Our hearts were touched by fire

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., delivered Memorial Day, 1884, at John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic, Keene, New Hampshire.

Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other -- not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth -- but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.

So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not.

We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough.

But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every man with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed.

You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south -- each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other.

As it was then, it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.

But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories.

When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone.

The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.

So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly.

To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall -- at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks -- but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.

When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right -- in the South as in the North.

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that.

You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion.

Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us.

I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.

But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.

Accidents may call up the events of the war.

You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, "The skirmishers are at it," and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom -- "Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach him, or can I kill him first?"

These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten.

But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least -- at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves -- the dead come back and live with us.

I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.

I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved.

I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy", and I knew that one of those two speakers was no more. The other, after passing through all the previous battles, went into Fredericksburg with strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate.

I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was gone.

I see the brother of the last -- the flame of genius and daring on his face -- as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley.

In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand before my memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it.

I may say of them , as I once heard it said of two Frenchmen, relics of the ancien regime, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." High breeding, romantic chivalry -- we who have seen these men can never believe that the power of money or the enervation of pleasure has put an end to them. We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm.

But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a race of conquerors -- stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known.

I see one -- grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name -- who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg.

His brother, a surgeon, who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm -- the next moment his ministrations were ended.

His senior associate survived all the wounds and perils of the war, but, not yet through with duty as he understood it, fell in helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in a Western city.

I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him.

There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. He entered the army at nineteen, a second lieutenant. In the Wilderness, already at the head of his regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers. I saw him in camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we were rejoining the Army together.

I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself. He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity; for, when duty was at an end, he who had been the master and leader became the chosen companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly enjoy.

His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side.

He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground.

He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.

There is one grave and commanding presence that you all would recognize, for his life has become a part of our common history. Who does not remember the leader of the assault of the mine at Petersburg? The solitary horseman in front of Port Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of him bade his soldiers spare, from love and admiration of such gallant bearing? Who does not still hear the echo of those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation and peace?

I may not do more than allude to his death, fit ending of his life. All that the world has a right to know has been told by a beloved friend in a book wherein friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that speak for themselves. I knew him ,and I may even say I knew him well; yet, until that book appeared, I had not known the governing motive of his soul. I had admired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere him as a saint. His strength was not in honor alone, but in religion; and those who do not share his creed must see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of ideal life.

I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in his own company.

In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because the men I have mentioned were my friends that I have spoken of them, but, I repeat, because they are types. I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember!

It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle -- set apart, even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives?

I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own sex---

But when the days of golden dreams had perished,

And even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion,
weaned my young soul from yearning after thine
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder -- not all of those whom we once loved and revered -- are gone.

On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist -- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water.

On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men -- a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse.

When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature.

We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.

But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Such hearts -- ah me, how many! -- were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year -- in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life -- there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's grave.

Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march -- honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.

But grief is not the end of all.

I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death -- of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring.

As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., (1841-1935) served 28 years on the Supreme Court, during which he was known as "The Great Dissenter" for his independence of thought and earned a reputation as one of the greatest legal minds in American history.

Holmes was also a veteran, wounded three times in the Civil War, at the battles of Ball's Bluff, Antietam and Second Fredericksburg, and was active in veterans' affairs. When he died, nearly three-quarters of a century after the war in which he had fought, he was buried according to his wishes in a soldier's grave alongside his comrades at Arlington Cemetery.

The poem he quotes is "Remembrance," by Emily Brontë. The photo is of Memorial Day, 1872, Glens Falls, NY, courtesy Chapman Historical Museum.

Semper Paratus

“Sometimes the public recognition isn’t always expected – or necessarily welcomed. Specialist Zachary Boyd recently was enjoying a well-deserved sleep when his post in eastern Afghanistan came under enemy attack. He immediately grabbed his rifle and rushed into a defensive position clad in his helmet, body armor, and pink boxer shorts that said 'I Love New York.'

"Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your perspective – an AP photographer was there for a candid shot, a photo which ran shortly thereafter on the front page of the New York Times. Boyd later told his parents that: 'I may not have a job anymore after the president has seen me out of uniform.'

"Well, let me tell you, the next time I visit Afghanistan I want to meet Specialist Boyd and shake his hand. Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage. And I can only wonder about the impact on the Taliban. Just imagine seeing that – a guy in pink boxers and flip-flops has you in his crosshairs – what an incredible innovation in psychological warfare. I can assure you that Specialist Boyd’s job is very safe indeed.”

-- Sec'y of Defense Robert Gates

Comedy isn't pretty

A number of years ago, I was invited to speak to a college writing class on the topic of freelancing. I brought along a stack of rejection slips from my novel-writing years and said, "If you decide to go into freelancing, your lives will be punctuated the way my talk today will be punctuated."

Then I proceeded to talk to them about the business of freelancing, but, every five minutes or so, I'd stop and read them another, "While we admire your writing skills, we don't feel this manuscript ..." and, as the lecture went on, I could see them sinking lower and lower in their chairs as the reality began to sink in.

Today, I got to see more or less the same effect at the Maine Comics Arts Festival in Portland.

The above panel is (from left) Corey Pandolph (Barkeater Lake, Toby: Robot Satan, The Elderberries), Norm Feuti (Retail, Gill) and Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate), under the leadership, at far right, of Mike Lynch, who sells cartoons to a variety of magazines. Their topic was "Surviving as a Print Cartoonist," which is right up there with "How To Be A Successful Pontiac Dealer."

It was an interesting group, because Corey is pursuing a mix of print and web, Lincoln has a couple of ventures going in writing for animation and licensing Big Nate to an on-line kids' gaming site, and Norm has just begun dipping a toe into the web world with "Gill," so, while each of them has a syndicated feature, they had a good deal more to talk about than simply "How to get syndicated."

And that's a good thing, because the number of new strips coming out this year is just about none. Universal is launching a strip called "Sticks" that has been in development for several years, and I think there's another somewhere, maybe out of the Washington Post Writers Group, but I forget what it is. That's down from about a dozen a year in the past, which still isn't very good odds but at least it was something.

They weren't trying to discourage people from giving it a try, and Mike, who works with editors regularly as a freelancer, did a nice job of directing the conversation into helpful areas and adding his own advice, but there just isn't that much positive vibe to share, and it was a somewhat grim presentation.

What saved it was this: Towards the end, they got away from nuts-and-bolts and began talking more about how, discouraging as the prospects are, it's still something they want to do. Hard as he scrambles to make a living, Corey said, "I still can't believe I get paid to do this," and both Norm and Lincoln delivered variations on that same theme.

My own take on art-as-a-career is that it's hard to make a living in the creative arts even in the best of times, and that anybody who can be discouraged probably should be, sooner rather than later. If you can walk away from it, go ahead. But then don't talk about what you could have done or should have done or are going to do some day. Scratch the itch so you can put it away and move on.

If somebody in the audience today got discouraged and saved himself some heartache and wasted years, more power to him. On the other hand, the years I tried to be a novelist helped me perfect my craft and led me into some interesting and even mildly profitable areas, though not specifically in novel writing.

And I think their passion and drive was clear, along with the message that, if you want to do this, then you should. Just don't count on making money doing it.

That's a pretty good message for young artists of any medium.

(PS -- don't miss Mike Lynch's more complete report on the gathering.)

Update

I still seem to be employed. At least, I keep showing up and doing the work and they keep paying me. Nothin' much more to report.

Goodbye to a good friend

Nobody loved kids more than Destry. When I was at the Post-Star in Glens Falls, part of my job was giving tours of the newspaper, and one Saturday, I did a day of tours for Boy Scouts. I didn't feel like leaving Destry home alone on what was going to be a hurry-up-and-wait sort of day, so I brought him along and he would wait in the car while I did a tour, and then I'd let him out during the 20 minutes or so while we waited for the next set of Scouts to show up.

But as they came in dribs and drabs, the earliest would end up playing with the dog, and I kept finding myself holding a leash that disappeared into a ball of Cub Scouts. He was delighted to be surrounded and patted and hugged and loved, and it was the beginning of his identity as a mascot, The Newshound, soon to be joined by Nellie Bly, who also loved kids.

I took him to trade shows where he would go three hours at a crack, gently standing while the tiniest kids all but climbed up on his back, and he'd have likely tolerated that, too.


Destry was the most infuriatingly absent-minded, distractable, foolish dog I have ever owned. But, as frustrating as it was to try to get him to keep up on a walk when he kept finding other things to examine, or to stand on the porch and call him and not even get a head-tilt of acknowledgement, or to try to persuade him to stop whining when he thought it was time to feed the dog and it most certainly was not, there was no way not to love such a kindly, gentle, affectionate knucklehead.

I only saw him lose his temper once. We were walking in a wooded park, when Nellie had first come to live with us. She was, to begin with, only a year old and, moreover, had spent most of her life in kennels as a showdog, surrounded by a half-dozen or more canine buddies, so she was used to a more rambunctious style and needed to be taught to walk off-leash but in control.

She was ranging up a little ahead of us, and we came around a corner and smack into a large German shepherd on a leash with a woman barely in control, shouting "Leash your dog! Leash your dog! He doesn't like other dogs!" The shepherd got away from her and lunged to attack Nell, but Destry was there in a flash, shouldering Nellie aside and taking the charge, then countering just as I caught up and we pulled them apart. He had a couple of puncture wounds, nothing serious, and I have no idea how the shepherd fared because we left. But as soon as the incident ended, he was calm and his old gentle self all over again.

This was striking because I had named him after the Jimmy Stewart character in "Destry Rides Again," the laid-back, calm sheriff who refused to carry guns but, in a memorable scene, demonstrated to some cowboys that he knew how to use a pair of six-guns very well indeed and did not intend to take any nonsense. And then went back to being laid-back and calm.

Nobody ever shied away from Destry, despite his size. Something in his face was so inviting that people naturally felt they could approach him, and he was always pleased to be patted, though he preferred that you not scratch his ears.

Here's how gentle he was: He'd happily play crash-and-dash games with other dogs, slamming into each other and tearing across a field. But the first time I tried to play a wrestling game with him as a pup, he began to cry, and I learned that he simply didn't understand and didn't want to rough house with people. For a breed that is bred to hunt lions, he was remarkably unferocious.


You have noted, of course, that I am speaking of him in the past tense. Friday, I had the privilege of performing a last act of love for this gentle, foolish old dog, whose hips had begun to fail him and who was in real danger of a painful breakdown. He'd have been 12 years old next month, an extraordinary age for a large dog like this, but it was time, and to avoid the decision would have been indulging me, not serving him.

I'll never know a more kindly dog. "Kindly" is an old-fashioned word that doesn't come up much anymore, but he was a kindly dog.







And wherever he goes, I hope there are plenty of kids.











And no dinosaurs. Definitely no dinosaurs.

The Fairy Wife

This is one of my favorite stories of the series, a bittersweet tale of the impossible marriage between mortal and immortal. Don't look for Tinkerbelle in this Welsh story, which is more like the Scottish tales of selkies. (And after you read my Welsh re-telling, don't miss this story from that Orkney link!)

(Rental suggestion: Filmmaker John Sayles made a memorable movie about selkies, though he moved them to Ireland).

Please stand by ...

ich will genau das was sie hatte

The Dog, The Cat and the Mouse

In this Romanian folk tale, we learn the source of the enmity among these animals. Naturally, lawyers were involved.

Also, I've linked the teaching guides for each story in the rail on the right.

C'est vrai! C'est aujourd'hui mercredi!

Sparrow and Woodpecker

This week, weeklystorybook.com features one of my favorites of the series, a Japanese story about two sisters with very different priorities. And I have a new interest, in that an ESL teacher in Texas has been using the stories with her third graders each week, asking them a fairly simple question and collecting their answers on-line.

What I find fascinating is that, while their answers are very short and unsteady, they are picking up nuances in stories I would think would go over their heads while missing some points in the more straightforward tales.

It is important not to underestimate the abilities of young people.

Ten years ago, the Denver Post was running a serialized story, "Field of the Dogs" by Katherine Paterson, known for "Bridge to Terabithia," "Jacob I Have Loved" and "The Great Gilly Hopkins," among others. In the story, a young boy moves to Vermont and is having problems with his relatively new stepdad, his very new baby brother, the move to a rural area and fitting in with the rough-edged blue collar kids at his new school.

He discovers that, when the neighborhood dogs get together in an isolated field, they talk to each other. He also discovers that there is a particularly unpleasant dog they fear. He decides to help out his dog and the nice dogs in that pack, and swipes his stepfather's shotgun. Things do not go as he plans, no dogs are hurt on either side of the social divide, and he instead turns his energies to working out his own problems and letting the dogs work out theirs.

It's a nice minor story, but, by the weekly schedule on which the Post happened to be running it, the chapter in which Josh steals the shotgun coincided with the shootings at Columbine. Fortunately, it was not the same day, and my friend Dana, who runs the Denver Post's NIE program, was able to pull it from the page before it ran.

But now what? They held the chapter for a week, and then ran it the next week and continued the story. The response was extremely positive, as both parents and teachers thanked them for providing a safe place in which to talk about the issues that had exploded in Littleton that past week.

That's what children's literature, and folk tales, and literature in general, is for: To inspire people to reflect on things.

Alas, this is more typical: Two years later, the paper where I was no longer working bought "Field of the Dogs" to run in their NIE program, but apparently only read the three sample chapters, not the synopsis, and didn't bother to read the entire thing when they had it in their hands. They simply began running the chapters in the paper, until they reached that one.

Guns? Kids? That's a no-no, and they pulled the serial two-thirds of the way through. They subbed in a much more placid tale that wouldn't upset the kiddies or their teachers or their parents.

Because we all know that kids can't think or react or analyze anything that might be difficult or nuanced, right?

If it were just that one little newspaper, it wouldn't matter. But for every Katherine Paterson being published these days, there are 50 Madonnas and Dutchesses of York providing safe, stupid utterly unnuanced stories that will do nothing to inspire children to read or think. And parents, and grandparents, and other grown-ups see the pretty pictures and fill their children's bookshelves with this uninspiring, formulaic pap.

Well, Katherine Paterson continues to sell a lot of books anyway, thanks to parents and teachers who understand the difference and who aren't afraid to offer their kids challenging material that might stretch their little brains.

And I'm grateful, both as a writer and as someone who needs to share a world with the results of their efforts.

Gathering the gang

Paige (second from the right) came over today for a final get together before she leaves for her new parish in San Diego. In about a month, Gabe, Sarah, Johanna and Tobias (at left) will take off for Michigan State. Jed, Courtney, Liz, Abby and Sam (at right) are moving down here, but I'm not sure where I'll end up.

It seemed like a good time to get a picture, quick, before the changes began to take effect.

As we did our hugs, Paige began to tear up and said, "You've been my family for 20 years!" and I, of course, reminded her that we were still her family.

Paige came East to be a freshman at Boston University in 1988, at a time when I was dating her mother, and she slid right into the family and has been big sister to the boys, an aunt to their children, a daughter to me and a confessor to all, performing a wedding and a couple of baptisms and extending her reach beyond our little circle and into the larger clan. When her mother and I broke up, she said, "I don't want this to affect your relationship with Paige," and some 13 years later, it has not in the least. Fact is, none of the kids in this picture were born when she joined the family, and, as far as they know, she has always been one of the gang. I, on the other hand, remember how quickly she and the boys hit it off, and love her as much for her influence on and affection for them as for any of the things that have passed between us.

And let's not over-emphasize the impact of all this moving. Over the years, we have not always had this little knot of siblings in one area the way we have for the past six years or so. It's been great having the kids in New York, Vermont and Maine, but there have been times when some of them have been living in Japan, California, Colorado or England, and we've managed to keep it together without geography's help. I'm sure we will continue to do so.

But the geography has certainly made it easy over the last several years.

Oh well.

Happy 10th Anniversary

It's been 10 years since schools began to lock their doors and make visitors sign in. The best commentary I can make is to direct you to this site by Ed Stein, of the late Rocky Mountain News. Ed is one of the few editorial cartoonists not to be fired by his paper. Instead, his paper simple ceased to exist.

And so Denver lost this voice. Unless they look on line.

I don't know if he'll ever be as eloquent as he was in probing the disturbing implications of that horrible day, 10 years ago Monday. I hope he never gets another chance.

Harry ti presento Sally

Don't let EITHER of these people speak at Notre Dame!

Holy Week and the Perils of Irony

An old college buddy dug this up from his basement, scanned it and sent it along. It originally ran in the Observer, Notre Dame's student newspaper, on May 11, 1970.

This was during the Student Strike, when schools around the nation shut down in protest of the invasion of Cambodia. The Kent State shootings had been May 4, and Notre Dame (or at least my department -- there were a lot of meetings that week!) had taken the position of allowing students to take their grade at the time of the strike, take an incomplete or finish the semester.

There were a lot of speeches being made and I was once again in the uncomfortable position of opposing the war, opposing the incursion which a lot of people felt brought with it the risk of Chinese intervention and of having high school friends serving in Southeast Asia. For me, the answers were not as black-and-white as they were for students whose high school buddies were also attending universities where correct answers were either one thing or the other.

So I wrote this piece, with the headline signaling my approval of John Lennon's approach of "you better free your mind instead." I don't know how my fellow students took it, but my department head told me he was at some parish council meeting when someone came in waving it and shouting about what they were teaching kids at that college of his.

We both laughed, but it was an early lesson in how irony is often lost on readers and you're better off just stating what you think without trying to make them think in turn.

However, it being Easter and relevant to the Scripture being parodied, I post it here for those of my readers who enjoy thinking. A higher percentage, I think, than I had back then or in any of my paying venues since.

(Click for a readable version. Please remember that, in them thar days, your hard copy was typed into the system by someone whose spelling skills might not be as good as your own.)

The ice is pretty much off the lake

(A good time to remember why I came here.)

In which two old men attempt to explain the world without losing their values

(Yesterday, I was twice reminded of this column that I wrote back around 1996 or '97. First, I had a conversation about the officer involved, and then I found a video by the young woman. He was eventually kicked off the force. She has flourished.)

“I grow old. I grow old.”

I thought of T.S. Eliot’s poem, the other day, as I sat in an attorney’s office, myself, the attorney, and a young woman who trusted us, who trusted the system, who believed, still, that, if you follow the rules and tell the truth, all will be well.

And we told her to lie. We explained to her, carefully, patiently, lovingly, that she should admit to having done a very small, wrong thing, so that she not be found guilty of having done a somewhat larger, wrong thing.

“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” she protested, looking from one of us to the other. “Why should I plead guilty to anything when I’m innocent?”

And the attorney and I looked at each other, and remembered when we had believed, and wondered when we had stopped believing, and had begun to hand out such practical, adult advice.

And we explained again this traffic ticket she had received, for a wrong turn she hadn’t made, and explained how the attorney could talk to the officer, and she could then admit to having done something with fewer points for her license, maybe even something that wouldn’t show up on her driving record at all.

And she kept asking why she should say she had done something she hadn’t done, when she hadn’t done anything wrong at all.

Let me pause here, and explain that I have respect for the law. I once ordered one of my sons not only to plead guilty to speeding, but to go into the court personally, and apologize to the judge for driving through his town at such an unreasonable, unsafe speed.

And let me explain that I want young drivers to be careful. I lost my little brother to the bad judgment of a young driver. I do not laugh away the mistakes of young drivers.

Let me explain, too, that I know many very good law officers, and I do not envy them the pressures of their jobs. But I also do not envy them having to work alongside some others. The one who wrote this ticket had nearly been the star of a news story, back when I was a reporter, about his pulling a gun on a kid. As it was, the hothead served a month-long suspension without pay over the incident.

And now the bully had written a ticket that didn’t have to be written, that, even if the turn had really been so abrupt, should probably have been a roadside lecture and a warning.

“You pissed him off,” the attorney explained. “That’s why you got a ticket.”

“But he was speeding! He told me he was going 60 miles per hour; that’s a 40 zone,” she said. “Anyway, I went back and measured. Even if I did turn too soon, he wouldn’t have had to brake to avoid hitting me, even at 60. My physics teacher helped me work it out. There’s no way.”

“That’s not the point,” we said.

“But I didn’t fail to yield. He had plenty of time!” she protested.

“It’s a judgment call,” we said. “He’s considered an expert.”

“So he can say anything,” she suggested. “He could say I made the turn wrong, even if I didn’t turn at all. He could say anything he wanted to about me, and the judge would believe him?”

I looked over at the attorney, and he looked over at me, and then he spoke. “Listen: The judge sees this guy all the time. He has to deal with him again and again and again. He only has to deal with you once.”

And she looked at me. And I grew very old and cynical and wretched. “Here’s the deal,” I explained. “You can go to court and fight this, but you’re going to lose. The judge isn’t going to rule against him.”

“I thought I was innocent until proven guilty,” she said.

And we looked at each other again, and we sank a little lower, inside. “It’s not that simple,” we told her.

“I have witnesses,” she said. “People called my mother afterwards, and told her how he was screaming and everything, how totally out of control he was ... ”

“That’s not going to be relevant,” we explained. “He can say he was upset because you created such a dangerous situation ... ”

“But I didn’t.”

“We know.” And there was a silence.

“You can go to court,” the attorney said, at last, “but you don’t need me. It would be too expensive and it wouldn’t make any difference. But, if you need to do this, you should.”

“Just know that the judge will rule against you and you’ll have to pay the ticket,” I said. “Look, we don’t want you to plead guilty and then go around thinking that you did the wrong thing, that you should have stood up and fought it. If you feel that you need to go to court and see this through, then you should do that. But you need to be realistic about your chances.”

And she looked at me, and she looked at him, and a few days later, she agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.”

The Tulip Nursery

This is one of two stories in this series that qualify as "fairy tales" but that are much more in tune with the folk lore theme in which fairies are other-world characters and not simply little women with wings and wands. Still, it's one of the more wistful stories in the collection and I think the timing is right, as gardeners begin to think about spring.

Dropping the Pilot

About six months ago, I came to the Upper Valley to edit a weekly paper. Made some changes, tightened some things up, helped to mentor a young, inexperienced and, to that point, somewhat undisciplined staff. (As writers, I mean -- their professional decorum was fine.)

However, editors serve at the pleasure of publishers. Thursday, my publisher told me he wasn't satisfied with how things were going and will advertise my position. It's basically a case of a bad fit rather than any actual professional shortcoming. I'm welcome to stay on board until a new person is interviewed, hired and ready to start, and it was a cordial meeting. But I figure I've got six weeks or perhaps a bit longer to find another gig. And I was told I could take time off for interviews without being penalized, so my paycheck is secure for the moment.

At this stage, I'm not sure what I'm headed for. I won't move for an uncertain job, and I'd like to stay in the Northeast. Newspaper work isn't so reliable that I feel the need to seek only newspaper jobs. At the same time, it's a little late in life for this old dog to start a job with an entirely new set of skills, so I'll be looking for something I already kind of know how to do.

Between drawing unemployment and being old enough to take from my 401k for immediate needs, I should be okay for awhile and there's no need to jump into something stupid.

And, hey, it'll make for some interesting blogging. What else matters in this world?

(Discreet inquiries and suggestions may be emailed to me here.)

The Priest and the Tanuki

This week, a Japanese folk tale of the unlikely friendship between an old priest and an aging trickster.

In case you missed Ed Henry (CNN) at the press conference:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You spoke again at the top about your anger about AIG. You've been saying that for days now. But why is it that it seems Andrew Cuomo seems to be in New York getting more actual action on it? And when you and Secretary Geithner first learned about this 10 days, two weeks ago, you didn't go public immediately with that that outrage -- you waited a few days, and then you went public after you realized Secretary Geithner really had no legal avenue to stop it.

And more broadly -- I just want to follow up on Chip and Jake -- you've been very critical of President Bush doubling the national debt. And to be fair, it's not just Republicans hitting you -- Democrat Kent Conrad, as you know, said, "When I look at this budget, I see the debt doubling again." You keep saying that you've inherited a big fiscal mess. Do you worry, though, that your daughters -- not to mention the next President -- will be inheriting an even bigger fiscal mess if the spending goes out of control?

OBAMA: Of course I do, Ed, which is why we're doing everything we can to reduce that deficit. Look, if this were easy, then we would have already had it done, and the budget would have been voted on and everybody could go home. This is hard. And the reason it's hard is because we've accumulated a structural deficit that's going to take a long time, and we're not going to be able to do it next year or the year after or three years from now. What we have to do is bend the curve on these deficit projections. And the best way for us to do that is to reduce health care costs. That's not just my opinion; that's the opinion of almost every single person who has looked at our long-term fiscal situation.

Now, how do we -- how are we going to reduce health care costs -- because the problem is not just in government-run programs; the problem is in the private sector, as well. It's experienced by families, it's experienced by businesses. And so what we've said is, look, let's invest in health information technologies; let's invest in preventive care; let's invest in mechanisms that look at who's doing a better job controlling costs while producing good quality outcomes in various states, and let's reimburse on the basis of improved quality, as opposed to simply how many procedures you're doing. Let's do a whole host of things, some of which cost money on the front end but offer the prospect of reducing costs on the back end.

Now, the alternative is to stand pat and to simply say we are just going to not invest in health care, we're not going to take on energy; we'll wait until the next time that gas gets to $4 a gallon; we will not improve our schools, and we'll allow China or India or other countries to lap our young people in terms of their performance; we will settle on lower growth rates; and we will continue to contract, both as an economy and our ability to provide a better life for our kids.

That I don't think is the better option. Now, have -- am I completely satisfied with all the work that needs to be done on deficits? No. That's why I convened a fiscal responsibility summit, started in this room, to start looking at entitlements and to start looking at the big drivers of costs over the long term. Not all of those are reflected in our budget, partly because the savings we anticipate would be coming in years outside of the 10-year budget cycle that we're talking about. Okay?

Q: On AIG, why did you wait -- why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? It seems like the action is coming out of New York and the Attorney General's Office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, look, we're outraged. Why did it take so long?

OBAMA: It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak, you know? (Laughter.)

Ed, apparently, missed it himself:

(and Gene Robinson gets the "Euphemism of the Month" award)

Here's a wonderful way to make up for the fact that the Bogsiders never released an album. Ruth has created a "play all" list that will allow you to enjoy, in album format, the songs I suggested would have been on our never-recorded-never-released album. It's a joy. Bless you, girl.

My Hero (no joke)

Having an emergency responder in the family, I'm used to tales of quick and creative response in an emergency. But this Thai firefighter is absolutely my hero.

Here's the story.

The Water Dance

This week's story comes from the Bantu of Southern Africa, but features a very familiar character to anyone who has read or heard the folk tales collected by Joel Chandler Harris in the American South from among former slaves.

Had dinner with my main man Tobias this evening.

Also his sister, his parents, his uncle and two of his cousins. But they're old news.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

from the Ladies Auxiliary of the Little Men's Marching and Chowder Society
J. Jackeen O'Malley, proprietor and spiritual advisor

The Kildare Pooka

This week's story at The Weekly Storybook is, not coincidentally, adapted from an Irish folktale collected by James Stephens.

The Bogsiders

This Irish pub band played in the Colorado Springs-Denver-Boulder corridor from about 1980 to 1983. The carefully chosen name was intended to forewarn Irish ex-pats that we sang a fair number of nationalist songs, without attracting a lot of American wannabes. Irish to this day laugh over the notion that this choice of names was in any way subtle, but it was, and, though they snicker at any suggestion of subtlety, they respect our desire to keep the dialogue in the family.

It was a painful time, but the choice of songs was as political as the songs themselves -- if you didn't sing them, it was as blatant a political statement as if you did. And we were geared to the Irish ex-pat crowd, though, in this picture, only the fellow in the middle, John, is Irish-born.

He was a Limerickman who was a truly brilliant whistle- and flute-player and had a very nice tenor voice. He had organized the band and booked our gigs, and he and I switched back and forth on introducing songs, though I usually sang lead, having a decent voice and a prodigious memory for lyrics. There were songs that were "his" however, and I would also step out while the other fellas played instrumentals -- It gave me a break and helped cover the fact that I played "Johnny Cash guitar" which is to say that my Gibson was more of a prop than a musical instrument and barely qualified as rhythm guitar. It was not miked and for good reason, begob.

The blonde fellow here, Paul, was an American with a blues background but who quickly learned our material and was a very good sessions-type musician. We went through three strings players over the course of the group -- one a violinist who needed sheet music and didn't last, then a fiddler/mandolin player who was brilliant, won Colorado state fiddling championships several years and left us after a year or so for better things, and this guy, who was not only a shy and gentle soul but a wonderful musical director for the group, having a keen knowledge of how this stuff actually worked. And between the latter two, we had three or four people sit in on jobs, trying to find the right chemistry, an experience that occasionally bordered on the surreal. I had to fire one of them in the middle of a gig because he got drunk and threw a beer on one of the barmaids. See the "Commitments" reference a few grafs down.

We also had a second Limerickman, Sean, who played bodhran and sang, but never got in the pictures because he was on disability (smashed his knee in a loading dock accident) and didn't want it publicly suggested that he could stand for long periods of time. As we started gaining more and more attention, he eventually dropped out, though the truth is, he really couldn't have stood up there with us if we'd been playing more than one gig a week. But tell that to someone who wants to stop your checks. He was a good, sweet man from whom I learned a great deal about Ireland, and life, and who acted as a bit of an anchor among what could be a fractious and undisciplined lot.

We broke up before recording was cheap and ubiquitous, and I'm sorry for that because I believe we were quite good and might have made a living at it if we'd been in a place with a larger Irish community, though all it really takes to dispel the allure of that notion is another viewing of "The Commitments" which makes me laugh but also gives me the heebie-jeebies.

In any case, in the absence of actual recordings of our own music, here's a typical playlist that we might have put on an album. You might want to right-click on these links and choose "open link in new tab" rather than keep trying to pop back and forth.

(2012 Update: They're linked on this YouTube playlist. Hit it and then you can read along as you like.)

1. Follow Me Up To Carlow
Revolution in the Elizabethan Age. We didn't like'em then, either. The other day I interviewed a jeweler from Carlow and mentioned the song, which got things off to a good start -- I think they're rather proud of their town being memorialized in such a gritty little song. Incidentally, songs of 16th and 17th century rebellion were not written at the time of the events memorialized. They were written in the 19th century as part of a movement to create a national, and nationalist, identity. And well written indeed.

2. MacAlpine's Fusiliers
A song of the construction workers who sent money home from England during WWII. MacAlpine was (and I think still is) one of the largest construction firms in England and a lot of remittance men put in their time there. Sean worked for them briefly before he emigrated to America in the 1950s.
"I come from County Kerry, the land of eggs and bacon And if you think I'll eat your fish and chips, By jazuz, you're mistaken!"
We were probably more like the Dubliners (heard here) than any other of the Irish groups -- grittier than the Clancies and a whole lot more fun than the Chieftains, not as musically adept as the Boys of the Lough but moreso than the Wolfe Tones.

3. The Spanish Lady
A lovely ballad of no known significance. Fun to play and sing, and people loved it.

4. The Black Velvet Band
This is a type of song known as a "come-all-ye" (from the phrase common to each) and a huge favorite with audiences, much covered by other bands. Not sure this live shot is the best presentation of the song ever, but it might be the closest you'll get to our style of entertainment, since the Dubliners are really just playing in a pub setting here. John, our whistleplayer, ran into them in Perth, Australia, when he was living there and they played a pub gig at the end of which the publican announced he wasn't going to pay them, whereupon Luke Kelly, the fellow singing lead here, hoisted him up against the wall and explained that paying the band would be cheaper than reassembling his pub. John then returned to Ireland from his multi-year sojourn in Australia on the same plane with them, during which trip the instruments came out and the passengers got a nice long concert that nobody had to pay for except maybe with lost sleep and hangovers. Significant hangovers. And well worth it.

5. The Foggy Dew
Everyone in Ireland grew up with this song -- even this young girl and the old men playing their instruments for her. When I met the Cardinal, we didn't talk about this one, who hadn't emerged on the scene yet, but we spoke about Bernadette Devlin and the woman who ran her Dungannon school, Mother Benignus. Ireland is a bit like Canada in that it's small enough in population that, while they don't all know each other, they do tend to all know the people with any significant public profile. Mother Benignus Kelly was apparently a bit like Miss Jean Brodie in the way she inspired her girr-ulls, albeit with an Ulster accent rather than a Scottish burr. It was clear that the Cardinal had a great deal of respect and affection for her, but wished that perhaps she could ratchet it back just a bit. And they both of them, cardinal and nun, probably sang this song in school, not just in the streets or pubs.

6. The Old Orange Flute
A Protestant song and a favorite as well. A little self-mockery is a healthy thing, and a lot of Catholics have gotten a huge laugh out of this old song. Come to think of it, I've never heard a Protestant sing it. Mind you, the Unionists are known for their instrumental music, particularly their piping, rather than "songs" which in Ireland means sung music. Another of the little cultural differences between the two communities.

7. The Juice of the Barley
Speaking of an appetite for self-mockery, this is a classic of the genre. Drinking songs were only about 10 or 15 percent of our playlist, but it was a rare night we didn't sing this one.

8. The Donegal Reel/Longford Collector
We didn't actually play this particular medley -- and pub bands play medleys, because with nobody up and dancing, it's repetitive to just cycle through the same song over and over -- but this is the sort of instrumental we would feature. This is the Dubliners again. Like I said, we were more like them than anyone else, at least in our dreams.

9. The Man from the Daily Mail
Whatever the merits of a cause, there's nothing like a hysterical tabloid to turn it into something else entirely. A salute to media distortion.

10. The Limerick Rake
Sean, our bodhran player, liked this song because it's the only Irish song in the world that mentions his hometown of Ardagh, where his father had been a thatcher back in the 20s and 30s. I liked it because it was naughty and obscure.

11. The Men Behind the Wire
We had people in our audience who had been burned out of their homes by hate groups and who could hand you a rubber bullet so you could see what it looked like and imagine what it felt like. This song wasn't in the least extreme to them. H-Block, or Long Kesh, was Guantanamo 20 years before Guantanamo -- no habeas corpus, no right to see the evidence against you, and you're stuck in a nether world, neither a common criminal nor a POW. A travesty of human rights, and this song was more about that than about merits of the nationalist movement itself.

12. The Rebel
A poem by Padraig Pearse. This sort of performance piece, well done, has as great a place in the hooley as a stepdance or song, and a person known for good recitation would be called upon to give a poem in the general go-round of contributions to the evening. This would be a common choice, though others might go for something sentimental or comic instead. This certainly isn't particularly comic.

13: Over the Wall
This is based on a real event, presumably before they really locked down the internment jails. My boys, who were very young in those days, loved this song, probably for its repetitive chorus. We adapted the lyrics a bit for American audiences, changing "they'd all got tranferred" to "they'd played out their options" and "I'll appoint Edmond Compton" to "I'll appoint a commission." It remains a very silly song, but the populist sense of "whatever they've done, they're still our lads" is unmistakable.

14. The Broad Black Brimmer
There are any number of videos for this selection, but I chose this one because this chilling little song is a good example of the mundane way in which rebel songs become part of the zeitgeist. Two-thirds of the video is shots of Hibernian FC, an ex-pat football team in Scotland. Then it suddenly shifts into IRA scenes, then ends up back at the football pitch. This demonstrates more than anything else on this list why you can't simply leave these songs out of your repertoire without being as engaged in politics as you would be if you included them. They are bred in the bone.  (2012 update -- that video is gone. Oh well. Perhaps that's a good sign. Here's another version closer to what we sang anyway.)

15. Sean South of Garryowen
John used to play at hooleys in Limerick when he was a young soldier in the '50s, despite his sergeant's orders to avoid those musical gatherings because they were so closely associated with nationalists. One of the people who used to come to those parties was a lad named Sean South, who seemed nothing special at the moment but chatted him up about his work, which involved radios, and even came out to the army base to see what John did for a living. Friendly fellow. Young Sean became rather famous shortly thereafter.

16. The Patriot Game
Two people were killed in that raid. This is the other fellow, a young man named O'Hanlon who was from Monaghan, near where my cousins lived. A generation later, it was they who slipped on the berets and went off to meetings in the middle of the night. A good movie about real life in that area known in the 80s as "bandit country" is "Run of the Country." This is Domenic Behan's original version of the song ... most singers make adjustments to be more gentle and politically correct; we made it a practice to vary our choice of versions by the audience before us.

17. Roddy McCorley
Because the march tempo made it easy to walk a fussy baby to this tune, it somehow became part of the bedtime routine in our family. An odd lullaby, certainly, but a lovely rebel song, and one that was sung with the group in the pub and with my boys in our home.

18. A Nation Once Again
We used to end every night with this song. It's not the Irish national anthem, but it might as well be.

19. The Rocky Road To Dublin
(You may want to turn your volume down a bit before clicking on this one.) When I was in high school, I used to sing this song while walking home, the trick being to get each verse out in one breath. I've heard it sung by a lot of Irish groups, some of whom sing it as if it mattered in the great scope of national identity, and others who sing it with the sense of fun inherent. I like the Dropkick Murphys' take on it because I think, first of all, that they represent the fact that the authentic "tradition" in Irish music is to enjoy the music and have some fun, and also because I suspect that they really would get off the boat in Liverpool and get into a brawl with the first person to insult them.

And win, by jayzuz.

Good night. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

Then again ...

Sigh. Some of them just can't get over it.

It pays to behave well

It's nice when an ex-girlfriend is willing to step in and help with the release of your new CD, but it doesn't just happen. It's the result of both of you showing a little class on the break-up. Which we did, including neither of us running to the tabloids. I'm pretty sure Jennifer wouldn't do this for Brad.

(Thanks, babe -- you're still the best!)

The Official Launch

The Weekly Storybook just got its official launch this week and not a moment too soon. Two good friends from my Newspapers-in-Education years have left, one voluntarily, from a rapidly sinking ship, the other in a frog-march that didn't even allow her to collect her personal effects, after 20 years of revenue-positive work for the company. In fact, both had programs that were revenue-positive and well-respected around the country, but we're not doing that sort of thing anymore.

With the shifts in the industry, the concept of selling kids' stories to newspapers is over and done. My gross sales in 2008 were a third of what they had been in past years, and many of the people who made those recent purchases are gone. Heck, one of my client papers has folded its tent and another is on the brink of closing down. Two others, come to think of it.

So Friday I made the announcement that any newspaper wanting to link to weeklystorybook.com was free to do so, and that they could post the teacher's guides on their web site and even spoof the url to their own so they could retain the return visits week to week. A couple have already indicated interest in doing so, as a means of adding a little extra traffic to their web sites.

The beta phase has thus ended and I've kicked off a new series of folk tales I did with an artist familiar to this page, Marina "Rinacat" Tay, who also designed the Newshound and Nellie Bly, among other things. Her work is top-drawer and the series is entirely made up of single episodes, so newcomers to the site won't have missed anything. Later, when we build a little audience, I'll do some of the multi-part serials.

And, in addition to the Amazon widget, I've set up a CafePress shop. My practical prediction? It will generate zilch. But you never know, and this could at least become self-sustaining at some point. And, yes, the artists will get a cut of that zilch, bless their hearts!

The bottom line is that I like telling these stories and I hope to reach some kind of audience with them, because they are fun and worth reading.

And, really, I've become fatalistic enough about the economy that whether or not something pays for itself doesn't much matter anymore. If you enjoy it, do it, and if you don't enjoy it, well, life is short and you need to make decisions accordingly.

So tell your friends and neighbors and I hope you enjoy the site yourselves.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Why is this comedian the only guy who gets it?

Really, I'll get back to actually writing posts myself. But this is sadly important and right on. Take a few minutes and get furious. It won't help the economy, but it might make you feel better.

Slant it right, but get it right

Tucker Carlson tries to explain to a roomful of conservatives that getting the facts doesn't always mean pleasing them, but that getting it wrong leads to failure, and that failure to gather news at all is pointless. By the end, they seem to be getting it.

Nast never apologized for his monkeys

(And why this guy needs to)

I've been asked what I think about the current cartoon controversy, which I'm not going to describe here for fear of attracting a lot of Googlers. It has become a magnet for some really unacceptable and unproductive trollery.

Here's what I think: It was unintentional. And it was racist, not in the intent of the cartoonist, but in his utter cloth-eared insensitivity to the symbols he used. A sin of omission, not of commission. But a sin of omission still calls for a real apology, not a half-hearted pro forma statement, and certainly not one that ends with a self-promoting stab at one's critics.

If I back into your car, it may have been because I hate foreign cars and wanted to smash the fender on one, or it may have been because I didn't look in my rearview mirror.

If the former, no apology is needed. I did as I intended.

Thomas Nast routinely depicted the Irish as ape-like creatures. In the cartoon above, an "Irish Catholic Invader," complete with hobnailed boots, revolutionary lapel pin, gun in belt and bottle in back pocket, dictates terms to (Democratic) candidate Horace Greeley, while the priest listens in to make sure he gets it right and a proud Saxon lad stands fast to protect (Protestant) religion in the schools. And in the Nast cartoon here, an Irish monkey girl clings to her rosary beads and waves a nationalist flag while she and her little monkey-children friends kick the (King James) Bible around the school playground.

Despicable, but boy-jayzus, didn't Thomas Nast say what he meant and then stick to his guns? I can hate his work and still admire both his artistry and his tenacity.

But this fellow in New York didn't mean to be offensive. He's like the driver who didn't look in his rearview mirror.

Only the fellow in the car likely understands that drivers are supposed to look in their rearview mirrors. He's going to apologize, not for his bad intentions, but for his mistake. He's not likely to say, "I'm sorry if you feel I damaged your car. Except that I'd like to add, to all the people who have criticized my driving in the past, that I don't care what any of you think of it now."

Professional commentators have an obligation to understand the tools of their work, and, for a political cartoonist, symbols matter. And symbols can take on different connotations depending on the factors surrounding them.

Example: You could draw a cartoon showing the governors lining up outside the White House to get stimulus money for their states, and hang a pawnbroker's three-ball symbol over the portico, suggesting that the governors were desperate enough to give up things or ... however you felt it captured the issue. And whatever the merit of that commentary, there would be nothing offensive about it.

Unless, instead of Barack Obama, the president were Joe Lieberman, in which case you or one of your editors should be bright enough to say, "Oh, wait, no, let's re-think this ..."

And you need to do that because people will misinterpret your intentions and because they will be offended and distracted by something you didn't mean. If your intention is to make a statement, then you don't want that statement derailed by what people will see instead. This applies any time you put something in a cartoon or an editorial that could make it misfire, even if it were only a matter of confusing readers rather than offending them. But especially if it were a matter of offending them for no good reason.

When the internal system fails, when something like this gets through the checks-and-balances and is published and draws fire, you need to man-up and take your licks. You don't apologize for your intentions, because they weren't evil.

You apologize for your carelessness. You don't apologize for the fact that the guy values his car. You apologize for not looking in the rearview mirror, or for misjudging the distance. You apologize because you screwed up.

Here's how a man handles unintentional offense, from Joe Klein's 1980 biography, "Woody Guthrie: A Life." It's about Woody's early career hosting and performing on a radio show in Los Angeles:

On October 20, 1937, Woody received a letter from a listener that read in part, "You were getting along quite well in your program this evening until you announced your 'Nigger Blues.' I am a Negro, a young Negro in college, and I certainly resented your remark. No person ... of any intelligence uses that word over the radio today." Woody was mortified. It was a word he'd used casually all his life. It was a word he'd used lightly, jokingly, without ever quite realizing its full implications. He took to the air immediately with an apology. He read the letter aloud, promised not to use the word again, and ripped all the "nigger" songs out of his book.

By the way, I often counsel people who are thinking about writing letters to the editor (or to anyone else for that matter) that a soft, hurt tone is more effective than harsh anger. But those of us with words like "editor" in our titles are supposed to be able to stick our egos in our back pockets and deal with people even when they are too angry to address us in that soft, hurt tone.

We're paid to exercise good judgment, both in what we put in the paper and in how we handle the response to it.