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The years go by and one after another source of precious joy in this life becomes troublesome for a body past its sell-by date (which seems to be somewhere around 23).

Meanwhile, read a few books in May; one year since these reviews began.

War Like the Thunderbolt, Russell S. Bonds. I’ve reviewed this in detail elsewhere, already. In brief, a decent and very readable account of the Battle of Atlanta, though not quite the riveting narrative which was Bonds’ earlier Stealing the General.

Go Down Together, Jeff Guinn. A recent biography of Clyde Barrow and his paramour, Bonnie Parker, better known as the legendary Bonnie & Clyde. An absolutely fantastic work, rich in absorbing detail. Definitely the best of the month.

I’m far from being an expert on Bonnie & Clyde, so I can’t evaluate this against any other works on the pair. But it certainly seems like Guinn did a lot of research, and used it to very good effect. Unsurprisingly, there’s no Hollywood glamour in the story; yet for a tale of two largely inept, ineffective small-time criminals, it’s a remarkably dramatic and even moving story.

The element of inevitable doom in Bonnie & Clyde’s tale probably contributes a lot to this, and while Guinn makes it a very real presence, he hardly had to invent it; throughout much of their brief criminal careers, B&C knew there was only one possible ending to their story, and were often completely frank and casual about it.

Perhaps the most effective and surprising ramification of this, though, is how Guinn convincingly calls into question just how much Barrow and Parker ever really had a better alternative. The story of their dead-end world in Dust-Bowl Texas, and particularly of the Barrows’ utterly dispiriting poverty, comes across as just unremittingly bleak. Unless the prospects for a young person in Depression-era Dallas slums were significantly brighter than Guinn’s account suggests, one has difficulty seeing any reason Bonnie & Clyde would have particularly preferred lives of impoverished drudgery to brief careers as famous criminals, even allowing for the deglamorized reality of the latter.

In all honesty, though written as a biography of two celebrated bandits, Go Down Together is one of the most effective works of social criticism I’ve read in a long while. (more…)

This is interesting. Apparently there’s a documentary about “fracking” titled Gasland, and Lakewood’s state representative and senator hosted a showing at our library on Thursday. I only got the e-mail now, because a message was caught in the spam filter.

Still, I think it’s worth posting in a bit of this:

High volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as “Fracking”, is here in Ohio after drilling its way through the other states. Right now, the House and Senate are considering multiple proposals, including parts of the Budget, to open up State Parks and public lands to oil and gas drilling, including Fracking. The House is even working right now to delete current state level prohibitions against drilling for oil and gas under Lake Eire [sic], one of our most precious resources.

From upstate New York to Arkansas, Fracking has polluted ground water, ruined crops, lowered property values, increased traffic, devastated small communities, and even caused earthquakes. Yet, this technique is exempted from the Superfund Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Clean Air Act (CAA) and many other environmental regulations. Other states are enacting moratoriums to study the detrimental effects of Fracking and ensure that State regulations are up to the task, but Ohio government is moving full speed ahead without taking the time to get the data.

Data? “Whaddya need that for, Dude?” Yep. (more…)

Seems to amount to something like this:

A Republican brandishing a large stick, standing on top of a ladder next to a wasp’s nest, around which a slowly-increasing number of wasps buzz, somewhat defensively. And the Republican, newly-stung in one or two places, affects this look of startled disbelief and pain, and complains loudly:

“OW! Ow, ow, owie, owwwww!!! Why are these wasps stinging me?!? All I’m trying to do is help with my Ryan Plan™ for Wonderful Things Which Benefit Wasps Honest They Do! This is all Jimmy Democrat’s fault for telling everyone that my splendid and beneficent Plan is actually a stick which I just want to poke innocent wasps’ nests with!! Untrue, untrue! Ow, ow!! Unfair!! Owwww!!!”

Yeeeeeep, doesn’t it just break your heart.

Also… (more…)