I’m trying to understand something: The alchemy that seems to permeate portions of my workplace that makes “shall” preferable to “will” or “must.”
Today I made an appeal to our own writing standard. Follow, brave souls, if you dare.
Here are the definitions I’m working with:
Must Denotes requirement. Will and shall are alternatives. Compare should and may.
May Denotes permission, not a requirement or recommendation. Do not confuse with can, which usually denotes ability. Compare shall and should.
Shall Denotes a requirement. Will and must are alternatives. Compare should and may.
Should Denotes recommendation. Compare shall and may.
Will Denotes requirement, but is more dependent on sentence structure and tone than must and shall, which are alternatives. Compare should and may.
I want to concentrate on must, shall, and will, but included may and should since they are referred to in the definitions.
I feel like, looking at these definitions, that must, shall, and will are synonyms. They mean the same thing. Even taking in the added wordage that will’s definition brings into the situation, I fail to see the difference between the three words. (Will’s extra wordage could, in fact, apply to shall or must, so I see no reason for it to be there. The meaning of all words is dependent on sentence structure and tone. And tone is something we should weed out of technical documents as much as possible.)
Yet I find myself between the proverbial rock and hard place, regarding these words. The rock, engineers reasoning (I believe correctly, based on the definition discussion above) there’s no difference in meaning, and the hard place, preferring shall to will but more importantly gatekeeps what wording is blessed and what wording is frowned upon.
I tried looking at what others are saying about must will shall, and I found a lot of people either throwing their hands up and saying, "Yeah, there's no difference," to "there is a difference because reasons."
He seems to favor shall to will, but I feel like he cherrypicks his reason, denigrates opinion that varies from his own while he opines that he's right.
Wikipedia drones on about English modal auxiliary verbs but doesn't really accomplish much in telling me the difference either.
I don't see winning any battles here, though. I shall have to concede. Because this is all I'm really getting:
A little note for you from the “Guilt is Good’ department.
This from Susan Cain’s book “Quiet,” which I’m currently reading and have written about before:
(As an explanation, she’s writing about an experiment in which youngsters are handed a toy designed to be broken easily by an adult who tells them this is their very favorite toy and that they should be careful with it. At the conclusion of the experiment, the children are shown the mended toy and told by the adult that everything is OK, after their reaction to the broken toy and the adult’s dismay over its state is observed.)
In our culture, guilt is a tainted word, but it’s probably one of the building blocks of conscience. The anxiety these highly sensitive toddlers feel upon apparently breaking the toy gives them the motivation to avoid harming someone’s plaything the next time. By age four, according to [developmental psychologist Grazyna] Kochanska, these same kids are less likely than their peers to cheat or break rules, even when they think they can’t be caught. And by six or seven, they’re more likely to be described by their parents as having high levels of moral traits such as empathy. They also have fewer behavioral problems in general.
“Functional, moderate guilt,’ writes Kochanska, “may promote future altruism, personal responsibility, adaptive behavior in school, and harmonious, competent, and prosocial relationships with parents, teachers, and friends.”
Feeling guilty about anything? That’s good. Exercise that empathy and personal responsibility.
I’m reading “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking,” by Susan Cain, a lucky find at the local thrift store.
It’s . . . enlightening.
First, for its discussion of our evolution from the Culture of Character, starting at the turn of the last century, to the Culture of Personality, the raging wildfire of alphas and grifters and even presidents to whom popularity and personal branding are far more important than, you know, leadership and character.
The book focuses on how the concept of extroverts versus introverts has skewed and is skewing perceptions of leadership in some pretty terrible ways.
In the book she talks about attending (in the lowest-paid tier) a Tony Robbins seminar bent on making extroverts out of everyone in what sounds like the most painful way possible:
[Usher} Stacy asks if I’ve brought my meals with me. It seems a strange question: Who carries their supper from New York City to Atlanta? She explains that I’ll want to refuel at my seat; for the next few days, Friday through Monday, we’ll be working fifteen hours a day; from 8 am to 11 pm, with only one short afternoon break. Tony will be onstage the entire time, and I won’t want to miss a moment.
Also:
Greeters wearing UPW T-shirts and ecstatic smiles line the entrance, springing up and down, fists pumping. You can’t get inside without slapping them five. I know, because I try.
This is all that came to mind:
Quickly the focus shifts, of course, to the grift, where for more money you can get seats closer to the stage – though attendees are encouraged to get up on their folding chairs and dance while Robbins does performative gestures on the Jumbotron, trying to foist investments of $45,000 yearly on attendees so they can go on vacation with Robbins and other like-minded power-oozing extroverted morons to connect and expand and network until light shines out of their bellybuttons and Robbins can afford two castles in Del Mar, California.
This is contrasted with the story of Rosa Parks, who encountered the same racist bus driver eleven years before the incident that led to the Montgomery bus boycott and who only got on the bus again absentmindedly all those years later because she was extra tired from standing on her feet ironing all day.
Guess which of the two has mightier power in our Cult of Personality today; it’s not the one who was overlooked by even the New York Times when the boycott proved successful and the Supreme Court called separate but equal on the bus unconstitutional.
True, I am an introvert myself, father to another introvert. Hoping as I read this I can better understand myself and maybe help that son of mine. I know he’s struggled with introversion in some ways holding him back. He’s intelligent and a hard worker, but he’s struggled to find employment because for most of the jobs he’s applied for, they pre-screen in ways that weed out introverts. (He’s talked about a few “personality tests” he’s had to take and it’s clear the questions skew to find those who love working with others or in groups or whatnot, and when he answers honestly that he’d rather work on his own, he’s screened out.)
Just a word to you extroverts out there: We introverts are always asked to step out of our comfort zones and mask or fake or cope or whatever it is we have to do to succeed in the extrovert world. Why is it no one asks extroverts to step outside of their comfort zones and recognize that they talk too damn much, that introverts can be effective workers, co-workers, and leaders when given the chance and shouldn’t have to be forced to play-act all the damn day just to bring home a paycheck?
Imagine being so broken that you not only think like Stephen Miller but agree with him.
Does everyone who comes to the United States behave like angels? No. But neither do those who've been here for generations.
All I know is that my Dad and his brother and parents came to the United States in 1950, leaving the Netherlands, devastated by World War II and subsequent catastrophic floods, and that's *exactly* what they reproduced here.*
Immigrants come to this country filled with hope. Many of those fall in places where at worst, society is wary, but at best, where society is welcoming. I'm blessed that my Dad came to a place where the latter occurred.
Individuals may cultivate cruelty in their hearts, but I firmly believe those who come to the United States -- or those who move from one country and culture to another -- will for the vast majority reflect their reception. If they're received with kindness, they reciprocate kindness. Those who are received with hostility on a consistent basis are more prone -- and bless those who return hostility with kindness -- to return that hostility.
Hearing our leaders spew bile like Mr. Miller makes me weep for the nation.
*Maybe in your racist heart you're thinking, "Well, they were Christians. They were (whispered) white. So they fit in better." If you're thinking that gives my family a bye, you're part of the problem.
“In all governments or political transactions, a man’s religious opinions should never be called in question. A man should be judged by the law, independent of religious prejudice.”
"Hello, milord." I spoke with my mind, as I speak to all creatures.
From somewhere within the broken skull, he answered. "Hello, Boy. My, you have grown."
I smiled. "Yes, milord. I'm an angel, it seems."
"An angel? How grand. Do you . . . know where my wife is? I can't seem to find her."
I blinked back tears. "I am sorry, milord. She awaits you in heaven."
Sir Jacques trembled, reaching -- I clasped his hands. How I used to marvel at his hands, the palms as calloused as tree bark. How his skin was so soft. "Shh."
"You were always so good. Help me, Boy."
I wrote about this book that there's no hooptedoodle. But boy, there is. The last two pages made me weep.
I'm not saying this kind of thing is happening in the United States now (outside of the Department of the Treasury) but I am saying we ought to be able to recognize bald-faced propaganda when we see it.
From "God's Smuggler":
East Germany was just then going through a devastating food shortage. The enterprising German farmer had not taken at all kindly to the collective idea; he had quit the land in such large numbers that that fall there had been no one to harvest the crops. The government had pressed production of mechanical harvesters, accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign. There was going to be plenty of bread because socialism was superior to the enterprise of individual farmers.
There was only one trouble. To ebe harvested by machine, the wheat had to be dry; a couple of days more sunshine were required than for hand reaping. And of course that year it rained. It rained every day, right at the time of the harvest.
And then suddenly, all over the country, posters appears carrying this little verse:
Ohne Gott and Sonnen schein
Holen Wir Die Ernte ein.
Without God and without sun
we will get the harvest done.
I could see that this slogan had really shaken the people. It was a brazen duel between the new regime and God Himself. The rains continued, and the harvest did not get in. Overnight as suddenly as they had appeared, the posters vanished -- except for the sodden few that you could still see clinging to the lamp posts.
The government did what only the government would try: It denied the food shortage. There was bread aplenty. To say anything contrary to that was the lie.
We have church at noon. We have had church at noon for more than eleven months now.
Yet this week I have twice told random children and my wife that we have church at 10:30 am and, in the case of this morning, that we needed to get on the dime if we were going to be there on time.
I blame it on an undercaffienated system. Or maybe it's just that I'm a doddering old fool. But I'm going to stick with the caffiene thing.
On a whim (at least for me) Liam and I went on a tour of the Burley Idaho temple today.
Drove two hours to shake hands with Brother Dansie, who lives across the street from us in Ammon.
It was a good day.
One detail I missed but that Liam picked up on: The stained glass had white flowers going down to tuberous roots. I figured they were lilies. No, they are potatoes. Which makes a lot of sense.
I’m reading “God’s Smuggler,” by Brother Andrew with John and Elizabeth Sherill.
It is, so far, a tale of The Netherlands during World War II. When I got to the passage below, all I could think of was the two Canadians on the motorcycle that came into Dad’s village in The Netherlands – not far from where this story takes place – to tell them the war, for them, was over.
The text, because the photo is a bit poor:
[His mother’s] only consolation was that Bas [his brother, who I believe was profoundly autistic] had not lived to see this time. He never could have understood the ache in his stomach, the dark fireplace, the treeless street.
At last the day came when mama could not get out of bed. If liberation did not come soon, we knew she would die.
And then in the spring of 1945, the Germans left and the Canadians took their place. People stood in the streets weeping for joy. But I was not with them. I was running every step of the five miles to the Canadian encampment, where I was able to beg a small sackful of breadcrusts.
Bread. Quite literally the bread of life.
I brought them home to my family with shouts of “Good! Food! Food!” As Mama gnawed the dry crusts, tears of gratefulness to God rolled down the deep liens in her cheeks.
The war was over.
The story thus far takes place in the village of Witte, which Brother Andrew describes as being on the polders, four miles from Alkmaar. I can’t find it on Google maps, which tells me it’s either a false name or so tiny it doesn’t merit a mention on maps. There is a Wittelte on the maps, but it’s further inland, between the Ijsselmeer and Germany, so that can’t be the place. He tells a lot of stories which echo in the stories Dad told of the same time in Santpoort, not too far away. Mischevious boys is certainly what stands out, as Dad and his brother weren’t little angels. Brother Andrew put rationed sugar in German gas tanks, set off fireworks to annoy the soldiers, among other things.
I’m looking forward to reading more of the story. Kind of adjacent to my won heritage.
Stomped up the stairs because on my Ring app I could see people "farting around" on the porch without ringing the bell.
Was stopped in my tracks by our daughter, who said it was my wife and a friend on the porch, that I should probably calm down, and that no one was "farting around" out there.
I slunk back downstairs into my antisocial lair to lick my wounds.
Situation: Monday afternoon, a document I thought was finally done was rejected at the last moment because the cover page was numbered as Page One, when it's not supposed to have any number at all.
Ordinarily an easy fix, but Page 2 has pen-and-ink signatures on it that no one wanted to re-do to fix the page numbers electronically.
So luckily we can do pen-and-ink changes of a minor nature, which helped get the document approved and to bed today.
Still:
I'm glad it's all resolved, though there are a few people who will probably look at me cross-eyed for the next little while.
First of all, spoilers. If you haven't read Ellis Peters' "The Leper of St. Giles," don't watch the video. I'll try to keep spoilers in the text to a minimum.
It was YouTube and Derek Jacobi who introduced me to Brother Cadfael. I think I've watched them all. Then I started finding the books at local thrift stores. I read all I could find. Then last Christmas I asked for more books.
They're enchanting.
Mysteries, by design, tend to be character- and place-driven, and this one certainly checks the boxes. I love that with nothing more than a keen eye and a wealth of experience, Brother Cadfael can suss out any mystery. Yet even as he does, he remains askance at times of human behavoir.
And Peters' writing is perfect. She's not pretentious, nor too ornate, nor is she too spare. She doesn't weigh the text down with accents, or jargon, or what have you -- though in the books I've got, she does offer a glossary at the back. I've read a few period pieces where accents would be involved and they can be heavy-handed. Peters recognizes that nothing should get in the way of the story, and thus generally avoids patois.
So here we are. Scout trailer in front of the house this weekend (now parked at Michelle's Dad's house). Because we're back into the Troop 1010 thing.
First meeting of the "new" troop last Thursday. Five girls there. We'll see how many come to the next meeting with registration forms and payment and a thirst for adventure that far exceeds my own.
I spent about an hour going through our personal camp gear looking for a bucket of Nalgene bottles I swear we had, as we try to figure out what happened to the bucket of Nalgene bottles that went with the scouts. I did finally find ours -- remembered I had a bucket I was using for sitting purposes in the basement bathroom I'm working on. I can't get the bucket open, but it *sounds* like there's some bottles in there. And I'm sure the rest are out in the camper, because Michelle took some to camp this summer. Part of the mystery solved.
A few good things: Their enthusiasm is contagious. And we won't be doing any camping until late January, or whenever they schedule the Winteree.
So I know this is a bucket that gets kicked, but you get the point.
Government re-opened as of last night, at least until the end of January, so it doesn't look like furloughs for us. As I'm a fan of many nasty habits like regular meals and making those mortgage payments, this is good news, though it was fun to think about for awhile until reality set in that it would likely mean using up all of my vacation time for the forseeable future to keep the lights on.
Drama, ripped from the pages of the Peanuts comic strip, January 1976.
The Browns' elementary school collapses. Sally is convinced it was a suicide because she has a habit of speaking to school buildings and they speak back and she knew it was depressed.
They end up attending the same school as Marcie and Peppermint Patty, and Chuck has to share a desk with the latter.
Here she is, alarmed their hips are touching.
I haven't finished reading the year's worth of comics, but this appears to be a storyline he dropped rather quickly.
If we pause for a moment and think about things, we're not altogether all that far apart on things.
That is, of course, a big "if."
That's part of what Henry Eyring addresses in his book, "Reflections of a Scientist," a series of essays he wrote and that are compiled by his son Harden.
More about his life here, including his contributions to science, specifically chemistry. I won't pretend to understand any of it, but it seems significant enough.
Eyring breezily, and easily, discusses that science and religion aren't all that far apart. Both invite investigation, skepticism, and a willingness to keep on trying and looking past the warts and difficulties to find what works, or "the truth," as he describes it.
My favorite quote: "There are all kinds of contradictions and religion that I don't understand, but I find the same kinds of contradictions in science, and I haven't decided to apostatize from science."
He recommends a hearty science eduation -- naturally -- particularly one that "contraditcs" what many religious faiths hold true. In that he supposes that exposure to the contradictions will ease new minds into understanding and pondering them, rather than looking at them superficially and deciding which way to go without much study. That's a lesson we could all learn on a great many subjects.
Fought hard to get through the traffic and city lights and all the traffic up in the foothills east of town, but we did get to see us some Northern Lights.
Found this on the DuMont today, and it made me angry.
If course it's rage bait meant to elicit comments and shared, and I fell for it.
But it is *so* wrong.
And worse yet, I suspect it's a mix of rage bait and artificial intelligence slop. I'm sure the prompt went something like this: "Write a plot summary for a MASH episode featuring Klinger and Hawkeye where Klinger got succotash on his boa [because they have no idea what a stole is, these infantile little language-garblers-for-money] because Hawkeye didn't want to eat any more liver "
For some reason, I got to thinking about Michael Palin of Monty Python fame tonight.
That led me to find and watch the Monty Python episode called "The Cycling Tour," in which Palin plays a cheerful idiot cyclist who crashes his way through North Cornwall until he ends up in front of a firing squad in Soviet Russia because a food scientists he happened to meet along the way was injured in an auto accident, thought he was Scottish folk singer Clodagh Rodgers, and then a mix of Clodagh Rodgers and Leon Trotsky.
So now I'm listening to Clodagh Rodgers on YouTube, having descended further into a really odd YouTube wossname . . . rabbit hole.
Michael Palin really does a passable Rosemary Wood too.
I don't know which of these statements to believe. Either it's actual video of the incident, or it's AI generated.
Maybe it's a hybrid - but in any case, the Las Vegas Review-Journal needs to state clearly what's going on here.
And while I appreciate them being up-front about AI use, the statement poses more questions than it answers. And if the situation leads to a big explanation on how AI was used, they might be better off not using it at all.
Many running for ze pooblic office in Idaho Falls are griping about "all the apartments" being built. They don't like them. They want, like the Tolkien's elves, for everything to remain static.
Me? I kinda like coming into town from the south and seeing these apartment buildings near the freeway, rather than the empty fields that have been there since I was a kid (There are three hotels going up in the area too. Neat.)
There's a loud group of people locally who don't want more people coming here. Oh, they want more places to eat and shop and do things, but they don't want more people -- you know, the catalyst that brings more places to eat and shop and do things.
I'm tired of it.
I posted this on a local site, and I stand by it. They were griping about the "lack of planning."
You do know that earlier this year Bonneville County suggested laying groundwork for an expressway south of town. Residents out there went totally bonkers and the county backed down, or at least radically scaled back the vision. A big part of the problem planners face are NIMBYs who want planning to occur unless it happens to impact them.
And yes, I do know there are impacts. Take a gander at Hitt Road between Iona Road and the Yellowstone Highway. The house I grew up in used to be there. It's gone now. That's part of the price we have to pay for growth, and there aren't a lot of people around here willing to pay the price.
Here's that plan. And out of it we're not going to get the groundwork for an expressway (like they're griping about) but another imitation of Sunnyside Road, which they're also griping about.
Same thing at I-15 and US-20. Idaho Transportation Department has a plan to relocate that junction and really get rid of a nasty bottleneck in town -- but when they held an open house, the preferred option was "Do nothing!" because it was going to disrupt the stasis, the static situation the local elves want to preserve.
Upcoming in Ammon: A proposal to convert some fields on the edge of town into a commercial area and room for 1,200 houses. People in an uproar because they don't want the field by their house to be filled with houses. The only way to prevent that is to BUY THE DAMN FIELD, but they'd rather usurp the rights of others to preserve stasis.
Whatabouttaxes and whatabout roads and whatabout schools? Yeah, that's a pickle. But new residents and new businesses bring in new tax revenue to pay for all those whatabouts.
Back in mid-July, I offered an update on my chore list.
Things have not improved.
Well, they actually have. I've gotten more chores done. But the list keeps getting added to, which is the nature of lists, so it feels like not much progress has been made.
Behold:
A major - and expensive - list removal involved the $1,500 we paid to have the spruce tree in the front yard taken down. I'm still working on getting the wood from it chopped into bits, but the tree is indeed gone, leaving me a rather massive chore for next summer, mainly reconfiguring the space where the tree was. That'll involve removing some roots that are in the way of pavers and popping up in the yard, and cleaning all the gravel I put under the tree, sorting it from the needles and other gunk. I mean, I guess I could just get new gravel. But part of me really objects to the thought of throwing away rocks.
I'm actually tossing this list and starting a new one. It's just too scribbled to read anymore.
This review could easily devolve into the old Boomer trope: "Why don't they teach this at school?" Well, frankly, there's just too much. Too much to learn, too much to read. Too much to absorb.
In Idaho, we get this history obviously as part of "Idaho History," which was required of fourth and eleventh graders when I was of school age.
I'll admit here I don't remember much of what I learned, partly because it's so long ago and partly because I've read a lot of such history, writ small and writ large, since then, and it's all become muddled in my brain.
It's clear even with Stephen E. Ambrose in his book "Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West" (finally we get to the subject of this review). It's an excellent book, full of detail, told in a splendid voice often in the written words (and creative spelling) of Meriwether Lewis. Highly recommended; I have yet to read an Ambrose book that's a stinker.
I did learn a lot of stuff I didn't know about the Corps of Discovery; mainly that it was splendidly led by insightful, hardy, and lucky people who treated some people with too much deference and others who deserved better treatment with some disdain and cruelty, particularly the Nez Perce of Idaho.
Also: Did not know that after the voyage was over Lewis was slow as tar in getting any organization going in their collected journals while he fought petty battles with other members of the corps that wanted to publish or did publish their own writings and ended up killing himself in Kentucky as a result of what may have been a lifelong battle with depression and other mental illness or a combination of that with addictions to morphine, opium, and alcohol. Or it might have been syphilus. That's not the kind of things they tell fourth graders.
Anyway, highly recommended reading. I'll be passing the book on to my wife. And I enjoyed the little bits of trivia I encountered in the book.
"The grouse and three of the magpies were dead, all killed by the survivor. [President Thomas] Jefferson ordered that special care be given the remaining magpie and prairie dog so that he might see them on his return to the capital."
From Stephen E. Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage," concerning specimens sent to Washington by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
I wonder: How long did the remaining magpie survive?
I've seen a few old farts (my age and older) on Facebook lamenting their lack of trick-or-treaters and the general feeling that the Vibe of Halloweens Past just isn't what it used to be.
My response: And? Holidays evolve and change over time.
Stop trying to relive your childhood in modern times.
Talk to the kids. Are they having fun at the trunk-or-treat and other modern Halloween activities that you hate, apparently?
If they're having fun, leave them alone. Let them have fun and go be grumpy somewhere else.
And tell me with a straight face that you really miss your Welcome Back Kotter costume choices. . . .
It's hard to believe these even existed -- plastic moisture-retaning masks to top off designer garbage bags you hoped wouldn't rip before the night was over.
Stumbled across this video tonight: Look how much the "commercial" aura surrounding Christmas has evolved over the years. I particularly like the irony of aluminum Christmas trees dying off thanks to the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and then having the specials themselves die off as the viewing audience is fractured by streaming and other such junk of today.
Once again, I did not get as far along as I hoped I would with the wood chopping. I did get one awkward piece carved up, but then mightily struggled with other pieces.
To start:
I can see more of the ground underneath the wood pile, so that's progress. Maybe I can do some more tomorrow.
These logs have got an awful lot of branches poking out of them, and they go deep. I mean deep; I've never seen logs like this. Part of the reason they've been hard to split is because I spend most of the time pounding through the inner branches. Absolutely painful.
I did, of course, run into more trouble. I ended up driving both of these wedges into the wood and had to bash the bottom of the log with another wedge before everything finally fell apart. Not visible in the picture: The *fourth* wedge buried in the front of the nearest log.
Getting mail and messages and phone calls as such as a kid was a lot of fun. Each was an event tied with excitement and mystery.
Getting such things today:
Today's was from the insurance company. Keep bracing for a rate hike. But it was just the insurance card for our youngest's new truck. Expect the worst, hope for the best I guess.
So I was ill last week and took two days off work.
Came back today and discovered the word "furlough" was used in a meeting on Thursday.
No details offered. No timeline. No word whether this means work without pay or if we're to use our holiday and personal leave to make up for what the government hasn't appropriated.
Don't know what to think except if the expectation is the latter while working, I'm just going to take the time off. I don't feel like I need to burn through vacation and holiday time because the government can't seem to find it's butt with both hands this time around. Maybe if they reimburse. But I'm not holding my breath. We have a Congress and a president who seem content to watch the world burn.
Maybe they will see some burning.
So we wait, I guess. I have little hope any compromise will be found because those in charge are still getting paid and thus have no incentive to make progress. They only seem to be listening to the constituent voices who support them, which shouldn't shock me, I guess, but a guy can dream. The blame game is all they're interested in.
[Of C.S. Lewis's comments on The Lord of the Rings]
When he would say "You can do better than that. Better, Tolkien, please!" I would try. I'd sit down and write the section over and over. That happened with the scene I think is the best in the book, the confrontation between Gandalf and his rival wizard, Saruman, in the ravaged city of Isengard.
I do not think the Saruman passage is the best in the book. It is much better than the first draft, that is all. I mentioned the passage becase it is in fact one of the very few places where in the event I found [Lewis's] detailed criticisms useful and just. I cut out some passages of light-hearted hobbit conservation which he found tiresome, thinking that if he did most of the readers (if any) would feel the same. I do not think the event has proved him right. To tell the truth he never really liked hobbits very much, least of all Merry and Pippin. But a great number of readers do, and would like more than they have got.
(From the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter No. 294, 1967)
Important stuff here:
1. Get feedback and take it seriously. Keep on writing, but keep on getting feedback too.
2. Know when to ignore the feedback you get.
I know this is basic stuff, but it's good to hear it from a writer of Tolkien's caliber.
A loathsome practice that disenfranchises voters, empowers the enemy and is generally an underhanded practice that we can all generally agree shouldn't be done.
Gerrymandering when "we" do it:
We have to gerrymander because when we do it everyone has butterflies and rainbows coming out their navel and it's at best a noble practice meant to prevent the enemy from gaining ground and at worst a necessary evil we have to stoop to because *they* are doing it.
Slight setback today as I worked yet again to cut up the wood left over from the front yard spruce tree.
I got the second wedge to make sure I could split these big logs (they look big, but they're only about a foot thick. Still).
There was only one thing to do: Go to Ace Hardware and get two more wedges, but true wedges this time, not the diamond wedges. Figured they would concentrate the splitting force in fewer directions.
And it worked. I still have half of the log to split, but the wedges are free and I'm refining my technique.
I've spent about $50 on additional wedges, but Zundel wanted $300 to haul the firewood off, so I'm still saving money. And getting some good cardio in to boot.
Indy and Harry
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We're heavily into many things at our house, as is the case with many
houses. So here are the fruits of many hours spent with Harry Potter and
Indiana Jone...
Here at the End of All Things
-
And another book blog is complete.
Oh, Louis Untermeyer includes a final collection of little bits -- several
pages of insults -- but they're nothing I hav...
Here at the End of All Things
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I’ve pondered this entry for a while now. Thought about recapping my
favorite Cokesbury Party Blog moments. Holding a contest to see which book
to roast he...
Christmas Box Miracle, The; by Richard Paul Evans. 261 pages.
Morbid Tase for Bones, A; by Ellis Peters. 265 pages.
There's Treasure Everywhere, by Bill Watterson. 173 pages.
Read in 2025
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, by Kai-Fu Lee. 254 pages.
Book of Boy, The; by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. 271 pages.
Book of Mormon, The; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 535 pages.
Child's Garden of Verses, A; by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. 105 pages.
Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide, by John Cleese. 103 pages.
Dave Bartry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need, by Dave Barry. 171 pages.
Diary of A Wimpy Kid Hot Mess, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.
Fall of Richard Nixon, The; A Reporter Remembers Watergate, by Tom Brokaw. 227 pages.
God's Smuggler, by Brother Andrew and John and Elizabeth Sherill. 241 pages.
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett. 377 pages.
Leper of St. Giles, The; by Ellis Peters. 265 pages.
Lincoln at Gettysburg, by Garry Wills. 320 pages.
Outrage Machine, by Tobias Rose-Stockwell. 388 pages.
Peanuts by the Decade, the 1970s; by Charles Schulz. 530 pages
Politically, Fashionably, and Aerodynamically Incorrect: The First Outland Collection, by Berkeley Breathed. 128 pages.
Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett. 365 pages.
Rakkety Tam, by Brian Jacques. 371 pages.
Reflections of A Scientist, by Henry Eyring. 101 pages.
Rickover Effect, The; by Theodore Rockwell. 438 pages.
Road to Freedom, The; by Shawn Pollock. 212 pages.
Rocket Men, by Craig Nelson. 404 pages.
Trolls of Wall Street, The; by Nathaniel Popper. 341 pages.
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West; by Stephen E. Ambrose. 521 pages.
Why Things Go Wrong, by Laurence J. Peter. 207 pages.
Ze Page Total: 7,040
The Best Part
God's Smuggler, by Brother Andrew and and John and Elizabeth Sherill.
(Andrew and his wife Corrie have just consented to sell their home in Holland for the equivalent of $15,000 so they can purchase 5,000 pocket bibles in Russian for distribution to the faithful in Russia.)
[A phone call] For it was from the Dutch Bible Society, asking me if I could arrange to have the printing done somewhere else.
I had? In England! Well, here is what they proposed. They would pay half the cost. If the Bibles cost $3 each to print, I could purchase them for $1.50. And although the Society would pay for the entire printing as soon as it was ready, I would need to pay for my supplies only as I used them. If this was satisfactory --
If it was satisfactory! I could scarcely believe what I had heard. I could be able to buy six hundred Bibles -- all we could carry at one time -- right away out of our "Russian Bible" fund. And we wouldn't have to leave our home, and Corrie could go on sewing the pink curtains for Steffie's room, and I could set out my lettuce flats and -- I could hardly wait to tell Corrie what God had done with the thimbleful of willingness we had offered Him.
Sure. Chalk it up to coincidence all you want. But God does work in mysterious ways, and recognizes the gift of sacrifice.
