I can recommend this Sixth Doctor novel to my Whovian classicist friends: it is set in a world where Antony and Cleopatra discovered alien technology and won the Battle of Actium, and a generation later, their twins and Cleopatra’s son by Julius Cæsar together are ruling the known world as an uneasy triumvirate. Of course, all is not as it seems, but Bulis has produced quite a good story with some quite subtle underlying themes of change and transformation, and in particular gives Peri a rather better story than she usually gets. The characterisation of the Sixth Doctor is a bit off-kilter, but actually in rather a good way. Good fun.
Monthly Archives: July 2011
July Books 13) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Bar
This is a lovely heartwarming novel, set in 1946 and told in epistolary form, about a young woman who uncovers the story of a small group of people in Guernsey who held together through the German occupation by setting up a book club. It had me captivated in the first few pages, which economically portray a traumatised small society coming to terms with the present and the future, and then develops into a more conventional but entirely pleasing love story. Strongly recommended.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-18-2011
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"It became clear to me that as a matter of policy, the hospital was coping with a large number of local patients using its ER for ordinary medical care by passive-aggressive neglect. Unless you walked in with an immediately and obviously life-threatening condition, time would be your triage, not a medical professional. If you could endure waiting eight to nine hours, that was proof that your condition was sufficiently serious that you might need urgent care."
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A sad occasion obviously but a lovely account. Look out for the photo of two Doctors and the vicar.
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Andrew Hickey not hugely impressed by Blackout / All Clear.
Well, that’s one mystery solved
July Books 12) Terre des Hommes, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For many years the phrase terre des hommes had a somewhat unusual connotation for me. My family visited Montreal in two successive summers, 1972 and 1973, when I was five and then six; and the place where we stayed was within walking distance of the decaying remains of the 1967 Expo, which had taken as its theme de Saint-Exupéry’s title. So the phrase “terre des hommes” evoked memories of desolate and derelict pavilions and disintegrating plastic sculptures. I haven’t been to Montreal in thirty-eight years, and I guess they have tidied it up by now.
But a few months ago I was discussing desert literature with my friend Mohamed Beissat, who actually comes from the Sahara, and he strongly recommended that I read Terre Des Hommes – and if possible in the original French, rather than in the English translation (Wind, Sand and Stars). I accepted his challenge, realising only later that it’s a very long time since I read a novel in French – it was L’Étranger, urged upon me by my then girlfriend, probably a quarter of a century ago. And though I did also read a graphic novel in French a few weeks ago, that’s not really the same challenge. I found it really tough going, and managed about a dozen pages a day, which is why it has taken me two weeks to get to the end.
It is a rather charming book. De Saint-Exupéry was there in the very early days of scheduled flights, across the Sahara and the Andes, an undertaking which was both constantly life-threatening and also gave the thoughtful pilot plenty of time to ponder the deep questions of continued existence. He reminded me, in a positive way, of the early Desert Fathers, though he is more fixed on the specifics of personal survival. The best and most famous passage his the story of his crash in and rescue from the Libyan desert; encounters with imminent death have a way of concentrating the mind.
I felt that it was not without flaws. Although de Saint-Exupéry constantly stresses our shared humanity, and indeed himself befriends, buys and releases a Moroccan slave; but the people he meets from other cultures (not only non-Europeans, but also the Polish workers who he meets on a train in the last chapter) are rather comprehensively othered, and his professions of equality seemed to me to include a taint of condescension. (Though maybe I would feel differently if I had read it in English rather than French.) Also there are very few women in the book at all, and we do not hear their voices.
Having said that, it must be one of the key books that inspired European intellectuals and peacemakers to seek a better way after the Second World War. I quoted one of his sentences in a post shortly after starting to read the book, and of course it is tragically ironic that the writer decribes how a character – whose name is Lécrivain! – disappears in mid-flight, never to land anywhere again; he must have been well aware of the likelihood of his own fate.
Top unread non-fiction:
Peleponnesian War | Innocents Abroad | Terre des Hommes | The Hero with a Thousand Faces | Race of a Lifetime / Game Change | Proust and the Squid | The Tipping Point | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Elementary Forms of Religious Life | Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | History of Christianity | History of the World in 100 Objects | A Room of One’s Own | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | The Last Mughal | Reading the Oxford English Dictionary | Jane Austen | Homage to Catalonia | The Road to Middle Earth | Essence of Christianity | The Strangest Man
Excursions on a Sunday
I set off a bit earlier than usual this morning to take B out for lunch; she does love the occasional chicken curry sandwich, eaten at a picnic bench in the park. Meandering back through the streets of the town where she lives I was astonished to come across a ruined church which I had never seen before, and we stopped to explore it. She was in an unusually good mood, which was very nice to see:
It’s not clear in the last one, but she is actually jumping with joy. I did wonder if B was fascinated, as people like her often are, by the peculiar and slightly pleasing geometry of the ruined buildings.
The church turns out to have a rather sad history. It was at the centre of the old béguinage / begijnhof of the town, but most of the historic buildings were flattened in an Allied bombing raid in 1944 (I checked the official records of the RAF’s 537 Squadron, and all that is noted is that the raid, whose target was an airfield some distance away, was considered successful) and the church itself, parts of which dated from 1250 was then burnt out in a fire in the mid-1970s. The ruins were restored as a public park in 1997.
The rest of us went out for a different excursion in the afternoon. Our province is holding a ‘hidden heritage’ day today and F, given the catalogue to browse from, chose a windmill near Aarschot as a thing he would like to see. (Most of the other options were churches.) I’m very pleased with this first picture taken from the carpark:
but it doesn’t quite capture the impressive speed with which the sails were turning. The effects on my family’s hair are more visible here:
Inside we were able to see the machinery, the huge wheels spinning with fearsome momentum:
and the corn disappearing down to be ground by the millstones:
The mill was actually built in 1667 in Mechelen, and then moved to its current base near Aarschot in 1833. So it has been in its second location slightly longer than in its first location, 178 years rather than 166.
Good choice, F!
Answer to Doctor Who Trivia Question
The answer to yesterday’s question, which Doctor Who companion features in this story…
…may surprise you:
As several people speculated, it is a story called “A Message of Mystery” from one of the spinoff Dalek books, the original Dalek Book of 1964, and must be the very first example of a published adventure in the Whoniverse featuring a canonical companion but with no Doctor in sight.
Gibbon Chapter LVI: Italy and the Normans
In this chapter, the Byzantines, Saracens and Franks battle over Italy, and the Normans arrive and take over the south of the peninsula and Sicily, as well as further adventures in the vicinity. Also my reflections on Italy as a concept, learning and toleration, and a strange story about attempted castration which somehow appropriately ends up with Tristram Shandy.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-17-2011
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Brilliant – now you know what to do with your Android! (Options include faking a phone call on it).
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House whose walls look as if they are entirely made of growing plants – awesome!
Who trivia question
Which Doctor Who companion features in this story?
(I keep on finding more spinoff literature…)
“A Game of Thrones”; and July Books 11) A Feast For Crows, by George R.R. Martin
Just to start with a few lines on the brilliant TV adaptation of the first book of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. I thoroughly enjoyed it; the acting and staging were superb, and while I wouldn’t go as far as Abigail Nussbaum in extolling its superiority to the original book, I certainly agree that it builds very effectively on what I felt was anyway an effective novel.
It is going to be very difficult to select a single episode to nominate for next year’s Hugos for Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form, though I suppose either or both of the last two might be appropriate; to be honest I’d rather nominate the entire series in the Long Form category even though it will then be doomed to defeat by this year’s cinematic releases.
Changing the subject back to the books, back in 2006/2007 I started rereading the whole series, in the hope that A Dance With Dragons would come out neatly in time to fit my pacing. But after I had reread A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and the two parts of A Storm of Swords, the new book seemed no closer to coming out and I left A Feast for Crows on the shelf – I had read it for the first time shortly after it came out in 2005, which was a lot more recent then. Now, of course, I have been caught out by A Dance With Dragons finally appearing, so felt a sudden need to catch up.
I don’t have a lot to add to what I wrote about it, getting on for six years ago.
Anyway, I found it an easy and very pleasurable (if long) read, and am very much looking forward to starting the next volume.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-16-2011
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Would you believe it? A Watership Down fanfic that sends a chill down the spine!
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A far better idea for reforming the Upper House than the government's current proposals.
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"A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask. Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye."
Torchwood – The Lost Files
Torchwood is on British TV again this evening, our transatlantic friends having already seen the new episode; but we’ve also had three new Torchwood audios over the last few days, broadcast on BBC Radio Four and downloadable from the Beeb’s site, featuring John Barrowman as Jack, Eve Myles as Gwen and Gareth David Lloyd as Ianto (which gives you an idea of the setting in continuity).
The first thing to say about them is that, unlike in the three Torchwood audio plays broadcast two years ago, John Barrowman appears to have woken up and discovered how to act without the visuals. All three of the regulars are on form here, and most of the guest cast are too.
And all three plays deal in slightly different ways with cheating death, which I suspect ties in to the theme of the new television Torchwood as well. Looking forward to it.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-14-2011
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Avoiding the ripoff prices on Eurostar.com!
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"Nursery is run for working parents: open 8-6, three meals a day provided, flexible arrival and departure time, and one itemised monthly bill. School is very different: closed 14 weeks of the year, and finishing around 3pm the other 38."
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Republicans fail in bid to defend freedom from energy-saving lightbulbs.
July Books 10) The Glamour Chase, by Gary Russell
This is one of the best New Who books I have read, and certainly the most mature of the standard range of Eleventh Doctor novels (which I felt generally have been written for a younger readership). The plot is an alien conflict being played out in rural England in 1936, but the point is the rather good exploration of the regular characters – particularly Rory, from a point in time shortly before his wedding to Amy – and a lot of squeeful continuity references. And I detected a load of other literary allusions in the story as well: I don’t think I’m completely imagining either Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Agatha Christie (I almost wrote that Russell did The Unicorn and the Wasp, but of course that was Gareth Roberts). Anyway, this one is highly recommended to those fans of previous ranges of Who novels who have felt something a bit lacking in the New Series Adventures.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-12-2011
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"Pratchett was very much aware of some of the dreadful sexism in his source material, and the female characters he wrote were often in direct response to what he saw in the fantasy genre. His intentions to point out the silliness of the portrayal of women in fantasy, sadly, backfired somewhat."
July Books 9) The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
A rather bold novel which merges the Harry Potter books with The Secret History by Donna Tartt with a certain amount of Narnia too. I liked the basic ideas a lot, especially the subversive concept of making the central characters at wizard school a bunch of maladjusted students in their late teens and early twenties; and some of the individual scenes and plot twists are very well executed. But it is rather annoyingly structured, with the plot taking a long time to get going and then seeming not very clear about when the story is over.
Another of the books included in the Hugo Voter Package to help us make up our minds how to vote in the John W. Campbell Award For New Writers. I liked The Magicians much more than Monster Hunter International, and sufficiently more than I Am Not a Serial Killer to be fairly sure that I will rank Grossman ahead of Larry Correia and Dan Wells, but behind Lauren Beukes. (Which still leaves me with the short stories of Saladin Ahmed to go through.)
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-11-2011
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Use of "genre" as a particle.
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" For those of us already concerned about Amazon's internal ethics, this anti-competitive takeover is worrying" – too right!
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I am privileged to have participated in this project an early stage.
July Books 8) The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio
It is not all that long since I read The Canterbury Tales, which comes from the same century and draws from the same roots (the Reeve’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale are indeed both in the Decameron in slightly different form). But I was struck by how much more enjoyable the Decameron is. For a start, it is actually complete – ten days of ten people telling a tale each, to give a hundred short stories and a framing narrative. It is also striking that the dullest of Boccaccio’s stories (the ones from Day Six with the untranslatable punchlines) are still better than the worst of Chaucer (the Monk’s Tale, the Parson’s Tale, and for my money the interminable Knight’s Tale). Boccaccio’s geography is also generally better than Chaucer’s, including even in Europe north of the Alps – one character ends up in Strangford, County Down; I’m not sure that Chaucer even mentions Ireland.
These are almost all great tales of incident, and I think anyone with an interest in the mechanics of storytelling would find useful material here. While almost all stories are set in fourteenth century Europe, with humour depending on an understanding of society’s expectations of marriage and the Church, a lot of it I think is basic commentary on the human situation and could be easily transferred to other situations; or simply updated to the idiom of a new century, as Shakespeare did in All’s Well That Ends Well. I am sure there are better translations out there than the 1982 Musa/Bondanella version for Penguin which I read, but even that gets a very strong recommendation from me.
Septuple time
Here’s a series of songs with seven beats to the bar:
The Beatles, “All You Need Is Love” (the verses only, the chorus seems to be in 4/4):
Rather more frantically, “Mother”, an early song by The Police:
On a different plane, the chorus “Old Joe Has Gone Fishing” from Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes:
Probably even more famous than “All You Need Is Love” (and qualifies better for this list since it is mostly in 7/4) – “Money” by Pink Floyd:
If you watch none of the others, do watch Dave Brubeck’s joyous “Unsquare Dance”:
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Russians
1) Good lines
On why he is addressing centuries of barbarian activity in one short chapter, having devoted three long ones to the few decades of the rise of Islam:
If, in the account of this interesting people [the Arabs], I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my transgression, or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world. But the same labor would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages, who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual emigration. Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valour brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant.
That last statement is a grand rhetorical flourish, but it wasn’t at all true of the Russians at the time Gibbon was writing, and not really true of the Hungarians though a better argument could be made. It’s fair enough comment on the Bulgarians, and possibly the Ukrainians if we allow them to be the Scythians and the ruled rather than rulers of Kiev (Kiow as Gibbon calls it).
2) Summary
Another short chapter (30 pages) which does what it says on the tin, taking the Bulgarians, Hungarians and Russians in turn and looking at their interactions with the Byzantine Empire over its later centuries. Gibbon is clearly taken with the scholarship of the Hungarians, and the romance of the Russians; rather less so with the Bulgarians. Essentially this is a chapter of three short national histories, each with a different ending – the Bulgarians end up dominated and partially assimilated, the Hungarians assertive and free, and the Russians gain Christianity but become ever more isolated.
3) Points arising
Hungarians as libertarian heroes
Gibbon is puzzled because the Hungarians are related linguistically and ethnically to the apathetic inhabitants of Arctic Scandinavia:
With this narrative we might be reasonably content, if the penetration of modern learning had not opened a new and larger prospect of the antiquities of nations. The Hungarian language stands alone, and as it were insulated, among the Sclavonian dialects; but it bears a close and clear affinity to the idioms of the Fennic race, of an obsolete and savage race, which formerly occupied the northern regions of Asia and Europe. The genuine appellation of Ugri or Igours is found on the western confines of China; their migration to the banks of the Irtish is attested by Tartar evidence; a similar name and language are detected in the southern parts of Siberia; and the remains of the Fennic tribes are widely, though thinly scattered from the sources of the Oby to the shores of Lapland. The consanguinity of the Hungarians and Laplanders would display the powerful energy of climate on the children of a common parent; the lively contrast between the bold adventurers who are intoxicated with the wines of the Danube, and the wretched fugitives who are immersed beneath the snows of the polar circle. Arms and freedom have ever been the ruling, though too often the unsuccessful, passion of the Hungarians, who are endowed by nature with a vigorous constitution of soul and body. Extreme cold has diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of the Laplanders; and the arctic tribes, alone among the sons of men, are ignorant of war, and unconscious of human blood; a happy ignorance, if reason and virtue were the guardians of their peace!
There is of course a confusion here between the Ugric languages, of which Hungarian is one, and the Uighurs of western China, whose language is actually Turkic.
But my point is that the Hungarians are here anointed by Gibbon as passionate about “arms and freedom”, thanks to their “vigorous constitution”, a word definitely chosen to reflect political debate as well, as we can tell from the end of the Hungarian section:
…the house of Arpad reigned three hundred years in the kingdom of Hungary. But the freeborn Barbarians were not dazzled by the lustre of the diadem, and the people asserted their indefeasible right of choosing, deposing, and punishing the hereditary servant of the state.
Gibbon is a bit ambiguous about whether that last bit is a good idea – back in Chapter VII he was rather defensive of the hereditary principle, but he was writing that before Britain lost the American war.
4) Coming next
Gibbon Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Russians
Another short chapter (30 pages) which does what it says on the tin, taking the Bulgarians, Hungarians and Russians in turn and looking at their interactions with the Byzantine Empire over its later centuries. Gibbon is clearly taken with the scholarship of the Hungarians, and the romance of the Russians; rather less so with the Bulgarians. Essentially this is a chapter of three short national histories, each with a different ending – the Bulgarians end up dominated and partially assimilated, the Hungarians assertive and free, and the Russians gain Christianity but become ever more isolated.
RIP Betty Ford
When we stayed in Washington in 2005, the table where we ate breakfast at our hotel was beside a tremendously vigorous picture of Betty Ford dancing on a table in the White House. I kid you not.
Anyway, it’s a sad reason to revisit my various stats.
Longevity of women married to American Presidents and Vice-Presidents (top twelve, including the two oldest still living, above the cut):
Bess Truman: born 13 Feb 1885, died 18 Oct 1982, aged 97 years and 248 days.
Ann Gerry: born 12 Aug 1753, died 17 Mar 1849, aged 95 years and 217 days.
Lady Bird Johnson: born 22 Dec 1912, died 11 Jul 2007, aged 94 years and 201 days.
Jane Wyman: born 4 Jan 1914, died 10 Sep 2007, aged 93 years and 250 days (divorced Ronald Reagan before he became President).
Betty Ford: born 8 Apr 1918, died 8 Jul 2011, aged 93 years and 91 days.
Ilo Wallace: born 10 Mar 1888, died 22 Feb 1981, aged 92 years and 348 days.
Jennie Hobart: born 30 Jan 1849, died 8 Jan 1941, aged 91 years and 343 days.
Tod Rockefeller: born 17 Jun 1907, died 21 Apr 1999, aged 91 years and 308 days (divorced Nelson before he became Vice-President).
Caro Dawes: born 6 Jan 1866, died 3 Oct 1957, aged 91 years and 271 days.
Eliza Bowen Jumel: born 7 Apr 1775, died 16 Jul 1865, aged 90 years and 100 days (married and divorced Aaron Burr after he had been Vice-President).
Judy Agnew: born 23 Apr 1921, still living, aged 90 years and 77 days.
Nancy Reagan: born 6 Jul 1921, still living, aged 90 years and 3 days.
Ellen Hamlin: born 14 Sep 1835, died 1 Feb 1925, aged 89 years and 139 days.
Edith Wilson: born 15 Oct 1872, died 28 Dec 1961, aged 89 years and 74 days (married husband while he was President).
Anna Harrison: born 25 Jul 1775, died 25 Feb 1864, aged 88 years and 214 days.
Sarah Polk: born 4 Sep 1803, died 14 Aug 1891, aged 87 years and 344 days (married husband while he was President).
Edith Roosevelt: born 6 Aug 1861, died 30 Sep 1948, aged 87 years and 55 days.
Muriel Humphrey: born 20 Feb 1912, died 20 Sep 1998, aged 86 years and 213 days.
Barbara Bush: born 8 Jun 1925, still living, aged 86 years and 31 days.
Lucretia Garfield: born 19 Apr 1832, died 14 Mar 1918, aged 85 years and 329 days.
Happy Rockefeller: born 9 Jun 1926, still living, aged 85 years and 30 days.
Lois Marshall: born 9 May 1873, died 7 Jan 1958, aged 84 years and 242 days.
Abigail Adams: born 11 Nov 1744, died 28 Oct 1828, aged 83 years and 351 days.
Rosalynn Carter: born 18 Aug 1927, still living, aged 83 years and 325 days.
Frances Cleveland: born 21 Jul 1864, died 29 Oct 1947, aged 83 years and 100 days (married husband while he was President).
Mamie Eisenhower: born 14 Nov 1896, died 1 Nov 1979, aged 82 years and 352 days.
Helen Taft: born 2 Jun 1861, died 22 May 1943, aged 81 years and 354 days.
Pat Nixon: born 16 Mar 1912, died 22 Jun 1993, aged 81 years and 98 days.
Dolley Madison: born 20 May 1768, died 12 Jul 1849, aged 81 years and 53 days.
Mary Breckinridge: born 16 Aug 1826, died 8 Oct 1907, aged 81 years and 53 days.
Joan Mondale: born 8 Aug 1930, still living, aged 80 years and 335 days.
Eliza Hendricks: born 23 Nov 1823, died 3 Nov 1903, aged 79 years and 345 days.
Etty Garner: born 17 Jul 1869, died 17 Aug 1948, aged 79 years and 31 days.
Grace Coolidge: born 3 Jan 1879, died 8 Jul 1957, aged 78 years and 187 days.
Eleanor Roosevelt: born 11 Oct 1884, died 7 Nov 1962, aged 78 years and 27 days.
Louisa Adams: born 12 Feb 1775, died 1 May 1852, aged 77 years and 79 days.
Julia Grant: born 26 Jan 1826, died 14 Dec 1902, aged 76 years and 323 days.
Carrie Sherman: born 16 Nov 1856, died 5 Oct 1931, aged 74 years and 323 days.
Ellen Colfax: born 26 Jul 1836, died 4 Mar 1911, aged 74 years and 221 days.
Floride Calhoun: born 15 Feb 1792, died 25 Jul 1866, aged 74 years and 161 days.
Anna Morton: born 18 May 1846, died 14 Aug 1918, aged 72 years and 88 days.
Martha Washington: born 2 Jun 1731, died 22 May 1802, aged 70 years and 354 days.
Letitia Stevenson: born 8 Jan 1843, died 25 Dec 1913, aged 70 years and 352 days.
Sophia Dallas: born 25 Jun 1798, died 11 Jan 1869, aged 70 years and 199 days.
Lynne Cheney: born 14 Aug 1941, still living, aged 69 years and 329 days.
Lou Hoover: born 28 Mar 1874, died 7 Jan 1944, aged 69 years and 284 days.
Julia Tyler: born 4 May 1820, died 10 Jul 1889, aged 69 years and 67 days.
Caroline Fillmore: born 21 Oct 1813, died 11 Aug 1881, aged 67 years and 294 days (married husband after his term as President).
Cornelia Fairbanks: born 1848, died 24 Oct 1913, aged about 65.
Eliza Johnson: born 4 Oct 1810, died 15 Jan 1876, aged 65 years and 102 days.
Jacqueline Kennedy: born 28 Jul 1929, died 19 May 1994, aged 64 years and 295 days.
Dorothy Barkley: born 1882, died 10 Mar 1947, aged about 65.
Laura Bush: born 4 Nov 1946, still living, aged 64 years and 247 days.
Florence Harding: born 15 Aug 1860, died 21 Nov 1924, aged 64 years and 98 days.
Peggy Taylor: born 21 Sep 1788, died 14 Aug 1852, aged 63 years and 327 days.
Hillary Clinton: born 26 Oct 1947, still living, aged 63 years and 256 days.
Mary Lincoln: born 13 Dec 1818, died 16 Jul 1882, aged 63 years and 215 days.
Annie Curtis: born 24 Dec 1860, died 20 Jun 1924, aged 63 years and 178 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Tipper Gore: born 19 Aug 1948, still living, aged 62 years and 324 days.
Elizabeth Monroe: born 30 Jun 1768, died 23 Sep 1830, aged 62 years and 85 days.
Marilyn Quayle: born 29 Jul 1949, still living, aged 61 years and 345 days.
Rachel Jackson: born 15 Jun 1767, died 22 Dec 1828, aged 61 years and 190 days (died just before husband’s term as President).
Jill Biden: born 5 Jun 1951, still living, aged 60 years and 34 days.
Caroline Harrison: born 1 Oct 1832, died 25 Oct 1892, aged 60 years and 24 days (died during husband’s term as President).
Ida McKinley: born 8 Jun 1847, died 26 May 1907, aged 59 years and 352 days.
Lucy Hayes: born 28 Aug 1831, died 25 Jun 1889, aged 57 years and 301 days.
Jane Pierce: born 12 Mar 1806, died 2 Dec 1863, aged 57 years and 265 days.
Cornelia Clinton: born 19 Nov 1744, died 15 Mar 1800, aged 55 years and 116 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Abigail Fillmore: born 13 Mar 1798, died 30 Mar 1853, aged 55 years and 17 days.
Ellen Wilson: born 15 May 1860, died 6 Aug 1914, aged 54 years and 83 days (died during husband’s term as President).
Jane Barkley: born 23 Sep 1911, died 6 Sep 1964, aged 52 years and 348 days.
Letitia Tyler: born 12 Nov 1790, died 10 Sep 1842, aged 51 years and 302 days (died during husband’s term as President).
Mary Wheeler: born 1828, died 3 Mar 1876, aged about 48 (died before husband became Vice-President).
Theodosia Burr: born 5 Oct 1746, died 28 May 1794, aged 47 years and 235 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Michelle Obama: born 17 Jan 1964, still living, aged 47 years and 174 days.
Hannah Tompkins: born 28 Aug 1781, died 18 Feb 1829, aged 47 years and 173 days.
Harriet Wilson: born 21 Nov 1824, died 28 May 1870, aged 45 years and 188 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Ellen Arthur: born 30 Aug 1837, died 12 Jan 1880, aged 42 years and 134 days (died before husband became Vice-President/President).
Evelyn Colfax: born 1823, died 10 Jul 1863, aged about 40 (died before husband became Vice-President).
Sarah Hamlin: born 2 Nov 1815, died 17 Apr 1855, aged 39 years and 166 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Hannah Van Buren: born 8 Mar 1783, died 5 Feb 1819, aged 35 years and 333 days (died before husband became Vice-President/President)..
Lucy Morton: born 22 Jul 1836, died 11 Jul 1871, aged 34 years and 354 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Martha Jefferson: born 30 Oct 1748, died 6 Sep 1782, aged 33 years and 311 days (died before husband became Vice-President/President).
Neilia Biden: born 28 Jul 1942, died 18 Dec 1972, aged 30 years and 143 days (died before husband became Vice-President).
Alice Roosevelt: born 29 Jul 1861, died 14 Feb 1884, aged 22 years and 199 days (died before husband became Vice-President/President).
Betty Ford ranks ninth (or eighth if you are literal) of those who survived their husband’s terms as President:
Mary Harrison 54.8 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was President)
Frances Cleveland 50.7 years
Julia Tyler 44.4 years
Sarah Polk 42.4 years
Edith Wilson 40.8 years
Edith Roosevelt 39.6 years
Lady Bird Johnson 38.5 years
Lucretia Garfield 36.5 years
Betty Ford 34.5 years
Jacqueline Kennedy 30.5 years
Helen Taft 30.2 years
Bess Truman 29.7 years
Caroline Fillmore 28.4 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was President)
Grace Coolidge 28.3 years
Abigail Adams 27.7 years
Julia Grant 25.8 years
Louisa Adams 23.2 years
Anna Harrison 22.9 years
(Nancy Reagan – still living – 22.5 years)
Pat Nixon 18.9 years
Mamie Eisenhower 18.8 years
Jane Wyman 18.6 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was President)
(Barbara Bush – still living – 18.5 years)
Eleanor Roosevelt 17.6 years
Mary Lincoln 17.3 years
Lou Hoover 10.8 years
(Hillary Clinton – still living – 10.5 years)
Lucy Hayes 8.3 years
Eliza Johnson 6.9 years
Jane Pierce 6.7 years
Ida McKinley 5.7 years
Elizabeth Monroe 5.6 years
Martha Washington 5.2 years
Laura Bush – still living – 2.5 years)
Peggy Taylor 2.1 years
Florence Harding 1.3 years
Abigail Fillmore 0.1 years
But surprisingly she is two places lower, eleventh, of those who survived their husband’s term as Vice-President, though could again be counted as eighth if you are literal:
Eliza Bowen Jumel 60.4 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was Vice-President)
Ellen Hamlin 59.9 years
Julia Tyler 48.3 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was Vice-President)
Edith Roosevelt 47.0 years
Mary Breckinridge 46.6 years
Lady Bird Johnson 43.6 years
Jennie Hobart 41.1 years
Ellen Colfax 38.0 years
(Judy Agnew – still living – 37.7 years)
Bess Truman 37.7 years
Betty Ford 36.9 years
Ilo Wallace 36.1 years
(Happy Rockefeller – still living – 34.5 years)
Ann Gerry 34.3 years
Grace Coolidge 33.9 years
Floride Calhoun 33.6 years
Pat Nixon 32.4 years
Abigail Adams 31.7 years
Caroline Fillmore 31.1 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was President)
(Joan Mondale – still living – 30.5 years)
Muriel Humphrey 29.7 years
Caro Dawes 28.6 years
Anna Morton 25.4 years
(Barbara Bush – still living – 22.5 years)
Tod Rockefeller 22.3 years (possibly doesn’t count, as not married to husband while he was Vice-President)
Sophia Dallas 19.9 years
Carrie Sherman 18.9 years
(Marilyn Quayle – still living – 18.5 years)
Eliza Hendricks 17.9 years
Letitia Stevenson 16.8 years
Jane Barkley 11.6 years
Eliza Johnson 10.8 years
(Tipper Gore – still living – 10.5 years)
Etty Garner 7.6 years
Cornelia Fairbanks 4.6 years
Hannah Tompkins 4.0 years
Abigail Fillmore 2.7 years
(Lynne Cheney – still living – 2.5 years)
Letitia Tyler 1.4 years
Edited to add: Living individuals now added to second and third lists.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-9-2011
July Books 7) The Day I Swapped My Dad For 2 Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman
Fun and yet somewhat creepy short graphic novel about a boy who gives away his dad in return for his friend’s goldfish. Dave McKean on form as illustrator too. Though one does wonder what is going on in town that makes so many kids anxious to acquire a father, even one who only sits and reads the newspaper.
Google Plus
I appear to be on it now. Feel free to add me if you are there too.
July Books 6) The Faerie Queene: a selection of critical essays, edited by Peter Bayley
I have not read a single line of Edmund Spenser’s late sixteenth century epic, The Faerie Queene, but I am uncomfortably aware that if I am ever to try and grasp the history of Ireland in Spenser’s time, I must some day give it a try, and this collection of scholarly essays on the poem seemed a plausible way in.
Perusing academic analysis of a work which one has not actually read risks being as boring as hearing about other people’s hilariously funny dreams, but the editor chose well here, and most of the essays are at least comprehensible and some even interesting. The ones that stood out for me were by Rosemond Tuve (who I hadn’t heard of previously), C.S. Lewis, Frank Kermode, and the editor himself (Peter Bayley). But they all gave me useful pointers to navigate the poem when I do get around to it.
I did wonder about Spenser’s possible influence on two later writers; I don’t think I have seen him cited as such in either case, but both must have read The Faerie Queene given what I know of their careers. The first is Tolkien, of course, who shared Spenser’s goal of writing a national epic for England, and like him succeeded to an extent. There are of course differences – Spenser was vehemently anti-Catholic, Tolkien quietly pro – but I sense a congruence in the political/cultural goal of the work. The second is Roger Zelazny, whose Amber books, though rooted in a framework which owes a lot to Arthurian influences, wander around rather like Spenser’s knights seem to, without really reaching a conclusion but with some very pretty writing along the way. My eye was caught by Spenser’s character Florimel, also the full name (or maybe nickname) of Zelazny’s princess Flora.
Anyway, it’s a short book, and more digestible than many such volumes.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-8-2011
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Skull of 1879 murder victim found in David Attenborough's garden.
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Short answer: yes, it was.
July Books 5) Doctor Who Annual 1986
This was the last of the old Doctor Who annuals, a series which started in 1966 and ended in 1986. It is one of the more interesting ones – not a huge variety of material, with just seven stories and a feature piece about the work of a make-up artist on the show, but the stories are fairly better than those in the 1985 season which preceded this annual; the Doctor / Peri relationship seems rather more on track, and both are drawn in loving detail; there are two stories featuring the Master, obviously the Jonathan Pryce incarnation from The Curse of Fatal Death judging by the art. Going back to 1966, I was struck that one story, “Beauty and the Beast”, reads like an obvious rewrite of The Savages, and another, “The Radio Waves”, has significant borrowings from The War Machines
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-6-2011
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Hooray! "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction to be published online, with text available free – The third edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the definitive reference work in the field,
will be released online later this year by the newly-formed ESF, Ltd, in association with Victor
Gollancz, the SF & Fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, whose support will enable the
text to be available free to all users." -
Alex is 10 years old… Google is basically just going to delete his last two years of email messages (they don't offer any way to log in and export his messages), and plans to cut him off from his family until he turns 13.
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Big Finish Productions is thrilled to announce that it has signed a licence deal with B7 Enterprises to produce original audiobooks and novels based on Terry Nation’s popular science fiction series Blake’s 7.
Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles will be launching in Spring 2012 on CD and download, and will be performed by the original stars of the TV series.
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"I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay’s *Voyage to Arcturus* and Well’s *First Men in the Moon.* It is better than any of Stapleton’s. It hasn’t got Ray Bradbury’s delicacy, but then it has ten times his emotional power, and far more mythopoeia." (Thanks to Andrew Hickey for alerting me to this.)
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"From today I will no longer be reading any articles, whether online or in the paper, published by The Sun, The News of the World or The Daily Mail."
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Really bad news as Amazon buys The Book Depository. I'm finding eBay a better and better source for my books.