friday december 29
After the April 2003 fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces, the world was horrified to learn that the Iraq Museum had been looted. The museum housed an enormous collection of Mesopotamian artifacts, and therefore the most ancient creations of human civilization. I remember a friend crying over the presumed loss of the wide-eyed worshipper (votive) figures , the Golden Lyre of Ur, and the pair of exquisite Ram in the Thicket statues, fabricated of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, copper, shell, and red limestone.
These are among the oldest Mesopotamian treasures, the 5,000-year-old legacy of the Sumerians, who gave us writing. Among the writings feared missing were the Code of Hammurabi, the best preserved among early bodies of law, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first surviving works of literature and still a great read.
A News Hour interview in July with reserves Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who had been charged with recovering the treasures, seemed to offer some hope, simply because Bogdanos made such a powerful impression. An assistant district attorney with a master’s degree in Classics, he himself seemed to exemplify civilization through a remarkable combination of idealism and resolution. Toward the end of the interview, Bogdanos was asked about his prospects for success. He replied with an almost laconic serenity:
“I'm a Marine. I expect to recover these items, no matter how long it takes…. To those who have taken the items, I urge them to listen to their conscience and their sense of duty in returning those items. And to those who need to be guided by emotions other than those, my message is simple: We will find you, no matter how long it takes and no matter where you are, we will find you, and we will recover this property.”
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My goal was to make $50 a week selling useless junk on eBay, and for about a month I did just that. Then, unfortunately, I began running out of useless junk that anyone else would want, and I'm at $52 for the entire last 30 days.
Kenneth Walton, author of Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, did much better. In about 1998 he was able to quit his job as a lawyer and sell the art he bought at garage sales and thrift shops for thousands of dollars a week. He spent $200 on Davenport's Art Reference & Price Guide and began to recognize the work of minor but collectible American artists. At one point he and his Army-buddy partner found a painting by Oscar Berninghaus at Goodwill, which they sold for $18,700.
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thursday december 28
For readers of post-apocalyptic fiction, or for those of you who just can’t wait for the world as we know it to end, here are two recent novels of note.
With A Meeting at Corvallis, S. M. Stirling brings to a close a trilogy (cited in a previous posting) set in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, following a catastrophe that renders useless all technology, power generation, and gunpowder. From chaos and brutality, feudal societies emerge with medieval capabilities and equivalencies.
But liberty versus tyranny is the familiar dynamic. The Clan MacKenzie, the Bearkillers, and the city-state of Corvallis form an alliance of communities that withstands dominion by the Portland Protectorate, a fascist-feudal nation led by the ruthless Lord Protector. (A former university educator, the Lord Protector is the worst sort of villain.)
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wednesday december 27
Elisabeth Robinson, a Hollywood producer and screenwriter whose credits include the movies Last Orders and Braveheart, published this semi-autobiographical work, her debut, in 2004. Robinson's younger sister died from leukemia in 1998. At the outset of The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters, her protagonist, Olivia Hunt, a struggling Hollywood producer, is contemplating suicide. She is interrupted by a call from her parents in Ohio: her newly married younger sister, Maddie, has been diagnosed with leukemia.
The novel is told through Olivia's letters: to her ex-boyfriend, Michael, whom she still loves; to the doctors at the hospital where her sister is being treated; to the head honchos at the studio where her current project, a film of Don Quixote, is having a hard time getting off the ground.
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Small people caught up in large events can be great characters for a novel. I think this is the fourth or fifth World War II novel I’ve posted about--not a theme I expected to see running through my blog entries, but there’s something about that combination of intimate, personal stories and the inexorable sweep of historic events that makes for great reading. So here’s another novel I can’t resist telling you about.
Melvyn Bragg’s
The Soldier’s Return is actually about the aftermath of the war, as you may guess from the title. It’s a quiet but heartbreaking novel about a soldier’s difficulty in readjusting to life back home in a northern English town.
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Ghosts and spooky happenings have always been interesting topics for books and stories.
Edgar Award winner Phillip DePoy has created a well-written fiction series about a folklorist named Fever Devlin who returns to his Appalachian roots and whose investigations delve in just short of the paranormal: The Devil's Hearth (2003), The Witch's Grave (2004), and the recent well-received A Minister's Ghost (2006).
Cree Black, Daniel Hecht's fictional paranormal investigator, explores haunted houses and weird happenings in City of Masks (2003), also available as a digital audio book; the series continues with Land of Echoes(2004) and Bones of the Barbary Coast (2006).
Another good ghost story is Jodi Picoult's Second Glance; it is one of those stories with characters and time playing tricks on the reader.
Some other books with a paranormal story line are the International Horror Guild's award winning Fogheart by Thomas Tessier, John Passarella's Kindred Spirit, and Charlie Price's Dead Connection.
tuesday december 26
Need a reading suggestion for that special oddball in your life? I may have a perfectly esoteric recommendation. If the person has an interest in the 1960's, the occult, eccentric people, and strange tales, Gary Lachman's intriguing Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius might be just the ticket (to ride). This fast-paced and highly entertaining reader of otherworldly and sometimes sordid activities alleges connections between many colorful figures such as: L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley, Charles Manson and the Beach Boys, Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey (founder of The Church of Satan), and other strange bedfellows too numerous to mention here.
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