Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 33

Feds say they’re solving global warming with ice cubes.

Washington, D. C., April 21, 2023, Star-Gazer News Service–“We’re not taking coals to Newcastle, we’re taking ice cubes to the Artic to lower temperatures, stop rapidly melting snow and ice, and put an end to the rising sea levels,” Homeland Security Deputy for Hail Mary Causes Bill Smith told reporters here today.

According to the department’s website, the original plan was mounting air conditioners on top of pack ice,  but scientists vetoed the idea due to classified logistics problems. Planners said that adding ice to ice made more sense.

President Joe Biden kicked off the plan by throwing the first “ice to the Artic” cube out the window of Air Force One late last night.

“It was better than starting the baseball season by throwing out the first call at Wrigley Field,” he said.

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre downplayed the President’s purported disappointment after he received an e-mail from Barack Obama that said, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

“He used to hear that a lot when he was Vice President,” the press secretary said.

Project managers said that the ice cubes are not, as some Republicans have suggested, coming from the freezer of an old Frigidaire in the basement of the White House.  They are, in fact, being harvested from existing glaciers around the world and transported to drop zones by retrofitted DC-3 aircraft.

Volunteers at coastal communities that are viewed as the greatest risk, are measuring the mean sea level daily to help Homeland Security chart the progress of the project.

“We’re determined to save the planet with ice cubes,” said Smith, “even if hell has to freeze over first.”

-30-

Story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

‘Castle Keep’ is a strange satirical movie

I’m drawn to strange movies such as this 1969 Sidney Pollack satirical film that ends up being simultaneously pro- and anti-war. The reviews were not outstanding, but that doesn’t bother me. William Eastlake, who wrote the novel, was wounded in the  Battle of the Bulge and was probably best known for his Checkerboard Trilogy.

In “Castle Keep,” a rag-tag group of American soldiers is assigned to a remote Belgium castle during World War II ostensibly to protect the artwork there.  With little to do, the soldiers develop their own hobbies and relationships with townspeople as though they’re all on extended leave. According to Wikipedia, “The American soldiers are happy to enjoy a respite from combat while being surrounded by unimaginable antique luxury, however, their days of leisure and peace almost undermine the very reality and the ugliness of the war itself. There is also a recurring theme of eternal recurrence, as one soldier drunkenly ponders out loud that maybe he’s “been here before”. And, although the men are eager to sit out the war that they feel will soon end, there is a sense of foreboding, a feeling of inevitability of what will eventually transpire.”

The New York Times summed up its review by saying, “‘Castle Keep,’ however, is never as impressive as its various, very expensive parts, including its extraordinarily handsome castle, built to order, I’m told, in Yugoslavia. Like the castle itself, the film’s occasionally provocative thoughts are wiped out, destroyed, in the orgy of the climactic battle, the kind of complicated, realistic moviemaking that reduces all problems to confrontations between pieces of mechanical equipment, tanks, mortars, grenades and machine guns. The movie, which has aspired to higher station is, after all, very conventional.”

I know, I know, but I still liked the movie with its character studies (so to speak) of the individual soldiers as they react to the madness of their situation.

–Malcolm

My novel Conjure Woman’s Cat is on sale today on Kindle for only 99¢. This is the first book in my Florida Folk Magic Series set in the Florida Panhandle in the 1950s when Jim Crow and the Klan defined the state. 

David Mamet’s 1992 film ‘The Water Engine’

“The Water Engine is an American historical drama television film directed by Steven Schachter and written by David Mamet, based on his 1977 play of the same name. The film stars Patti LuPone, William H. Macy, John Mahoney, Joe Mantegna, and Treat Williams. It was released on TNT on August 24, 1992.” – Wikipedia

Set in Chicago during the 1934 “Century of Progress” World’s Fair, this is the most brilliantly written and haunting movie I have ever seen. The film was part of a TNT Screenworks series of dramas from widely known playwrights.

The protagonist is a struggling inventor who, in his off-work hours, creates an engine that runs on water. However, when he tries to patent it and figure out how to sell it, big industry moves in and stops the project, leaving Lang (Macy) and his invalid sister Rita (LuPone) as casualties along the road of thwarted possibilities. The irony of their plight–as the world is celebrating progress at the World’s Fair–drives the playwright’s intent into the viewers’ hearts like a sharp knife. Throughout the film, we hear “background” announcements from the public address system of the Century of Progress exhibition.

In his 1992 Washington Post review, Tom Shales wrote, “Mamet, who adapted his 1976 work for television, subtitled it ‘An American Fable,’ but ‘Anti-American Fable’ might be more accurate. It’s a bleak downer about a little man living in the Great Depression who invents an engine that needs only water as fuel and how the American industrial establishment rushes in to crush him under its mighty heel.”

The film isn’t listed in the TNT archive,  so the company’s rights must have been limited to the premier. That leaves us–apparently–with no TV channel or streaming service (that I can find) showing the film. Sad, because like the engine, the film is too good to lose.

–Malcolm

Too much “news” these days comes from the port butter cutter

On a navy ship, the port butter cutter was the mythical source of the useless scuttlebutt that made its way up and down the passageways faster than a sailor could run for his general quarters station.

These days, I suspect much of the “news” that we think is true, and therefore believe as gospel, comes from a similar source, probably some deranged blogger who lives on the port coast.

Since I was born in California, I can say that most weird, mistaken, or otherwise strange news and ideas come from what used to be a wonderful place to live before the state invented government overreach.

I’m amazed by the number of sources one has to track down on the Internet to get what we used to call “the straight scoop.” Most people don’t bother. Many even admit that they listen to the biased source they like rather than any mainstream diet of beans, bullets, and black oil.

If you get your news from the Yahoo home page, you’ll be the first to know what celebrity posed nude somewhere or “rocked” the latest in see-through clothing would that put a liberty town bar girl to shame. These clothes aren’t cutting edge. I saw it all during the Vietnam War but neglected to tell my mother about it.

Other websites specialize in one-sided reports about how inept the President is and or how inept those who don’t like the President are. Why can’t we put these “news” casters (bent shit cans) who report this kind of bilge on an ice floe bound for the tropics during hurricane season? On the floe, they could cast all the spoilt bait they want.

“News” these days has become rather like hotdogs. You don’t even want to ask what it’s made of. I think my journalism degree would prevent me from being hired at a lot of the port butter cutters that comprise what’s left of the fourth estate. My credentials include “swears like a sailor.” That won’t get me a job at CNN or FOX, though it should.

–Malcolm

Those who get to know me (and few are crazy enough t try) know that I’m very much like the Jock Stewart character in my novel Special Investigative Reporter.

‘The Collected Enchantments’ by Theodora Goss

I’m a fan of Goss’ fantasies, especially the three-book series, Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club. One thing that makes them fun is the incorporation of other well-known myths and stories. You’ll find the same glorious extrapolations in The Collected Enchantments.

From the Publisher

A monumental career retrospective

“In the tradition of great modern fantasists like Angela Carter and Marina Warner, Theodora Goss’s sublime tales are modern classics—beautiful, sly, sensual and deeply moving . . . I envy any reader encountering Goss’s work for the first time.”
—Elizabeth Hand, winner of the Mythopoeic, Nebula, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards

A wicked stepsister frets over all the ways in which she failed to receive her mother’s love. A lost woman travels through an enchanted forest looking for someone who can remind her of her name. A girl must wear down seven pairs of shoes to gain help from a witch. A fox makes a life with a human, but neither can deny their true natures. A young woman returns to her childhood home and the fantastic stories she left there. A man lets himself be taken prisoner by the Snow Queen to prove that the woman who loves him would walk barefoot through the ice to save him. Medusa cuts her hair for love.

The Collected Enchantments gathers retellings of folk and fairy tales in prose and verse from World Fantasy and Locus award-winning author Theodora Goss, creator of The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series. Drawing from her Mythopoeic Award-nominated collections In the Forest of Forgetting and Songs for Ophelia and her Mythopoeic Award-winning tome Snow White Learns Witchcraft, and adding new and uncollected stories and poems, The Collected Enchantments provides a resounding demonstration of how, as Jo Walton writes, Goss provides “a vivid, authentic and important voice” that, in the words of Jane Yolen, “transposes, transforms, and transcends times, eras, and old tales with ease.”

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the four-novel Florida Folk Magic Series set in the state’s panhandle of the 1950s. 

Sunday’s mixed bag

Timothy Egan’s new book A Fever in the Heartland, which came out in April, is chilling because of the vile group it describes, the fact that most people associate the KKK with the South, and the recent upsurge of hate groups. From the publisher’s description: “The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped ThemThe Roaring Twenties–the Jazz Age–has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.”While nobody I know has ever had a median nerve in his/her arm knicked by a needle during a standard blood draw for a doctor’s test, this happened to my wife a month ago and now it appears she will be stuck with the cost of seeing a neurologist and with the weekly physical therapy visits. Her right hand is pretty much out of service, causing–you might guess–hardship when trying to handwrite, type something, or pick up just about anything. There’s a lot of information online about this; from that, “the best” I can see is that her PT will go on forever. I will get all of my blood draws done in my left arm from now on out! I’m finally reading Anthony Doerr’s 3033 novel Cloud Cuckoo Land.  At 93 pages in, I can see that the story is just as crazy as the title suggests.  It has a 4.3 rating on Amazon, so others figured out how to soldier through the chaos. The New York Times review is headlined, “From Anthony Doerr, an Ode to Storytelling That Shows How It’s Done.” The review includes this comment: “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” a follow-up to Doerr’s best-selling novel “All the Light We Cannot See,” is, among other things, a paean to the nameless people who have played a role in the transmission of ancient texts and preserved the tales they tell. But it’s also about the consolations of stories and the balm they have provided for millenniums. It’s a wildly inventive novel that teems with life, straddles an enormous range of experience and learning, and embodies the storytelling gifts that it celebrates. My guilty TV fun includes watching “Swamp People: Serpent Invasion.” Supposing this has any reality to it, the show follows men and women catching Burmese pythons (and sometimes gators in the Everglades. I love the Everglades, a park that has survived almost every human attempt to destroy it. I saw an article somewhere that said we may never get rid of the pythons.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell does not include any pythons in his Florida Folk Magic Series because, at the time it is set, there were no known pythons in the Florida Panhandle. We had panthers then, however.

The four-book series begins with Conjure Woman’s Cat.

‘Pioneering Women of Glacier National Park’ by David R. Butler

This new book is a must for students, researchers, authors, and hikers in Glacier National Park, Montana.  Released March 27, the book is another in a string of titles about the park by long-time researcher and former geography professor David R. Butler who has worked and hiked through the park since the early 1970s.

From the Publisher

“Pioneering Women of Glacier National Park examines the role of early pioneering women in the pre-park period up through the first three decades of Glacier Park (1910-1940). The concept of ‘pioneering women’ includes a wide range of activities that were atypical for women during this time period. These activities range from Blackfeet and other Native American women carrying out extraordinary feats, to women homesteaders, wives of early Park rangers, writers visiting and writing about the park, artists engaged in outdoor painting, influential artists’ wives who furthered their husbands’ careers, and pioneering outdoorswomen. All helped advance the cause of putting female faces and names, largely ignored and anonymous up to this point, into the history of the park. The book also has several modern photographs taken by the author and others, illustrating landscape changes in Glacier Park since the early period of the park.”

Butler provided me with a list of the table of contents headings which one would normally see provided by the publisher had they activated Amazon’s “look inside” feature:

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Native American Pioneering Women

Pioneering Women Homesteaders and Settlers

Ranger Wives: Pioneers of a New National Park

Pioneering Women Authors of Glacier National Park

Influential Wives of Early Glacier Park Artists

Pioneering Women Artists of Glacier National Park

Pioneer Outdoorswomen of Glacier National Park

Afterword: The Lasting Legacy of the Pioneering Women of Glacier Park

Endnotes

Bibliography

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell, who also worked as a summer employee in Glacier National Park, has written fiction set in the park, and his account of the 1964 flood appears A View Inside Glacier National Park: 100 Years – 100 Stories edited by Kassandra Hardy.

The first potpourri of April

If I believed in omens, I would see it as a good sign that my riding mower started on the first try when I mowed the yard earlier this week. Now I have to get the older car started after it sat idle all winter. I don’t want the newer car smelling like gasoline after I refill the gas cans for the next lawn mowing adventure–coming soon to a blog post near you.As I finally finished re-reading Richard Powers’ The Overstory, my favorite quote is:  “You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. . . .” I also liked: “This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”In her post, “My Creative Process,” a favorite author Julianna Baggott describes an approach to writing that sounds very familiar to many of us who write. For me, her lead paragraph says it all: “My creative process doesn’t have edges. I am writing all the time. I experience the world as me but simultaneously as an artist looking for moments when the story world and the actual world bounce light off of each other. I am constantly running a story in my head, sometimes a few of them. I am constantly collecting moments from life to hoard for the next story. “ And then, too, “There’s the moment, inevitably, when the project leaves me—and the process that story has carved out inside of me ends—and the project becomes a product. Art, when money is involved, becomes a commodity. This is when I say goodbye to it emotionally. It’s hard and at the time when a lot of people start to get excited about sharing it with the world, I tend to say goodbye and snip all the wires that connect the story to my heart—like I’m diffusing a bomb.” I often use my Facebook headers for pictures of the locations of my books. This one shows a scene very typical of Florida Panhandle where I’ve set Conjure Woman’s Cat and the subsequent novels in that series. I try to show prospective readers where my words will take them–and remind myself about the environment where I grew up.When I used the name chow chow in my novel in progress, I wondered how many people–even in the South–know anything about this traditional Southern relish made from the last vegetables (except hot peppers) in the garden. Years ago, everyone here knew what it was and put up a lot of veggies by making it. In “real life” the relish looks just like Sally Vargas’ photo. If you want to experiment, you can find a good recipe here.And, I’ll finish with a hearty “welcome back to the States” for my brother and his wife who spent about a month touring Australia and New Zealand. When they said they came home experiencing a lot of jet lag, I mentioned that when I came home from the Pacific on an aircraft carrier, there wasn’t any jet lag, and I’m betting we had better chow (not chow chow) than Barry and Mary were served on the plane.

–Malcolm

PEN AMERICA CEO: PROTECTING FREE SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES ESSENTIAL TO PRESERVING ACADEMIC FREEDOM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 29, 2023

(WASHINGTON) — Today, PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel (pictured here) testified before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce’s hearing, “Diversity of Thought: Protecting Free Speech on College Campuses.”

Nossel testified that protecting free speech on college campuses is essential to preserving the academic freedom and institutional autonomy necessary for universities to continue to serve as incubators of democratic citizenship.

“Students often lack awareness of the First Amendment or the precepts of academic freedom, sometimes believing that the best answer to noxious ideas is to drown them out, or to call on university authorities to shut them down,” Nossel said in her opening statement. “At PEN America we argue that the essential drive to render American campuses more diverse, equitable, and inclusive need not – and must not – come at the expense of robust, uncompromising protections for free speech and academic freedom.”

In response to Ranking Member Robert Scott’s (VA-03) question regarding enacted laws restricting what can be taught in schools, Nossel stated:

“A principle is not a principle if it is not applied to all equally. To cherry pick certain ideas, certain course materials, certain theories and say, ‘these are out of bounds,’ that’s the core of what the First Amendment protects against – viewpoint-based discrimination, the notion that the government would be listing out particular topics, subjects of discussion, aspects of curriculum, and saying they are out of bounds.

Read Nossel’s full remarks here and watch the full hearing video here.

–

My father and mother were both journalists and journalism teachers. This means I grew up respecting the first amendment and supporting it at all costs, most often against our own government, and–when schools are involved–parents who believe their own personal comfort levels should supersede a teacher’s lesson plans and assigned books.

–Malcolm

Some of my best experiences were co-teaching journalism courses at Florida junior colleges with my father. I still learn from his textbooks even though technology has made the methods out of date.

Upcoming title, June 15, ‘The Last Lookout on Dunn Peak’ by Nancy Sule Hammond

Coming in June from Basalt Books, The Last Lookout on Dunn Peak is available for pre-order.

From the Publisher

“Some summers are destined to generate cherished memories. For married high school sweethearts Don and Nancy Hammond, they happened in 1972 and 1973, when Don’s lifelong dream of being a United States Forest Service fire lookout came true.

“Don’s first post, the Dunn Peak Lookout, was located eight miles northwest of Avery in Idaho’s St. Joe National Forest. Once they arrived, they breathlessly lugged provisions and water up steep stairs to its fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cab two stories above the forest floor. Furnishings included a single bed, small bookcase, cabinet, and table, and a wood stove. There was no electricity or running water. A battery powered two-way Motorola radio would be their only connection to the outside world. That night–engulfed by lightning strikes and filled with adrenalin–they faced their first storm.

“Unless it was foggy or raining, the Forest Service required Don to conduct binocular searches from the catwalk at least twenty minutes of every hour while he was on duty. He watched for smoke during the day and the glow of fire at night, and learned to distinguish between blue smoke plumes and white wisps of fog. Despite the primitive conditions, Don, Nancy, and their Dalmatian, Misty, settled in and came to love their lookout life. They spotted wildfires, were startled by their first cougar scream, encountered a wide variety of human and animal visitors, discovered delectable huckleberry patches, and simply enjoyed the enchanting beauty all around them.

“The Forest Service decided to close the Dunn Peak Lookout, so the couple spent the summer of 1973 at the Middle Sister Peak tower, ten miles southeast of Avery. In The Last Lookout, Nancy shares stories from those two exciting, magical fire seasons, along with their return as volunteers 37 years later. Interspersing regional fire history as well as dangers and details of the work, she journeys back to the narrow catwalks and stunning panoramas–a place where storms are building, the forest is dry, and any lightning strike could ignite a raging wildfire.”

About the Author

The daughter of a steel mill worker, Nancy Sule Hammond grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and fell for her future spouse at a high school dance. She received a biology degree from Kutztown University, then ran quality control tests on disposable medical syringes. But she yearned for adventure, and found it when her husband spent two summers as a fire lookout in Idaho’s St. Joe National Forest. They returned to the Middle Sister tower as volunteers in 2010. After decades away they moved back to Idaho, and recently celebrated their fifty-second anniversary.

Looking forward to this book! I’ve climbed up in a lot of Fire Towers and read accounts of people in them during thunderstorms. The work isn’t for the faint of heart.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat” and its three follow -up books, all of which are available on Kindle/Nook, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover.