Books, E-Books, and Theft--Very Confusing

My collection of articles on copyright issues, the public domain, open source materials, and digital rights management (DRM) continues to spill over here from my work Website. Here are some discussions of "digital book piracy," as opposed to the offline pirates at the library.

Sherman Alexie has been very vocal about electronic formats for books, but I'm not sure I understand his position. Clearly, he wants to retain ownership of his works, because he derives a decent living from their sale. I can't object to that. We all want to live, and we all would prefer meaningful work. But that's a copyright issue--ebooks are subject to the same copyright laws as print books. He doesn't want his books available in digital format, but several of them are available--his publisher made that decision, just as the publisher chose cover art, fonts, formats, and all the other production details. Is he unhappy with his publisher? Maybe so--many authors are.

On the one hand, he's worried that ereaders and ebooks are "elitist," too expensive for poor kids like the one he used to be. On the other hand, he's worried about book stores being driven out of business, and book stores were too expensive for the kid I used to be (and the old lady I am now--I seldom buy a new book, and the copyrighted ebooks are too expensive for me to consider. I'm a loyal customer of Project Gutenberg.).

I don't even understand his testimonial about print books: " And all of my senses-sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste--come into play when I think and read about books. Books are tactile and eccentric..." I've always been a scrounger of odd books at the back of the library, or at the estate sale, or the used book store, and the books I've enjoyed the most have not always been a delight for the senses of smell and taste. My EZReader's copies of Dickens smell much better than the print copies, and they are easier to read, as I can control the page contrast and the font size and shape. Maybe Mr. Alexie will think differently when he reaches that age where all the typefaces get so small.

Most of the intellectual property I have produced belongs to the universities, the government, or the research institutes who payed me a salary while I produced it. This is probably why I like the Open Source ideas and products so much, and feel that the Internet should be more like a free library than like a cable TV channel. And whether it's in print or in electronic form, it's always possible to Steal This Book. (Google Books will let you read the first 45 pages for free, but if you want to read the rest, you'll have to buy it from one of the vendors they list. Ironic, no?)

Here are some discussions of book piracy, ebooks, and a bit about digital rights management:

• A post from the MobileRead forum: Author Sherman Alexie Wants to Punch You in the Face:

  At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices "elitist" and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, "I wanted to hit her."

  ....[W]hen given a chance to correct himself on his own blog, the only thing he apologizes for is the idea of hitting a woman; "I should have edited myself. I should have said, "I saw a man on the airplane reading a Kindle and I wanted to hit him." In this way, my joke becomes about my true object of fear, distrust, and anger---the Kindle---and not about the gender of the person reading the Kindle."

• Later, Sherman Alexie Clarifies "Elitist" Charges:

  People are eager to portray me as being anti-technology, but that's not the case at all. I think the iPod is as vital as the fork and wheel. So I'm not even sure why I have this strange, subterranean fear and loathing of the Kindle and its kind....I rose out of poverty and incredible social dysfunction because of books. And all of my senses-sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste--come into play when I think and read about books. Books are tactile and eccentric. An eBook will always be a gorgeous but anonymous box. It will also be just a tool--perhaps an amazing and useful tool--but I don't want it to replace the book. And I'm worried that many people don't care about the book itself, and see the eBook as a replacement. And I'm worried that Amazon and other eBook distributors will completely replace bookstores....face-to-face interaction will become more and more rare. Sure, the Internet can launch careers, but there is a loss of intimacy that should be acknowledged and mourned.

• And later still: Digital piracy hits the e-book industry:

  "I'd be really worried if I were Stephen King or James Patterson or a really big bestseller that when their books become completely digitized, how easy it's going to be to pirate them," said novelist and poet Sherman Alexie on Stephen Colbert's show last month.

  "With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership -- of artistic ownership -- goes away," Alexie added. "It terrifies me."

  ....However, some evidence suggests that authors' and publishers' claims of damage from illegal piracy may be overstated. Recent statistics have shown that consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.

  Ana Maria Allessi, publisher for Harper Media at HarperCollins, told CNN, "we have to be vigilant in our punishment ... but much more attractive is to simply make the technology better, legally." E-book technology offers so many positives for both the author and the consumer that any revenue lost to piracy may just be a necessary evil, she said. "Consumers who invest in one of these dedicated e-book readers tend to load it up and read more," said Allessi. "And what's wrong with that?"

• E-Book Piracy: The Publishing Industry's Next Epic Saga?

  While publishing e-books protected by DRM seems like a no-brainer solution to piracy, the idea has faced criticism from within the publishing industry and from consumers. First, publishers are weary of reports that the DRM technology used in the Kindle and the Sony Reader has been hacked, says Nick Bogaty, an expert in DRM technology for Adobe. Second, consumers are hesitant to buy digital books with inflexible DRM that ties an e-book to a limited number of e-readers.

  Critics say that the two providers of DRM-protected e-books, Amazon and Adobe, are stunting the e-book industry's progress. For instance, Amazon's Kindle uses its own DRM-restricted AZW e-book format. People who purchase an e-book on their Kindle cannot transfer it for reading on another, competing e-book reader from a different company.

  DRM issues get thornier when device makers, such as Amazon, start negotiating exclusive e-publishing rights for their product. Amazon signed a deal with best-selling business writer Stephen R. Covey to publish several of his books, including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle-Centered Leadership, exclusively for the Kindle. The company has also negotiated exclusive rights for Kindle e-books from author Stephen King and for a biography of First Lady Michelle Obama.

  The idea of exclusive e-book rights tied to devices seems as annoying as being allowed to play a particular new CD only on a certain company's CD players. But Ian Fried, the vice president of Amazon Kindle, has stated that Kindle consumers don't mind its DRM. That could change, however, as a predicted flood of new, rival e-readers hit the market in 2010, and Kindle owners think about jumping ship--only to discover that they can't take their e-books with them. Remember the backlash against DRM-protected content in Apple's iTunes store?

  Bogaty points out that Adobe, whose DRM technology is used by Sony and Barnes & Noble, is yielding to critics who say that its antipiracy technology is too restrictive. Adobe is loosening the grip of its DRM, allowing users to share e-books with friends and to read books on up to 12 different devices (6 desktop and 6 handheld).

Linux Woes--Lenny to Kubuntu in 48 Hours

Almost a year ago, I bragged about how smoothly the upgrade from Debian Etch (old stable) to Lenny (new stable) went. Only a few weeks later, the motherboard and hard drive went up in smoke. Because I grew up steeped in the works of the Brothers Grimm, I knew I had somehow caused this by being cocky. (cf. "Rumpelstiltskin;" "The Brave Little Tailor")

A sadder but wiser girl, I replaced the computer and installed Lenny (stable) from a netinstall CD image (via Debian.org) and everything went smoothly, with one exception. When I used the "ctrl-alt-F1" action to switch between tty consoles, all I got was a blank screen with a floating message from my monitor that the settings were not optimal. "ctrl-alt-F7" sent me back to the console running Xorg, and all the pretty stuff. I poked around the Debian forums a bit, but because I didn't really understand the problem, I didn't know what search terms to use. I eventually just learned to live without the tty consoles, although I really missed them.

Lately, though, I began to wish I had a newer version of OpenOffice, because I'm teaching a class in spreadsheets and word processing. I had Calibre, the dandy open source ebook management program, backported from sid (Debian unstable), but it only "sorta" worked, and Iceweasel (Debian version of Firefox) was choking for me pretty often. When the Lenny version of Miro crashed every time I tried to use it, I thought I'd upgrade to testing (Squeeze) or maybe unstable (Sid). (For a recent discussion, see What do you prefer for your desktop: Lenny, Squeeze or Sid?)

First, I backed up my data files. This reminded me how crummy my data backup procedures are. Here's the procedure:

1. Whenever I'm working on a Really Important file, I ftp a copy to the Mac mini (currently in the living room where we're watching it in lieu of a TV), which machine saves it to the 1 terabyte external hard drive. (No, I still haven't set up a better system. Perhaps now is the time....) If it's a work-related file I send it to the work-related Mac Book Pro the same way.
2. Periodically, I copy my data files to the Mac mini's external drive. Sometimes I use ftp (excruciatingly slow and painful), sometimes I copy the files to an external USB drive, carry the drive to another computer, plug in the drive, and copy the files over.
3. Periodically, I copy the Mac mini's external hard drive files to the hard drive in my Linux box by one of these awkward procedures. Thus, I have two or three copies of my data files scattered around the house.
4. If it's important, not huge, and not in some way confidential, I upload it to my web site, my work website, or here. (See Linux and Open Source for examples of things I don't want to misplace.)

I should fix this mess--I say that every time I have a problem, or do an upgrade. I could get an external USB hard drive and back up my Linux installation; I could set up my LAN to work more smoothly, I could set up an automated backup procedure that didn't rely on whim.... That should be my computer project for this spring.

The length of this post must tell you that my upgrade from Lenny (stable) to Squeeze (testing) did not go smoothly. In fact, I'm sitting here typing in Emacs on a spanking new Kubuntu 9.10 installation. I hope that in a few weeks or months, I'll be able to move back over to a working version of Debian, but right now, I seem to be out of luck, and I don't yet know why. Here's a rundown of my problems.

1. I "googled around" for known problems and suggestions for the upgrade. I didn't see any generalized "Lenny-to-Squeeze angst," and I found the suggestion to upgrade the installer software first, and to use a "safe-upgrade" option, followed by a reboot, followed by a "full-upgrade." So, I updated my /etc/apt/sources.list to replace "lenny" with "squeeze," and started the process. Updating the installer programs and the aptitude safe-upgrade procedures showed no apparent problems, so I rebooted, and entered aptitude full-upgrade command.
2. At the end of the upgrade process, I got messages that lots of programs could not be loaded. Many of them were associated with the KDE desktop. This thread from late December 2009 Failed to upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze. [SOLVED] on Debian User Forums points to problems with KDE in Squeeze. I thought that might be the problem. But, Gnome's still in there, so I rebooted, and got as far as the Gnome display manager (gdm). However, the computer wouldn't accept input from the mouse or keyboard.

3. I found this relevant forum thread: keyboard problem with xdm and kdm. Of particular interest is this observation:

   When the keyboard doesn't work in xdm or kdm, even ctrl+alt+F1 doesn't respond....I think it might be related to the radeon driver, which seems quite unstable; when I work after a startx, everything works fine, as long as I don't work too much with the console. But if I switch to the console a lot and do a lot of work on the console, finally, when going back to X, my X ends up not responding to the keyboard nor to the mouse.

   As it happens, I have the same Radeon video chipset. A helpful forum responder pointed me to the appropriate proprietary driver. I don't know yet if I need this--Kubuntu 9.10 seems to be working well. I'll have to find out more about the driver eventually....

4. Because I had no input hardware working, I declared the update project hosed, and downloaded the January 29, 2009 netinstall disk for Squeeze (amd64). The text-based installer wouldn't come up at all, and there was something seriously wrong with the graphical installer, too. It failed during the disk partitioning step, so anything that might have been usable on the hard drive was hosed.

5. The only way to get Sid is through the upgrade path, and, for now, the same is true for Squeeze. So, I downloaded the Lenny netinstall disk image, burned it to a CD, and installed Lenny from scratch. It seemed to work, but the tty consoles were once again, unavailable. I wondered if that might be related to the video chipset driver, or perhaps to the Xorg installation. I hypothesized that my problem might have to do with the Lenny kernel, or the version of Xorg, so I decided to upgrade to Squeeze once more.

6. This time, because all the failing KDE stuff wasn't there, I saw my Xorg-related stuff failed to update. I had no working Xwindow programs, just a console window. I found these relevant forum threads:

   • Blocked packages during upgrade Lenny to Squeeze:

     [i]t appeared that the sticking point for udev and older kernels is linked to the Squeeze libdrm2 package, which is depending on the drm (direct rendering manager) built into kernels >= 2.6.29. Since xorg, udev and hal are also linked to libdrm2, the whole upgrade process gets broken. Once you have a newer kernel, the upgrade process should work.

   • Lenny will not autoconfigure X suggests ways to examine the failure of the Xorg installation.

   • SMXI.org--A set of scripts that may be helpful if (more likely when) I have to troubleshoot this problem again:

     smxi is an interactive script designed to help people maintain their systems. It supports Debian (Stable, Testing, and Sid) and true Debian based distros (sidux, AntiX, Mepis). It does not support Ubuntu based distros because there are too many differences between Debian and Ubuntu.

   • Here are some more things to try if I get Ctrl-Alt-F1 = Black,blank screen? instead of a tty console.

7. At this point, I suspected my graphics card driver was not working properly, I wasn't alone in having problems upgrading the Debian Xorg packages, and I needed a Linux machine before too long. I found this advice from a network administrator in Prague (city of my ancestors, the very ones who instilled in me the certainty that boasting is always punished by ill fortune): Putting new X.org version on Debian stable (lenny).

   Of course, there is a catch--new computers have graphic cards that lenny simply cannot cope with anymore. And if you want new drivers, you need new xorg version. There are no official backports. So you are faced with installing xorg from testing (squeeze), but this is a fairly large-scale operation: your libc6 package and other base libraries will be upgraded, your keyboard/console configuration will change, etc. Especially the library upgrade is troublesome, since in order to stay binary-compatible across the whole department, we would need to install libc6 etc. from squeeze on *all* our machines. It is not very likely significant breakage of these packages would go through to testing, but there are risks and overall it adds significant overhead to the task.

   Thankfully, there is a neat alternative solution--add Ubuntu to the repository cauldron! Ubuntu Jaunty is very similar to Debian Lenny package-wise, and in fact not even libc upgrade is necessary. Only a fairly isolated set of xorg-related packages will be upgraded, which seems ideal for the purpose.

   Perhaps my problem is compatibility with my newer machine. If the Ubuntu repositories have fresher drivers and x-org packages, why not use Ubuntu (or in my case, Kubuntu, because I need several KDE programs for my specialized projects) instead of Debian, at least until an upgrade path becomes available.

8. I downloaded the Kubuntu 9.10 disk image and installed it. X-org seems to be working fine and the tty-consoles are there and behaving just as they should. I found it quite easy to change all the little things I didn't like about Ubuntu (the way it handles root, the behavior of the terminal windows), and the latest, greatest KDE versions of my favorite programs are very nice.

Really Big Things

The Onion surprised me with another tea-spilled-in-the-keyboard moment with Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further.

SILVER SPRING, MD—Frustrated by continued demands from viewers for more awesome and extreme programming, Science Channel president Clark Bunting told reporters Tuesday that his cable network was "completely incapable" of watering down science any further than it already had.

"Look, we've tried, we really have, but it's simply not possible to set the bar any lower," said a visibly exhausted Bunting, adding that he "could not in good conscience" make science any more mindless or insultingly juvenile. "We already have a show called Really Big Things, which is just ridiculous if you think about it, and one called Heavy Metal Taskforce, which I guess deals with science on some distant level, though I don't know what it is. Plus, there's Punkin Chunkin." "Punkin Chunkin, for Christ's sake," added Bunting, referring to the popular program in which contestants launch oversized pumpkins into the air using catapults. "What more do you people want?"

It's just what I've been imagining all these years.

Apple iPad--Early Reviews

The iPad? Really, Mr. Jobs? It doesn't look absorbent at all, and don't the better products have wings? When I heard the name for Apple's new, extra-large iPod Touch (the iPhone without the phone), I thought it was a joke, but not only is Apple really calling it the iPad, there is a competing claim on that goofy name: Adobe responds to iPad's lack of Flash, Fujitsu consulting lawyers over iPad name .

Fujitsu says it owns the "iPad" name. The company sold an iPad handset in 2002, filed for a trademark in 2003, and said it is consulting lawyers over the matter.

Here's the product review that best answered my questions. I found both these videos at Dvorak Uncensored.

Librarians as Offline Pirates

Earlier this week, I had to report to the local government on the historic preservation project that has me in such close association with the Reverent William T. Price and family. Part of that project has sent me reading up on copyright issues and the public domain. I even wrote a little report on it: Pocahontas County Historic Preservation Project: A Draft of Digitization Policies.

Join that with my recent interest in ebook readers and you'll see why everywhere I look, I find more to read about copyright laws, digital rights management (DRM), and intellectual property theft. This week Slashdot pointed me to this amusing analysis: Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion

Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that "publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy" comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were "loaned" last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

From what we've been able to piece together, the book "lending" takes place in "libraries". On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a "card". But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there's no admission charge and it doesn't cost anything to borrow a book, there's always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material.

The slashdot story comments were also amusing:

In related news it has been discovered that the contents of textbooks, which often sell for $200 or more, are largely made up of information and ideas developed by previous authors. The previous textbook authors are starting to complain that they aren't getting any royalties from new textbooks and are now calling new textbook authors "seagoing murdering thieves" (pirates). Others are wondering why books mostly inspired by previous works, have more than a hundred year copyright, when the Constitution only authorizes copyrights for limited times, not a trillion years.

Martin Luther King Day

Here's an hour-long Martin Luther King Day program: Democracy Now, January 18, 2010.

Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King....While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People's Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, which he delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, "I Have Been to the Mountain Top." that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

I'm not sure if I ever heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, and it's been a long time since I heard the famous "I have Been to the Mountain Top" except in sound bites. I was glad to be reminded of this.

A Peek at My Scanning Project

I've been scanning materials from the Pocahontas County Historical Society archives since this past summer, and the last few days, I've been working on an annual report for the project. Most of the scans are hard to read handwriting, but there are a few photographs. This is Susan A. Price, daughter of my old pal, William T. Price, sometime after she graduated from the Womens' Medical College of Baltimore in 1903. The photo was taken in Marlinton, perhaps in her sister's home, which is now houses the Historical Society's museum. She served as a physician in several mental hospitals, and lived and worked for many years in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she was avidly interested in historical preservation of that city.

Gotta love the outfit--especially those elbow-length kid gloves. Doesn't she look like the cat that ate the canary? Here's another photo taken the same day, showing more detail of her dress, and a more contemplative expression. I suspect that if I had that outfit, I too would read with those gloves on. In fact, I probably wouldn't take off the hat.

DIY Book Scanner--Piracy or Not?

For the past 18 months I've been working on a digitization project for local history materials. (Hence my unhealthy co-dependent relationship with the Reverend William T. Price.) That's how I came to follow Digitization Blog's RSS feed, and discover Wired Magazine's article: DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes.

For nearly two years, Daniel Reetz dreamed of a book scanner that could crunch textbooks and spit out digital files he could then read on his PC.

Book scanners, like the ones Google is using in its Google Books project, run into thousands of dollars, putting them out of the reach of a graduate student like Reetz. But in January, when textbook prices for the semester were listed, Reetz decided he would make a book scanner that would cost a fraction of commercially available products....

"The hardware is ridiculously simple as long as you are not demanding archival quality," he says. "A dumpster full of building materials, really cheap cameras and outrageous textbook prices was all I needed to do it."

Reetz went on to upload a 79-step how-to guide for building a book scanner (.pdf). The guide has sparked more than 400 comments. It has also spawned a website, DIYbookscanner.org, where more than 50 independent book scanners spread across countries such as Indonesia, Russia and Britain have contributed hardware refinements and software programs....

For details on the "how-to" of it, you can visit DIY Book Scanning news and forum, or download the 79-step how-to guide for building a book scanner (.pdf). The Wired article focuses more on the "whys" and "why nots" of do-it-yourself digitization.

Reetz says the DIY book-scanning forum isn't about distributing pirated content, but he can see the temptation. "My project was founded in angry desperation," he says. "It was a watershed moment when I realized getting an 8-megapixel Canon camera was cheaper than buying a bunch of textbooks."

As adjunct faculty at a couple of colleges, I sometimes teach science, math and computer classes, and I can tell you the cost of textbooks will make your hair stand on end (even at the intro level, where economies of scale could keep expenses in check). The schools won't let the students see the ISBN numbers of the required texts, to prevent them from shopping online for second-hand books, and they even forbid cell-phones in the campus bookstores, lest price-conscious students photograph shrink-wrapped book covers. Patently unfair practices like these seem designed to encourage piracy.

So are Reetz and the builders of the DIY scanner pirates? That would depend on who you talk to, says Pamela Samuelson, a professor at University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in digital-copyright law. Trade publishers are almost certain to cry copyright infringement, she says, though it may not necessarily be the case.

....If you scan a book that you have already purchased, it is "fine, and fair use," she says. "Personal-use copying should be deemed to be fair, unless there is a demonstrable showing of harm to the market for the copyright at work," says Samuelson. But not so individual users who already own the book....For publishers, though, the growth of the DIY scanning community could hurt. Publishers today sell digital versions to customers who already own hardcover or paperback versions of the same book.

"You cannot look at this idea from the perspective of whether the publisher can make extra money," says Samuelson. "Publishers would love it if you can't resell books either, but that's not going to happen."

Call of the Tame

Via Slashdot, I read Soviet Scientist Turns Foxes Into Puppies, where I found these links to documentary excerpts. I don't know what brought these breeding experiments into the news--most of the related stories I found are at least a few years old. However, it was news to me, and offers some fascinating suggestions about how domestic animals came to be that way. Here's the abstract of a review article, Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment, by Lyudmila Trut (1999):

Abstract: At an experimental farm in Novosibirsk, Siberia, geneticists have been working for four decades to turn foxes into dogs. They are not trying to create the next pet craze. Instead, author Trut and her predecessors hope to explain why domesticated animals such as pigs, cattle and dogs are so different from their wild ancestors. Selective breeding alone cannot explain all the differences. Trut's mentor, the eminent Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev, thought that the answers lay in the process of domestication itself, which might have dramatically changed wolves' appearance and behavior even in the absence of selective breeding. To test his hypothesis, Belyaev and his successors at the Institute have been breeding another canine species, silver foxes, for a single trait: friendliness toward people. Although no one would mistake them for dogs, the Siberian foxes appear to be on the same overall evolutionary path--a route that other domesticated animals also may have followed while coming in from the wild.

You can download the complete article: Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment (pdf file). It's well worth reading, and not painfully technical. (That's my evaluation, but I've been told I'm a painfully technical kind of gal, so YMMV.)

A 2006 New York Times article describes some related research on rats: Nice Rats, Nasty Rats: Maybe It's All in the Genes.

Extinctions Inside Us

I've had this article sitting on my "to blog" list for a while: Bugs Inside: What Happens When the Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Disappear? The human body has more microbial than human cells, but this rich diversity of micro-helpers that has evolved along with us is undergoing a rapid shift--one that may have very macro health consequences. At my last "real" job at The Institute for Genomic Research (Now known as J. Craig Venter Institute, because that is the boss's name, and he's not a bashful fellow) I wrote some grants to sequence microbial ecosystems. It was too early in the microbial genome sequencing game for those proposals to fly, but now several organizations are doing just that. It's been 11 years since I left, so I guess I was right not to stick around waiting for it to happen, but I'm feeling a little envious of the folks who are getting to do that work now.

Sea water microbes, oil well flora, rumin ecosystems, and human "normal flora"--it's a way to get a look at bacteria in non-homogeneous culture, and characterize "bugs" that can't be cultured individually. Of course, the normal flora of humans are of particular interest.

Having evolved along with the human species, most of the miniscule beasties that live in and on us are actually helping to keep us healthy, just as our well-being promotes theirs. In fact, some researchers think of our bodies as superorganisms, rather than one organism teeming with hordes of subordinate invertebrates....

With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction. In many of the world's larger ecosystems, scientists can predict what might happen when one of the central species is lost, but in the human microbial environment—which is still largely uncharacterized—most of these rapid changes are not yet understood. "This is the next frontier and has real significance for human health, public health and medicine," says Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan (U.M.) School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

Meanwhile, each new generation in developed countries comes into the world with fewer of these native populations. "They're actually missing some component of their microbiota that they've evolved to have," Foxman says.

Happy (Belated) Public Domain Day

Between my consumer's interest in ebooks and my work on digitizing local history materials, I read quite a bit about copyright issues. This article on Public Domain Day really brought home to me how much modern copyright law locks away from the reading public:

What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2010? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1953.

Current US law extends copyright protections for 70 years from the date of the author's death. (Corporate "works-for-hire" are copyrighted for 95 years.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those laws, works published in 1953 would be passing into the public domain on January 1, 2010.

This Center for the Study of the Public Domain (CSPD) article mentions many movies and musical compositions that would be in the public domain by now, but it was the list of books that really gave me a jolt:

• Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March
• Ray Bradbury's dystopian novelFahrenheit 451
• C.S. Lewis'sThe Silver Chair
• J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories
• James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain

Even more surprising to me is this tidbit:

All of these works are famous--that is why we included them here. And the authors of famous and commercially successful works would probably renew the copyright for a second term of 28 years. But we know from the Copyright Office that 85% of authors did not renew their copyrights (for books, the number is even higher--93% did not renew), since most works exhaust their commercial value very quickly. That means that under the law that existed until 1978, up to 85% of all copyrighted works from 1981 would be entering the public domain on January 1, 2010.

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain has several informative Web pages on related issues. Orphan works represent the public domain issue that troubles me the most. as the CSPD explains:

These works are still presumably under copyright...but they are commercially unavailable and the copyright owner cannot be found. They probably comprise the majority of the record of 20th century culture (one study indicates that only 2 percent of works between 55 and 75 years old continue to retain commercial value). The default response of archivists, libraries, film restorers, historians, artists, scholars, educators, publishers, and others is to avoid using copyrighted works unless they are clearly in the public domain. As a result, orphan works are not used in new creative efforts or made available to the public due to uncertainty over their copyright status, even when there is no longer anyone claiming copyright ownership, or the owner no longer has any objection to such use. The costs here are huge: needlessly disintegrating films just when technology would allow for their preservation, prohibitive costs for libraries, incomplete and spotted histories, thwarted scholarship, digital libraries put on hold, delays to publication. In the cases where the work is truly an orphan work, those costs are tragic because they are completely unnecessary: no one is benefiting from the continued copyright protected over these works, while the entire public loses the ability to adapt, transform, preserve, digitize, republish and otherwise make new and valuable uses of them.

I Join the Electronic Book Revolution--Sort Of

I bought an Astak EZ Reader Pocket Pro a couple of months ago, and I'm really pleased with it, although I haven't yet explored all its features. I had been wishing for an ebook reader for a couple of years, and I opined on them back in May. If only there were a way, I whined, to read electronic copies of Project Gutenberg books comfortably, without a backlit computer screen. Thousands of books that would never get mildewed, or lose their pages, or take up shelf space, in any font size I desire. Because most of the gadget reviewers are young men who don't imagine they'll ever have vision problems, or otherwise get old, cranky or cash-strapped, I'm offering a product review by "A Woman of a Certain Age."

The E-Ink reading experience seems very natural to me, and after the first two or three pages of Wuthering Heights, I had completely forgotten that I wasn't reading a regular book. In fact, if I had been holding my moldy old paperback with the tiny, tiny print, I would have been much more aware of the unfriendly format. My eyeballs are middle-aged, and being able to adjust the font size and contrast is wonderful. I stayed up late to follow Cathy and Heathcliff to the bitter end, without the eye fatigue that comes from reading too long on a computer screen. (I didn't remember how much house-keeping information Emily Bronte included--what they ate, how they cooked it, what it took to keep the kitchen clean....really interesting. Also, everybody seemed to have a simmering case of tuberculosis, with realistic, unromantic symptoms.)

My device came with a 1 GB SD card, loaded with "300 Free eBooks," although I think that was a special, introductory offer. I bought a 4 GB card, and started loading it up with the complete works of every 19th century author I fancy. Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, George Eliot, the Brontes, Henry James--bookcases full, and there's still loads of room on the SD card.

It also turns out this is a great way to read knitting patterns. I often have to rewrite knitting patterns on 3x5 index cards to keep with my knitting. It's just as easy to type them and copy them over to the E-Ink device, where I can make the font as HUGE as I like, whenever I need it.

The most advertised E-Ink readers (Kindle and Sony, for example) are designed to sell digitally locked up, copyrighted books (DRM books) for what I consider high prices. They even charge the customer money to make Project Gutenberg books available in their proprietary formats.

In September, the Astak EZ Reader Pocket Pro came on the market for $200. (And it was available in RED!) It's a little Linux computer that can display 21 non-DRM'ed file formats. I may never buy DRM'ed ebooks, but if I decide to, the EZReader can display ADE-encrypted PDF and ePub books, and there are lots of books available in those formats. In addition to the company website, there's a careful and detailed look at the Astak Pocket PRO, provided by a company spokesman.

Here are some features that convinced me that I would really like this device, instead of the many others on the market. (Also, it comes in RED.)

• E-Ink technology, with eight levels of grey scale (better display of pictures or illustrations than earlier devices)
• Displays these DRM-free formats: PDF, TXT, PDB, DOC, HTML, FB2, LIT, MP3, EPUB, PRC, WOL, CHM, PPT, TIF, PNG, GIF, RAR, ZIP, DJVU, JPG, BMP
• Adobe Digital Editions firmware update lets you buy copy-protected eBooks in PDF and ePub formats.
• a user-replaceable rechargeable battery (Sony and Kindle devices are done for when their battery won't charge anymore--have to send them back to the factory for servicing)
• an SD card that supports up to 16GB
• three levels of font size and different font choices; also you can read in portrait or landscape mode, which is useful if you go with a very large font
• mp3 player mode which can be used simultaneously with reading mode
• Text-To-Speech... meaning it can read to you and automatically advances pages
• bookmarking capability
• Accessories in the box include crush-resistant case with magnetic clasp, ear buds, AC charger, USB cable, and wrist leash. (The pricier devices require you to buy these separately.)

What's Cooking, Princess?

The new house is all the things we hoped it would be--wonderfully warm, easily cleaned, with plenty of closets and cabinets--but we're all having a little trouble adjusting to the new space. Princess is still looking for that perfectly cat-sized hiding place.

I hope this picture doesn't suggest the Fatal Attraction bunny to you. In November, we moved the canned goods from the old house to the new cellar, and Princess had to inspect the canner. Although the size was reasonable, it didn't remain long enough on the kitchen floor for her purposes. The rocking chair seat will have to serve until something better comes along.

Our New 1959 Tractor

With all the new house excitement, I never mentioned that we traded in our lovely 1946 Ford tractor for this new 1959 Massey Ferguson model. Adorable and smooth-running as the Ford was, its low gear was much too fast for our steep hillsides. It was great on level ground, but we built a house on the only patch of level ground we had. The new tractor also has a sweet sound, and it can go really, really slow.

Alexander Hamilton

Writer and star of the Broadway musical In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda performs "The Hamilton Mixtape" at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009. Accompanied by Alex Lacamoire.

I'm not sure where I first saw this, but it's so cool, I thought I should file it here where I can find it again, and you can see it if you haven't already.

What Would Eleanor Roosevelt Knit?

What would Eleanor Roosevelt knit? Mittens, it turns out. Knitty, the online knitting magazine, features Mittens from Mrs Roosevelt, including an interview with Mary Ann Colopy, a seasonal park ranger at the Roosevelt/Vanderbilt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York. She describes some manuscript knitting patterns found among Mrs. Roosevelt's papers at her work site, and shares what she knows about Mrs. Roosevelt's knitting history.

Franklin Habit, Knitty regular, tested and rewrote the directions, which produce mittens just like the ones my mom and grandma used to knit. Neither fancy, time-consuming, nor expensive to produce, they are the sort of mittens you just use until they wear out.

Ms Colopy says of Mrs. Roosevelt:

Eleanor's knitting was something she did for herself, to feel active even when sitting. She would ask other knitters for patterns, and share patterns with other knitters. But outside of the world of women producing garments for their families, the patterns and artifacts were not appreciated. And this is still true in many ways for knitters. Knitting is a folk art, passed from hand to hand. Unlike many textiles -- such as lace, quilts, weaving, and samplers -- it has not received academic attention until very recently and has not been appreciated as a craft.

A Garden of New Year's Wishes

A little iambic pentameter for the New Year:

May the New Year be like a garden fair
With flowers of joy, and free from weeds of care;
Good fortune, as the smiling sun to bless
Your every effort with complete success.

This card was sent to Florence Williamson at her parents' home near Williamson, Iowa in honor of the 1910 New Year, postmarked Snyder, Oklahoma, Dec. 23, 1909. The message says Hello, Florence! Here is wishing you a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year. We are having zero weather with snow for several days. We are all well & hope this will find you all the same. With love and best wishes, 1909, Theresa Wiginton, Snyder, Okla.

Every Good Wish for a Happy New Year

There's no legible postmark on this card, so I don't know which new year it celebrated, but it is addressed to Florence Williamson, and it says: We wish you many pleasures for the coming year. May you find the ---? Well, good luck and coma and see us. We are all well. Went to a lecture last night. Tell Jim the house is still here. J. M. W.

Good Luck With Your Zeppelin in the New Year

Children flying a zeppelin festooned with pink forget-me-not garlands and giant four-leafed clovers--I think this is the strangest post-card my grandma ever got, mailed by her friend Agnes Moore from Iowa City December 23, 1908. (I don't know if Grandma and Agnes found it odd or not.) Agnes wrote ""Hello Florence, How are you? I'm just fine. Excuse poor writing." (This because the card is so heavily embossed that there's almost no writable surface available.) Agnes includes her new address at "15 E. Washington St., Iowa City, Ia."

A Merry Christmas, 1909, Prescott, Iowa

Another card from Florence Williamson's album: Dec. 22, 1909, "Wish you Merry Xmas and Happy New Year. E.V."

Snow Princess

Most of the time, I think a cat's-eye view of the world is an advantage, but with her chin six inches from the ground and the snow 30 inches deep, it's no wonder Princess is ready to come back in the house after one short trip off the porch. Even a winter-wooly coat is no help with snow like this.

Snowy Saturday Morning

By mid-day on Saturday, we had hip-deep snow on the ground. Really pretty, provided you don't need to go out!

Thanksgiving Greetings, 1910, Adams County, Iowa

Postmark: St. Paul, MINN, 6 pm Nov. 19, 1910. Dear Florence, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Did you get my letter? What are you folks going to do this Thanksgiving? We will all be at home. From your loving friend, Edna C.

Index Humor

My work life has, the last few months, involved quite a bit of directory planning and index-making. I hadn't thought of it as an avenue for humor until last week. Miffed that Sarah Palin's new book was published index-less, several people have posted their own indices. It's unlikely that Palin will thank them for their trouble, given that I laughed aloud at the first two listed below. At the risk of joining the ranks of the lonely and shallow people who don't admire poor Sarah, here are the indices I've seen so far.

• The 'Going Rogue' Index by Seyward Darby (November 17) in The New Republic. Some favorite entries:
  • "Dang" 74, 184, 282, 296, 352, 401
  • "Going rogue" 209, 298, 317, 359, 403
  • Good deeds of Sarah Palin 1-403
  • "Holy geez!" 171
  • Lies told about Sarah Palin 74-75, 77, 79, 95, 102, 148, 202-204, 215, 232, 236-239, 246-247, 272-275, 289, 314, 318-320, 338, 343, 346-348, 350-352, 365-366, 378, 380
  • Lies told by Sarah Palin N/A
• The Going Rogue Index on Slate.com compiled by Christopher Beam Tuesday, Nov. 17. My favorite entry: "progress," usage of as transitive verb, 64.
• "Going Rogue" Index (Unofficial) by Marcus Baram on The Huffington Post also appeared November 17. This one is less amusing than the previous two, but perhaps more functional. As I don't intend to closely examine (or even quickly skim) the text, this is not a selling point for me.
• It's the Going Rogue Index! just lists the names of living people mentioned in the book, but it provides loud music, and some photos of those not indexed, including, apparently, King Kong and Captain Ahab.

I Fall Out With Reverend Price

Have you noticed that every time I mention William T. Price on here, I fall silent for a long time afterwards? No? It's true. Because I've spent so much time with Reverend Price in the last year, I've tried really hard to like him, or empathize with him, or admire him. For example, he was ready with a sermon for any occasion, complete with some appropriate but relatively obscure Bible verses. Always prepared; always professional--that's surely admirable. He faced many hardships--long days in the saddle, riding from church to church to deliver those professional and polished sermons; the hardships of the Civil War; the vague but looming career disappointment in the years following the war--surely I could conjure some sympathy.

But no. I can't turn my attention away from his apparent snobbery, his Jesus-free Calvinistic sermons, and his disdain for careful editing. It always leaves me in a funk. It's passages like this one (from his Civil War diary) that keep me cranky:

Upon resuming my journey...I saw a solitary person approaching at a brisk, headlong trot. He was mounted on a very ordinary looking horse. The saddle and saddlebags were old and much worn, his shoes were of some home tanned leather, coarse and heavy, very need of the attention of a cobbler, while his clothing was of plain homespun jeans. His loosely fitting coat was threadbare and out at the elbows, and his crumpled slouch hat nearly concealed his shaggy eyebrows beneath which blazed a pair of piercing and inquisitive eyes, such as are seldom seen in a life time and never to be forgotten. He rather abruptly stopped me in the road by a stentorian inquiry whether I was from Beverly.

"How is the vote?"

"I think Secession has the majority"

"Do you say the Secession candidate is ahead? I have the honor to be that candidate."

And this was really so: the successful candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates was before me, elected by the counties of Randolph and Tucker. What a comment upon the democratic tendencies of our political institutions when candidates to be popular should dress like the Biblical Gibeonites and behave accordingly. One of the blessings of this civil war, we may hope, will be to inaugurate a happier era by sweeping the depraved and vicious from the political arena, or teach them to prize their political privileges by choosing the best, not the worst looking of men for their rulers.

On(line) to Grafton: A Civil War Journal

For the last few months I've been scanning documents from the Pocahontas County Historical Society's archives. I'm still working my way through the William T. Price family collection. The oldest material I've worked with is from the 1840's, and it does give a glimpse of our local area at that time--not an easy or comfortable time and place.

This week, Reverend Price's Civil War journal, which he published in 1901 as "On to Grafton," is "serialized" on our Pocahontas County History web site. Rev. Price was a Virginian, and like most of the people in this area, approved of secession. Here's what he had to say about "The Cause" on his second day out on the Grafton campaign:

Early in the afternoon I reached Huttonsville in Randolph County where I found the people much excited and worried, and wearied to the verge of exhaustion by attention to soldiers a day or two before. Some persons seemed very desponding of the final outcome....I tried to cheer them up by saying to them that the cause of Virginia is a just one, such as the God of Hosts would approve. We might be slain in battle but never conquered....The question then was whether we should sustain the usurption of power and draw the sword against our friends, or whether it should be resisted and stand on the defensive. If let alone no blood would be shed, but if assailed then battle for all that is near and dear to the noble heart.

Moreover in my table and fireside conversations I tried to impress the minds of all that the question now is whether Virginia shall have the privilege of self government and regulate our taxes according as our interests and social institutions require, or whether we are to have our laws made for us, and enforced by rulers, whose popularity at home is in direct proportion to their hatred of us and abuse of our social and political institutions.

As a seminary trained minister, Rev. Price's opinion on which side the Lord of Hosts would approve must have carried some weight. I find myself anachronistically despondent reading (and transcribing) all the pre-battle puffing up. I want to tell them, "No! Don't! Just stay home--it's going to be worse than you can even imagine." There is, of course, no talk of slavery at all. It appears that it was not considered polite to mention it. Rev. Price and all the other writers of this time use the word "servant" when they must talk of people owned as chattel. It's a nicer word, and it's in the Bible, so it must be OK.

Writing Skills Resources

Sometimes a blog can be a handy online filing cabinet for things like this: 50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills. It's a list of links, most of which point to further lists, sometimes of advice, sometimes of still more links.

I'm particularly impressed by the scope of "writing tips." These include English grammar, advertising copy, student term papers, Web pages, writing prompts, rhymes, and famous writers on writing.

My favorites are the "tools," like Wordcounter, which points out your most frequently used words. I tend to think of some dandy five-dollar word, and then use it over and over again in the same document.

Physics for Fido

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel--This is chapter 3, "Schrodinger's Dog." It's wonderful.

I can't tell you exactly how I came upon this--I know I started at Sherry Chandler's blog, followed a link, and another link...and there I was, reading Orzel's bitter complaint about a New York Times movie reviewer who proudly displays his ignorance of physics. A physicist and college professor, Dr. Orzel is often irritated by The Innumeracy of Intellectuals. Sadly, indifference to math is not limited the the intelligentsia. Adult basic education students, school children, and college freshmen all use a smug tone to tell me they "are no good at math," meaning "Get out of my face with that stuff, I can't be bothered." In contrast, people who can't read well generally try to cover up and fake it. I don't get it, but the reason I often end up teaching math to the unwilling is the scarcity of teachers willing and able to take on those classes.

I'm looking forward to reading the whole canine physics course--we never got to quantum mechanics in my undergraduate physics class, because the physics department thought it was "too hard for biologists." I wish I'd had Dr. Orzel!

Purple Peppers

Our garden had mixed success this year, but one crop I was very pleased with was the Black Hungarian Peppers I ordered from Seed Savers Exchange. I've tried several times to start peppers from seed, but this is the first year I had anything to harvest. The peppers start out a dark, eggplant shade, but turn red when they're ripe.

They're good-flavored mildly hot peppers, but the thing I liked best about them was the way the plants looked as they were growing. The seedlings are nearly black (leaves and all; sorry I didn't think to take a picture last spring!), and the even the blossoms have that purple pigment.

Check out those black anthers!

One Teacup at a Time

We're living in the new house now, still doing finish work, and still moving in, a little at a time. I don't have any interesting progress photos to share, as the changes are incremental and unspectacular, but I felt the need to break blog silence anyway.

I had thought when the walls were painted, the floor covering laid down, and the cabinets installed that most of my finish work would be done. There were just a few doors to install and paint. We bought pre-hung masonite doors, and installation took one day. They were already white, so how long could it take to get a little off-white, washable semigloss paint on them? Turns out, a really long time.

Our house only has four rooms, so how did I end up with eleven doors to paint? Well, there's the front door and the back door, the cellar door, the bathroom door, the bedroom door, and the office door. Then, there's the pantry door, the double doors in the bedroom closet, the office closet door....

The "pre-primed" masonite doors didn't take paint well, so two coats of primer were required, followed by two coats of semigloss. Eleven doors, painted four times each. The doors started out one shade of off-white, the door frames a different white. The primer was a greyish white, and the final coat a pale, pale yellow. ("Mesa Beige," actually. The naming of paint must be an interesting industry.) I still catch myself humming "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

Now, we've moved in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the part of my office contents required to keep working, and I'm chipping away at the rest. We're turning the old house into a workshop, so I'm trying to decide where stuff "belongs" before I move it over here, and trying to not leave wreckage behind. The TV, china cabinet, and the parrots are still in the old house, along with most of my books, our home-canned goods, and my grandma's china collection. It feels like we're moving one teacup at a time.

Including the Kitchen Sink

I've received a complaint from Pendleton County on lack of new house photo coverage. August was a busy month, but it turns out that newly painted walls don't make really interesting photographs. Here you see the intersection of two kitchen wall colors, and the kitchen cabinet installation, already in progress. This is the same flooring we have in the whole house. It wasn't hard to put down, but there really is a lot of it. My knees are still complaining. The kitchen counters and counter top are in now, as is the sink.

Shopping for Color

I made three trips in three days to the big-box home improvement store in Lewisburg this week. I don't usually go to Lewisburg more than once a month, so this is city-overload for me. The motive for this frequent driving was paint selection for the new house. On Thursday, I got paint samples, on Friday I bought paint for three rooms and half-pint paint samples in some colors I wasn't sure about, and on Saturday, I bought more paint.

I really love looking at paint, and paint-color displays. Here are just a few of the colors I brought home and held up against the walls. You can see I'd already decided on "green" and "blue" and "yellow," but comparing hues and tints and shades...I could turn it into an end in itself.

I'm evidently not the only one who sees the possibility of paint-choice paralysis, according to The Onion's Study Finds Paint Aisle At Lowe's Best Place To Have Complete Meltdown.

"Even the most well-adjusted individual can be reduced to a feeble, trembling shell of his or her former self after a half hour of paint shopping at Lowe's," said Dr. Olivia Kang, a behavioral psychologist at the University of Texas and lead author of the study. "The pressure to make a decision between two seemingly identical shades of beige, the glaring fluorescent lights, the frantic patrons on all sides—it's too much for the human psyche to process."

"In terms of causing normal, healthy adults to completely lose their shit, the Lowe's paint department amounts to a perfect storm," Kang added.

New House--Ceramic Tile

I've painted the drywall with primer, and we've installed the ceramic tiles we'll use as a "hearth" for the wood stove to stand on. These were, for the most part, fun activities, and they made the house look different, which ups the satisfaction ante.

This week, the kitchen cabinets we ordered came in, but the flooring has been delayed until next week. I've been playing with paint samples, looking at them in different light conditions, holding them up against the cabinets, a flooring sample, the windows....I suspect I could do this indefinitely, as it is a lot of fun, but I've picked out some colors, and today I went to the store, and came home with paint for the bedrooms and bathroom, and...more paint samples.

New House--Finishing the Interior

The drywall is up now, and last week I painted it with primer. It has become hard to photograph progress now that all the walls are up and painted uniformly white, but you can see the textured ceiling and the new ceiling fan here, and the drywall in the process of being primed.

This week's project is the subfloor, and, perhaps, the tile platform for the wood stove.

Clark Kessinger Video

A few weeks ago, Larry Ayers, of "Riverside Rambles" posted a link to Norman Blake's version of "Done Gone". I started gathering URL's about my own experiences with that tune (including how it helped me get my banjo fixed for free), when I came across this video of West Virginia's Clark Kessinger, performing at the Newport Festival. I have a number of his recordings (including "Done Gone"), but I'd never seen him in action before.

Whatever I meant to say about Larry, Norman Blake, "Done Gone," and Clark Kessinger has vanished from both brain and hard drive, but Mr. Kessinger's fiddling is well worth a link.

Fun With Spreadsheets--Student Resources

I don't use Microsoft products myself, but I recently put together some training sessions on Excel spreadsheets. Here's the list of free resources I handed out to my students. Everything here will also work with OpenOffice's Calc.

• Excel 2000 Intermediate by Patrick J. Murphy, Academic Computing and Communications Center. This seminar covers different features of Microsoft Excel 2000. Importing a file, Excel databases, one-input tables, scenarios, the LOOKUP function, and linking files will be included.
• Excel and Word Tutorial Sites from Bean Counter's collection of bookkeeping resources
• Microsoft Excel Handouts from the Davis School District of Farmington, Utah.
• Charting in Microsoft Excel from Microsoft Excel Tips and Tricks on "John's Excel Page"
• Excel 2003 Chart Wizard Tutorial, from About.com: Spreadsheets
• List of Free Excel Templates
• Templates from Microsoft Office Online
• Excel Lessons from R. S. Schaefer, from the Math Department at Kutztown University. PDF handouts for in-class Excel projects. Very nice!
• Microsoft Excel Modules from Internet 4 Classrooms
• Georgia Perimeter College Instructional Technology Service handouts for all sorts of software, including Excel. The pdf's I've opened are really well-done!
• Class Training handouts from Akron-Summit County Public Library. Very nice pdf handouts on a variety of Microsoft Office products.

Princess Downsizes

Like other cats, Princess enjoys a new cardboard box. However, this puny box makes her look like another candidate for the Washington-based journalists' "2009 Poverty Tour" across the Alleghenies. Eventually she spilled out of the box the printer paper and ink cartridges came in.

New House Update--Siding Is On!

The house siding has been complete for some time, but rain and other projects have kept us from staining the exterior. Inside, drywall is going up, and should be complete soon.

More Journalists Seek Recession Along West Virginia Route 219

It's beginning to look like our part of West Virginia is a required stop on Washington D.C.-based journalism's "2009 Poverty Road Tour." Last week, "The Atlantic Monthly" visited Hillsboro, while the Sunday Washington Post hit West Virginia a few miles south of us, in Union, WV. They report: 'Country' Folk Say Hard Times Not So Tough a Row to Hoe.

The Post's account is archived in their Half a Tank Blog: Half a Tank is part of a summer-long quest to find the stories of lives altered by a flattened economy. Reporter Theresa Vargas and photographer Michael Williamson left Washington June 1 to cross the country and post a daily online journal of the characters and scenes they encounter. If you're looking for a recession road trip, I would recommend this one over the rather amateurish blog that mentioned Hillsboro. Here's a quote.

It's hard to tell whether Union has been slapped more softly by the recession or if its residents are just able to grin and bear it more than elsewhere....

When Michael and I spoke to most people here about the economy, they described subtle changes between their pre-recession and post-recession lives.

"We're country boys," said Robert Ferguson, 90, a World War II veteran who well remembers the Depression. "We can survive better than these city boys when something like this happens."

City folks, said Oswale Yates, 86 and also a World War II veteran, "wouldn't know which end of the hoe to get hold of. We live more simple. In other words, we don't live as high on the hog as some people."

Snake In the Grass

We've been seeing more snakes here this spring than usual. This fellow was having some trouble avoiding cars out at the hard road, so we brought him home.

Hillsboro Makes the Atlantic Monthly

Hillsboro, my mailing address, got a brief feature last month in The Atlantic Magazine online: Taking Comfort in Small Joys. The series, correspondent Christina Davidson's "Recession Road Trip," has this mission:

For the next four months I will travel the back roads and State highways through the 48 contiguous United States, uncovering stories of economic survival and endurance. In diners, bars, bingo halls and coffee shops, I seek those Americans who have lost everything--except hope.

The tone of the Hillsboro piece is complementary--

...within the state, the ruggedly self-sufficient culture that endemic poverty has engendered represents strength and independence--a thing of pride for residents. Most importantly--for the purposes of this project--that natural state of being for West Virginia has acted as a kind of buffer against some of the heartbreak and despair the recession has visited upon wealthier parts of the country.

One hopes that the accuracy of her subsequent articles will be better. She has several errors of fact (one per paragraph, by my count), such as mistaking the West Virginia household income for the per capita income, making West Virginia sound like a financially flush place. Still, I do like her take-away message:

Valuable recession lessons can be gleaned from the West Virginia experience: Never buy what you don't need. And learn how to can.

Power Line Preparation, Part Two

I've been teaching bunches of classes, but there's been unblogged house progress. Here you can see siding, and the setting of the power pole at the end of May. You can see that we also got the garden in.