To Kill A Mockingbird.

In keeping with the theme of the books I’ve been reading lately (In Cold Blood, Capote: A Biography), I bought a well-used copy of To Kill A Mockingbird this past Saturday in St. Louis while visiting my husband’s mother.

It’s about the second or third time I’ve read it, and once again, I’m just startled at the brilliance of it.

I heard a rumor recently that Harper Lee has written more novels, that will only be released following her death. I can only hope that’s true.  She has said openly that she’s struggled writing anything to follow the novel-and one doesn’t have to wonder too long why.

I cannot help but be astounded that two children (Lee and Truman Capote), best friends, even, growing up next-door to each other in Monroeville, Alabama (whose population in the year 2000 was a very measly 6,862 persons) could both grow up to be such mammoths of American Literature.

The first best website on the internet.

According to me.

When I first started using the internet, back in 1993, I think it was, I somehow introduced to the wonder that is Matthew and Jake’s Adventures. Back then, I was using a telnet client to access the internet, and websites that were easy on the 900 baud modem I had were much appreciated. Hence, Matthew and Jake’s Adventures.

Matthew and Jake, at least, according to their website, were students at MIT who had many adventures and mis-adventures, and then told those tales on the internet.

And used diagrams like this:

There was just something about the simplicity of the stories and the easy humor that made the website very appealing.

It’s sort of amazing how much the internet has changed since those days.

And I wonder if Matthew and Jake are still having adventures.

A loving tribute to air conditioning.

Ah, air conditioning. Without you, I would truly be a sad person indeed. Your icy coolness, it soothes me and aids me in making it through my least favorite of days-summer.

You’re so good at keeping me from sneezing through spring.

I listened to a radio show, probably about ten years ago, that asked what the greatest invention of the last 100 years was. Someone was arguing that air conditioning was, and I tend to agree.

Think of the areas of the United States that would be practically inhabitable without it-Las Vegas, Phoenix. In addition, think of how much more productive we are as workers in the modern age since we don’t have to battle heat fatigue.

This is a fun website that details those same arguments-how air conditioning changed America. 

And here, copied from Wikipedia, is a history of air conditioning, for your reading pleasure:

While moving heat via machinery to provide air conditioning is a relatively modern invention, the cooling of buildings is not. The ancient Egyptians were known to circulate aqueduct water through the walls of certain houses to cool them. As this sort of water usage was expensive, generally only the wealthy could afford such a luxury.

Medieval Persia had buildings that used cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season: cisterns (large open pools in a central courtyards, not underground tanks) collected rain water; wind towers had windows that could catch wind and internal vanes to direct the airflow down into the building, usually over the cistern and out through a downwind cooling tower^[2]. Cistern water evaporated, cooling the air in the building.

In 1820, British scientist and inventor Michael Faraday discovered that compressing and liquefying ammonia could chill air when the liquefied ammonia was allowed to evaporate. In 1842, Florida physician Dr. John Gorrie used compressor technology to create ice, which he used to cool air for his patients in his hospital in Apalachicola, Florida.^[3] He hoped eventually to use his ice-making machine to regulate the temperature of buildings. He even envisioned centralized air conditioning that could cool entire cities.^[4] Though his prototype leaked and performed irregularly, Gorrie was granted a patent in 1851 for his ice-making machine. His hopes for its success vanished soon afterwards when his chief financial backer died; Gorrie did not get the money he needed to develop the machine. According to his biographer Vivian M. Sherlock, he blamed the “Ice King,” Frederic Tudor, for his failure, suspecting that Tudor has launched a smear campaign against his invention. Dr Gorrie died impoverished in 1855 and the idea of air conditioning faded away for 50 years.

Early commercial applications of air conditioning were manufactured to cool air for industrial processing rather than personal comfort. In 1902 the first modern electrical air conditioning was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier. Designed to improve manufacturing process control in a printing plant, his invention controlled not only temperature but also humidity. The low heat and humidity were to help maintain consistent paper dimensions and ink alignment. Later Carrier’s technology was applied to increase productivity in the workplace, and The Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America was formed to meet rising demand. Over time air conditioning came to be used to improve comfort in homes and automobiles. Residential sales expanded dramatically in the 1950s.

In 1906, Stuart W. Cramer of Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, was exploring ways to add moisture to the air in his textile mill. Cramer coined the term “air conditioning,” using it in a patent claim he filed that year as an analogue to “water conditioning”, then a well-known process for making textiles easier to process. He combined moisture with ventilation to “condition” and change the air in the factories, controlling the humidity so necessary in textile plants. Willis Carrier adopted the term and incorporated it into the name of his company. This evaporation of water in air, to provide a cooling effect, is now known as evaporative cooling.

The first air conditioners and refrigerators employed toxic or flammable gases like ammonia, methyl chloride, and propane which could result in fatal accidents when they leaked. Thomas Midgley, Jr. created the first chlorofluorocarbon gas, Freon, in 1928. The refrigerant was much safer for humans but was later found to possibly be harmful to the atmosphere’s ozone layer. “Freon” is a trade name of Dupont for any Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), Hydrogenated CFC (HCFC), or Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant, the name of each including a number indicating molecular composition (R-11, R-12, R-22, R-134). The blend most used in direct-expansion comfort cooling is an HCFC known as R-22. It is to be phased out for use in new equipment by 2010 and completely discontinued by 2020. R-11 and R-12 are no longer manufactured in the US, the only source for purchase being the cleaned and purified gas recovered from other air conditioner systems. Several non-ozone depleting refrigerants have been developed as alternatives, including R-410A, known by the brand name “Puron”.

Innovation in air conditioning technologies continue, with much recent emphasis placed on energy efficiency and for improving indoor air quality.

Zug.

One of my favorite websites is www.zug.com. I enjoy the humor stuff there-although some of the pranks are less enjoyable than others, I find. However, here are some of my favorite articles.

The Credit Card Prank (Part II) – An experiment the writer does to see just how outlandish his credit card signature can get before a sales clerk gets suspicious. Included is this attempt to sign a credit card transaction with a drawing of a human intestinal tract.

Ole Olestra – This is an old one, but a good one, where the author tries out Olestra, a product that was in chips for about ten minutes, and the lovely intestinal side effects. Not really appropriate to read while eating. Or, you know, ever.

Drug Deathmatch – Same author pits one over-the-counter drug against another.

My newest hobby.

So I’ve taken up quilting, which makes me feel approximately 80 years old. Still, I enjoy it a great deal. I’ve made a couple of simple quilts for Project Linus, a charity that gives quilts to kids living in homeless shelters, hospitals, etc.

My latest project is a quilt for my brother’s wedding. I’m working out of this book-Patchwork Quilts Made Easy by Jean Wells.

I’m making this quilt:

I’m making it in these colors:

Aqua and brown-the colors they selected. Not my favorite, but I’m not the one that’s going to have to look at it. I’m still not sure I got the right color shades, but at this point, it’s just going to have to do, I suppose.

I did make a quilt from that book that was for us-the one from the front cover:

Here it is, in process:

It’s a bit more finished now. I just need to actually quilt it, which I’m hoping to do on the machine as opposed to by hand. We’ll see how well that works.

Clue.

In 1984, my family and I moved to a new community, where my Dad accepted a new position as minister of a United Methodist Church. I was twelve at the time, and up to that point, we’d enjoyed a grand total of two television stations. Not that that stopped me from enjoying various television programs, mind you-nor movies. I remember we would occasionally travel to Liberal, a nearby “big city” (a town of a little less than 20,000 will seem like a big city when you’re living in a small town with 350 residents) to rent a disk player of some sort or another-I remember it having these HUGE cartridges.

At any rate, previous to that point, my parents had introduced us to movies like Annie, Ghandi, Chariots of Fire and Huckleberry Finn (the one with Paul Winfield, which ROCKED.)

When we moved, though, we got a free trial, as I recall, of HBO-and a VCR. Which meant I got to obsessively watch some not-so-great movies that I hadn’t had the chance to watch up to that point.

Including Footloose, which, I kid you not, may have changed my life. But that’s a story for another time.

I want to take a minute for the 14 year-old in me to sing the virtues of the movie Clue.

Clue was GREAT. I developed such a crush on Tim Curry. (Boy, was I in for a big surprise when I finally saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was in college!)

At any rate, I watched Clue over and over again. As an adult, I’ve seen the movie a time or two and it still never fails to amaze me how much I enjoyed dry humor, even at that age and at a point where I wasn’t really exposed to much dry humor.

Some quotes from the movie:

Colonel Mustard: And are you the host?
Wadsworth: Me, sir? No, I’m just the humble butler.
Colonel Mustard: And what exactly is it you do here?
Wadsworth: I buttle.

Wadsworth: Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die
Professor Plum: Die?
Wadsworth: Merely quoting, sir, from Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Colonel Mustard: I prefer Kipling, myself. “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
[to Miss Scarlet]
Colonel Mustard: Do you like Kipling, Miss Scarlet?
[He offers her a tray]
Miss Scarlet: [Takes food off the tray] Sure, I’ll eat anything.

Wadsworth: But he was your second husband. Your first husband also disappeared.
Mrs. White: But that was his job. He was an illusionist.
Wadsworth: But he never reappeared.
Mrs. White: He wasn’t a very good illusionist.

Ah yes. Good times, indeed.

Blogs that review crap.

One of my favorite things to do when I have time on my hands and want to kill some time on the good ol’ internetwork, is to find and read blogs that review things.

Heat Eat Review is one I visit every day. It’s a blog that reviews all things that you’ll find in the frozen foods aisle at the grocery store. It’s extra helpful if you’re on Weight Watchers, as many of their reviews include points information.

The Impulsive Buy is one I check via RSS feeds.   This blogger reviews all kinds of stuff. I particularly enjoyed his entry on donating blood.

Others I read from time to time…

Cheap Eats. Good for those pesky times when you’re hungry.

We Called It.  Another blog that reviews whatever they feel like reviewing.

Renee’s Book Of The Day.  Pretty much what it says it is.

Andrew Taylor Recommends.  Some things that Andrew Taylor recommends.

Candy Blog. A blog about candy.

Bloggeries. Headspinningly, a blog that reviews blogs.

Wings.

So there was this show in the 1990’s called Wings.

And it rocked.

I just purchased Season 3 on DVD, and I am enjoying re-watching the episodes quite a lot. I’m not entirely certain why that show clicked for me when Cheers didn’t-they’re very similar shows. But Wings just WAS good.

Some fun quotes I found on IMDB:

Helen: I got suckered into making the stupid welcoming speech at the reunion tonight.
Fay Schlob Dumbly DeVay Cochran: Oh come on, it can’t be that bad. Let me hear your opening line.
Helen: That was it.

Brian Hackett: It says here, fifteen percent of the American public would rather watch television than have sex.
Roy Biggins: Fifteen perc… Yeah, yeah, I buy that, yeah. You know, maybe you’re… you’re too tired, or she’s too… what’s a nice way to put this? Ugly.
Brian Hackett: The words “too tired” aren’t in my vocabulary, and frankly, Roy, I don’t think the words “too ugly” should be in yours.

Ahhhh…good times.

Pringles.

For some reason, tonight I’m craving Pringles. Big time.

I could eat this many:

Also, I find this funny. Sadly.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The world got a lot duller this week with the passing of one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Never afraid to voice an opinion, the man opened minds and enlightened generations of readers with his oft-times off-putting opinions. But you had to like the guy, none the less.

Don’t miss these essays in the Chicago-based production In These Times . The man had a way with words…

“Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Related, because I was thinking about Vonnegut and had just watched the movie In Cold Blood for the second time, I asked a group of people on a forum I frequent to name authors they considered classic American. Here’s the list I was given, with the number of hits they got on Google, arranged in order from least to most. I also threw in a few modern, popular authors as a point of curiousity. Yes, I had a lot of free time today.

Stephen King 4,130,000
Dan Brown 3,260,000
Mark Twain 2,850,000
Tom Clancy 2,710,000
Tom Wolfe 2,050,000
Ernest Hemingway 1,870,000
Truman Capote 1,720,000
John Grisham 1,710,000
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1,600,000
Isaac Asimov 1,570,000
Ray Bradbury 1,490,000
Ayn Rand 1,460,000
Jack Kerouac 1,410,000
Hunter S. Thompson 1,410,000
Henry David Thoreau 1,400,000
Walt Whitman 1,380,000
John Steinbeck 1,350,000
Kurt Vonnegut 1,340,000
Arthur Miller 1,330,000
Herman Melville 1,310,000
Robert Frost 1,290,000
William Faulkner 1,280,000
Maya Angelou 1,260,000
Sylvia Plath 1,260,000
F. Scott Fitzgerald 1,240,000
Toni Morrison 1,230,000
Allen Ginsberg 1,190,000
Raymond Chandler 1,140,000
Ezra Pound 1,140,000
Edgar Allen Poe 1,130,000
Thomas Paine 1,110,000
JD salinger 1,110,000
John Updike 1,100,000
Harper Lee 1,090,000
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1,040,000
Robert C. Heinlein 950,000
Cormac McCarthy 934,000
Flannery O’Connor 924,000
Saul Bellow 920,000
William Burroughs 783,000
Harriet Beecher Stowe 741,000
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 734,000
Dashiell Hammett 696,000
Ralph Ellison 611,000
PJ O’Rourke 600,000
Stephen Crane 589,000
James Fenimore cooper 584,000
James A. Michener 359,000
Frederick Douglas 252,000
Harold Robbins 192,000

One MAJOR oversight in the group that was pointed out to me after I made the list that I absolutely cannot believe I didn’t mention myself is Thomas Pynchon.

Who’s on your list of classic American authors, and where do they fall?