One Lucky Man

By all accounts, Charles Elder was one of those lucky people who get to live a lifetime working at a job that is more pleasure for them than it is work. Mr. Elder, who passed away at age 100 on June 27, owned various bookstores in Nashville for over 60 years.

The bookstore, which traces its roots to a shop Mr. Elder opened on Fifth Avenue in the early 1930s, has become a Nashville landmark, mentioned with Ernest Tubb Record Shop and Tootsies Orchid Lounge as one of "Nashville's greatest hits" in the November issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

"There's a sizable remnant of people around Nashville who love books, and all of them know Elder's Bookstore," said John Egerton, a friend and author.

...

Mr. Elder's love of books was nurtured by his wife, Dorothea Calhoun, a minister's daughter who came from a cultured and educated family. They met at David Lipscomb, now Lipscomb University, and married in 1934.

During the Depression, Charles Elder opened bookstores in Chattanooga and Knoxville, as well as Nashville, but they didn't last long. He eventually took a job with the U.S. Postal Service.

"He was a grouch and irascible post office clerk," said Egerton, whose books include Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.

Mr. Elder "made a bad post office clerk," Egerton said, "but he made a great bookstore owner."

...

Besides running the bookstore, Charles Elder was a publisher, reprinting 30 books on Tennessee and Southern history in the 1970s and '80s.

Mr. Elder continued to work after his wife died in 1996. He retired in 1999, at age 92. "He wouldn't have felt comfortable outside the world of books," Randy Elder said. The younger Elder now operates the bookstore with his wife, Anita.

What a lucky man. So few of us are able to find real pleasure in what provides our living. Mr. Elder was one of those fortunate few.

True to the Roots: Americana Music Revealed

I doubt that very many of you are country music fans, but I'm willing to bet that you all listen to FM radio at some point during your week, even if it's only on your car radios while you're stuck in traffic. If you listen to only one or two types of music, I'm also willing to bet that you soon grow tired of hearing the same 30-35 songs that are considered "playlist worthy" by the corporate types who decide what you should be listening to and buying. You find that you only get any real variety by switching to "oldies" stations or to an entirely different type of music. That happens to all of us because a handful of corporations, including Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting, now own the majority of the biggest FM stations in this country and they have a common playlist, by genre, for all of their stations. A listener can no longer even pick up his telephone to request a song that's not already on the playlist because local stations aren't allowed to play anything not already sanctioned by corporate headquarters.

That's bad for listeners, but it's even worse for singers and musicians who don't conform to the cookie-cutter music that the corporate types prefer to broadcast. There are thousands of singers and bands out there who scrape for a living because they refuse to conform to the mediocrity demanded by today's FM radio and because they refuse to give up their dreams. Monte Dutton's True to the Roots tells the story of a few of those dreamers who are living their dreams while making what has come to be known as Americana music.

Dutton is a writer whose main beat, the NASCAR circuit, takes him to that part of the country that thrives on the kind of music that radio largely continues to ignore. True to the Roots is the result of the numerous interviews with Americana performers that Dutton completed between late 2003 and early 2005, interviews with an articulate group of singers who all seem to be very aware that the likelihood of them becoming big recording stars is very small. They realize that they don't fit into the corporate boxes that would make that kind of success likely and they are fine with that because they believe that smoothing out their rough edges in order to fit into those boxes would be the same thing as "selling out." And that's something they refuse to do.

It's no coincidence that most of the singers interviewed by Dutton live and work in Texas. Texas is a hotbed of live music and much of it is country or Americana, by label. Live music, by uniquely wonderful singers and bands, is within a short drive of Texas music lovers pretty much seven days a week. Particularly lucky are music fans who live in or around Houston, Dallas, and especially Austin.

Since I'm one of the lucky fans who live in Houston, most of the artists interviewed by Dutton for his book were already familiar to me. But even if you've never heard of most of the people in True to the Roots, I think that you'll be intrigued with what they have to say. You might even find that they open up a whole world of music to you that you never knew existed, a world that will change forever the way that you listen to music. I can't imagine anyone reading this book and not becoming curious enough to find the music of people like Billy Joe Shaver, Robert Earl Keen, Jack Ingram, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jerry Jeff Walker, Slaid Cleaves, Tom Russell, Django Walker (Jerry Jeff's son) or James McMurtry (son of author Larry McMurtry).

Along the way, Dutton also spoke with lesser-knowns who eke out a living playing in Holiday Inns or as house-bands in small clubs throughout the Southwest. They keep their dreams alive despite having to work the day jobs that make their music possible, and what they have to say is every bit as insightful as what someone like Brad Paisley, the biggest star interviewed by Dutton, has to say about the state of the music business today.

But my favorite chapter of the book is the one about James White who as a young man freshly released from the military decided to open up his own honky tonk in his old Austin neighborhood. That was 43 years ago and The Broken Spoke is still one of my favorite honky tonks in the whole state. White has seen many of country music legends come through his front doors, from Ernest Tubb to Bob Wills, but he is just as excited about providing a venue for today's musicians as he was when the legends worked his place. He realizes that he is helping keep alive the kind of root music that Nashville so shamefully neglects and discourages today. He is proud of The Broken Spoke and he should be. I'm proud of him and all those singers and pickers who make my life so much more fun than it would be without them.

Rated at: 3.0

Edna and Her 20,800 Books

The U.K.'s Edna Foulds has borrowed an amazing 20,800 books from her local library over the last forty years. Now assuming that she read at least 90% of the books she borrowed, that comes out to an astounding pace of reading well over a book per day for forty years. I can't imagine that many people have managed to read at that pace for such a long period of time, so this has to be close to some kind of record.

It is estimated that pensioner Edna Foulds has borrowed an amazing 20,800 books over the past 40 years from her local library.

However, an even more staggering fact is that the 85-year-old great-grandmother has only ever had to pay one fine.

But with an intake of ten a week, Mrs Foulds, from Redcar, east Cleveland, still struggles to name a favourite.

"I just love reading," she says, sitting next to a stack of novels waiting to be devoured and recorded in her black book, where she catalogues the tomes she has borrowed.

The number of books she has taken out must run into many more thousands, because she first joined a library as a child in Leeds, when she checked out Edgar Rice Burroughs' tale of Tarzan.

A member of Redcar Library, in Roseberry Square, since it opened on February 22, 1967, her status as the branch's longest- established and keenest borrower was rewarded this week.
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She was given a place of honour at the opening of a new library following development work in the square and, naturally, she was allowed to borrow the first book.

I started keeping a list of the books I read a long time ago so that I wouldn't inadvertently buy duplicates or bring them home from the library. But let's just say that Edna has out-read me by a substantial margin and that she should not be concerned with me breaking her record. I'd have to live four or five lifetimes to read 21,000 books. Well done, Edna.

The Chess Machine

The Chess Machine is based on actual events that occurred during 1770 in Pressburg, what is today the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. During an era in which science and entertainment were still closely related, the Habsburg Empire became enthralled with Wolfgang von Kempelen's unexpected invention, a chess-playing automation that became known as the Mechanical Turk. This machine, fronted by a turban-wearing "mechanical Turk" who moved his own chess pieces with a life-like right arm and hand easily defeated the best chess players it encountered in exhibition matches around the empire.

Kemplen's invention brought him instant fame and seemed certain to also bring him his fortune. After all, he had invented the first machine that was capable of thought, a machine that could, in fact, think better than the human beings it encountered. But, as many of Kemplen's scientific rivals suspected, the Mechanical Turk was too good to be true. Rather than having created a thinking machine, Kemplen had instead built an automation that depended entirely on the chess-playing dwarf who was hidden inside the wooden box housing the useless clockworks that appeared to make the machine work.

Tibor Scardenelli, the Italian dwarf, hired by Kemplen to be the brains of his machine, is a remarkable chess player but he soon begins to tire of the secret life he is forced to live. Tibor comes to feel that he is living a prisoner's life, always locked away in one room of Kemplen's home or inside the chess machine itself. For the sake of keeping the illusion of a chess-playing automation alive, no one can be allowed to know of his existence. Despite Tibor's growing uneasiness with the scam that he is so large a part of, everything goes well for the chess machine until one of Kemplen's court rivals manages to place his lover, Galatea, into the Kemplen household as a spy. In time, Galatea, known to Kemplen as his house servant Elise, comes to know the truth.

But Kemplen and his team have bigger problems than Elise. After a performance at the ball celebrating the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, a young countess is found dead. There are no witnesses to her death but she has left traces of her rouge on the Turk's face, and many come to believe that the Turk has seduced and murdered the woman. Especially taken with this notion is the young woman's brother who is determined to take revenge on the Turk and its owner.

Much like one of his own chess pieces, Wolfgang von Kemplen soon finds himself being pushed into defensive moves that require more and more ruthlessness on his part. His Mechanical Turk comes to own him in a way that he never owned the Turk.

Robert Lohr's The Chess Machine is filled with the level of period detail and unforgettable characters that can make historical fiction so rewarding. But at the same time this is a novel full of adventure and psychological insights, one with a story that will stay with the reader for a long time.

Rated at: 3.5

Sony Strikes Again

Right up front I'll say that the Sony Corporation is one of my least favorite companies in the entire world. The sneaky and underhanded way that they managed to damage so many home computers by loading spyware, and worse, from some of their new CDs last year made me swear off their products as much as I can. The one exception I've made in recent months was to buy one of their eReaders and I only bought that from Sony because no other company is really marketing one of those gizmos just yet. But when I can find a substitute brand for anything Sony, I jump all over it.

Sony showed no remorse for all the problems caused by their "copy protection" software and only responded at all when the internet became filled with stories of CDs that wouldn't play on computers and the software that caused other computers to crash. Sony finally came up with a very lame settlement offer that required the company to give thousands of free CDs to various libraries (CDs that had been sitting largely unwanted in warehouses for months or years) and to replace the encrypted CDs that the company had foisted on its customers.

So the news that Sony Italy has been providing Italian school kids with fake book covers in which to hide their game players doesn't really surprise me at all.

This really tickled us here at Pocket-lint.co.uk, although we are taking it with a pinch of salt.

Apparently Sony Italy has been providing Italian schools kids with sham books that allow them to play their PSPs secretly behind the cover.

The title is Dante's "The Divine Comedy" and even includes the "Cliff Notes" version of the book, so PSP slackers can bluff basic info should they be called on to do so.

A fine example of corporate responsibility…

Indeed.

Maybe I'm losing my sense of humor but this just strikes me as another example of the irresponsible way that Sony markets its products...just another reason that my personal Sony boycott will continue. (I still feel bad about giving Sony my money for the eReader, so don't rub it in.)

Books and Bad Cops

I stopped venturing into Mexico years ago because I finally figured out that the policemen there were probably more dangerous than any of the common criminals I might meet on the streets. First I quit driving a vehicle into the country, and then I decided that I had crossed the border for the last time even on foot. Mexican policeman have so bad a reputation that they make the New Orleans police department of years past look like a bunch of angels on the job, in fact.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, as the old saying goes, and Eric López is in charge of a program that uses literature in an attempt to convince Mexico's cops that some things are more important than money. The hope is that the program will create some incorruptible policeman to serve Mexico's citizens.

They've left their bulletproof vests on the floor against the wall. But as they read quietly for the first part of their bi-weekly literature class, the 20 policemen and policewomen keep guns holstered at their sides, their handcuffs firmly wedged against their backs.

There is no chatting, but the atmosphere is relaxed. It's a moment to de-stress, says officer Claudia Hernandez, a time to leave behind the felonies and domestic complaints of the street, and to immerse themselves in other worlds.

It is also a novel experiment, "part of an effort to elevate the cultural level of the police," as José Amador puts it. Chief of public security in the Mexico City satellite of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, Amador is betting he can tackle police corruption through literature, from popular detective fiction to Miguel de Cervantes' 17th-century classic, Don Quixote.

"We think that culture can help them see that there are other values greater than money," he says. "It is a way of competing, of counterbalancing (the bribes) criminals are offering them on a daily basis."

Participation in the program, Literature Always Alert, has been obligatory for almost all of Neza's 1,200 police officers since 2004. "If they have the ability to read not only books but also people's expressions, what lies behind an event, not just the event itself, or what lies behind people's intentions," says Amador, "they will be able to provide a more opportune, more prudent response."

...

The program's co-ordinator, Eric López, admits that there was some resistance to the idea at first – "not so much rejection," he says, "but incomprehension. `What's it for?' some people would ask." López is not a policeman but a social psychology graduate, the program's seven teachers are referred to as monitors and the one-hour classes as sessions, and participation in them is not only a learning experience, but interesting and fun.

"It has helped us a lot," says officer Hernandez, 31, a former secretary who carries a Mendoza 9-millimetre submachine gun on the job. "It helps us express feelings we are often afraid to let out."

But is Don Quixote any match for the nation's powerful bands of drug traffickers and their vast hoards of illicit cash? Police departments all over Mexico are in thrall to organized crime, says Samuel González Ruiz, former chief of the Mexican government's Special Unit Against Organized Crime. "Mayors and governors throughout the country receive hefty campaign contributions from the cartels. In exchange they get to name the director of public security."

...

While other municipalities in Mexico have contacted Amador to see how they can start similar programs, he admits that in cleaning up Mexico's police forces, "we still have a long way to go.

"But we are making progress," he adds. "Today we have better relations between the police and the public compared to three years ago."

I tend to be a pessimist when it comes the question of whether or not the basic nature of a culture can be positively impacted in less than decades of gradual change, so I don't expect to notice much change in the Mexican police force during my lifetime. But I do have to admire whomever it was who had the courage to put this kind of plan in place because it proves that good people never give up the hope that things can be made better no matter how largely the odds are stacked against them.

I have to pull for someone like that.