Death by Balloon

Eight years ago I put up a post about Japan’s World War II rather random weapon, the incendiary balloon. I just came across a more thorough account in Nicholas Basbanes’ history of paper. The balloons were made of paper, so … 

[This] ambitious [balloon] offensive was deemed feasible on the strength of meteorological research conducted in the 1930s that had discovered ‘rivers of fast moving air’ flowing in the upper atmosphere toward North America, wind patterns that we know today as jet streams. …

Seven manufacturing centers were set up around Tokyo to assemble what was code-named the Fu-Go Weapon (the first character of the word for balloon is fu), with handmade paper selected for the skin of the thirty-two-foot-diameter balloons, six hundred individual sheets required for each one, all glued together in a lamination that made no allowance for gas leakage. …

It is believed that nine thousand balloon bombs were launched from three coastal locations in Japan between November 3, 1944, and April 5, 1945, each inflated with nineteen thousand cubic feet of hydrogen. About a thousand are thought to have reached North America … Sightings were confirmed in locations that ranged from Alaska, British Columbia, and Manitoba … to Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska … One traveled as far east as Grand Rapids, Michigan … Wreckage … turns up from time to time in densely wooded areas, one as recently as 1992. …

Unwilling to give the Japanese any information to fine-tune their assaults, American censors placed a strict embargo on all details of the raids. … The … assault was not without its victims, however. On May 5, 1945, a woman and five children on an outing near the Gearhart Mountains, northwest of Klamath Falls, Oregon, came across a strange object lying on the ground; all six were killed when one of them apparently tugged on a dangling line, triggering a bomb. A memorial plaque erected after the war identifies the location as the ‘only place on the American continent where death resulted from enemy action during World War II.’

The people killed in the ballon bombing campaign were almost all children. Children killed by balloons. Children love balloons!

source:

On Paper: the everything of its two-thousand year history

by Nicholas A. Basbanes

2013. Alfred A. Knopf, New York

phrase of the day: politically correct

I first encountered the phrase “politically correct” (and “politically incorrect”) when I began to socialize with lesbians. Back in the mid-80s I took classes at Santa Rosa Junior College, and I joined the Gay & Lesbian Student Union (GLSU). I was lonely and fragile, desperate for community, but fired with a sense of justice and eager to do something to help people escape from oppression, evangelical, you might say. I had an idea that I proposed to a meeting. Gay visibility was an important part of acceptance; that seemed logical. If you see gay people and topics just as a regular part of your environment, the foreignness goes away, and the fear. How about a poster series? I asked, offering a few design ideas. I got dressed down by a lesbian for my first design idea which read as sexist to her. I was being un-PC. 

Although I was hurt by the criticism, I think the concept of political-correct-ness is useful. It gives one tools of analysis. What is or is not politically correct?

In a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, Lillian Faderman introduces the subject:

The women’s [music] festivals … always had political overtones. Workshops were held that attempted to raise and solve lesbian-feminist problems; movement literature and paraphernalia were widely available; and the organizers attempted to be sensitive to all the issues: they provided day care, easy access for the disabled, vegetarian meals, sign interpreters for the deaf, ‘chemical free’ areas for women who disapproved of substance use, sliding scale fees so that the poor would not be excluded. Nothing was allowed at the festivals that was not ‘politically correct,’ a label that was to become a benchmark of all judgments in the community, even judgments passed on lesbian-feminist entertainers.

Those musical artists who got on stage and acted coolly professional, “too much like stars,” were seen as on an “‘essentially male performing trip.’ To be in any way like a male professional was to be politically incorrect.”

The politically correct ideal was utopian. Sooner or later utopias fail their own principles, disillusionment sets in, people fight, things fall apart. Olivia Records tried to run their business in a politically correct fashion, but somebody was always ready to be offended. “When Olivia sponsored women-only events, they were attacked by some for excluding male children; when they opened their concerts to everyone, they were attacked for offending lesbian separatists. [Said one of the founders,] ‘We couldn’t win.’”

Lilian Faderman continues, “[Such] hard lessons … were repeated often in the lesbian-feminist community and caused a blurring of the community’s utopian vision.”

Faderman expands on the pernicious effects of policing of political-correct-ness:

[T]he desire for a Lesbian Nation was founded on so intense an idealism and required such heroic measures that fanaticism became all but inevitable. … [D]espite the movement rhetoric about love for all women, those who, by some infraction of the code, were judged ‘politically incorrect’ were given cold treatment by the community. Being politically correct (‘p. c.’) mean that one adhered to the various dogmas regarding dress; money; sexual behavior; language usage; class, race, food, and ecology consciousness; political activity; and so forth.

When idealism ossifies into dogma, justice goes out the window along with compassion and harmony. Idealism is good, but, unless your fantasy of how the world should be ordered is more important than the world, best to allow for adjustments and compromises, in action if not principle. 

In my poster series example above, I should have been more accommodating. But I was pursuing a vision, man! Plus I knew I’d be doing all the work … 

source:

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America

by Lillian Faderman

1991. Penguin, New York

#feminism

Adrienne Rich is trying to pursue ambitions other than motherhood. She realizes that continuing to have children will foreclose everything else. 

Before my third child was born I decided to have no more children, to be sterilized. … My husband, although he supported my decision, asked whether I was sure it would not leave me feeling less ‘feminine.’ In order to have the operation at all, I had to present a letter, counter-signed by my husband, assuring the committee of physicians who approved such operations that I had already produced three children, and stating my reason for having no more. … [M]y own judgment would not have been acceptable. When I awoke from the operation, twenty-four hours after my child’s birth, a young nurse looked at my chart and remarked coldly: ‘Had yourself spayed, did you?’

WTF.

source:

Of Woman Born: motherhood as experience and institution

by Adrienne Rich

1976. W. W. Norton & Co., New York

word of the day: ropable

word: ropable

context:

PC [Farias, the political campaign treasurer of Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello] called himself the president’s best friend. Sometimes, after a few bottles of French champagne in the evening, he said, I give Fernando his orders. This got into the papers and Fernando was ropable. For the first and last time he threatened to break with PC.

definition (Merriam-Webster): in a bad temper

source:

A Death in Brazil: a book of omissions

by Peter Robb

2004. A John McRae Book / Henry Holt & Co., New York

word of the day: inanition

word: inanition

context:

Brazil[’s] consultate in Naples … occupied a vast and gloomy suite with high ceilings and the finest veil of dust in a distinguished Umbertine palazzo two blocks in from the Bay of Naples. … A hundred years earlier, hundreds of thousands of southern Italian peasants had sailed steerage for Brazil from Naples. Now a third of Brazilians were of Italian descent, and some of the richest among them. The rich came to Italy to spend and poor Brazilians, if they could, would come to Italy to make their fortune. … The Naples consulate was dying of inanition.

definition (Merriam-Webster): emptiness; exhaustion; the absence or loss of social, moral, or intellectual vitality or vigor

source:

A Death in Brazil: a book of omissions

by Peter Robb

2004. A John McRae Book / Henry Holt & Co., New York

Titles Read in 2013

January

Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka & J. H. Williams III

Animal Farm by Sam Sax

Persephone’s November by Rebecca Radner

Flagrant Conduct: the story of Lawrence v. Texas by Dale Carpenter

Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture by Rob Salkowitz

To Hellholes and Back by Chuck Thompson

Bite a chapbook by Amy Dentata

That’s Disgusting: unraveling the mysteries of repulsion by Rachel Herz

Moomin: the complete comic strip. vol 3 by Tove Jansson

Something Good for a Change by Wavy Gravy

Persistent Voices Philip Clark & David Groff, editors

February

Oddly Normal by John Schwartz

Astonishing X-Men: Northstar by Marjorie Liu & Mike Perkins

Disclamor by G. C. Waldrep

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Secret Lives of Ants by Jae Choe

Push Open the Window: contemporary poetry from China edited by Qingping Wang

Spook: science tackles the afterlife by Mary Roach

Moomin: the complete comic strip, vol 4 by Tove Jansson

At This Point by Joseph Massey

Cyndi Lauper: a memoir by Cyndi Lauper with Jancee Dunn

Out in the Open poems by Cathal O’ Searcaigh

The Killing of Chief Crazy Horse Robert A. Clark, editor

City of Rivers poems by Zubair Ahmed

For All My Walking by Taneda Santoka

March - June

Smokers Die Younger Stephanie Young, editor

Love Cake poems by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

24-Hour Comics edited by Scott McCloud

Fighting to Serve: behind the scenes in the war to repeal DADT by Alexander Nicholson

Of Woman Born: motherhood as experience and institution by Adrienne Rich

Lush Life chapbook of the song by Billy Strayhorn

Song of San Francisco chapbook by Ed Mycue

Santoka: grass and Tree Cairn translations of Santoka by Hiroaki Sato

Areas of Fog by Joseph Massey

The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu

I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual by Pierre Seel

Auto Bio poems by Dale Jensen

Straight by Boy George with Paul Gorman

Better Off Without ‘Em by Chuck Thompson

Moomin: complete comic strip, vol 5 by Tove Jansson

The Imaginary Lover by Alicia Ostriker

A Few Perfect Hours & other stories by Josh Neufeld

She’s Such a Geek! women write about science Annalee Newitz, editor

Another Kind of Nation: an anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry edited by Zhang Er and Chen Dongdong

While Eating Oysters a chapbook by Kit Kennedy

Green Age by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Sleeps Like Water a chapbook by Ron Alexander

More Than Human by Tim Flach

Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms by Richard Fortey

Ogre, Ogre by Piers Anthony

Are You My Mother? a comic drama by Alison Bechdel

March Hares: Fine Madness, 1982 - 2002

Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain edited by Michael Palmer, et al

Once More Out of Darkness & other poems by Alicia Ostriker

Speedy in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

The Wishing Horse of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

An Unfortunate Woman by Richard Brautigan

A Medicine for Melancholy by Ray Bradbury

Miracles: poems by children edited by Richard Lewis

Top Shelf Asks the Big Questions

Urban Myths: 210 poems by John Tranter

Contemporary French Women Poets edited by Carl Hermey

The Other Voice: 20th century women’s poetry in translation edited by Joanna Bankier, et al

Captain Salt in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Handy Mandy in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

The Silver Princess of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

I Killed Adolph Hitler by Jason

Stitches by David Small

Yankee in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

The Enchanted Island of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Pink Thunder by Michael Zapruder

Moon Won’t Leave Me Alone California Poets in the Schools statewide anthology, 2004

A Day for a Lay: a century of gay poetry edited by Gavin Dillard

Two Lines: world writing in translation vol 14, 2007

After Life: poems by Judy Steadman edited by Geri Digiorno, et al

Letters to the Sky by Ann Erickson

The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, vol 1 by Bill Watterson

A Voyage Long and Strange: rediscovering the new world by Tony Horowitz

Fatale, book one: Death Chases Me by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: an anthology Edited by Carl Morse and Joan Larkin

The Voice of the Poet: William Carlos Williams CD and book

What the World Hears California Poets in the Schools statewide anthology, 2009

The Crack in Everything by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

July

Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies spring 2013

The New Yorker March 9, 2009

Three Vietnamese Poets translated by Linh Dinh

The Wild Kingdom by Kevin Huizenga

Supergods by Grant Morrison

Fatale, book two: The Devil’s Business by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

Shazam: Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith

August

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

The Worst Intentions by Alessandro Piperno

A Splendor of Letters by Nicholas Basbanes

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Volcano Sequence by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Autobiography of a Book as told to Glenn Ingersoll

Letting It Go by Miriam Katin

The Property by Rutu Modan

Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, translated by E. Harden; illustrations by Roberto Innocenti

The Next Day by J. Porcellino, P. Peterson, J. GIlmore

Alien vs. Predator by Michael Robbins

Voices from Wah-Kon-Tah edited by R. Dodge, J. McCullough

Too Much Coffee Man: Cutie Island by Shannon Wheeler

Flex Mentallo by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Ransom by Jay McInerny

What We Believe But Cannot Prove J. Brockman, editor

Poetry Speaks: hear great poets edited by E. Paschen , R. P. Mosby

Optic Nerve #13 by Adrian Tomine

Being Frida Kahlo and Po Doomand Knock Knock / Not Not three chapbooks by Jim McCrary

September - October

Two Lines. no 15: Strange Harbors 2008

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

Before the Big Bang by Brian Clegg

A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb

Garish Zow Comics #4 summer 2003

No Heaven by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman

The Ways of White Folks: stories by Langston Hughes

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein

How Music Works by David Byrne

Rungs a mini comic by Matt Harding

My Life in 26 Letters a chapbook by Justin Hall

Artifice by Alex Woolfson and Winona Nelson

Haiku in English edited by Jim Kacian, P. Rowland, A. Burns

Petaluma Poetry Walk 10-Year Anthology edited by G. Digiorno, B. Vartnaw

Invincible v. 15: Get Smart by Robert Kirkman

Feynman by Jim Ottaviarii, Leland Myrick

Black Sheep #2 by Fredo

Invincible v. 16: Family Ties by Robert Kirkman

Invincible Presents: Atom Eve and Rex Splode by Cereno

The Little Space: poems selected and new, 1968 - 1998 by Alicia Ostriker

Dear Julia by Brian Biggs

Smut Peddler edited by Spike, T. Sebastian, J. Carlson

America in Europe by German Arciniegas

Alternatives to Sex by Stephen McCauley

Dragon Child by Katie Shaw

2-Rabbit, 7-Wind: poems from ancient Mexico translations by Toni de  Gerez

Obscenely Yours by Angelo Nikolopoulos

November

Thus Spake the Corpse, v. 1: Poetry & Essays Codrescu & Rosenthal, editors

Helping Me Help Myself by Beth Lisick

Panic by Julia Vinograd

The Origin of Feces by David Waltner-Toews

Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah

Transposes by Dylan Edwards

The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks

Not My Bag by Sina Grace

Cyncialman: the paperback by Matt Feazell

Weird Life by David Toomey

No Straight Lines: four decades of queer comics edited by Justin Hall

Papercutter #4 a mini comics magazine

Hickee edited by Graham Annable

Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn

The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony

December

Astounding Villain House by Shannon Wheeler

Fran by Jim Woodring

Stuck in the Middle edited by Ariel Schrag

Orange Sunshine: the brotherhood of eternal love & its quest to spread peace, love and acid by Nicholas Schou

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter

Locke & Key, vol. 1 by Joe Hill

Locke & Key, vol. 2: Head Games by Joe Hill & G. Rodriguez

The Poetry of Our World edited by Jeffery Paine

Locke & Key, vol. 3: Crown of Shadows by Joe Hill

Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me by Harvey Pekar

Runner Runner a mini comics anthology edited by Greg Means

Reason for Hope by Jane Goodall

Young Avengers: Style Substance by Gillen & McKelvie

The Horizontal Poet by Jan Steckel

Wolverine & the X-Men, vol. 1 by Jason Aaron, et al

Wolverine & the X-Men, vol. 2 by Jason Aaron, et al

King-Cat Comics and Stories #73 by John Porcellino

Papercutter #15, #16, and #17 a mini comics magazine

The Wonder City of Oz by John R. Neill

Wolverine & the X-Men, vol. 3: Avengers v. X-Men by Jason Aaron, et al

The Unsubscriber by Bill Knott