The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raines

The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary ReckoningThe Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This outstanding narrative begins describing how just before the Civil War a wealthy southern landowner bet he could bring a load of African slaves into Alabama through the blockade the federal government had set up to enforce the ban on such slave importation. He had a boat, the Clotilda, outfitted specifically for this task and set out to Ouida, Dahomey, then the slave trading capital of Africa. He partially succeeded in his task, although there were setbacks. The first chapters introduce the three main locales: Mobile, Ouida, and Africatown, the community later established by the slaves who were on the ship, the very last one to import slaves to the United States.

The book then goes on to describe how the ship returned with its load, was hidden and burned to conceal the crime, one punishable by death. The author, an investigative journalist and Alabama tour boat guide, is the one who eventually found the ship 160 years later. He tells how information he gleaned from descendants of those slaves and his own knowledge of the rivers and the local history led to this find despite earlier failed attempts by others. The discovery confirmed many of the accounts of the slave descendants and debunked others from many sources. The subsequent history of many descendants, those of slave traders, slaves, and the Africans who sold their fellow Africans to the whites, are all explored. It brings exposure to the reprehensible treatment Africatown received at the hands of the whites in power over the years. It’s fascinating as both a detective story and a social and political exposé.

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The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

The Last Days of NightThe Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novel, one I read only because it was a choice of my book club, is a historical fiction depicting the interplay between Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla over the “war” between direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC). The central character is Paul Cravath, the original founder of what became the famous law firm Cravath, Swaine, and Moore. The female lead is Agnes Huntington, a renowned singer of the day and later the real Paul Cravath’s wife. There are many more characters and keeping them all straight is rather difficult. That may be one reason I didn’t much enjoy the book. I found the historical part interesting, although much of it highly implausible. The author’s notes declare it to be mostly true or at least plausible, but I find that hard to believe. The way the author describes it, everyone, including governments, police, and common citizens lived in fear of Edison, J.P. Morgan, or Westinghouse sending Pinkerton agents to kill them or ruin their lives. Many supposed events that were critical to the plot, like Tesla’s mental breakdown and amnesia, are not even mentioned in the lengthy Wikipedia entry on Tesla. The Tesla in the book is a near lunatic with no sense of business and no social graces, yet other public sources indicate that he founded and ran profitable companies and socialized with many famous people. I realize that the book is a novel, but I find it disturbing when historic events and people are presented in what seems to me to be an inaccurate way. Use fictional characters if you want to tell a fictional story. The writing style is florid and the love story is perhaps the most implausible part of the plot. Still, the story of the science and technology breakthroughs and rivalries kept the book interesting enough.

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Freegal.com – Playlist update

Like most people, I get tired of listening to the same songs and need some variety. Unfortunately, I just don’t like the popular stuff coming out these days. So I’ve been plumbing the depths of music archives, in particular Freegal.com. Freegal (Free + Legal) is a service for libraries and their patrons. Our county library has a subscription which allows its users, e.g. me, so sign in with their library cards and stream or download songs. The archive is mostly from Sony Music and is paid for through your library, i.e. taxes. It doesn’t carry the new stuff, but that’s fine with me. So below is a list of stuff I have retired (but may bring back some day) from my mp3 playlist and stuff I have added. I last did this a year ago, so you can compare if you like;

Retired songs

A Real Slow Drag Scott Joplin
Above My Head, I hear Music In The Air Gas House Gang
Beat Me Daddy Andrews Sisters
Blue Champagne The Manhattan Transfer
Chicken Chowder The Ragtime Skedaddlers
Coffee Rag Trebor Tichenor
Colonial Glide Trebor Tichenor
Country In My Genes The Broken Circle Breakdown
Daydream The Lovin Spoonful
Deep River Blues Doc Watson
Dill Pickle Rag Ludwig Boeckmann
Don’t Tell Your Monkey Man Eubie Blake
Easier Said Than Done The Essex
Eubie’s Boogie Eubie Blake
Freight Train Peter, Paul & Mary
From Four Until Late Dr. John
I Ain’t Got Nobody Judy Carmichael
I’m Blue (Gong Gong song) The Ikettes
Kilakila Slack Raymond Kane
Lollipop The Chordettes
Mule Skinner Blues The Fendermen
NutRocker B. Bumble & the Stingers
Old Hymns The Gas House Gang
One Fine Day The Chiffons
Over In The Gloryland The Broken Circle Breakdown
Pretty Woman Roy Orbison
Put Your Brakes On John Campbelljohn
Quarter to Three Gary US Bonds
Rescue Me Fontella Bass
Ring of Fire Johnny Cash
Runaway Del Shannon
Someone To Love Buddy Holly
Something Doing Craig Ventresco
Spirit In The Sky Norman Greenbaum
Squeeze Me George Gershwin
Statesboro Blues Roy Bookbinder
Sunny Afternoon The Kinks
Take your burden to the Lord Prairie Home Companion
Tequila The Champs
The Double Eagle The Country Gentlemen
The Midnight Special The Weavers
Distant Lights Trebor Tichenor
Turkey Knob The Country Gentlemen
Walk (Back to Your Arms) Tami Neilson
Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On Jerry Lee Lewis

Added

Aint Nobodys Business Taj Mahal
AlStricker_SaintLouisBlues Ed McKee, etc.
Aunt Hagars Blues Doc Cheatham, Sammy Price
Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar Commander Cody
Boogie Woogie Hot Little Mama
Buffalo Gals The Northquest Players
Can’t Let Go Alison Krauss and Robert Plant
Cold Mornin Shout Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod
Dont Mind Patty Griffin, Craig Ross
Don’t You Leave Me Here Guy Davis
Down By The Riverside Henri Herbert, etc.
Down the road a piece Chuck Berry
Ezekiel Saw The Wheel Delta Rhythm Boys
Five Foot Two Charleston The Charleston All Stars
Get Up And Boogie Silver Convention
Going to Chicago blues Doc Watson
Goldenrod Stomp Trebor Tichenor
Great July Jones Cisco Houston
Harry Lime Theme Gary Potter
How Far From God Sister Rosetta Tharpe
I Ain’t Living Long Like This Emmylou Harris
If Love Hurts The Uppity Blues Women
Jug Band Music Lucinda Williams
Just Strollin Bob Crosby
Just Walk On In unknown
Kansas City Stomp Butch Thompson
Lonesome Road The Quebe Sisters
Longhairs Blues Rhumba Ethan Leinwand
Low Down St Louis Style Ethan Leinwand
Monday Morning Blues Mary Flower
Motherless Children Lucinda Williams
My Creole Belle Ed Gerhard
Nine Pound Hammer Ludwig Boeckmann
Nitty Gritty Mississippi Ry Cooder
Old Louisiana Style Ethan Leinwand
Pratt City Blues Ethan Leinwand
Red Wing Glen Campbell
Rhapsody Rag Winifred Atwell
Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay Danny and the Juniors
Rock That Boogie Commander Cody
Saint Louis Blues Stricker Ed McKee, etc.
Sammy Price Boogie Woogie 2 Orange Kellin, etc.
Slow Blues with Stride Ethan Leinwand
St Louis Boogie Memphis slim
Stompin’ One For Sonny Ethan Leinwand
Sunburst Rag The Ragtime Rags
Sweet Georgia Brown Henri Herbert, etc.
Take Me to the River Lisa Biales
Tico Tico Jose Gomes De Abreu
Trouble With My Lover Alison Krauss and Robert Plant
WorriedBlues Doc Watson

On Call by Anthony Fauci

On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public ServiceOn Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps the most famous doctor in America, the author sets forth his experiences as the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist. After a short, rather egotistical personal history, he describes what it was like treating patients and wrestling the bureaucracy over the many epidemics that our nation faced over half a century. He describes numerous flus, MERS, SARS, HIV, AIDS, Zika, Ebola, Malaria and, of course, Covid outbreaks. His writing is clear and very readable. The book would be better without so much ego in it, but it is very informative. Although Fauci never describes other persons in derogatory terms, it becomes clear through the actions of the many politicians he dealt with which were morons (e.g. Peter Navarro) and which were caring people who just wanted the best medical advice for dealing with a health crisis (e.g. both Bushes, Obama, Biden). Although it’s not riveting reading, I enjoyed it and felt better informed for having read it.

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What3Words – Second Trump assassination attempt

By now the world knows what appears to be a second assassination attempt on ex-President Trump occurred at his Trump International Golf Course in Florida. The suspect did not fire a shot or even come within line of sight of Trump so I doubt he can be convicted of attempted assassination, but he is facing many charges. I do not know the exact coordinates of where he set up with a rifle, but if newspaper maps are correct as to where the FBI cordoned off the area, I searched the right area with my What3Words program. These W3W combinations from the area are somewhat ironically applicable:

fairway.puffed.twisty

money.self.immunity

duvet.tombstone.lawfully

Write your own story about these. I don’t want to be accused of treating the matter lightly.

My New York Times Connections game solving tool

I’ve been having fun playing the Times’ Connections game and decided to write a tool that would help me when it gets to the final hard part. What the tool does is find the words that most often follow or precede a set of puzzle words. You can find the most likely candidates to solve puzzles (usually the purple one) in the form ___word or word ___. I’ve made a video of the tool in action. The default is to find the highest scoring words that follow the puzzle words, trying to find the connection. If I check the box, it will do the same for words that precede them. In the video I show how after solving the yellow and green groups I am hypothetically stumped at the last two categories. I’d actually solved this already without the help of my tool. I selected four of the eight remaining words that included three connected words as though I was unsure. I could have entered as many as eight, but that would take too long for the video. I ran my tool and it found one of the connections, the word KING. The tool uses the Google Twograms data to determine the frequency of word pairs that include each puzzle word, then selects and orders the ones that have the highest overall frequency combined with multiple (but not necessarily all) puzzle words. Here’s the video.

Rich Blood by Robert Bailey

Rich Blood (Jason Rich, #1)Rich Blood by Robert Bailey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jason Rich, fresh out of rehab and bar discipline, is an ambulance-chasing personal injury attorney who has never taken a case all the way to a jury trial. His sister Jana is a former beauty queen who cheated on her husband, a rich doctor, takes drugs, and is accused of murdering her husband. There’s bad blood between them, but she calls on Jason to defend her and he agrees to do it mainly for his nieces’ sake. I’ll skip the details of the investigation and the trial to avoid spoilers but the case does go all the way to trial.

The blurb on the cover quotes another author as saying it’s a “deliciously clever legal thriller.” That’s not accurate on either count. It’s not particularly clever nor much of a legal thriller, but I will say it’s worth reading if you’re the patient sort. There is a psychological heuristic known as the peak-end rule that says an experience is remembered as a whole based on only two points in time: the peak experience and the end. In this book, both come in the last 50 pages, which is why I say you need to be patient. It’s rather boring for the rest of it. The first 200 pages or so are mostly filled with descriptions of how Jason has messed up his life and is about to fall off the wagon again and similar unflattering facts about Jana. The investigation by Jason and his team consists mostly of interviewing all the obvious witnesses and doing a little bit of physical surveillance. They all say pretty much the same thing which points to Jana’s guilt. There’s no cleverness in that. The courtroom part starts around page 280 and isn’t full of any surprises, either. I certainly never felt “thrilled.” But the author does manage to end with a couple of surprises, provided more by an unlikely last-minute stroke of luck (a sudden memory) than by any cleverness on Jason’s part and by some post-trial revelations. Still, it leaves the reader with a feel-good “end” that proves the truth of the Peak-end rule. At the end you feel like you’ve enjoyed it, even if you were bored for 80% of it. If you like true legal thrillers I would recommend Scott Turow or Michael Connelly over this author.

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The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

The Violin ConspiracyThe Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My wife gave this to me to read when she discovered it was a mystery. I like mysteries, but this isn’t really one. The mystery part is actually fairly well done but confined almost entirely to the opening scene and the last 10% of the book. The rest consists of hundreds of pages of descriptions of classical violin pieces and is a showcase for the author’s personal knowledge of the fine points of playing them. When it’s not doing that, it’s the story of a handsome, decent, young black man who is constantly subjected to racist treatment at the hands of whites. I’m quite tired of reading or hearing from professional victims. Yep, racism is real but I don’t need to be told that for the ten thousandth time. I’m part black although I don’t look it; I’ve been discriminated against for being too white. I just want a good mystery. Concert violin soloists might enjoy this more than I did, but I actually thought the music part was rather clumsy and mostly an ego trip for the author. Other than some bluegrass fiddling and romantic string quartets I don’t care much for violins. Still, the book is readable enough to pass the time.

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The Wager by David Grann

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and MurderThe Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book I’ve read all year by far. It’s a must-read. It’s a total page-turner almost from the beginning although it takes a few chapters to introduce the key figures and their backstory. This is the true story of a harrowing misadventure of a task force of English ships sent around Cape Horn in 1740 to prey on a Spanish Galleon thought to be laden with treasure. The group becomes separated in the notorious storms in that region. One ship in particular, The Wager, is shipwrecked on the Patagonian shore. Thereafter is a tale – many tales – of death and disease and heroism and bravery and cowardice and resourcefulness and deviousness. It’s a cross between Lord of the Flies and Horatio Hornblower 1 – 11. and Robinson Crusoe. Some survive. Some don’t. I don’t want to spoil it beyond that but the subtitle tells you there’s a lot more: “A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder.”

The book is thoroughly researched with many direct quotes from log books and other original sources, but the book reads like a well-paced novel, not a white paper. There are many truths here and they are not consistent. You can judge the officers and seamen and the entire British navy for yourself after finishing it — or maybe you’ll decide you shouldn’t judge anybody.

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Google Trends – V.P. candidates

I thought it would be interesting to see who’s trending where of the two leading vice presidential candidates. In case you don’t know who they are, J.D. Vance is the Republican, Donald Trump’s running mate, and Tim Walz is the Democrat running mate of Kamala Harris. This map is from Google Trends and covers the last 30 days. The map colors are misleading because Vance is blue and Walz red, the opposite of the colors normally associated with the two parties.

Since Vance grew up in West Virginia and Ohio, geography explains some of his popularity in those blue-colored “red states.” Walz was less well-known than Vance until recently, which may explain why people all over are now curious about him. As for Arizona, Vance recently visited there, reportedly “to introduce himself to those voters.”

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is as advertised, a fantasy novel for young adults. It’s set in an alternate universe where England is in a weird mix combining gothic and modern elements, but technologically behind the real world by a few decades. I would not normally read something in this genre but a friend has taken a liking to the HBO/MAX series now playing which combines all three of the books in the trilogy His Dark Materials. We’re watching it for the spectacular CGI and production values but it’s hard to follow at times. I got the book to explain some of the fantasy world and characters better. The book was good for that, but I found it juvenile and not particularly well-written. It reads as though the author just started writing and when he came to a block in the story like an unsolvable peril for the main character, Lyra, he just invents some fantastic character or suspension of the laws of physics – an armored bear, a witch, a companion animal/daemon who can change shape to fight, fly, etc., to get past the jam. Since it’s fantasy, anything goes and nothing makes sense. This book, the first in the series, was made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman but it bombed at the box office, so the trilogy wasn’t completed then. HBO picked up the baton and did the whole trilogy from scratch. The book is harmless enough, an easy read, and I suppose would be okay for a twelve-year-old girl, but I can’t recommend it for adults.

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The Internet of Animals by Martin Wikelski

The Internet of Animals: Discovering the Collective Intelligence of Life on EarthThe Internet of Animals: Discovering the Collective Intelligence of Life on Earth by Martin Wikelski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is a wildlife biologist and Director of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He and his colleagues have devised the concept of an Internet of Animals as the title calls it, which is essentially a global tracking system for animals both wild and domesticated. They have worked for decades toward this goal and partially implemented it through Project Icarus jointly with Russian scientists. The system consists essentially of three parts: a tagging system to put on animals, a satellite to receive signals from the tags, and a database to record and analyze the information. The satellite was mounted on the ISS and began operation, but the Ukraine War ended the cooperation of the Russians and the program was short-lived. But it has since been restored to life with a new plan to launch a new satellite later this year without the need for Russia or the ISS. Although this is a lifelong dream of the author and his inner circle, I’m not sure the scientific community as a whole, or the general public at all, would consider this quite as lofty an achievement.

Nevertheless, the book is fascinating throughout, at least most of the time. It details the author’s many expeditions and biological discoveries, anecdotes of meeting helpful (or not) local people all over the world, and some often amusing stories. The descriptions of the obstacles involved in fashioning tags and how those have been overcome especially intrigued me. The tags alone are a truly incredible engineering feat but it also has to be combined with a range of protocols for how and where to install them on a wide variety of animals from elephants to dragonflies. You may think it’s impossible to make a small electronic tag that will fit comfortably on a bird and yet be powerful enough to collect and transmit data to a passing satellite, but it has already been done.

The book centers on Icarus, but is more than that. Much of it is about how the author connected with others who have been instrumental in the project, and described their many unrelated clever research triumphs (and not-so-clever failures). The author tends toward the egotistical, but can be self-deprecating such as when he describes how he got a horrible case of poison ivy climbing a tree because he is so bad at plant identification. Anyone who enjoys wildlife stories or field research will enjoy this book.

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Phantom Orbit by David Ignatius

Phantom OrbitPhantom Orbit by David Ignatius
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ivan Volkov is a Russian scientist knowledgeable about satellites. In the 1990s he studies in China with a scientist named Cao Lin. In their discussions they figure out a way to disable a whole satellite guidance system, like the American GPS. Volkov also meets a young woman named Edith Ryan who turns out to be a spotter for the CIA. Sparks fly between them, but ultimately he realizes she’s using him and he returns to Russia. Cao tries to get him to return to China, but the FSB (KGB with a new name) keep him home. Skip ahead to modern day and these three characters’ lives interact once again while the U.S., Russia, and China are on the brink of war in space involving satellites. China is helping Russia in the Ukraine war.

I was hoping for better than this book delivered, but it wasn’t bad. It took almost 200 pages to get to the present day, which is where the suspense kicks in and things get complicated. Be prepared to read about years of personal history on these characters. There was surprisingly good detail on satellites and how they work, which I enjoyed. The spy tradecraft and cold war type action are less than credible in places, but I liked how they brought it right up to the present day, even working in the Ukraine War and oblique references to ex-president Trump. The ending was mostly predictable thus diffusing the suspense. The writing was good enough to keep me reading, but I don’t have a desire to read another of his books.

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What3Words – Assassination Attempt on President Trump

Followers of this blog know that I like to find three-word combinations that are linked in the What3Words.com (W3W) website or app in an interesting or amusing way. The shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, however, is not something to joke about. It is a serious reflection of how cavalier or at least accepting Americans have become about violence in general and political violence in particular. But I don’t want to digress into politics or gun control.

I will refrain from treating the matter lightly, but I think it is still poignant to note some ironic word combinations at that site. All of the following W3W combos are real and in or around the rally/shooting site.

The Podium Area

  • codes.crucial.fenced
  • distracted.hunter.appear
  • targets.wonderfully.linked
  • targets.porch.aura
  • rooftop.mortal.newsprint

That last one seems prophetic. Crooks, the shooter, climbed on the rooftop, proved to be mortal, and made it into newsprint. That seems to be his only motivation.

The shooter’s Rooftop

  • speech.apprehend.unusual
  • celebrate.schemes.impact
  • enabling.investigate.yesterday
  • refers.period.botch

These last two refer to the Secret Service failures and the forthcoming investigation, I would say. Conspiracy theorists will no doubt make hay with or without knowledge of these coincidences, and that’s all they are. Still, here are two theoretically ominous combos in the shooter’s area for them:

  • conspire.residual.affirms
  • conspire.seamstress.refrigerate

Alien Earths by Lisa Kaltenegger

Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the CosmosAlien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos by Lisa Kaltenegger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is an astrophysicist originally from Austria who is now affiliated with Cornell University and the Carl Sagan Institute specializing in exoplanets. The book is written for the average reader, not scientists. Much of the beginning is taken up with a primer on how the galaxy and solar system and Earth formed, then does the same with the origins of life on Earth. Any long-time fan of the television show Nova has seen or heard it all before, but it is good background for the main topic of life on other planets. She peppers the book with digressions about her favorite rock songs or coffee or gushing over scenery at the conferences she attended. I could do without that. The meat of the book, a description of the various best candidate exoplanets along with their desirable characteristics, is saved for well into the second half, and is too sparse for my taste. Even so, I found that part worth the wait. Although there no great revelations, the style is very readable and the topic fascinating, so I enjoyed the book.

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Bugaboo – Step foot

From time to time I point out annoying trends in language. My bugaboo today is the phrase “step foot.” This term has only become common recently. See the graph from Google N-grams below. It’s only in the last 20 years or so that it’s been popular.

So what’s wrong with it? It’s redundant. The word step includes the meaning of foot. You don’t step with your head or shoulder or belly button. It’s like saying “bite teeth” into something or “think brain” of an idea. When I was growing up I often heard people use the term “set foot,” which is fine because you can set lots of things, so foot is needed. They might also use the word step by itself, e.g. “When I step into the room…” They mean the same and make grammatical sense. I suspect that some people with poor language skills got confused as to which to use and simply conflated the two to make “step foot.”

Of course, people know what you mean if you use “step foot” but you’ll sound more intelligent if you say set foot or just step. That’s my language lesson for today.

 

November Road by Lou Berney

November RoadNovember Road by Lou Berney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book won a Silver Dagger award as the best thriller that year. I can’t agree. The plot is preposterous. Bad organized crime guys in New Orleans supposedly arranged for the assassination of JFK. Then they proceed to try to kill off every one of their minions involved in the deal. The person they send to clean up the mess in Dallas is a charmer named Frank Guidry. Then another thug is sent to take him out. The book becomes a long chase scene across the country. I hate crime books where the bad guys kill their own people. That just is so inaccurate it’s ridiculous. No one would ever work for them or join a gang. Yes, I have experience in law enforcement, so I know. It’s all about loyalty to the gang. No one is ever expendable unless they turn state’s evidence.

At this point in the plot I ran into another problem: from then on this book is too much like another Berney book I recently read, Dark Ride. I really liked that one, but I realize now it was mostly a copy of this one, at least the second half. The main character develops a kind heart for a damsel in distress with two kids in a perilous domestic situation and proceeds to disregard his own safety to make sure they are safe. Basically antihero becomes hero. In both books there’s plenty of bloodshed, which I don’t consider a good point, but its much more excessive in this one. If I’d read these in the other order I might have reversed the ratings, but I doubt it. I do like the author’s writing, but this plot is even less plausible than Dark Ride.

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Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Man’s Search for MeaningMan’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a book club choice so I gave it a try. The first part is a lengthy detailed account of life in the Nazi death camps during WWII. I read as much as I could stomach, but it’s too horrible to read it all. If I was a Nuremberg prosecutor, I’d force myself to read it, but, fortunately, I have a choice, so I skipped to the second part. Frankl lays out his ridiculous theory he calls logotherapy. I won’t spell out the problems with it. You’ll either buy it when you read it or see the flaws for yourself.

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A Fatal Inheritance by Lawrence Ingrassia

A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical MysteryA Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery by Lawrence Ingrassia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is a member of a large family that has Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS). That rare condition is the presence in the family genes of a specific genetic mutation on what is known as p53. The result is that many family members have cancers and die young. There are treatments for the various cancers that arise, but not for the presence of the defective gene itself. This book describes the discovery of the mutation and how it works, or doesn’t, to allow cancer. I say it this way because p53 is not a cancer-causing gene, but a cancer-fighting gene. The mutation prevents the gene from fighting any number of cancers that might arise in the body from other causes, such as environmental ones. There are many stories in the book of families with this syndrome and how the cancers brought about so much sadness and suffering, so it’s not for the faint of heart. The author is a former editor and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, so the book is well-researched and well-written. It is an easy read in one sense but a hard read emotionally. He is one of the family members who did not inherit the faulty gene, but he has experienced the loss of many of his family members and watched them suffer through the surgeries and chemo and radiation treatments. Apparently to this day, even many oncologists are unfamiliar with LFS. The book is worth reading for those with a curiosity about medical progress or cancer.

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CMC Arthroplasty

I haven’t posted much lately for good reason: I just had surgery on my left thumb. I’ve had arthritis in both thumbs for the last five or so years. It has significantly limited my activities. I had to stop playing guitar, couldn’t use most tools (e.g. pliers, scissors), couldn’t button a shirt, etc. In February I had surgery on my right thumb carpometacarpal (CMC) joint. That’s the one where the thumb bone abuts the wrist bones. That surgery went really well with minimal pain. I was able to get by with only acetaminophen post-surgery and by day nine I could drive again. It’s about 95% back to normal, but there is still some pain with pinching or gripping.

My left hand surgery was 10 days ago and I’m having more pain than the first time. This is the first time I’ve been able to type more than a few words, and most of it is with my right hand. I got my cast off on day 7. I’ll get the stitches out on day 14. I’m using a stiff splint (or spica). The Physicians Assistant (PA) for the right hand told me I was very lucky to do so well with the right hand, so this left-hand experience is more normal. But I’m sure it was worth it. I was able to play guitar again for the first time a few weeks after the first surgery. Of course, I didn’t play well, but I did start to relearn stuff pretty quickly. Now I’ll have to wait a few weeks before I can start up again.

There are several variations on the CMC surgery which is called an arthroplasty. They all start by removing the trapezium bone (a trapeziectomy) . That’s the triangular bone in the wrist at the base of the thumb. The pain originates there where the cartilage has worn away and it’s bone on bone. The standard practiced by most hand surgeons is called the LRTI and uses a piece of ligament taken from your forearm to fill in that gap and the lower thumb bone is attached to the adjacent finger bone in the hand with a rod to give it stability. The newer method is called a suspensionplasty or suspension arthroplasty. It uses fiber to attach those same bones and leaves the gap unfilled, although eventually that gap fills with scar tissue. The advantage is that it’s not necessary to cut your tendon. The fiber may be secured with metal anchors (mini-Tightrope) or only by fiber (FiberTak). The former requires an incision between the forefinger and middle finger bones to place one metal anchor, while the latter can be done with only one incision. If you want details, do some online searches. There are plenty of videos of all these procedures. I recommend the FiberTak that I had after comparing it with the stories from others who had other CMC surgeries. Here’s a picture of my hand taken yesterday.