Day 143/365 Utilitarianism

My description of a book I'm offering for sale:

Spinoza's Selections, Edited by John Wild -1930 Red Cloth Edition~Rounding to the top and base of spine from shelving~Previous Owners Name Inscribed on First Loose Endpaper~*1* word written neatly in margin on page 286, as well as *3* vertical lines at various points in the introduction.



Usually people fall into one of two categories: those who mark in books and those who don't.


Those who don't are sometimes obsessive. Not only do they not mark in books, but they do not dog ear pages to mark their place, nor do they scrawl their names across the inside front cover, much less pencil their initials on the forepages. God forbid they should grace the book with their own personal illustrations or provide running commentary in the margins.

And then there are those who DO mark in books. In them, outside of them, on the spine, on the foredges, on the endpapers, on the title page (HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM GRANDMA!), sometimes on the table-of-contents (stars besides which chapters are important), underlining, circling, highlighting, sometimes making notations in the margins that show orgasmic agreement with the author (YES!!!YES!!!YES!!!) or equally disdainful contempt (i.e. the short but expressive WTH?), and of course, let's not forget the artists among us, gracing endpapers with everything from stick figures to a detailed pencil illustration of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine.

As a book re-seller, I adore the first group - the non-markers. Nothing like finding a pristine 1880's edition that looks as if it had never been opened, much less marked in.


(On the other hand, was that owner so shallow that he simply bought books that looked good on the shelf? Did he spend his lifetime surrounded by a beautiful library, just to impress his visitors, but never cracking open a single volume? Poor sad man- now he has my pity.)


As a reader I think I prefer those that simply must make their mark upon the printed book, if for no other reason than I know they actually opened it, and read a bit (and sometimes enough to provoke a strong reaction).

The marks themselves tell a great deal about the one who made them: engineering books tend to have solid, ruler-straight, red-pencil underlining, with to-the-point notations (always in very
careful lettering). I always wonder if engineers have a specific class for this -instructing them how to comment in their textbooks?

My favorite was the U.S.S. Maine illustration. It was drawn in great detail on the inside of a army textbook with the date February 15, 1898, and was almost as detailed as this painting from Uncle Sam's Navy, courtesy of the U.S. Naval Historical Center.

The young man who drew it would have been immediately caught up in the Spanish-American War that shortly followed, and his illustration (and the one above) were that generation's equivalent to our memories of planes flying into towers. No wonder he (or his family) kept that textbook for so many years.

Religious books are the least likely to be marked in (or opened for that matter, even the vintage ones appear to be unread). Apparently the buyers have the same premise I have concerning gym memberships: if I paid for it, it is, by default, beneficial to me.

As for Spinoza and his selections - the owner has used a fountain pen to inscribe his name on the first loose endpaper (Eugene J. Welds). What points in the introduction were worthy of a vertical line notation? Just this: Reason will lay down moral principles in calm moments, applying them to imaginary situations, thus steeling the will against catastrophe.

What one word was chosen to write in the margin? Utilitarianism, printed right besides the definition: By good, I understand that which we certainly know is useful to us. By evil, I understand that which we certainly know hinders us from possessing anything that is good.

And what of that second vertical line notation in the introduction? Our conduct transcends all rigid principles and we play on life as a great musician plays on his instrument...we have become one with God, thus we are capable of neither jealousy nor envy...God loves no one and hates no one, and yet God loves, for love is an aspect of thinking, and therefore really the essence of God.

There you have it, the secret to life, wrapped up in 17th-century rationalist philosophy.

I wonder what notes Spinoza made in the books he read. Somehow I can't picture "Happy Birthday, Love Spinoza". Much easier to visualize "WTH???" in the margins, and possibly a little 1600's stick figure drawn on the endpapers. I'm betting he was a marker.

Day 142/365 Rough on Rats

Tonight I've found a bit of a mystery in an apparently widely-known, obscure Southern author.

How can Edna Henry Lee Turpin be both widely-known and obscure?

I'd never heard of her before I picked up Peggy of Roundabout Lane this evening, and I'm a Virginian.

Miss Turpin was born on July 26, 1867 (somewhere), growing up in those horrible years after the Civil War, coming of age during Reconstruction, and becoming at some point an independant well-respected woman author.She wrote children's books (Honey-Sweet), school textbooks (Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades for elementary schools of New York state education department), agricultural reference texts (Agriculture, its fundamental principles), and teen series books such as The Old Mind's Secret and the afore-mentioned Peggy of Roundabout Lane.

I just know there's a fascinating life story here.

There is a university library collection with "A Christmas card from Miss Edna Lee Turpin, explaining that she was very impressed with Miss Densell's illustrations, and she'd would be in Blacksburg (Va) soon and would like to discuss them".

And there's a book called The Promise of the New South, by Edward L. Ayers, which contains a reference to Miss Turpin, a reference made casually and without further explanation, so that it is apparent that the reader would of course recognize her name:

Edna Turpin wrote to a former student to tell of a difficult evening with "three old maids, the Misses Noel," who insisted their visitors taste various things, from cod liver oil to tomatoes. Turpin became uncomfortable, "but the dear old souls seem so anxious for you to enjoy their dainties (?!) that I verily believe they could inveigle me into making a meal on Rough On Rats." "Rough on Rats," as it colloquial name suggests, was a widely advertised vermin posison, familiar to everyone who read a Southern newspaper." The Promise of A New South, Edward L. Ayers

That's it.

That's all I can find about this once famous author.

Oh, except - she died on June 7, 1952, and is buried in Hollywood Cemetary, in Richmond Virginia.

She's buried in among others who must be family members, possibly her brother, a sister and sister's husband, and possibly her sister's daughter. Edna outlived them all. The daughter died before her time, her father following two years later.

And this is the lady herself, busy conducting research in a library (maybe her own), with a lovely corsage on one shoulder (highly fashionable at the time).

Other than this - I got nothing.

I can't find anything else about her.

How did she become an author? Was she the unmarried spinister sister who choose between marriage or independence for love of writing? Or did she turn to writing when it became apparent married life was not in her future (this was, after all, just after the Civil War, and an entire generation of men were decimated by the War Between the States, particularily in the South)? How did it come to pass that she saw her entire family pass away before she did?

I love a good mystery.

Day 141/365 Yellow Dogs

The definition of Yellow Dog Democrats: If the only candidate on the Democratic ticket is an old cur yellow dog running against a highly regarded Republican, we would vote for the yellow dog. Period.

The term originated in Alabama, when a Democratic senator refused to support the Democratic candidate for president, choosing instead to support Herbert Hoover. We all know how well that turned out. In response, the errant senator's constituency coined the phrase: "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket!' "

Yellow Dog Democrats have two predominant traits: absolute party loyalty, and an equally absolute belief in liberalism.


And now I'd like to introduce you to my grandmother, our matriarchal Yellow Dog Democrat herself.

This is Inez Hazelwood, about the time her parents were discovering she had quite a temper and a extremely stubborn disposition. Her mother was America McKinney and she took her politics seriously (being a Scot). She was a Democrat before there were Democrats and she raised her daughter the same way.

This is Inez during high school. She's just won an elocution award for giving a most excellent speech supporting Woodrow Wilson, then-current President of the United States, a Virginian and a Democrat to boot. I need not mention which of those three characteristics was most important.

My grandmother was an unusual person. She was no shrinking violetand no soft-spoken Southern lady. She preferred wearing pants, excelled at basketball, never hesitated to speak her mind, knew how to handle a gun and seat a horse, and above all, would rather be fishing.

However, it being the 1920's, she chose the accepted working occupation for young ladies. She became a school teacher. Raised on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, she could have remained at home, teaching school while waiting for Mr. Right.

Instead, she graduated from teacher's college, then picked up and moved to the wilds of western Virginia, taking up a postion at a one room schoolhouse, up in the mountains of Highland County,Virginia. During the winter, the roads were impassable, and teacher and students arrived either on foot or by sled drawn by draft horses.

And then Mr. Right appeared (I knew him as Grandpa, but when he was younger, he was smoking hot. Looked alot like Al Capone with his fedora.) This was their first visit to his parent's farm in Bland County, when she was introduced to his family, discovering they were also dyed-in-the-wool Yellow Dog Democrats, and Scots, and avid horsebreeders. What more could she want?

The ensuing years brought a family business, and four sons serving in World War II and Korea. Even so, still Democrats. Various members of the family served as party chairmen, and FDR was the mantra.

In the early Sixties, Kennedy was a household word, and Grandpa still wore a fedora, and still looked cool in it. His cigar just added to the mystique.

By the late Sixties, my Grandpa having passed away, Inez was still outspoken , still a good shot (she did not suffer fools or trespassers), and an accomplished musician on the accordion, mandolin, and organ. And not half bad with a kazoo. "Nixon" was considered a swear word in her home. And "Reagan" was a joke. Yep. Still a Democrat.

Many women might prefer jewelry from their husbands, but my grandmother's idea of a great present was a boat. It made fishing so much easier. By the time of her death in 1980, she had three: a rowboat for the creek in back of her Virginia home, a motorboat for her lake home, and a larger 20' cruiser for her Florida home.

My grandmother took her fishing, her boats, and her politics seriously. From cradle to grave, she was the walking definition of a Yellow-Dog Democrat.

Day 140/365 Time Travel and All The Rest

Thomas Edison hated him.

Mark Twain counted him as a close friend.

Some of his contemporaries thought he was an angel from Venus, sent to help Earth with technology.

And in his later years he was in love with a pigeon.

Nikola Tesla would have been 153 years old today.

This is the man who invented radio, introduced the robot in the 1890's, invented alternating current, VTOL aircraft (Vertical Take Off and landing) which includes helicopters, wireless transmission of electricity, designed a remote control, perfected AC hydroelectric power (still operating at Niagra Falls), believed he had received radio transmissions from space, and is rumored to have experienced time travel when he absorbed a massive electrical shock.

He once tore up a contract with George Westinghouse -one that would have made him millions- because he believed in free electricity for the world.

His friends included Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Rudyard Kipling, the naturalist John Muir, John Jacob Astor, Theodore Roosevelt, architect Stanford White, and his most important financial backer: J. Pierpont Morgan.

In fact, Morgan may be responsible for your monthly utilities payment.

From 1901-1905, Tesla oversaw construction of the famous Wardenclyffe Transmission Tower, a 187 foot tower, topped with a 55-ton steel "cupola" . Tesla designed this tower to provide wireless electrical transmission to the world.

After last minute design improvements temporarily halted operation, Morgan asked Tesla what good power production was, if there was no place to put the meter? At that point, he cut off his funding, and local newspapers labeled the tower "Tesla's Million Dollar Folly". The newspapers failed to mention that five years earlier, in 1900, Tesla had built a successful wireless transmission facility in Colorado Springs - one that lit up a bank of 200 incandescent light bulbs, without wires of any kind, from 25 miles away.

Between the loss of the Wardenclyffe funding, and a disastrous laboratory fire that destroyed many of his notes and experiments, Tesla fell into depression, living out the rest of his life at the Waldorf-Astoria, finally dying in 1943.

And the pigeon?

"Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: "Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me." If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.

"One night as he was lying in bed, she flew in through the window and he knew right away that she had something important to tell him: she was dying. "And then, as I got her message, there came a light from her eyes - powerful beams of light". "...Yes," "...it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory."

"Tesla admitted to O'Neill that when that particular pigeon died, something went out of his life. Before that time, he could complete the most ambitious programs he could ever dream of but after the pigeon flew into the beyond, he knew his life's work was done for good."John J. O'Neill Prodigal Genius - the Life of Nikola Tesla, pp. 316-7, Ives Washburn Inc., 1964; 1st ed. 1944

Imagine if J. Pierpont Morgan has been a bit more of a revolutionary, with a more humanitarian ambition, instead of one driven by profit?

To read more on Nikola Tesla (and there is so, so much more, including Earthquake Machines, Thought Photography, Radio-Controlled Torpedos, Death Rays, Force Fields)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_patents

Day 139/365 And The Band Begins to Play....

Recognize this?

It's from 1968, an obscure little piece of anti-war movement memorabilia.

Yep, Yellow Submarine's for Peace.

And our four fearless leaders?

Yep.

41 years ago, the band began to play - helping Captain Fred vanquishing Blue Meanies and Apple Bonkers, while posing as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (we hope that you enjoy the show).

I adore this movie. It's one of the few that translated out of the Sixties and it's altered state of mind.

Plus it gave Ringo a great song to sing, and sent me off on a major infatuation with drummers.

Happy Birthday Ritchie - it's been a long,strange trip and I never would have made it without you!

Just for fun, here's a Yellow Sub quiz:
http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/1031801/which-yellow-submarine-character-are-you

(I was John, the smart, funny one....)

Day 138/365 233 Years Later....

"We are called to remember how unlikely it was that our American experiment would succeed at all; that a small band of patriots would declare independence from a powerful empire; and that they would form, in the new world, what the old world had never known – a government of, by, and for the people." President Barack Obama, July 4,2009

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

How unlikely indeed.

Every single one of these men made their signature, knowing they would be executed for treason if the effort failed.

Day 137/365 Mississippi Turning

Recently I did a couple postings about some of the most grim moments of the Civil Rights movement, infamous moments like the killing of three men in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

I am delighted to report that the same year we have our first black president, Philadelphia, Mississippi (in the heart of Neshoba County) has elected it's first black mayor, James Young. According to CNN "Despite a 55 percent white majority, Young defeated Rayburn Waddell, a white, three-term incumbent, by the slim margin of 46 votes."

Meaning some of the white folks voted for him.

Mayor-elect Young will be sworn in this weekend, the Fourth of July.

I believe Neshoba Country is on its way to redemption.