What Are You Reading

[Tiki Tom]

I'm an American mutt, but grew up, in NJ, with some Catholic families in our neighborhood, which I loved as, if you were one of the kids' friends, you were always welcome in their home.

Absolutely! I completely agree.

 

[Harp]

Texas v Pennsylvania

Innovative filing and original jurisdiction with US Supreme Court.

Denied. Court found Texas lacked standing.

A predictable scenario; yet the Court dodged the larger constitutional issue.

 

[Harp]

Yeah. I do still toss out the occasional Gibbons quote to suppress friends and family.

Reginald Foster's The Mere Bones of Latin sits on a shelf still untouched, I am embarrassed to admit,
an extension of the Latin class he taught in Rome while stationed at the Vatican. A Carmelite priest,
Foster is considered among the finest Latinists in the world, and would lead his students out on the
streets of Rome to sites such as where Cicero denounced Catallus, and classical graffiti extant and visible
today. If the lingo intrigues, buy his book as a Christmas gift for yourself.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Thanks for the tip, Harp. Father Foster sounds like an appealing character from a whodunnit. I love being led to examples of ancient graffiti in vibrant cities. As for my bookshelf, it includes books on both Latin and Ancient Greek that are there more as testaments to my inflated hopes and intellectual vanity than anything else. Ah. Next year!

 

[Harp]

The Degradation of American Democracy-And The Court, Michael J Klarman; Harvard Law Review Nov 10

The tenuous preach against voter identification requirement ad infinitum.
Intellectual slight of hand with truth makes for vapid rhyme and reason.

 

[Fading Fast]

Oh Murderer Mine by Norbert Davis originally published in 1946

This is another in the Doan and Carstairs series (see other review here: #8470). It's an even shorter (120 not-dense pages) effort of hard-boiled-detective fun driven forward by short, chubby, affable but whip-smart private investigator Doan and his equally smart, if sometimes lazy except when truly needed, huge Great Dane, Carstairs.

Taking place at a small university in Los Angeles, Doan and Carstairs have been hired by a self-promoting cosmetics company owner to look after her much younger professor husband, Eliot Trent, now employed at the university. Ostensibly, Doan is there to protect him as she's very wealthy, but he's really there to make sure her young, handsome husband doesn't cheat on her.

From here, a lot of stuff happens in a hurry: the apartment of a young, cute female teacher, Melissa, who lives just above Trent's apartment is broken into, she's roughed up, Doan is shot at and Trent's laboratory experiments are wrecked.

Things then amp up from there, as Melissa's boyfriend is killed, a odd foriegn professor, who escaped Nazi Germany, keeps popping up in surprising places and a teacher friend of Melissa is killed when she visits Trent's wife's beauty "institute." Meanwhile, the police investigator of all this, Humphrey, is just itching to blame it all on Doan, who is always two steps and three quips ahead of Humphrey. And, finally, a Mexican detective shows up, bringing an international element to all of this.

As noted, it's a short book, but it packs a lot of story, twists and turns in, too many for this reader to figure it out ahead of time. But in truth, the book is not about its confusing plot, it is about, one, the atmosphere of post-war Los Angeles trying to restart civilian life, two, the banter driven by Doan's retorts providing continuous sparks and, three, Carstairs, a dog that clearly thinks he's smarter than humans and usually is. All those things make the books in this series quick, smart and fun reads.

 

[Harp]

Reader-errant internet wander; stopped at the venerable New York Times where the sage
Linda Greenhouse scribbles doggerel of Olympian scale on the US Supreme Court and all sundry
morsels and tidbits that cannot be found in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin but serve that stupendous
canary cage-dog kennel floor mat paper of non record tabloid Times exceedingly well.
Greenhouse's December 17th opine, Thank the Supreme Court, for now ridicules Texas v Pennsylvania
for its original jurisdiction dodge of lower court parochialism but ignores relevant issues lurking
in the dark shadows of the Court, and, Texas.

The Chief Justice exercises unique jurisprudential philosophy that fails constitutional adherence.
John Roberts ignores the document itself, seemingly blind to Article II stricture, a silence of
thunder echoes remonstrance to no avail. Whether the Roberts Court wishes pronounce or not,
federal election infringement by lower state court or state executive branch is a violation.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A ridiculous column in today's Boston Globe by a pot-stirrer suggesting that if Cleveland can accept a new name for its American League Baseball Club, then Red Sox fans should be willing to accept the need for a new ballpark with all the latest amenities.

Bah. Non sequitir.

You say "amenities," I say annoying distractions that ruin the game experience. Let's call the whole thing off.

Besides that, he has the poor taste to comment that LA winning the asterisked World Series this year is a 2020 accomplishment that should be celebrated by all except for "a few resentful old people in Flatbush." 107-year-old Joe and Sally put their teeth in just to gnash them at him. (And they don't even live in Flatbush.)

 

[Fading Fast]

Reader-errant internet wander; stopped at the venerable New York Times where the sage
Linda Greenhouse scribbles doggerel of Olympian scale on the US Supreme Court and all sundry
morsels and tidbits that cannot be found in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin but serve that stupendous
canary cage-dog kennel floor mat paper of non record tabloid Times exceedingly well.
Greenhouse's December 17th opine, Thank the Supreme Court, for now ridicules Texas v Pennsylvania
for its original jurisdiction dodge of lower court parochialism but ignores relevant issues lurking
in the dark shadows of the Court, and, Texas.

The Chief Justice exercises unique jurisprudential philosophy that fails constitutional adherence.
John Roberts ignores the document itself, seemingly blind to Article II stricture, a silence of
thunder echoes remonstrance to no avail. Whether the Roberts Court wishes pronounce or not,
federal election infringement by lower state court or state executive branch is a violation.

A ridiculous column in today's Boston Globe by a pot-stirrer suggesting that if Cleveland can accept a new name for its American League Baseball Club, then Red Sox fans should be willing to accept the need for a new ballpark with all the latest amenities.

Bah. Non sequitir.

You say "amenities," I say annoying distractions that ruin the game experience. Let's call the whole thing off.

Besides that, he has the poor taste to comment that LA winning the asterisked World Series this year is a 2020 accomplishment that should be celebrated by all except for "a few resentful old people in Flatbush." 107-year-old Joe and Sally put their teeth in just to gnash them at him. (And they don't even live in Flatbush.)

One has to marvel at the variety of topics and styles that pop up in this corner of FL. Both are very insightful and enjoyable posts in their own inimitable way.

 

[Harp]

^^^Lizzie surely makes the Lounge a class joint.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^Lizzie surely makes the Lounge a class joint.

You both do.

 

[Harp]

You both do.

Aw shucks sir. T'aint nothing but a Chi town southie jack leg.

But you're right bout Lizzie. She's more than a barkeep, she is the stick that stirs the drink around here.

 

[Harp]

Santa gifted Titan, The Life of John D Rockefeller, Sr, Ron Chernow

The old man has always been an interesting, though distant figure. Time to acquaint.

 

[camjr]

I just finished re-reading Thoreau's Walden, and am about a quarter of the way through Melville's Moby Dick. I'm taking time during the pandemic to read up on some classics. After John LeCarre's passing, I'm tasking myself to read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I read The Night Manager last year.

 

[Harp]

...I'm taking time during the pandemic to read up on some classics. After John LeCarre's passing, I'm tasking myself to read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I read The Night Manager last year.

Moby Dick was Melville's finest cast, and Billy Budd a nicely done literary career epilogue.
LeCarre's memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel is excellent.

 

[Harp]

It's been suggested, with considerable statistical support, that the single biggest factor in addicting American men to tobacco in the 20th Century was the issuance of cigarettes in ration packs beginning during WW1 and continuing thru Vietnam. Big Tobacco and the US military had a very cozy relationship for a very long time, and it could get ridiculous. It was common to listen to a baseball broadcast in the 1950s and hear "that home run by Snider means another thousand free Luckies to the patients at the Brooklyn VA Medical Center." Smoke em if you got 'em -- lungs, that is.

After a Chicago Bears victory, stuck inside, reading and back tracking this thread...belated response

Vietnam C-rations always included a small pack of Chesterfield cigarettes with three nails inside.
Since I didn't smoke these were patrol trade bait.A triple play gave three cigarettes for a date nut roll.
Never turned down, nada once. Occasionally, condoms were traded for placement over the M16 bore.
Money also passed hands, or a freebie smoke or pack given out. But cigarettes were hard currency.

 

[Harp]

I finished re-reading A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous, a diary of a woman who lived in Berlin right when the Soviets came in. It's an absolutely chilling read. I read it about 10 years ago but wanted to refresh my memory since one of the main characters of my current novel-in-progress is a German woman who lived in Berlin during the same time.

...Belated response, apologies...

I recall reading this, not an easy memoir but absolutely chilling to the core of the soul.

 

[Harp]

Speaking of which, I'm reading "Blowback," by Christopher Simpson. Written in 1988, this is an exhaustively researched, thoroughly documented look at how the CIA recruited and employed as many "former" Nazis as it could get in the years after the Second World War, as advisors on Eastern European policy and as active intelligence operatives. These weren't "rehabilitated" cuddly Nazis like Wehrner "I knew nooooooothink!" von Braun, but full-blooded hardcore Nazis, including SS officers and bona fide war criminals like Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon." Simpson not only explores the decision to work with these men, but the influence their ideologies had on the political culture of the Cold War period both inside and outside the Agency.

Yalta set the stage and then the post war Soviet Invasion of eastern Europe followed suit.
It is indeed horrific when moral ambiguity is accepted and lines blur or are erased, honor blacklisted,
standards of depravity once considered defeated given rise as a phoenix. Usage of available
assets are necessary in war and peace, and this world is far from perfect.
Espionage stud poker is strictly pro; expertly dealt off an ice cold deck. A conscience carries
a price with payment demanded down to the last cent. When I was stationed in Munich I once
had dinner with a former Nazi who escaped Soviet capture in Yugoslavia and subsequently
enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, went to Indochina, and, discharged with French citizenship,
signed on with CIA. His personal history with evil gave him a rather unique perspective; equally
critical of the Allies-Americans in particular-and the British. South Africa British concentration
camps he compared to Auschwitz and Dachau, which he admitted to be a tenuous analogy.
But he was adamant that human history is a mixed bag. I agreed with him.

 

[Harp]

Caught Adam Liptak's New York Times article this morn, A Cheerleader's Vulgar Message...
A social media embroglio as to 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech limit beyond campus;
which necessarily draws in the ACLU, a Yalie law prof, Justin Driver, and a host of assorted
opines, all trenchant fodder for the ultimate confrontation at the US Supreme Court.
The case in ? is Mahonoy Area School District v B.L. No 20-255, recourse after the US Crt Ap/3rd
agreed with a kid who zipped varsity cheerleading. Not enbanc bench baseball but a solid hit
for First base with a cautionary opinion by Judge Thomas L Ambro attempting to set some
boundary. The last case relevant is Tinker v Des Moines, a Vietnam black armband scene,
now antiquity and hardly a pragmatic standard.
The Chief Justice will be hard pressed to decline Mahonoy.

 

[Harp]

Now listening to NPR, The Queen's Gambit featured, its director and Chess.
I missed the book and series, love this. Another to do list entry.