water to the yard, and we’d get the plumber in some time in the next week. No big deal.

Once we were outside, Jane pointed at some water running down the steps from the back yard; the water proved to be coming out from under the doors of a storage wall we’ve got under an overhang back there. Not, oddly enough, from under the door of the cupboard that contains the hot water heater, but from under the door next to that.

The problem turned out to be a big old one-inch galvanized pipe that runs the full length of the storage wall up under the roof. It had developed a couple of pinhole leaks and was spraying water all over the gardening tools and bags of fertilizer and assorted scraps of plywood. Joy! Something would clearly have to be done, and soon.

I called up my dad and asked him to come over and show me where the nearest shutoff was (Jane and I about our house from my parents about seven years ago; they’d lived there for the previous thirty-five years). I had fond hopes that we might not have to shut off the water to the house to fix the problem.

No such luck–that big old one-inch galvanized pipe, which had been there since at least 1965 and possibly longer, is the line that feeds all of the indoor plumbing. Double-joy!

Fortunately our plumber was available this morning, and was able to stop the leaking with a couple of pipe-clamps. But we’re looking at a complete repiping (and a new water heater), and it needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Triple-joy!

I can only imagine what wonders tomorrow will bring.

As I’ve hinted upon occasion, our favorite TV show at the moment is
Good Eats, which airs on the Food Network. It’s not so much that
we’re foodies (we’re not) as that Alton Brown is both funny and
informative. He doesn’t just show you how to cook something; he also goes
into the chemistry and physics of it. And he goes about it in a suitably
whimsical way. Anyway, in Alton Brown’s cookbook he references McGee’s
On Food and Cooking as one of his major sources–indeed, as
a source that often goes a good bit beyond what he needs to know.

Well, Jane was looking for a present for me this past Christmas; she was
ordering me some books through Amazon and wanted to get me just one more.
I’m not sure just what prompted her to add this one to the list, but I
don’t regret it. I’ve been reading it in small dribs and drabs ever
since, and finally finished it up this morning.

It’s fascinating stuff. He covers the characteristics of the major foods
(the different kinds of fruits, vegetables, grain, meat, nuts, and so
forth); the different methods of cooking, and how they work; how the body
digests food; it’s fairly comprehensive and very detailed.

For example, were you aware that fatty acids have a chemical structure
very similar to that of octane and other hydrocarbon fuels? Octane
is a chain of eight carbon atoms; each carbon atom has two hydrogen atoms
attached to it on either side. The carbon atoms at the end have an extra
hydrogen each. Octane reacts nicely with oxygen to give you carbon
dioxide, water, and heat; it’s a lot of energy stored in a compact space. Fatty
acids typically consist of longer chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms,
very similar to octane’s longer cousins, with a carboxyl group at one
end. And just like octane, fatty acids react nicely with oxygen.

The single neatest thing I learned from the book, though, is the secret
of modern beekeeping: five-sixteenths of an inch, the so-called “bee space”.
In the old days, it wasn’t possible to remove honey from a beehive
without destroying the hive. A beekeeper harvested honey at the end of the
season by destroying all but a few of his hives. In modern beehives, the
honeycomb is built on to removeable racks which slide out the top of the
hive. There’s a wire mesh below the racks that prevents the queen bee
from getting up into that part of the hive; consequently, only honey is
store there.

And the bee space? That’s the required distance between the edge of the
racks and the wall of the hive. If the gap is any smaller, the worker
bees will seal it with wax; if it’s any larger, they’ll fill it with
honey comb. But if it’s just five-sixteenths of an inch, they leave it open
and use it as a highway.

Apparently the fellow who discovered this (a pastor and school principal
turned beekeeper named Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth–and didn’t his
parents have a fine time rolling out that name when they were angry at
him)–I say, the fellow who discovered this patented his discovery, but
it didn’t do him much good; infringement was too easy once the secret of
the bee space was generally known.

So, if you like to cook and what to know just what’s going on in your
oven or stewpot, or you’re just generally curious about how things work,
On Food and Cooking is well worth your time.

I like Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr stories. They amuse me. I have found that I
need to space them out and not read them back to back, however, since he
tends to repeat details from one book to another. It can get annoying if you
don’t give yourself enough space between them. But it’s been awhile since I
last read one and I found this one on my shelf one night as I was prowling around
looking for something to read so I gave it a go.

One thing you have to know is that this series is fairly formulaic.
Bernie is going to burgle, is in the process of burgling, or has just burgled
some place, and someone shows up dead there. Bernie then has to find the murderer or
he’s going to end up taking the blame. That has been the essential plot line of
every book in this series that I’ve read so far. But this one is very
different, enjoyably so.

Bernie has a hot weekend planned with his latest flame in a quiet country
inn in upstate New York. Unfortunately, she cancels on him a couple days
before because she’s, yikes, about to get married. Bernie was not aware of
the other guy in her life and he is understandably bummed out. But he’s not
so bummed that he cancels the trip. Rather, he invites his extremely
short friend the lesbian dog groomer along instead. Not exactly the romantic
weekend he had planned but then the owner of the inn stocks a particularly
fine brand of whiskey which at least makes up for it a little. And there is
this book in the library of the inn that he’s kind of interested in finding.
It’s a book by Raymond Chandler, inscribed to Dashiell Hammett, that may
have been given to Hammett during a weekend they may have spent together
that Hammett may have left at the inn. Maybe. He’s just going to take a
little looksee around.

Things get interesting when they get there. They have to share a room and a
bed. The inn is snowed in and the snowstorm is predicted to last all
weekend. There is an extremely precocious kid that Bernie jokingly tells
he’s a burglar, which she blabs all over the place. Fortunately, it’s such
an absurd statement that no one believes it. Ha! And amazingly enough, his
ex-girlfriend and her groom show up for a quiet honeymoon weekend. Awkward
isn’t strong enough. And then, he finds a body in the library when he’s out
cruising in the middle of the night for the book. No phone, no one in or out
because of the snow and no way to call for help.

I enjoyed this one more than the others. Block is playing around with some
of the basic conventions of mysteries and mystery writers here and still
telling a funny whodunit. And the ending with it’s nod to the deus ex
machina strategy to save the hero is hilarious, especially when you realize
who the deus is in the machina. If you like Block, get it and read.

Memoirs and diaries are an interesting genre to read but especially so when
written by non-professional writers who are merely telling a story.
Polishing thoughts can be a good thing but it can also knock some of the
edges off that give power and sharpness to the true story.

This book was written by a woman who lived thru the Nazi occupation of
Norway, grew up and wrote this book as a response to her grandchildren’s
request for stories about her childhood. She tells of having to abruptly
flee inland away from the bombing of the fjord they lived near and in the
process leaving her toys and pet dog behind. For a time her older sister is
working in a hospital directly in line of the bombs treating German and
Norwegian injured, unable to communicate with the family and in serious
danger. She, her mother and siblings travel to refugee sites inland without
her father who works in the harbor, living in cramped quarters with
strangers and struggling to find food. The stories go on of atrocities
committed in concentration camps in Norway, of kids teasing the German
soldiers and of adults trying to keep a sense of pride in a situation
purposely designed to demoralize.

It’s a story of hardship and uncertainty and, above all, trauma. It’s not
polished writing. There are no elegant phrases or images. It’s rough and
untidy and at times hard to read. But it gave me a clear picture of what
her childhood was like and what her family had to do to survive. And if it
seemed chaotic at times, that only reflected the uncertainties a little girl
had to live with every day. It’s something that should be written down and
should be remembered so that I and my kids and the rest of the folks who
read this book understand what it is that war does to the people living
around the battlefields. I’d recommend it for that alone.

I find
that after—-reading Emily
Dickinson for an
Hour or So,
my apprec—–iation of Punct
uation and Grammar
has garnered
Immensity

Last week I wrote that I hoped to get back in harness and start posting daily again; and then my cold came back. I felt lousy most of the weekend, and frankly it’s still not quite over; and as I’ve been working the last couple of days anyway I’ve simply had no energy for writing when I get home.

I’d like to promise that things will improve immensely, but as we’ve got a baby due sometime in the next week I fear that will not be the case. We Shall See.

These are three more volumes in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles that Wrede
wrote in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I suspect the Harry Potter phenomenon
brought them back from dusty retirement as a way to fill up those tables at
the bookstore that have large signs saying “If You Liked Harry Potter,
You’ll Like These.” I’ve browsed some of those books and aside from magic or
the supernatural as a leitmotif, very little else is like Harry.

However, I’ve been on a young adult fiction kick lately and I did enjoy
these, so much so I actually stayed up late to finish one. They remind me
vaguely of a cleaned up, more innocent version of Terry Pratchett‘s Lancre
novels.

The books tell the story of Cimorene, the princess who’s run away from home
because princessing is too boring to be believed and has become the
voluntary captive of Kazul, the King of the Dragons. Kazul is female, by the
way, but King is a job description and not gender associated. There’s a
Queen who fulfills other functions.

In Searching for Dragons she meets Mendanbar, a reluctant King of the
Enchanted Forest, while on a quest to rescue Kazul from the Wizard’s Society
who are using Kazul to suck all the magic out of the Enchanted Forest into
their Wizard’s staffs. This is a bad thing. Unfortunately, Mendanbar’s magic
sword leaks magic, and while out of the Enchanted Forest
it stands out like a beacon on a hill for evil Wizards. Not to mention the
magic carpet that they borrow has transmission problems and keeps dropping
them all over the place.

In Calling for Dragons, Princess Cimorene has become Queen Cimorene and
she’s newly pregnant when someone, likely a wizard, threatens the Enchanted
Forest with destruction. Because the magic of the forest is tied directly to
King Mendanbar, he’s unable to do the heroic thing and go on the quest to
save the forest himself. Cimorene goes in his place, with the help of Morwen
the redheaded, pretty, and nearsighted witch, and Telemain the Sorcerer who
is really a magic geek speaking in magically scientific terms no one can
understand until someone translates for them. Sorcerers are different from
Wizards since they study all sorts of magic rather than specializing. And,
oh yes, the trio have help from a bunny who’s been enchanted to be 7 feet tall,
then eats magical donkey cabbage and turns into a donkey and then is further
enchanted to sprout wings and turn blue when he eats some specialized magic
ag products raised by Farmer McDonald who is diversifying his farm. The
bunny’s name is Killer. They return to a really frightful situation with a
war between the Wizards and the King. And the King is in trouble. Almost
best of all, in this one we get to hear what Morwen’s cat’s are really
saying when they meow.

Talking to Dragons breaks stride just a bit. The narrative switches to
focus on Cimorene’s son, Daystar, now 17 years old. One day, she hands him a
sword and sends him on a journey in the Enchanted Forest telling him nothing
except he will know what he’s suppose to do when it happens. And then he has
all sorts of adventures after meeting a fire-witch, a baby dragon and a
lizard named Suz.

One of my theories about young adult and children’s books is that the high
quality ones can be read by both adults and children with enjoyment. These
certainly follow that theory. I enjoyed them so much I told my daughter I
want them back for MY bookshelf when she’s done with them. Perhaps my son,
the Terry Pratchett aficionado, will read them as well.