Author Archives: michaelulinedwards

GULLIGAN’S ISLAND

Posted on by

0

I follow the news closely, but on the whole I’d rather watch reruns of Gulligan’s Island than the PBS Newshour. Sometimes it is better to be stuck on an isolated, desert island where everyone has enough space, there is food for everyone, and clean water is plentiful. It is a much cheerier locale without Internet or telephone connections than the dismal, unchanging island and inhabitants advanced in William Goldman’s Lord of the Flies, an episodic novel much like a TV show.

It is important and improbable to appreciate Gulligan’s Island. On the week before Christmas who would have thought that Mary Ann’s photograph wold be printed on the first page of Not Born Yesterday – News for Smart & Savvy Adults. Mary Ann looks terrific. Anyone who is eighteen years or older should stand and salute.

The interview with Dawn Wells aka Mary Ann (have you ever noticed no woman is named Dusk) gives some personal details. Dawn Wells was athletic but had bad knees (not evident on the show). Her youthful activities were jettisoned except canoeing and archery (neither evident on the show or she alone would have rowed to other islands and gotten help). When growing up she wanted to be a pediatric surgeon (not useful on the show). She went to college and onto the University of Washington where she became a theatre major (which is what a lot of people in Hollywood do).

Dawn Wells has now co-authored a book What Would Mary Ann Do? A Life Guide. I hope its tales and advice comes from the real life experiences of Dawn Wells, and not from the TV show. In the interview Dawn Wells is frank about the show: “If you’re a ten year old kid watching…, there’s not much to date it ‘ a desert island is a desert island.'”

I’m happy to learn that the rivalry between Ginger (Tina Louise) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) was only fable; Natalie Schaffer, Lovey Howell, was a real human being. Dawn Wells has credits in 150 TV shows and films and 60 theatrical productions since her Mary Ann role.

It is a Hollywood storied career with a book along the way – be positive, have friends, keep and generate new interests. That is good advice for every member of the human race. And for Dawn Wells, Mary Ann could have done much worse.

Dawn

IS THIS RIGHT?

Posted on by

0

Yep, but it is daunting. A few blogs ago, I mentioned that I was reading and came up with subjects for three new original novels to write.

I now know which one I’ll write first. Spotting the subject, I promptly staked my claim, but I wouldn’t worry about it until January. Unbidden waters rose, and I could not stop the flow. I had to control it, regularize my thinking, add rigor and rough it out. Write the general subject of each chapter. It took less than five minutes to write 50 words, also giving subsidiary issues within chapters.

That productivity was fun and elating: Family, profession, pressures, sibling rivalries and marriage, in-laws, children – all over a 40 year period. I did not finish the chapter subjects but I realized this isn’t 50,000 words. I sense it is 100,000 or more.

Yet the hooks of that story are in me. To get loose, I have to write it.

OIL AND ITS PRICE

Posted on by

0

On Thanksgiving Day OPEC declined to cut its production of oil. That means Saudi Arabia refused to cut its production whilst all other producers would maintain their production of oil and oil sales. The price of oil has declined since that decision.

One talking point, utterly stupid revealing a complete lack of understanding and knowledge about oil and production in the United States, is the Saudi Arabian move will affect oil production from fracking. These commentators are ignorant.

Most tracked oil is produced at the current market price. More wells are drilled to maintain pressure within a field, not always to produce. Wells must be drilled to maintain production. Many of the wells drilled in 2010 – 2012 produce oils at a lower cost per barrel than the current market price. Much of the expense in drilling involves the drilling rig and specialized employees. Costs of frack-drilling have declined since 2007.

As Americans have demonstrated this oil can be got at quickly, within a year or two. We have railroads to bring in heavy equipment and trucks to move it on site. Warren Buffet, Obama’s friend, owns the primary railroad.

It is a losing proposition for any country to believe it can diminish or stop American oil production through fracking. The UAE attempted to diminish tracking for natural gas by producing a misleading movie starring Matt Damon released in 2012. The UAE has loads of natural gas which it would like to deliver in liquified form to American harbors. Instead, that market is gone.

Who wants big liquified natural gas facilities in America’s harbors? All Americans should raise their hands.

The Saudi Arabians are much smarter than the TV and print people give them credit. They have a product, oil. They have a global market to get the product to. First question, will Saudi Arabia be around as a country?

The Saudis look at Iran, nuclear research and reactors leading to bomb making. Before the bomb became an issue there was a century of mistrust between the Arabs, largely of the Sunni sect of Islam, and the Irans, mostly of the Shiia sect of Islam. What are the Americans doing? Nothing. They just gave the Irans six or eight more months to negotiate a deal, which was supposed to be completed by 2014. A bomb may be forthcoming by the time Obama leaves office.

If Iran does not have money from oil, its nuclear program may slow a lot.

The Russians are the real target of the Saudi move. The Russians produce more than 9,000,000 barrels of oil a day. Much of that oil is produced of the large area of Siberia. It is ordinary oil.

Last month the Russians and Chinese agreed to build an oil pipeline from Russia to China. Who’s going to finance the pipeline? Who’s building it? Will it be built if there is not enough oil to transport? Will it be built if the price of oil is low?

A chunk of Siberian oil has been going west. Sanctions affect those sales. Sanctions affect that production: Maintenance cannot be effectively and efficiently performed on the wells in wide spread fields. The price of oil affects those wells. If it costs $80-90 a barrel to lift and transport Siberian oil, why do it if the oil can be delivered in a harbor with a refinery close by in China for $70?

Production of high priced Russian oil will decline. There will be no drilling and no maintenance. How long will the Russians lose money? The Russians can shut-in the wells, but that means restarting them after maintenance. Sanctions eliminates that possibility. Within a few years Russian production might fall 3,000,000 barrels, not to come back for decades.

Giving the Chinese access to Siberia by way of building a pipeline is a great danger for Russia. In the nineteenth century the Russians Czar compelled the Chinese emperor to hand over a million square miles of Asia. The Chinese want that land returned; to my knowledge Mao was the last Chinese leader to make that claim public. Of course, the Russian Far East is lightly populated, not much opposition for hundreds of millions of Chinese.

Putin is not much of a chess player. He does everything for a minimal gain tomorrow or sometimes next week. He’s becoming buddies with the Chinese much like Stalin got cozy with Hitler in August 1939. That did not turn out well for the Russians.

The Saudi Arabians are not acting maliciously or from hatred or contempt. They are acting according to their national interests, and because they are most affected, the Russians are affected most.

 

READING

Posted on by

0

I know how to stir myself to write something original. Read, read everything, read a lot. Garbage in, garbage out. Last week I came up with three ideas to write into new separate novels.

Most of this year has been devoted to advancing manuscripts toward publication. Concentrating on previous efforts of originality has presented a problem: Will I ever write anything new and original again?

If I can’t write, my life is over. I may as well die. That thinking didn’t get far. I went to library booksales and bag sales at the end. A dollar for all the books that would fit into a grocery bag. Three cents a piece for each book was fantastic.

What to do with that bag of books, plus 20 others purchased and unread over the year? From October to today, I’ve read, sampled and surveyed texts. Here’s a list, out of order:

Ghandi, William L. Shirer, not compelling but of interest.

History of the Ottoman Empire, vol 1, Shaw, very interesting passages – Shia/Sunni sects, the Ottoman Empire suffered greatly from a complex, fixed social structure, explained in 50 pages of detail. I skipped over most of that.

The Sleepwalkers, Clark, a fantastic book about the 20 years in Europe leading up to World War One. I recommend it strongly.

A Short History of Medieval Philosophy,  Weinberg, looked good but I’m no longer interested.

Trafalgar, Rene Maine, read another history, not this one, about that navel battle.

Brighton Rock, Graham Greene, It is readable, but not as interesting as the promos on the back cover.

Force and Freedom, Jacob Burckhardt, I know Burckhardt wrote an excellent book about the Renaissance, but this book is heavy wood and labored.

Galapagos, Michael Jackson, technical, detailed – why feathers on this bird vary from feathers of birds on nearby islands – the sorts of thing Darwin saw plus more. If I were going to those islands, I’d take the time to read it, but I’ll never make it.

Old Rail Fence Corners, compiled ancedotes, tales from early Minnesota. I had hoped for a bunch of Lincolnesque stories. There wasn’t much that was funny about any of them.

West Coast Journeys,  Carolyn Leighton, young woman travels from east coast to west coast in the 1860s. The volume tells of  her experiences, few of which are engaging or interesting.

The Fist in the Wilderness, David Lavender, excellent book well worth reading. About the fur trade among and between the French, Indians, British, Spanish and Americans on the North American continent.

The Atlantic Essays, compiled essays from the Atlantic magazine from 1930-1950s. Like any compilation there are a lot of duds and a few beauties.

The Composite of Acting, Jerry Blount. I knew the author. I like the book and recommend it.

The Quiet American, Graham Greene. I read this long ago. It is the best novel about Vietnam although it was written 10 years before American became engulfed in that country.

Wartime, Paul Fussell, excellent book, well worth reading about the home fronts in Britain and the US.

The Mexican War, 1846-1848, excellent book about that war. I recommend it, and the earlier book it disagrees with. I read this book some time ago and bought it for my library.

The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460, Miskimin, a good economic survey of the Europe before the age of discovery expanded the European wealth.

Selected Short Stories, Hawthorne, read the short ones. The long ones are difficult because Hawthorne’s nineteenth century style puts many, many words on a line in this Fawcett Premier edition.

Australian Short Stories, Penguin, the dialects are difficult to fathom. I read some and looked at many stories but I gave up.

The Rights of Man, Tom Paine, very readable political science. It affirmed my impression that Paine is the second best writer from the American Revolution. The best writer is Franklin; third best Jefferson.

The Ancient Civilization of Anghor, Christopher Pym, well presented, somewhat dated (1968) and certainly out of my areas of historical familiarity.

The River and I, John Neihardt, not very good. 1908 journey down the Missouri. I had a grandfather canoe down the Wisconsin a few years later. There isn’t much detail; historical decryption is lacking.

The Maltese Falcon, Hammett, see the 1941 movie of the same title.

The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford, I got to page three and wondered why I was reading the same points that were on the first page. I stopped.

The Other Californians, Heizer/Almquist, excellent book about Native Californians and their slaughter – Spanish, Mexicans and mostly in the Central Valley and inland area, Americans. It was heartbreaking.

Houdini On Magic, Edited, picked up at three cents and after reflection I realized I won’t read it.

The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, does not give much text from those gospels, but the interpretation of the author. I wanted to see the text.

J.S. Bach, vol 2, Albert Schweitzer, thought I was interested but no.

Civil War Stories, Ambrose Bierce, recommend. Some of the stories edge toward horror.

The French Navy in World War Two, Auphan/Mordal, a 50 cent book that is offered for sale on Amazon for $10-15.

Blockade Runners of the Confedercy, Cochran, Somewhat of interest, but not for the library. It has a story of a Union navel officer falling in love with a captured Confederate spy, female on a blockade runner. He died in 1865, so it wasn’t a long romance and a shorter marriage.

The Devil In France, Feuchtwanger, excellent book about a prominent novelist who fled Hitler and Germany being put into a French Concentration Camp during the first year of World War Two. The French realize they have imprisoned many opponents of Nazism and try to make amends, but author and wife still have to elude the police and escape to America.

Power in the Blood, Sabean, about deviancy in Renaissance Germany. It details a very complicated social structure of those times. I got half way through and stopped.

The Experience of Defeat, Christopher Hill, what happened to the Puritans in England after the Restoration of 1660? This book categorizes the Puritans and tells their stories. For the modern reader it does not say what the experience of defeat was, but it explains that experience from the view of the seventeenth century.

The Sixties Unplugged, Degroot, like all books about the Sixties its story is incomplete but it contains many salient tales and historical points.

Orlando, Virginia Woolf, another novel from this mentally ill author which I cannot read.

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, Bird, something bought on vacation and mildly interesting but not a keeper.

Honky, Conley, from a library sale, UC Press, I believed it was set in California. I was wrong. I didn’t want to read it.

Democracy During the American Civil War, DP Crook, excellent book detailing the relationships between the British and Americans during that war. The larger, longer book by the same author on the same topic is not that much better.

Above are the books currently in my possession, in my rooms, to be moved. There are others I don’t remember. I won’t read so devotedly for a while because I’ll write the three stories that have come to me.

I’LL COME RUNNING (AWAY)

Posted on by

0

I watched 40 minutes of this movie, I’ll Come Running. The script is on par with TV teleplay writing, low level incidents and ordinary dialogue in bad need of canned laughter.

Three Danish men, early twenties, travel in Texas. They eat in a restaurant, where they are loud and boisterous while speaking Danish. No one understands their rudenesses. That is a point Danes should understand – being rude works only if the words are understood by everyone. But no one in the world speaks Danish. They are so obnoxious they offend the Latina waitress.

One Dane, the protagonist (mostly English speaking now), decides to go home. His friends drive off leaving him in Austin. He has flight reservations in a few days. He can’t find the hostel – he sits around outside the restaurant doing nothing. Latina waitress leaves work and invites him to a party. One thing leads to another, episodically – the story is weak or nonexistent. Dane and Latina end up in bed; I don’t know why e.g. she doesn’t like his 10-day growth; the next day she insists he shave, a mistake!. He looks much better when he hides his face.

She cuts work to spend the day with him (She’s a working stiff – that all the film shows.) although the job is important to her. What do they do? Very little. She wants to go out; he wants sex. A local parade passes her house. He takes out his camera and films as people pass by. A Texan doesn’t want pictures being taken, grabs the Dane and moves him 20 feet into a fountain, pushing him in.

A writing point making for a better story: Texan grabs Dane who begins speaking Danish. Texans realize this guy isn’t speaking my language. Texan lets go. DANE (in English) “Pictures for Copenhagen!”

However, the fountain dunking puts the Dane in the shower, where Latina begins taking film of him. They get to film and touch each other, etc., etc., look at various and sundry sites on the Internet.

The next morning he leaves to return to Denmark. No tears, but many hugs and much smug satisfaction. Taxi drives off. Going down the highway Dane decides to turn around and go back. Why? The movie has to be longer than 40 minutes.

I realized the movie was over. For these two characters as the old saying goes, “We’ll always have Austin.” I don’t need to see more of their adventures in Texas and going to Denmark, is not like being in Austin.

ENOUGH ALREADY

Posted on by

0

Review of THE IMITATION GAME

No one should hurry out to see The Imitation Game, the new British production about the World War Two program surrounding intelligence involving the Enigma machine.

Previous British movies and TV productions have centered on the Enigma machine: Enigma (2001) and Bletchley Park (2011). There is a little known British movie: Men are trained and become transvestites to be dropped into Germany and to get employed in the factory making Enigma Machines, steal the machine… The last movie is cute and complete shameful.

The Enigma machine provided the British and Americans with intelligence, Ultra, knowledge of German military maneuvers and planning. Before June 21, 1941 the British told the Russians invasion is upon you. The Russians ignored it. Montgomery and his planners ignored Enigmas intercepts before invading Belgium and the southern Netherlands in September 1944. It is a reason that military operation failed.

Enigmas is credited with winning the Battle of the Atlantic, safeguarding convoys. That is wrong. The reason the British needed intelligence was their own codes were being read, almost in real time, by the Germans. The intelligence advantage of Enigma was mostly a wash. What won the Battle of the Atlantic was equipment and men. Much of the equipment and weapons, radar/sonar were of British origin advanced further by the Americans. The primary equipment was ships, American produced destroyers and especially escort carriers. The British had the best submarine hunter, Johnnie Walker whom they did not promote. The Americans were very aggressive. That’s why a full U-boat is on exhibit in a museum in Chicago.

Before World War Two the Americans had decrypted the Japanese diplomatic code in real time. Those intercepts were called Magic. The Americans were working on decrypting the Japanese Navel Codes, one intercept leading to the first complete allied victory of the war: Midway. The Americans started from scratch.

With Enigma the British started at the 50 yard line in the 100 yard dash. Poland and the Polish people. In mid-August 1939 Polish intelligence invited French and British intelligence over to the office and said, “Look what we have.” During the previous decade the Poles had workers in the Enigma factory; they had a machine in Warsaw; they had analyzed it operations and its potentialities. The British and French both said, We want it. The Poles shared, and when they were losing and were conquered in the next six weeks, the Poles erased all trace of their enigma intelligence operation: equipment, papers, people. Some Poles ended up in France and later England.

To my knowledge the French have been considerate and gracious not to claim credit in movies or on TV for any Enigma feats. No so the British who won the War by decrypting Enigma intelligence. I’m tired of British hero movies about Enigma. It’s time for the Brits to fess up. The Poles did it.

SERENDIPITY, GET THE GRINGO

Posted on by

0

Movie Review, SERENDIPITY, John Cusack, Kate Beckindale. I like both actors. And this movie. I watched 90 seconds before turning the movie off.

Black pair of gloves. John and Kate each reach for the last pair. Idle chit-chat amounting to dull, flimsy dialogue getting worse. After a minute of it, an old man (actor I don’t like who should always be the bad-evil pervert) intervenes and claims the gloves. On his second line I turned it off.

PROBLEM: Kate and John are supposed to fall in love, at-first-sight. There’s no chemistry, no electricity, no other atoms or molecules and no bison measurements flowing between them. John has to move his mouth, and he has to sound intelligent and interesting. He sounds lame. Kate waits.

Dialogue should not be the gracious, meaningless offer from each, “You take them.” Share, share, we learned how to be kind to one another. Let’s be three years old again (when nobody was buying gloves). Remedy: In a busy world Kate says, “All right,” and takes the gloves. John has to convince her while making her interested in him, to let give him the gloves.

That didn’t happen.

Movie Review, GET THE GRINGO, Mel Gibson. A decent action movie about an American stuck in a Mexican prison. In America he has stolen $4,000,000, some of which the Mexican police have. Nobody can identify the Gringo; he doesn’t tell what he did, until the information is useful to save his life and help him leave the prison. Hence, the audience as do the characters in the movie learn about the entire sum late.

Mel Gibson is the thief. How he navigates in the Mexican prison (“Worst mall in the world…”), how he gets out and how he survives provide action in realistic settings.

PASS ON IT

Posted on by

0

THE MAKING OF A LADY – PBS/BBC

This is a weak BBC production. Marquis from the India service, previously married, childless, returns home. He’s urged to marry to keep all the family loot within his lineage.

His familial competition for the English estate is a ner-do-well cousin who was also in India and has married an Indian woman. That couple is joined by the wife’s mother. Marquis disapproves of his competition.

Marquis marries protagonist, a capable woman from a good family who has no fortune. [Her parents died when she was young; aunts and uncles have too many off-spring of their own.] Her capacities as a secretary are excellent; she can organize and keep matters straight. Theirs is a peculiar marriage – little communication about anything – lives, aspirations, living arrangements, what’s going on in the world. Late – two weeks, a month, however long after marriage they have sex and settle into a natural routine, which seems the only communication between them. He also teaches her to swim.

I didn’t understand why a previously married man did not start sex earlier, especially when he is trying to sire an heir. The shyness and introvertishness is added on as an explanation, but if she were shy she would not have married. It is not part of the story. The husband is very direct and assertive with his intentions before marriage, but those behaviors seem to fade.

Thus the protagonist dissolves to a stupid little girl. As mistress she wants to learn the workings of the house. Longtime butler and housekeeper (husband and wife) are cold and unaccepting of her. Protagonist: “I’d like you to show me the house today.” Housekeeper: “I’m doing the laundry today.” Protagonist: “Maybe I can help.” That’s very odd dialogue coming from the mistress of the house. The lines of the Protagonist should be: “I want to learn about that by watching or overseeing.” OR “No, you’re showing me the house today.”

Marquis gets called back to India. Protagonist realizes Marquis is leaving the morning when she comes downstairs and sees trunks being carried out the front door. There seems to be a failure to communicate, here.

It is no wonder why the protagonist is easily deceived by a forged writing suggesting the “second-in-line” cousins visit the estate and stay along with the mother. NOTE, the Marquis has told her he disapproves of his cousin, but there are no suspicions. Weird behaviors (reminded me of British movies of the 1960s, so there is a shift in time 1890 to 1965), and stuff happens: The butler dies (is murdered); protagonist gets sick; housekeeper refuses to stick around.

Protagonist never learns that 2 + 2 = 4 until she is cured: Marquis returns to estate, just in time to save his wife and unborn child. Like Sleeping Beauty protagonist wakes, and everyone lives happily ever after.

THE SLEEPWALKERS

Posted on by

0

This spectacular diplomatic history by Christopher Clark is about European foreign relations and history before World War One. It is an essential source to understand the years before the War.

It tells how Serbian goofballs and nuts, backed blindly by the Russians and supported by the indifferent French, were able to start the War. The British, flat on their asses, joined the French.

Oddly, the Germans were late to the party. Germany began mobilizing on August 1, 1914 two weeks after the Russians with French encouragement began mobilizing and putting a million soldiers on their Western borders. Historian Clark mentions that the Germans have been blamed for heightening tensions and starting the War. Blame is much better placed on the Russians and French. Clark refers to an excellent history by Fritz Fischer, but Clark does not discuss policy during the War, whereas Fischer does.

The Sleepwalkers is an appropriate title. The diplomats and rulers read, discussed, pushed papers and harrumphed. In Britain the Foreign Minister, Edward Grey (of Earl Grey tea fame), was aloof, spoke only English, disliked foreigners, preferred long country jaunts and liked fly fishing. And in 1914 Grey had the on-coming disability of going blind. Everyone in the government knew it but left him in place.

The Sleepwalkers is well presented and well-written. It raises a question: If the men who decided to go to war in 1914 had read this book before deciding, would they chose War? Clark gives the impression that the men were so impossibly devious and utterly stupid, that despite knowing all the facts the would chose War.

EARLY HALLOWEEN

Posted on by

0

In WARTIME by Paul Fussell, about World War II he talked about rumor and how quickly it spreads. I’m sure he enjoyed dropping it into this book.

“One narrative popular in Germany just after the war when food was scarce could have been written by Poe himself. It was said that a blind Wehrmacht veteran, tapping along the street with his white cane, encountered a healthy and amiable girl and asks her to help him by delivering a letter to a certain address. As she set off she looked back and saw the blind man stepping out briskly, his cane now abandoned. She was so suspicious that she took the letter not to the address indicated but to the nearest police station. The police went to the address and found a shop run by a couple. All seemed perfectly ordinary until the police stumbled upon a concealed cellar full of fresh meat, suggesting a black-market butcher shop. But closely inspected, says Douglas Botting:

the meat turned out to be human flesh. Until now the police had overlooked the letter

which the blind man had given the girl. When they opened it they found a piece of paper

on which was written a single, chilling sentence: ‘This is the last one I shall be sending you today.'”

(Chapter 4)

Have a nice weekend