What I Accomplished Today

The verdict for the day: not much accomplished.

A long blog post done.

The group thing.

Then absolute lethargy for the rest of the day. Meaning, no writing done.

But I did learn a few things:

 Plan commission forwards solar power ordinance to Delaware County commissioners

MUNCIE, IN — The Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission has voted 8-1 to forward to county commissioners — with a favorable recommendation — an ordinance covering local operation of solar-panel facilities.

The vote to give the ordinance a favorable recommendation came at the conclusion of a four-hour hearing on Tuesday, Aug. 12, that drew a large audience to the auditorium in the Delaware County Justice Center.

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Doug Marshall, who lives in northern Delaware County, said, "Industrial solar installations are not in the long-term, or short-term, interest of our community."

That last paragraph evidences much of what I dislike about journalists. Why are solar panels not in the interest of Delaware County? What is the evidence for this opinion? 

2025 Indiana State Rail Plan (INDOT) is mostly about freight, but there is a survey that does include passenger rail questions. This map from the site shows passenger rail in Indiana.

This shows the interurban map for 1926:

A show I did like gets an appropriate appreciation: Elementary is a Masterclass in Sherlock Holmes Adaptation (CrimeReads)

Making $ Through Atrocious History: A Review of Empire of the Summer Moon

I have been teaching Native American history for almost twenty-five years now. So, on a regular basis, people ask me for my thoughts on Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne, since it’s one of the most successful books published in the field in the past couple of decades. It has 4.7 stars out of over 20,000 ratings on Amazon, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and also for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In a resolution passed recently, the Comanche Nation (the main subject of the book) made it clear they consider the book to be junk.

Oh, if more of us thought this way:

 The answer is that most people are not educated enough to spot the difference between entertaining crap and real history. Most of us have opinions about stuff that we have no business having opinions on. If you don’t know enough for your opinion to be an educated one, perhaps it’d be best not to have one at all.

 Gerald Howard's review, Among the Blasphemers (n+1) gave much to think about the difference between the Eighties and now. The MAGA never does quite define when America was great, the period they want to go back to, and maybe they should be reading more history.

The problems really arise when one group apprehends something as a symbol when another group believes it to be a real and tangible fact. I kept being reminded of Flannery O’Connor’s deathless crack at a dinner party: Mary McCarthy and Robert Lowell (a Catholic convert) were nattering on about the simply wonderful symbolism of the Holy Eucharist (as we were taught to refer to it), don’t you know, when O’Connor punctured their mildly nauseating hot air bubble with the tart riposte, “Well, if it’s only a symbol, I say the hell with it.” Refreshing! Paul Elie’s cadre of crypto-religionists could all mount vigorous defenses of the unfettered artistic imagination if asked to, but too few of them ever deployed that facility to imagine how a truly faithful reader might apprehend their work, and just how offended they would be to see their most profound beliefs, as they experience it, mocked and used to opaque and ignoble ends. Culture wars ignite when one side extends no sympathy or understanding to the other and the battle lines get drawn.

And a better way of handling cultural conflicts: John Boyne says LGBTQ+ fiction prize backlash brought him ‘close to the edge’ (The Guardian)

Boyne said: “It seems absurd and wrong to me that so many debut writers are losing their opportunity for this, either through misguided ideas about who I am or, as I’m aware has happened in some cases, because you too were bullied or intimated into withdrawing.”

He added: “I would encourage all the debut writers on the Polari longlist to return to the list, to look forward to the shortlist announcement and, in time, the fun and excitement of the ceremony. One of you gets to win the prize, and that’s as it should be. The organisers stood firm and didn’t expel me from the longlist, which I appreciated. And I am not withdrawing from the longlist. However, should the debut writers all return, I would respectfully ask the judges not to consider Earth for the shortlist. I don’t think I can say any fairer than that.”

Sorry, ever since reading Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative (a book I have not seen noted since then), I have not seen a disconnect between pre-WWII conservatism and what is now called conservatism, so Bonfire of the Leopard Face Eating by Jonathan V. Last is nothing new for me. Just glad to see I am not doodling by myself.

"No Ordinary Word" is again rejected:

Thank you for your submission to The Saturday Evening Post. After careful consideration, we are sorry to say that we will not be publishing your story in our publication. Because of the sheer volume of freelance submissions we receive, we regret that we are unable to provide a more personal response. For many reasons—from subject matter to style to the limitations of space—we sometimes must reject well-written, insightful stories. 

We are indebted to independent writers like yourself, without whom publishing our magazine and our online content would not be possible. 

Sincerely,

The Saturday Evening Post Editors

3520 Guion Road

Indianapolis, IN 46222

317-634-1100

SaturdayEveningPost.com

 Learning more than I knew by living in the area from this video:

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