On the Wing: American Poems of Air and Space Flight

On the Wing: American Poems of Air and Space Flight by Karen Yelena Olsen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm not much of a poetry person. On the rare occasions that I read any, about 90% of it does nothing for me. Too abstract, too vague, too flowery. But every once in a while, there's a bit that does make an impression.

On The Wing is a poetry collection all about flight, and it wasn't an exception to that 90% rule of thumb. Much of the parts that didn't click for me were about the feeling of flying, largely by pilots or those writing about pilots. It's not that I don't enjoy a bit of romanticism about flight...there are some songs I like that fit that description...but the format here didn't work for me.

The 10% that I did find interesting, though, was pretty good. Much of it was about passenger flight, which makes sense considering that I've spent a lot of time as a passenger. Rosanna Warren's "from North", for instance, the first section of which is about the feeling of being a passenger while flying through dangerous weather. And Simon Ortiz's "A San Diego Poem" that describes a whole trip, including feeling a bit lost in an airport after disembarking. I also enjoyed several in the section related to military flight, most notably "Tuskegee Airfield" by Marilyn Nelson Waniek.

This collection was published in 2004, but most of it came from prior to 2001. That means there's very little written after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Only one poem makes a direct reference, "History of the Airplane" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (written in 2002). Oh, there's still a few pieces that deal with hijackings, but they don't have the kind of urgency and trauma that you'd expect from people who lived through that day. I suspect that similar works written in the last two decades are quite a bit more focused on security and danger.

Poetry is never going to be my favored form of writing. Given the right subject matter, though, I can find some pieces that I enjoy like I did with On The Wing.

The Ivy Crown by Mary M. Luke

The Ivy Crown by Mary M. Luke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

English royalty isn't something I'm particularly interested in. Most of what I know comes from the occasional Jeopardy category about the various Henrys and Richards and Edwards (which I almost always get wrong). But I was looking for something from the 1500-1800 timeframe and The Ivy Crown caught my eye, about Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII. And I was somewhat surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

The Ivy Crown is historical fiction, as opposed to an academic biography, which certainly helped make it entertaining. In the author's note, Mary Luke says that she enjoyed being free from the restrictions of direct quotes and citations, and I think it shows in the writing style. Having said all that, I still think the "historical" part of this book is the primary focus, not the "fiction" part. Luke may have imagined some of the happenings in Parr's life, but it's all in a framework of true history.

The Katherine Parr in this book is an intelligent woman who devoted herself to family and friends. She asked very little from life for herself; only her eventual final marriage to Thomas Seymour really came from her own desires. By all accounts she was well-loved by almost everyone she met, making few enemies and many friends. Even when she fell out with various people over political and religious issues, she did her best to reconcile when the situation changed. When reading historical fiction, I always wonder how much the person's life and reputation has been burnished by the author; in this case, I don't think Parr's life needed much help to stand out.

Parr lived through some very interesting times, with Henry VIII running around on his various wives and declaring himself head of the Church. She wasn't directly involved in most of it, but since she was friendly with many of those involved, all that upheaval played a large role in her life. And then, of course, she ended up right in the middle of it all when she became Henry's sixth queen. That lasted only a few years before the king died, and then Parr herself had only a few more years before dying after her daughter was born.

I knew in a general sense that people's lives in those times had much different norms than we do today, but Luke's writing really brings it to life. Children used as pawns in power games, the casual misogyny that women suffered, people dying from "the sweats" on a regular basis, teenagers married and having children, the nobility living richly while commoners barely survived...it was a very different time and mostly not in a good sense.

There are a bunch of intriguing characters in The Ivy Crown besides Katherine herself. Anne Askew, who became a martyr in the power struggle between Catholics, the Church of England, and Protestant reforms. The Princess Mary, Parr's childhood friend and eventual stepdaughter. Thomas Seymour, who would become Parr's fourth husband. And many more, from the famous to the common.

I highly recommend The Ivy Crown to anyone who enjoys a good story of a life with plenty of drama and intrigue. Even better if you're interested in the specifics of 16th century English royalty, but I don't think you need to care about the historical period to enjoy the book.

Marshall (movie) and Young Thurgood (book)

Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice by Larry S. Gibson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't know much about Thurgood Marshall outside what everyone learns in history class: civil rights hero, argued Brown v. Board of Education, later Supreme Court justice. At the local library, I came across a couple of ways to rectify my ignorance: the 2017 movie Marshall, and the book Young Thurgood by Larry Gibson. The book fills in much of the backstory that led to those great things, covering the first 35 or so years of his life. The movie is a dramatization of a rape case that took place in 1940, pretty much right after the time covered by the book. I read the book first, then watched the movie.

There's a lot packed into Young Thurgood about Marshall's early life, but two major themes stood out for me. First, Thurgood Marshall had an incredible work ethic. He was constantly busy with activities, whether those took the form of work or education or community service. Second, Marshall had a true belief in the importance of civil rights activism and put that above his own welfare. This is most clearly demonstrated in the way that he repeatedly took civil rights cases over more lucrative law practice options, despite his own tenuous financial position.

Beyond the details of Marshall's life, the other theme that struck me in reading Young Thurgood was just how pervasive racism was in the early 20th century. Everything from lesser pay to school restrictions to lynchings...reading example after example really drives home how bad things were only a century ago. We've still got plenty of work to do on this front, but it's also striking how much things have changed. And Thurgood Marshall had a large role in making those changes.

Young Thurgood isn't a novel; there's a lot of fairly dry recounting of history to get through. There's not a lot of excitement in the documentation of individual incidents, but taken as a whole, the book does a fine job of painting a picture of Marshall and the early 20th century.

The movie Marshall, on the other hand, struck me as very much the opposite - very entertaining, but light on the historical accuracy. It strikes me as extremely unlikely that Marshall would have been quite so high-handed with Sam Friedman as is shown in the film, for instance. Making Friedman carry his bags, really? Being cavalier about little things like changing radio stations or sending Friedman into the mud? It works for setting the Marshall-in-charge dynamic for the film, but I highly doubt the accuracy. But that's not surprising, in a film that's largely about showing Thurgood Marshall as a civil rights superhero. He deserves the acclaim, exaggerated or not. And I enjoyed catching references to many of the people that I'd just read about in the book.

I'm never going to be a Thurgood Marshall expert, but I feel like I know a little more now about the man and his work. Time well spent.

Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator by Gregory B. Jaczko

Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator by Gregory B. Jaczko
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty much every rational person has a healthy fear of nuclear weapons. Massively destructive and terrible long-term consequences. Nuclear power comes from the same dangerous forces, but we rely on technology and design to keep those forces in check. Jaczko makes the case in Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator that the system designed to keep nuclear power safe just isn't working.

Before I get into the main points of the book, let me first say that Jaczko has done a fine job of keeping a potentially dry subject entertaining. He includes plenty of personal anecdotes and first-hand descriptions of some pretty tense situations around events we're all familiar with - Three Mile Island, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster - as well as some near-misses that may not be as familiar - fire at Browns Ferry in Tennessee, flooding at the Fort Calhoun plant along the Missouri river. And he makes no bones about his own personal failings, either, especially his often adversarial and confrontational personal style. It's not a page-turner thriller novel, but the book is well written and kept me engaged throughout.

Jaczko makes two main points about the current state of nuclear power:

First, because the forces involved are so powerful, it's impossible to make nuclear power completely safe. We can develop elaborate safety measures that will reduce the risk to extremely low levels, but that risk is always there. This means safety measures have to be redundant, cover every known risk, be constantly updated against new risks, and strictly enforced. If you don't do those things, the risk very quickly becomes unacceptable. This is a pretty straightforward point and I don't think anyone would argue with it, though the definitely of exactly what is "acceptable" can be debated.

Second, none of that is happening as it should, because the regulatory system in place to ensure nuclear power safety is ineffective. In the current political environment, not just in the US but all around the world, putting a truly effective nuclear power regulatory system is simply not possible. This is a much more contentious point, but I think Jaczko makes a strong case. He cites repeated examples where regulators have been unable to enforce existing rules, or put into place important new rules, due to interference and delay by nuclear power providers. Those obstructions are enabled by political cover from officials who are beholden to the nuclear power industry. This is an example of regulatory capture: through political and economic influence, the nuclear power providers have taken control of the very processes meant to ensure that their product is safe.

The logical conclusion from those two points is that nuclear power should be eliminated, and that is in fact the position Jaczko takes. "Nuclear power is a failed technology"...no equivocation there. That is a very strong denouncement from a former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The argument isn't that human beings are unable to use nuclear power safely - while the risk is never zero, it can be reduced to acceptable levels. Rather, the constant pushback against updating and enforcing regulations required to maintain those low levels of risk means nuclear power won't be made safe. The issue isn't that we can't, it's that we won't.

I've long considered nuclear power to be a worthwhile alternative in the search to find alternatives to fossil fuels, but after reading this book I've changed my mind. Until we can either drastically improve technology to lower risk, or effectively address the regulatory capture concerns that Jaczko raises, nuclear power should be off the table. I don't see how the former is possible economically, or the latter politically. There are other clean alternatives, and though those have their own issues, they don't carry the same extreme risks as nuclear power.

Paper: Paging Through History by Mark Kurlansky

Paper: Paging Through History by Mark Kurlansky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Paper is one of those things that I never really thought much about. There seems to be an inexhaustible supply pretty much anywhere you go, in a huge variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. This book describes the long and complex journey to that state of affairs.

I learned a lot about what actually goes into the creation of paper from reading Paper. I always thought of paper as coming from trees, but that's a fairly recent development. For a long time, various kinds of cloth rags were the primary input material. Kurlansky describes the evolution of the paper-making process from early hand methods to modern paper mills. It's only in the last couple of centuries that the volume of paper produced has exploded, making it so easy to obtain.

The subtitle mentions "history" and there's plenty of that here. The book focuses on literacy and the use of paper, of course, but that ties into a whole lot of world history along the way. From the long history of China to the Middle East to Western civilization, Paper traces how changes in society drove the development of paper-making and usage over time.

Much of the book describes paper used for writing and drawing, of course, but I was surprised at how many other uses of paper were also mentioned. Wrapping, packing, cartridges for firearms, construction materials, even clothing...paper is used in all kinds of ways that don't immediately spring to mind for me.

Any student of history will find Paper an interesting read. Kurlansky provides a view into the long history leading to the wide variety of paper products we have today.

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Color of Law makes the case that racial segregation of African Americans in the United States was largely enacted by government action, and has never been sufficiently addressed.

Much of the book is devoted to explaining the many practices, at all levels of government, that caused segregation that persists to this day. From zoning boards to police to union regulations to school boards, discrimination and segregation has resulted directly from government actions or refusal to halt unconstitutional citizen activities. I don't think there are many people who would disagree that this was the case from the Civil War until the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Rothstein takes the argument further, though, explaining how the results of segregation have caused lasting harm to those affected. Explicit racism has largely been eliminated through legislation and the courts, but very little was done to correct the results of decades of government-sponsored segregation. Generations of African Americans have lower wages, less housing equity, and fewer educational opportunities than their white counterparts. Those disadvantages compound over time, and have never been corrected.

Today's policies may no longer be explicitly based on race, but many still effectively target African Americans due to the legacy of segregation. Public services based on property values, for instance, will provide lower funding and service levels for low-income areas, which is where many African Americans still reside. Government provides more support to affluent suburbs (the mortgage interest deduction is one example), which are largely white. Even programs which support low-income citizens have restrictions which serve to keep those people in the same locations and professions...segregation in all but name.

Rothstein puts forward a few ideas for making corrections to this inequality, but he himself says that it's highly unlikely that any would be enacted. Allowing African American buyers to purchase houses at a discount proportional to their income (vs equivalent white residents), for instance. That might be correct some of the historical discrimination, but would assuredly be seen as favoritism in today's political climate.

I must admit, I found The Color of Law to be somewhat depressing. The extent of the racial discrimination in the history of our country, and the impact it still has to this day, isn't easy to face. But I think it's important to recognize these kinds of flaws, both to avoid repeating past mistakes, and to have perspective on current issues. If more people recognized this history, we might find more support for the kind of policies that can begin to undo the damage.

Hidden Figures (movie)

I'm a sucker for pretty much anything to do with space travel. Hidden Figures takes place at NASA in the 1960s, so it definitely falls into that category. But it's the extraordinary story of black women overcoming racial and gender stereotypes that really drives this film.

As a computer nerd with a moderate interest in history, I'd heard of Dorothy Vaughan, a supervisor and self-taught programmer who worked with the first computers at NASA. Only the basic outlines, though, without much of the personal detail that the movie shows. And the stories of Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson were entirely new to me.

There's a lot of casual racism and sexism portrayed in the film, as you'd expect when the setting is the early 1960s. In quite a few spots, I found myself thinking "I'm sure glad we're past that" - segregated fountains, separate coffeepots, refusing to let a woman into meetings, colored-only bus seating, etc. But then there were other parts that I think haven't changed as much as I'd like. Mistaking Katherine for a janitor, for instance. Or high-level decisions being made in meetings consisting entirely of white men. Anyone who thinks that society has moved past the issues portrayed in this film needs to look a bit more closely - there's been progress, but there's still plenty to be done.

The tension of the space race and cold war is worth noting, too. For people of my generation and older, it's not all that remarkable - we grew up with the Soviet Union always out there, with nuclear holocaust looming if either side blinked. But anyone who can't remember the world before 1991 has never known that tension, so references to "duck and cover drills" and the fierce patriotism felt by the entire country when opposing the Soviets has got to be an alien concept. I thought the movie did a good job of portraying this, though of course I'm not exactly the target audience.

As with most historical movies, not everything is perfectly accurate. I'm no expert, but I did read a few articles afterward about where the movie made some changes. From what I found, I think the film makers did a fine job of making sure the concepts were communicated, even when they couldn't use the exact people or events. And when they did follow the historical record, everything I read said that they did an outstanding job.

I really enjoyed Hidden Figures, and recommend it to anyone. I hope it's a part of inspiring the next generation of mathematicians and engineers, regardless of who they are or what they look like.

The Titanic Museum in Branson

When my family decided to take a short vacation in Branson, Missouri, I must say that a museum dedicated to the Titanic was not something I was expecting to find.

View of the museum as you pull into the parking lot.

Right off the main road through Branson's entertainment strip, at a fairly major intersection, sits the museum. They have signs, but they're not really necessary since the building is modeled to look like the front half of the luxury liner. With an iceberg, of course.

My Titanic passenger - Quigg Baxter.

When you first arrive and get your ticket, they also give you a card with information about a passenger or crew member that was on the Titanic when it went down. After you go through the whole museum, there's a wall near the end that tells you whether your person survived or perished. (Mine didn't make it.) It's a nice little personal touch to give everyone something to think about on the way through.

Cameras aren't allowed once you get inside, so I don't have anything to show of the actual displays. I thought they were very well put together, though. One of the first things you see is a scale model of the entire ship that took two full years to build, for instance. There are lots of artifacts from the Titanic herself or the Olympic, her sister ship. Everyone is given an audio tour handset to listen to as you go through the displays that adds some more information to what is posted.

Completely unrelated to the museum itself - this car, driven by a guy with a full white Santa beard, pulled up as we were waiting to go inside. The toy car key actually turns as the car is moving.

There are details on all the things you'd expect - the ship's size and construction, the three different passenger classes, the crew, details on the fatal crash. One whole room was devoted to the musicians who famously played on as the ship was going down, which I thought was one of the better parts of the entire tour. Lots of details on various individual passengers and crew as well, especially those with relatives who had saved some of their belongings.

And then there are things that I was surprised to see, such as information about the dogs that were on the ship. Apparently the butcher was in charge of keeping them fed and exercised. Impressive detail of research, that is, although I did note that they were unsure of the names or breeds of some of the pooches. There was also a room kept very cold that I assume was meant to give you an idea of what the night of the crash felt like, and an actual ice wall to touch on the way in. A bit overkill, perhaps, but it added some flavor to the experience.

A closer look at the side of the museum building, iceberg and all.

Southern Missouri isn't the first place I think of when the Titanic is mentioned, but I very much enjoyed this particular museum. They've done a good job with the displays and there's plenty of interesting information. Worth a stop if you're in the area.

Extra History

The term "history lesson" conjures up images of long lists of names and dates, dusty library shelves, and research papers. Certainly not every opportunity to learn some history is like that, but a lot of folks think of it that way. If you want to get people interested in learning, it helps to overcome that stereotype right off the bat.

Extra History makes history lessons instantly entertaining. The Extra History YouTube videos use animation (mostly hand-drawn) and excellent narration to explain historical events. If you've ever watched Extra Credits, the game design video series, the format will look very familiar because it's the same crew behind the show.

I've watched four of the series thus far:

• Rome: The Punic Wars
• World War I: The Seminal Tragedy
• England: South Sea Bubble
• Warring States Japan: Sengoku Jidai

And there are four more that I haven't yet watched, as of the time I'm writing this.

Each series is in the general vicinity of 30-45 minutes, broken up into episodes that are around 8-12 minutes each. As you can tell from the series topics I've listed, they're covering a lot of ground in each one. The Extra History folks do a great job of covering key points without overdoing it on the details, and making it entertaining all the way. I also like that they do a "Lies" episode at the end, explaining where they made mistakes or purposely glossed over some parts in order to keep things moving.

The videos are free to watch on YouTube, but I encourage anyone who enjoys the series to consider supporting them on Patreon. For those not familiar with Patreon, it's sort of a pay-what-you-want subscription service. You choose what amount to donate monthly, and there are various perks depending on how much you pledge. Almost 3000 people are supporting Extra History. I really like this model, since it keeps the content available for folks who can't afford to pay, while the creator gets support from those of us who can afford it.

I highly recommend Extra History to anyone, whether you're usually interested in looking back to the past or not. You'll definitely be entertained, and there's a good chance you'll learn something at the same time.