Magill's Annual

Magill’s two-volume 2011 Literary Annual arrived in the mail, containing my reviews of the NASCAR and Comanche books. Last month the company that took over the enterprise announced that reviewers were no longer receiving hard copies but instead a web site link where for a limited amount of time we could download stuff. I protested that at the time I agreed to do the 2,000-word reviews the terms included remuneration of $100 (an amount that has remained constant for 30 years) plus the two volumes, which include first-rate summaries of many worthy books I never got to read. While I agreed that in the future, the company could change the rules, I wanted the books. Obviously, they complied. I had begun to think I had heard the last of them. Obama is on the cover. One excellent reviews, of “The Grand Design,” makes Stephen Hawking’s M (multiverse) theory semi-understandable. Two reviewed novels that I have read include “Karl Marlantes’ “Matterhorn” (about Vietnam) and Anne Tyler’s “Noah’s Compass” (about a 60 year-old laid-off teacher). Paul Kern would probably enjoy the review of Peter Krentz’s “The Battle of Marathon,” and Ron Cohen would enjoy seeing the review of Sean Wilentz’s “Bob Dylan in America.”

Fitting in with the theme of “On Their Shoulders” (the subject, perhaps, of my next book) is Condoleeza Rice’s “Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family.” Rice’s parents, John and Angelena, were both teachers who hoped their daughter would be a professional pianist (her name is a take-off on the Italian musical term “con dolcezza,” meaning with sweetness). One of Angelena’s students was future baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays. John was also pastor of a Black middle-class congregation in Birmingham, Alabama. When he tried to register to voteas a Democrat in 1952, he was asked to guess how many beans were in a jar. Reviewer Timothy Lane (no relation) writes: “After being informed that the Republicans had a more reasonable literacy test, he registered and remained one the rest of his life.” While teaching a course on “The Black Experience in America,” first at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa and then at Denver University, he asked his friend Stokely Carmichael to speak. If I do a book about Region people, maybe in the intro I could make reference to people like Marvella Bayh and Condy.

I’ve been boning up on the Carpatho Rusyns, whom I’ll be talking about on October 22, although the organizers mainly want me to describe the city of Gary in 1911 (five years after its birth) when two Orthodox churches were founded. I emailed Rick Busse inquiring about the difference between Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine churches and discovered that he was at the Indiana State Fair with his fried vegetable trailer. He was there last Saturday when the stage collapsed, killing five people and said it was quite a scene.

Texas governor Rick Perry has been stealing Michele Bachman’s thunder with idiotic statements denying global warming and defending the teaching of creationism. He once suggested that Texas would be better off seceding from the union if the “socialistic” trends in Washington weren’t reversed. Conan O’Brien mocked Michelle’s latest gaffe, asking a crowd to wish Elvis a Happy Birthday even though it was on the day “The King” died. He added that Bachman subsequently apologized to the entire Costello family.

If I can find the money, I’m thinking about making volume 42 of Steel Shavings about pioneer days in the Region. One possibility, if I can find it, is reprinting a volume about early Gary settlers called “Papers of Various Hands.” Another idea – a volume dealing with the writings of nineteenth-century preacher, teacher, and historian Timothy Ball. We have several of his books about the origins of Lake County; in fact, I used a couple excerpts in the Cedar Lake issue. Maybe I could get Chris Young to be a co-editor.