Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

As usual, Michael Ventura’s column appeared first in the Austin (Texas) Chronicle, this one on July 6, 2007. Also as usual, he writes with a depth of seriousness of purpose rarely seen.

Heartland

Idly leafing through old travel notebooks I came upon aged Verlie, who sat beside me on the bus from Muskogee to, eventually, Wichita. It was very late; she couldn’t sleep; she seemed in pain on that bus seat but didn’t complain. You could smoke in buses then and we were smoking. At the last stop I’d gotten her a coffee, not knowing if she’d want one; she was glad to take it and started talking.

She told me of being a girl on her family’s farm in Arkansas, 1905-ish, grinding coffee beans by hand. Coffee came in 50 pound bags, “Green beans, roast ‘em yerself, grind ‘em yerself.” She asked where I was from; I told her, and spoke of my travels. She said (very satisfied to say it, too), “I just been to four states my whole life, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, an’ Texas” — she spoke as though even four was too many, and offered the opinion that a young man like myself “shouldn’t be wanderin’ aroun’ so far from family.”

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The Whimsic Alley Book of Spells, Caribbean Pirates and Discovering the Golden Compass: a Guide to Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials have all had favorable reviews in VOYA ( Voice of Youth Advocates) in the August 2007 issue.

Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and Paul Potts

Paul Potts Given a Standing Ovation

Lancishire Evening Post, 8th July

Reality television sensation Paul Potts was given a rapturous welcome during his first live performance since being elevated to stardom.

The mobile phone salesman and winner of Britain’s Got Talent sang during a special one-off opera concert in the grounds of Margam Park in South Wales.

The venue, attended by more than 5,000 people, is only a few miles from the 36-year-old’s home town of Port Talbot.

He performed after accepting a personal invitation from the award-winning Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins, who hopes to make the concert, billed as Katherine in the Park, an annual event.

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Accrding to the official Paul Potts website, this first album goes on sale July 16.

I myself don’t intend to miss buying one.

From the Schwartzreport. As one who has had asthma, i can tell you, you’re better off without it. And while I don’t much follow mechanistic theories of health and disease links, this one does make sense to me.

Teens Who Skip Fruit, Fish Risk Asthma: Study

HELEN BRANSWELL - Canadian Press (Canada)

Teens who turn up their noses to fruit and fish may be undermining their lung health, new research released Monday suggests.

The work, based on the study of 2,112 American and Canadian teenagers, found an association between good lung function and levels of dietary intake of fruit and fish rich in omega 3 fatty acids.

Teens who ate less of these foods had higher rates of asthma, wheezing and symptoms of chronic bronchitis such as cough and phlegm, said the researchers, from the Harvard School of Public Health and Health Canada.

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Probably you missed this item from The Star of Canada (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/233442). What struck me was this line in the story:

“We cannot overlook a propaganda film that portrays the Japanese as a brutal race,” Nariaki Nakayama told a press conference in Tokyo last month … “We cannot allow that, for the sake of Japanese honour.”

It is just that false sense of honor that has led people to deny the truth about the slave trade, the Holocaust, capitalism, communism, etc., etc. But a nation’s honor consists in owning up to the wrongs it has actually done, and repenting them, does it not?

ARCHIVAL PHOTO FROM NANKING
Children who lived through the 1937 Japanese occupation on Nanjing are now elderly witnesses sharing their nightmares in the documentary Nanking.

The horrors of Nanking

Jul 07, 2007 04:30 AM
Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau

BEIJING–At 79, Chang Zhiqiang is a survivor whose strategy had always been simple: put the pain of the past behind, focus on the future, get on with life.

And it always worked.

Until one day in 1997 when Chang bought a television set.

Then, everything changed.

“I was watching a TV program in which some right-wing Japanese people were denying the massacres in Nanjing had ever happened.”

Chang knew differently.

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From AOL, via a friend who often sends me interesting items like this.

Key to Giant Space Sponge Revealed
By Ker Than,
Posted: 2007-07-07 07:20:21

(July 7) - One of the strangest moons in our solar system is Hyperion, a Saturnian satellite so pockmarked by deep craters that it looks like a giant, rotating bath sponge adrift in space. New image analyses suggest the moon’s odd appearance is the result of a highly porous surface that preserves craters, allowing them to remain nearly as pristine as the day they were created.

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from http://www.thirdage.com/news/articles/ALT02/07/07/06/ALT02070706-01.html

Meditation May Hold Hope for Alzheimer’s

By Carla McClain

For the first time, there is evidence that daily meditation appears to improve memory loss and may strengthen parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease.

That has to be welcome news to the millions of Americans facing the threat of this brain-destroying disease — expected to strike in epidemic numbers among aging baby boomers in the coming decades.

However, experts warn that the study showing that meditation improved memory function and increased blood flow to vital areas of the brain lacked scientific controls and was too small to actually prove meditation can delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s.

Even so, the preliminary findings are provocative — suggesting that a simple, inexpensive mind-body exercise with known health benefits may fortify our brains against mental decline as we age.

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Last year, after a friend gave me as a birthday present Jack Kennedy: The Making of A Statesman, (a wonderful book: Who would have thought there could be a book with entirely new material some 40 years after his death?) I went looking for his wartime journalism, which I haven’t found, but at the JFK library site I did find this commencement address, which was so typical of the man: Funny (the first four paragraphs) and serious, deeply rooted in history and skeptical and iconoclastic. .. What a lovely man. I rejoice that I lived in his day. Those of you who came upon the scene too late can never know what you missed, alas.

Commencement Address at Yale University

President John F. Kennedy
June 11, 1962

President Griswold, members of the faculty and fellows, graduates and their families, ladies and gentlemen:

Let me begin by expressing my appreciation for the very deep honor which you have conferred upon me. As General de Gaulle occasionally acknowledges America to be the daughter of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard. It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds, a Harvard education and a Yale degree.

I am particularly glad to become a Yale man because as I think about my troubles, I find that a lot of them come from other Yale men. Among businessmen I have had a minor disagreement with Roger Blough of the law school class of 1931, and I have had some complaints from my friend Henry Ford of the class of 1940. In journalism I seem to have a difference with John Hay Whitney, of the class of 1926–and sometimes I also displease Henry Luce of the class of 1920, not to mention also William F. Buckley, Jr. of the class of 1950. I even have some trouble with my Yale advisers. I get along with them, but I am not always sure how they get along with each other.

I have the warmest feelings for Chester Bowles of the class of 1924, and for Dean Acheson of the class of 1915, and my assistant, McGeorge Bundy, of the class of 1940. But I am not 100 percent sure that these three wise and experienced Yale men wholly agree with each other on every issue.

So this administration which aims for peaceful cooperation among all Americans has been the victim of a certain natural pugnacity developed in this city among Yale men. Now that I, too, am a Yale man, it is time for peace. Last week at West Point, in the historic tradition of that Academy, I availed myself of the powers of the Commander in Chief to remit all sentences of offending cadets. In that same spirit, and in the historic tradition of Yale, let me now offer to smoke the clay pipe of friendship with all my brother Elis, and I hope that they may be friends not only with me but even with each other.

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Do We Really Want Big Brother Watching Us?

July 5, 2007
By John W. Whitehead

“There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment…. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”–George Orwell, 1984

We live in a surveillance age.

From the biggest city to the smallest town, we have succumbed to the siren-song promise that surveillance cameras will not only stop crime, they will actually make us safer.

New York City, for example, is estimated to have over 4,000 surveillance cameras. Other big cities using these cameras include the District of Columbia, Boston, Baltimore and Chicago. The Mayberry-size town of Bellows Falls, Vt., with its eight full-time police officers, plans to install 16 surveillance cameras. Even the quaint college town of Charlottesville, Va., where I live and work, is considering installing 30 surveillance cameras in its small downtown mall area to monitor its citizens.

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