There’s an article up on the BBC which actually made me feel lightly ill.

It’s about winning the lottery in Oregon.

The healthcare lottery, that is. Apparently Oregon has decided to address the issue of healthcare for low income individuals by creating a lottery system, with lucky winners who receive healthcare. The losers, apparently, buy tickets…er…apply…again next month. The timing of this article is especially interesting to me because I’ve just been thinking (again) about the need for universal single-payer healthcare.

The thought that people should get healthcare coverage through a lottery system is just obscene, and I’m sure that European readers must find the article a bit perplexing. There are a lot of misconceptions about the American healthcare system in Europe, and articles like this only cement those misconceptions, while also pointing out the serious problems with America’s approach to healthcare.

The thing about universal single-payer healthcare is that it’s just straight up cheaper to run than this asinine system we have going now. By covering everyone, the government would encourage a culture of preventative care, and it could negotiate better costs with drug companies and healthcare providers. In many parts of Europe, doctors make quite respectable salaries, and they get bonuses for keeping their patients healthier, in a system which encourages a strong relationship between patients and doctors while promoting a generally higher standard of health. Meanwhile, Europeans in general appear healthier than Americans, accounting for less missed days of work and creating a more vibrant, productive society. The EU, my friends, is kicking our butts.

I’ve read several critiques by American doctors who find the thought of universal single-payer repugnant, arguing that it is nothing more than rank socialism. And it is, but that’s the beauty of it. Socialized medicine is vastly better than entering a lottery in the hopes that you can get healthcare coverage. It’s better than a system where people overload emergency rooms with petty complaints because they don’t have regular doctors. It’s better than a system where scads of independent contractors (like me) gamble that they won’t have major health problems, because they can’t afford health insurance. I hear Clinton wants to cap health insurance costs at 10% of people’s incomes. That would be great, if I could spare 10% of my income for health costs. But I can’t, and neither can most middle and lower class Americans.

A lot of Americans don’t seem to understand that the healthcare system is broken, yet fixable, with some effort. I can’t help but think that people are kept in deliberate ignorance in the hopes that insurance companies can continue to profit, because anyone with half a brain ought to be able to see that this system is not working. People should not be afraid to go to the doctor because they can’t afford it. They shouldn’t be afraid to embark on a course of medical treatment which might change their lives because they can’t afford it. People in this country should not be dying from lack of healthcare. It’s just not…well, honestly, it’s just not American, darnit. This is the country where people are supposed to be neighborly, looking out for each other and lending a hand where it’s needed, not a country where people let their teeth rot in their heads because they can’t afford a dentist. It shouldn’t be a country where people rely on games of chance for medical treatment.

Europeans get cradle to grave care, so clearly it’s not impossible…so why are we having such a hard time figuring our scene out?

In March, I read a total of 40 books, and 13,174 pages, for an average of 424.96 pages and 1.29 books a day. That makes around a 75 page/day increase over February, and I more than doubled January’s pages/day average. March was simply a more productive month, reading wise.

There are a couple of reasons for this, I think. The first is that I read a lot of Swedish detective novels in March. Now, many of these novels were quite good, but they are also very easy to read. I tore through the Story of a Crime novels, for example, but it took me two days to read Dracula, because I had to slow down in order to digest it properly. Swedish detective novels are like potato chips, whereas Dracula was like a bony fish roast which forced me to pick my way through slowly and thoughtfully. Both had their merits.

I also think that as the days lengthen, I read more. I think that I am going to increase my averages through April and May, and possibly plateau out during the summer, when friends are visiting and I spend more time outdoors, and then my averages will start to decline in October/November as I lose daylight. Basically, when it’s dark more, I sleep more, and when it’s light more, I am awake more, thereby giving me more time to read. It will be interesting to see if this prediction holds true.

I think that my favourite book this month may have been Dracula, although Reading Lolita in Tehran was also quite good, as was Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Of these books, two were re-reads, and one was a recommendation from a reader, and I liked them for very different but good reasons. I also found A Tale of Two Valleys really valuable, so I’m adding that to my favourites list. All of these books are well worth reading, but if you live in a semi-rural community which is struggling with its identity and an influx of outsiders, read A Tale of Two Valleys.

I also note that I disliked a lot of books this month. I struggled with Faithless, because it failed to meet my expectations for short stories. I didn’t much take to Biting the Wax Tadpole, either, because I thought it was a pointless and stupid book. (And, for the record, although F recommended it, she had not actually read it. She heard about it and thought it sounded good, so she told me I might be interested. I just don’t want anyone casting aspersions upon her literary taste, which really is quite good.)

I definitely want to ramp up my nonfiction reading in the coming months, and I also wish that I was reading less garbage. As I’ve said before, it’s hard when you’re so hungry for reading material that you will read the phone book if that’s all there is. My reading taste is akin to a goat’s eating taste: if it’s in front of me, I’ll read it, although when I’m given a choice, I do have more discriminating tastes.

If you’re reading this post and wondering what in the heck the “book project” is and why anyone would care that I read 424.96 pages a day in March, the Book Project is my big mission for the year of 2008. Over the course of year, I am recording and writing about every single book that I read, no matter how questionable and embarrassing. Some of the reviews are very brief, basically taking the form of notes which say “I read this,” and some are longer, delving into why I like and don’t like the books I read.

I am welcoming recommendations from readers for the Book Project, because I love being introduced to new reading material, and you can feel free to leave them in the comments. Be warned that I am a rather blunt person, so if I read something you recommend and I don’t like it, I’ll say so. But I don’t see why that should hurt your feelings. After all, I’m only some random stranger on the Internet who spouts off about cheese and makes cupcakes sometimes. I have also pledged to read every single recommended book, if possible, assuming that I can get ahold of recommended books.

If you really want me to read something, you can mail it to me:

s.e. smith

po box 2764

fort bragg, california, 95437

I will read every single book which is mailed to me, without fail. If you want to loan me a rare/unusual book through the mail, rest assured that I will return it, as long as you indicate this in a note and enclose your mailing address. I can also pass books on after they are sent to me; otherwise, I’ll keep them, because I am a book hoarder. For local readers, there is a dead drop option, as sending things locally through the post is just sort of silly.

Aloha Airlines has gone under. Pity, I always rather liked flying Aloha. I seemed to be doomed to fall in love with airlines that fail; my last airline of choice was TWA.

A proposal is afoot in Tennessee to allow transgendered individuals to change their sex on their birth certificates. When Tennessee is getting that progressive, it’s a very good sign.

Olfactory surveillance is the next big thing, apparently.

When veterans return with PTSD, they go from the battlefield of Iraq to a battle for VA benefits.

Books are often cited as a dealbreaker, and it’s no wonder. Literary types are just as pervasive as musical types or physical types, and I think that they are just as important.

Educational apartheid might be one of the more unfortunate results of the subprime mortgage crisis. Given how segregated our educational options are already, I shudder to think of what’s to come.

See, what happened was, I was going to write about some of these yesterday, but then I had a ham feast. And then I was going to write about them today, but my internet went out right after I wrote this morning’s post and finally came back on, so now I have six books to write about all at once. Sorry.

Julie and Julia

So, the thing about blog to book projects is that I usually don’t like them. The books tend to feel extremely choppy and poorly assembled, even when the blog’s author is quite talented and funny. Which just goes to illustrate the difference between the media of books and blogs, I suppose.

Anyway, this is a blog to book that doesn’t suck, largely because it is well put together, thanks to the framework of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. For those of you who haven’t heard about the Julie/Julia project, Julie Powell decided to cook her way through Julia Child’s classic in a year, and she did, and she wrote about it on her website, and then got hugely trendy, and then wrote a book about it.

I can forgive her a bit for being trendy, though, because it was a neat idea, and it was well executed. Also, she’s a crass writer with a great flair for the descriptive.

Demographics:

Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell. Published 2005, 310 pages. Cooking.

Borderliners

I like Smilla’s Sense of Snow, so I was prepared to dig Borderliners, but apparently such was not to be. To put it plainly, I really loathed this book. Reading stuff in translation is so challenging, because I can’t tell if the translator just failed to capture the author’s voice, or if the translator captured the author’s voice just fine and the book is just bad.

At any rate, I don’t really want to waste any more time on this book than I already have. Suffice it to say that I need to learn to stop picking up books with cutesy narrative devices, because I seem to pretty much uniformly hate them.

Demographics:

Borderliners, by Peter Hoeg. Translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland. English translation published 1994, 277 pages. Fiction.

A Spot of Bother

I had a tough time getting into this book at first, and then around halfway through, I found myself gripped by it. So if you’ve picked it up and struggled, I encourage you to give it a second chance. It’s just a slow, sleepy developer which gradually inches in under your skin until you finish it and then feel slightly melancholy.

The book is about a dysfunctional family, to some extent, and it’s also about slipping into insanity and making difficult choices. It kind of takes awhile to set the book up in the beginning, and maybe that’s its problem, but once it gets going, it’s really hot. Hoppin’, even. I haven’t read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is Haddon’s famous book, but if it’s anything like this one, I will have to take a gander at it. I really liked the writing style, which wavered between being very clean and crisp to being a tad obscure, and I liked the characters, and I liked where Haddon took them.

Demographics:

A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon. Published 2006, 390 pages. Fiction.

Tales of the Unexpected

When I looked it up in the online catalogue, I was shocked to discover that the Fort Bragg Library actually has a couple of collections of Roald Dahl. Therefore, I had to race over to the library and grab them, before someone else did. So I did, and this one is a collection of macabre, gory, and somewhat creepy stories.

While the book retains a note of the silliness that Dahl’s children’s books have, it was much darker. There are ghastly murders, nasty adults, and short, icky vignettes. Dahl truly was a master of the short story, I tell you what. It’s hard to pick a favourite from the collection. I love “Taste,” where a father bets his daughter’s hand in marriage that a dinner guest can’t identify a mystery wine. “William and Mary” has a plot too complex and ghoulish to delve into without spoiling it, but it was funny, and brilliant. “Poison” is theoretically about snakes, but also about vicious, vindictive racism, while in “Royal Jelly,” a man turns into a bee.

I would really like to have met Roald Dahl. I think we would have got on very well.

Demographics:

Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl. Vintage Edition published 1990, 471 pages. Fiction.

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

Another collection of Dahl stories, these of a somewhat different bent than those above, although “The Ratcatcher” definitely was delightfully icky. Many of these stories were inspired by Dahl’s experiences in the English countryside just after the Second World War, and by a character named Claude. Reading this book, I found the inspiration for Danny the Champion of the World. I absolutely loved “Parson’s Pleasure,” about a conniving furniture dealer who gets his comeuppance, along with the title story, which delved into the mysteries of breeding cows.

I can’t wait until the other short story collections I ordered arrive.

Demographics:

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, by Roald Dahl. Published 1989, 179 pages. Fiction.

Primary Colors

Given the fact that the election is heating up, I thought I would take another gander at Primary Colors, which created quite a stir when it was published. I haven’t read it in a few years, and I definitely got much more into it this time around. I found myself engaged by the plot, which delved into the seamier side of American politics, but also dealt with race, gender, and life on the campaign trail. I can also see why it caused a stir when it came out, since it is a thinly veiled and contemptuous look into the 1992 Clinton Presidential campaign, which made it all the more apt to read now.

Of course, in the end of the book, the Clinton character is forced to make a choice between doing anything to get ahead, and doing what is right, and he chooses to do what is right. Too bad the real Clintons appear incapable of making that choice, eh?

Demographics:

Primary Colors, by Anonymous. Published 1996, 366 pages. Fiction.

British authorities claim that there is no health benefit to eating organic fruits and vegetables, according to an article in the Guardian I read this morning. The crux of the article is that it is more important to eat fruits and vegetables than to worry about whether or not they are organic, with the argument being that organic food is more costly, so for people in the lower classes, it might be prohibitive. This following hard on the heels of a story about reviving the victory garden to get more Britons involved in the production of their food.

There are a couple of problems with the Guardian article. For one thing, although it briefly references the nutritional differences between organic and conventionally produced food, it didn’t delve into them, instead treating them very dismissively. In fact, there are substantial nutritional differences between organic and conventional food, with all evidence pointing towards organic food as a substantially better choice, healthwise. It contains a number of useful vitamins and minerals which are not present in conventionally produced food, thanks to the fact that organic food is produced in healthy soil. I think this shoots a pretty big hole in the claim that organic food has no benefit to health.

Furthermore, organic produce is not contaminated with pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Despite claims that washing conventional produce will eliminate this problem, it seems clear that at least some produce absorbs these substances, causing the people who eat the produce to ingest these substances as well. I’m pretty sure that most people agree that ingesting the -cides is not good for people.

I would also argue that organically produced food also has a tangible environmental benefit, which can translate into a health benefit, especially if the food is produced locally. By buying organic produce, consumers are voting for clean waterways, healthy field workers, and a more sustainable mode of food production. It’s not that “green” is trendy, it’s that by eating green, people are making a conscious choice to protect the environment, and that, my friends, is a good thing. And a good thing which has direct health benefits, not just for you, but for other people.

I understand the crux of the article, I really do. In a situation where the choice is conventional tomatoes or no tomatoes, I vote for conventionally produced tomatoes, because the tomatoes are the important thing in the equation. But when the choice is organic, locally produced tomatoes or potato chips, I vote for the tomatoes. One thing that the article did not address was the need to rethink food budgeting, devoting more money to food in general, and specifically more money to minimally processed ingredients. The junk food needs to go, and so does the packaged food, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is simple cost: organic tomato sauce is expensive, but making your own tomato sauce with organic produce is not, and people need to learn to think beyond the box.

This was really illustrated for me the other day when I was talking with a friend about the cost differences between the local grocery stores. As locals know, there is a long-standing claim that Harvest is more expensive. In fact, as my father discovered through several sessions of comparison shopping, Safeway is more expensive. It’s just that Harvest has expensive packaged junk, so people who buy that stuff have the perception that Harvest is pricier. If you actually make your own food, rather than following the directions on a box, Harvest is substantially cheaper. Since I ignore whole aisles in grocery stores because they are filled with packaged food, my grocery bills are pretty low, considering how much food I make, and I think I eat better, because I am able to control what goes into my food. If you make the choice for ingredients over packaged food, eating organic starts to become a lot more doable.

I also note that the claim shied away from any discussion of organic vs. conventional meat and dairy products, perhaps because they knew it would be a losing battle. Hormone laced chicken, or free range? It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of argument there.

It’s time for another installment in our serial fiction story. If you’re lost, want to catch up, or want to refresh your memory, the archive is here.

When Henry Makepeace woke up, he decided that Gregory would probably be able to solve the mystery of the box, since he had been working the day before, and it was entirely possible that he had gone inside for something and knocked it over. This didn’t solve the more puzzling issue of why the box was empty, and he almost called Jennifer, but she had been quite firm about never wanting to hear from him again, so he suspected that it might be more trouble than it was worth. These things had a way of working themselves out.

Instead, he decided to lie in wait for the mailman, because he couldn’t work until he got that package of photographs, so he took a cup of oolong and a cookbook out to the porch and began leafing through it. He was supposed to host the book club on Thursday, and had a vague idea of making some sort of snacks. The last book club meeting had been hosted by Eduardo, a local chef, and Henry had been rather pleased by the delicate finger food which had been provided. While he might not be the equal of a chef, Henry certainly knew how to offer hospitality.

When Gregory arrived, Henry was deep into a rather complex but intriguing recipe for chocolate zabaglione trifle, and the mailman was still nowhere to be seen. Gregory brought up the box on his own, asking what was inside and explaining that it had still been sealed and on the table when he popped into the house before he left to wash his hands in the kitchen.

“By the way,” Henry said, “that new plant by the garage? What is it? It looks like some kind of vine?”

Gregory stared blankly back, and Henry felt a little frisson of uneasiness, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. He had definitely seen the plant the night before, with delicate curled tendrils waving gently in the breeze. And he had noticed that it was in a lightweight pot, as though it had just come from the nursery.

“It’s, ah, well, maybe I’m mistaken. Let me show you,” Henry said, bookmarking the recipe and walking out to the garage. Gregory still looked deeply confused, and muttered something about a flat of lobelia, but when the two arrived at the garage, the plant was gone, although a moist circular mark on the concrete suggested that something in a pot had certainly been there recently.

“This is quite peculiar,” Henry said. “It was right here, last night, coming home from the party.”

Gregory looked curious, but could offer no explanation, and Henry began to feel rather perturbed. As the two stared blankly at the garage, a police car rolled up, with Officer Carlisle at the wheel and another, older officer beside him, with the name “Baker” on his badge.

“Ah,” Henry said, somewhat surprised. “Good morning, Officer Carlisle. Come by to ask some questions, have you?”

Officer Baker narrowed his eyes at Henry, while Officer Carlisle said “yes, actually, we have. But not about the, ah, incident yesterday. We were wondering if you noticed anything unusual last night?”

Henry Makepeace wondered if a mysterious empty box and a disappearing vine counted as “unusual,” but he decided that it probably didn’t, and he explained that he had come home late and a bit inebriated, and hadn’t noticed anything before going to bed. Gregory, who happened to live down the street, added that he hadn’t seen anything peculiar either, although the neighborhood racoons had been at the garbage cans again during the night.

“Dragged the wife’s, ah, personal stuff right out of the cans into the alley,” he said. “Not the kind of thing I like to deal with early in the morning, you know?”

The policemen nodded politely, and there was a long and pregnant pause.

“Well, if you remember anything,” Officer Baker said, “be sure and let us know.”

“Sure thing,” Henry said with a smile. “What’s all the fuss about, anyhow?”

The policemen muttered something about routine investigations and drove on, and Gregory said he had better get back to trimming the hedges, while Henry realized that he should probably not attempt the zabaglione at this stage, since the book club was only a day away, and he didn’t want a complete failure on his hands. He would probably be better off sticking to something nice and sensible, like stuffed artichokes and perhaps a cheese platter. And fruit, good fresh fruit. Perhaps he could get a batch of baguettes done, too, if he finished reviewing the photos in time, and mixed cupcakes would make an adequate dessert offering. Or perhaps chocolate dipped cream cheese ice box cookies. Or maybe both. He wondered how many people would be turning up at the book club meeting, and decided that if there were going to be more than 15, he could make the cookies and the cupcakes.

When Henry Makepeace returned to the porch, he wearily noted that a yellow slip was sticking out of the mailbox, and that the mysterious mailman was nowhere in sight. There was also a letter from the water reclamation board, announcing that an unknown source of contamination appeared to be causing problems at the reservoir, and until they figured out the source, he should probably boil water before consuming it, just in case.

Unknown source of contamination, indeed, thought Henry Makepeace. There’s only one major company here, and dollars to doughnuts, I’ll bet it’s them.

With that cheerful thought, Henry returned to his cookbook, sighing happily as he encountered not one but four recipes for stuffed artichokes, and he wondered if perhaps he should make two different versions, but then of course there was the issue of which ones. Gregory hummed away at the hedge, and presently the phone rang, drawing Henry inside to speak with someone at Halycon Insurance, who wanted to know if the photos had arrived yet. Henry didn’t want to explain his problems with the mailman, so he simply said that they hadn’t arrived, and asked if perhaps another carrier could be used for important packages. He also agreed he would travel to the firm’s hangar in Minneapolis next week to inspect a fire-damaged plane, which the owner claimed had spontaneously caught fire during a routine flight. Given that the plane belonged to a company which was experiencing financial difficulties, Henry Makepeace had his doubts about the “spontaneous” part, although he certainly didn’t doubt the “caught fire” part, since the plane had been on the national news two nights ago. Henry Makepeace wondered if he could get a ride to the airport with the traveling nurse from the book club, who always seemed to be going back and forth between the city and their small town, and made a note to ask her, bringing the notepad with him to the porch with the intent of writing a grocery list.

When Henry Makepeace arrived outside, he was surprised to see a large assortment of cars, including several news vans. Gregory was standing at the gate, glowering at a reporter who threatened the ornamental borders the community had collectively planted along the outer edges of the sidewalk, and Henry walked over to see what was going on.

The reporter was a high-strung man in his early 30s, who looked deeply displeased to be where he was, and even more displeased by the glaring Gregory. A flurry of reporters had descended upon the street, actually, trailed by sound technicians, camera men, and journalists with tape recorders and note pads. Any neighbors who were home peered out from their windows, or walked into their yards to get a better idea of what was happening, and Henry Makepeace noticed Stella, his neighbor, in her yard.

Henry and Gregory walked over to Stella and surveyed the pandemonium which was reigning in their sleepy street.

“What in the heck,” said Gregory, “is going on here?”

“Didn’t you hear? It’s George MacInroe,” Stella replied. “He’s gone missing.”

Whenever I read these two Roald Dahl autobiographies, I tend to read them together, because they are two halves of the same story. Boy talks about Dahl’s childhood, and sets the stage for Going Solo, which is about Dahl’s career with the Shell Company right before the outbreak of the Second World War, and then it’s about his service in the Royal Air Force. I love the introduction to Going Solo, which mentions that the first part of the book is edited to take out the boring bits, but the second half includes everything, because “every moment was…absolutely thrilling.”

Dahl has long been one of my favourite authors, and I keep meaning to read his books for adults, some of which are supposed to be quite racy. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of my favourite children’s books, and Danny the Champion of the World is one of my favourite books of all time, bar none.

So anyway. Boy is truly awesome, and you can see where Dahl got his inspiration for many of his books, ranging from ferocious mean adults to sweet store pranks. One thing about the book which particularly interests me is his discussion of corporal punishment in British schools. It was a widely accepted practice when Dahl went to school, and he wrote quite compellingly about his repugnance for the practice. I’ve also noted that several of his books also condemn corporal punishment, so it’s obviously something that continued to bother him long after he grew out of childhood.

It’s also fascinating to read about Dahl’s family, from his one-armed father to his determined mother who managed to keep their family together after the death of her oldest daughter and Dahl’s father in a short period of time. That can’t have been a mean feat in Wales in the 1920s. There are also a number of comic vignettes in the book which are quite sweet and excellent.

In Going Solo, I loved reading about Dahl’s time working for the Shell Company in Africa, and the adventures he had there. His experiences as a pilot are also fascinating to read about, and his quiet condemnation of the way that the war was fought in the Middle East and Greece is quite excellent. He certainly pulled no punches when he bemoaned the “pointless waste of life” among young RAF pilots, and with good reason: of the 16 men he trained with, 14 died in the war.

These books read like Dahl’s children’s books, in some ways, only all the more exciting because they are real, supplemented with excerpts from letters and photographs.

Demographics:

Boy, by Roald Dahl. Published 1984, 176 pages. Autobiography.

Going Solo, by Roald Dahl. Published 1986, 210 pages. Autobiography.

I haven’t read Dracula in a very long time, and I’m not sure what inspired me to pluck it from the shelf last night, but I found myself deeply engrossed in it. The book was certainly different this time than the last time I read it, or rather I have changed enough that my perspective on the book is radically different. I remembered it as being rather stuffy and cumbersome, but instead I found it a rather compelling and action-packed read.

The last time I read Dracula, I obviously hadn’t read as much feminist literature as I have now, and one thing which really intrigued me about the book was the tacit fear of female sexuality. The female vampires in the book are described in extremely sensual terms, with ruby red lips and flowing tresses. In the scene where Jonathan Harker is accosted by the three female vampires in the castle, the description of his experience is charged with sexual excitement, with lines like “the moisture shining on her scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the sharp white teeth…lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin…”

Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, on the other hand, are not really described until Dracula’s influence falls upon them, at which point they, too, become highly sexualized. It was extremely intriguing to see sexuality equated with evil and bestiality, with Lucy essentially punished for her wanton thoughts of marrying three men at once. The implication there seemed to be that Lucy was more susceptible to Dracula’s sexual power because of her wantonness.

Indeed, both Lucy and Mina come across as innocent, wholesome women until they are corrupted by the influence of the vampire. In a sense, I almost felt like the book was an allegory about the effects of the modern world on women, with Stoker suggesting that the world was filled with corrupting influences which would turn perfectly nice assistant schoolmistresses into fiendish, sexualized creatures. There are even a few unfavorable references to the “modern woman” in the book, as though to ensure that readers would not miss the parallel.

The book also seemed to deal a lot with repression and dreamworlds, where anything is possible, and in that sense it was almost like an exploration of Stoker’s own mind. Perhaps I’m being a bit too Freudian here, but the book gave me the sense that Stoker had some issues to work out, especially around female sexuality. In a way, the book felt like Stoker’s attempt to reclaim his manhood, with the virile team of men ultimately triumphing over rampant sexuality, despite significant temptation in the scene where Van Helsing puts down the female vampires in the castle.

I can see why Dracula has remained a classic, not only in the horror genre, but in the fiction genre in general. There’s a lot going on in this book, and I have a feeling I’ll be reading it again in the near future to explore it even further.

Demographics:

Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Published 1897, 520 pages. Fiction.

The cemetery series begins again, thanks to a whirlwind Saturday trip to capture the three coastal cemeteries* we hadn’t shot yet. I’ll start with Inglenook Cemetery, which had to be the smallest and least exciting cemetery we visited. I suppose that’s not too surprising, since Inglenook is one of the smallest and least exciting towns I have visited. (Sorry, Inglenookians, but it’s true and you know it.)

One awesome thing about Inglenook cemetery was the few really old graves, like this one, which is right by the side gate:

It’s the grave of Reverend McKinney and his wife Louisa, and it dates from the turn of the last century. Pretty cool, eh? There’s another McKinney grave next to it, also very old, but the shot didn’t come out at all well, alas, because the headstone was so dark.

I really loved this wheat carving on an obelisk:

Wheat, incidentally, symbolizes rebirth, because grain crops die away and then renew themselves. This is one of the more detailed wheat carvings I have found on a headstone.

My first Shriner headstone:

A beloved pilot:

Check out those superlatives. Go ahead. Click through and read them. Inglenook can wait.

The Jensens have a headstone with a little character. I like that, and I like David’s motto.

*Our cemetery shooting has excluded private cemeteries, for the obvious reason that they are neither publicly listed, nor accessible unless I want to trespass. We did take a few photos of the pioneer cemetery in the Botanic Gardens as well, but it has been so sterilized that they were pretty dull. That said, if any of my local readers would allow me to photograph their family cemeteries, I would be honored, because I have a deep love for private family cemeteries on farms and so forth. Ultimately, I would like to be buried on my own land, assuming that I ever live on a farm far enough from city limits to get a cemetery permit.

The International Olympic Committee needs to get its act together, according to Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post.

MASSIVE DEFEAT takes pictures. They are neat. Go look at them. Did I mention that they are pictures of Iraq?

Green products are all the rage, which raises the question of we know that products are genuinely green.

Methinks the lady doth misspeak too much.

Polls suggest that the Democratic infighting may lead to a massive defection in November. Get used to saying “President McCain,” kids!

Honey gets a new look in the LA Times food column. Mmmmm…honey.