An E-Book: Praise from a Future Generation

Some very witty wag once defined a liberal as someone whose interests aren't at stake.

This applies to more than just politics.

Elsewhere on this blog, I railed against e-books and e-readers. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

My publisher recently contacted me to see if I would like to prepare an e-book version of Praise from a Future Generation, my account of the "first generation" critics of the Warren Report. A conventional hardcover version appeared in October 2007.

I would very much indeed like to prepare an e-book version, I replied.

I still don't care for Kindles, and all the other e-readers out there on the market. But I can't deny the realities of the marketplace. According to an item I saw in the paper recently, Amazon is selling more e-books than printed books, including books for which there is no electronic edition.

This development gives me an opportunity. There are some little grammatical errors throughout the print version of the book, and in the months ahead I'll be ferreting out and correcting as many as I can. And I'll be adding some new material, too. Not a hell of a lot, but some stuff that should have been there all along. Just enough, perhaps, to justify calling the e-book a revised, second edition.

There is no formal publication date yet. Probably sometime in the fall, I'm told.

By the way...that witty wag who defined liberals also defined conservatives: in their case, as those with two perfectly good legs who refuse to walk forward.

Litterbugs, Part 12: A Farewell, Sort Of

There are only so many ways you can say, "I went for a walk today, and picked up a bunch of litter along the way."

I know that now.

I began my Great Litter Pickup around the first of this year, and recorded its stunning details in a blog post right around that time. I got so charged up, so enthusiastic about it, that I made regular posts about picking up litter and disposing of it properly. And I got so enthusiastic about that, that I began compiling these posts in their own blog.

But as the expression goes, I guess I bit off more than I could chew. It really proved to be too much. I haven't posted anything new to the litter blog in a couple of months, and don't foresee doing more anytime soon. For one thing, another project is demanding much of my writing time (it was a lull with it that got so hot on blogging to begin with). And for another, as I said...there are only so many ways you can say, "I went for a walk today, and picked up a bunch of litter along the way."

I'm still taking walks and picking up trash, and still railing against anyone so piggish and disrespectful of our shared environment that they litter. That won't change. But I'm running low on ways to write about it.

I'm not officially ending the trash blog, but don't really see how much more stuff I could put there. Whatever there is left to say will probably go in this curious little blogspot.

I'll end here by urging you to never, ever litter, and to urge everyone you know to never, ever, ever litter.

It's good sense, good vibes, and good karma.

Bike Race

There was a bike race in my town a few days ago – the "Sonic Boom" criterium. It was actually a series of races, and they lasted all day. The races were broken into a number of different categories, mostly the age of the riders.

I stopped by for about half an hour. A criterium is a close-course race. This particular criterium was in a big figure-8. I'm not sure how many city blocks it covered.

There were hundreds of riders in all. I watched them whizzing by from several different locations. In this top photo, riders are cornering from Front Street onto Walnut. On the left, outside the frame of this photograph, is our wonderful local library.

The photo below is basically a reverse angle of the above picture. These two riders are comin' 'round the corner from Front Street onto Walnut.