Elisha Kane, Arctic Explorer

During the Mexican-American War, Albert Brackett was a lieutenant in an Indiana Volunteer regiment under the command of General Joseph Lane.  In December of 1847, while garrisoned in Puebla, Bracket met Dr. Elisha Kane of the US Navy.  Kane had been escorted by the Spy Battalion (Mexicans who fought for the US and were used to counter the guerrillas that lurked along the national highway) and even found himself in a confrontation with guerrillas.  While Colonel Dominguez, leader of the Spy Battalion, wanted to shoot the captured guerrillas, Kane convinced him to turn them over to the regular army in Puebla.  In addition to saving them from being shot, Dr. Kane saved the life of one of the injured captives.  Interesting, but why does Brackett make a point of mentioning a random courier who passed through Puebla?  By the time Brackett wrote his memoir, Kane was famous.

Elisha Kane graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1842 and joined the US Navy the following year as an assistant surgeon.  He sailed the world aboard the USS Brandywine, having a variety of adventures but nothing to earn him fame.  Not long after his return to the US, he requested that Secretary of State James Buchanan send him as an envoy to Mexico City during the war.  Thus, in the Fall of 1847, he was dispatched with a message to General Winfield Scott.

After the war, he was back to regular naval service.  Of course, the issue of the time was what happened to Sir John Franklin's expedition in the Arctic?  Lady Jane Franklin had appealed to President Zachary Taylor to help find her missing husband.  However, the US Congress was clearly not keen on buying ships for such a task.  In stepped Henry Grinnell, a successful American merchant.  He purchased two brigs - the Rescue and the Advance - and loaned them to the US government.  Elisha Kane was the chief medical officer of the expedition.  On this first expedition, the graves of three of Sir John's crewmen were discovered, but no more.

Upon his return, Kane spoke about his arctic travels to many groups and eventually wrote a book about the Grinnell Expedition.  In 1853, Grinnell funded a second expedition and Kane was given command of the USS Advance.  This time, he pressed further north, providing a path for future explorers to reach the north pole.  He returned in October of 1855, still having failed to find Sir John Franklin.  Even so, he was hailed as a hero.  He traveled to England to report his failure to find Sir John to Lady Jane Franklin.

Kane had never had the best constitution.  He had originally set out to be a civil engineer, but his health argued against it.  Thus, he switched to medical school.  Despite his physical ailments, he again pursued an active career.  He had contracted coast fever (probably malaria) in Africa during his time on the Brandywine, forcing him to return to the US to recover.  After the 2nd Grinnell Expedition, his health was once again failing.  He went to Havana to recover.  He died there in February 1857.  He was only 37.

The Terror (2018)

In 1850, Captain Sir James Ross treks into the frozen Artic to locate a missing expedition.  The Eskimo says that he did encounter a dying Englishman.  Ross provides pictures of the various officers and the Eskimo points to Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris).

In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Hinds) was given command of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus to map the Northwest Passage.  He was aided in this by Captain Crozier and Commander James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies).  The ships had particularly thick hulls to protect against ice and also possessed steam-powered engines to both drive the propellor and provide warmth to the ship.  In September of 1846, the ships get stuck in the ice and have to wait for the summer thaw to sail further.  The thaw never comes.  Instead, they are beset by an Inuit spirit beast that takes the form of a deformed polar bear.  In addition to the bear, the crew suffer from lead poisoned food, scurvy, and a growing threat of mutiny.

This 10-episode series follows the fate of the lost expedition as well as the efforts of Sir John's wife, Jane Franklin (Greta Scacchi) to send a rescue mission.  The series ends where it began, in the tent with Sir James Ross discussing the fate of the crew.

The setting is excellent and the characters well-realized.  The British stiff upper lip and never say die mentality shines through.  If the number of problems had been reduced by one, Crozier would likely have brought most of the men back to civilization.  It hardly matters which one, but there is definitely the straw that broke the camel's back here.

Recommended.

Bruno Leoni

On a recent EconTalk, Michael Munger discussed the underrated economist, Bruno Leoni.  Leoni held that law should emerge in a manner similar to a market.  The current system of topdown legislation is just as backwards as central planning for an economy.  As an example, Munger suggested that rather than paving paths between buildings on a college campus, builders should wait a year and see where the muddy paths emerge.  That is where you pave.  Of course, we have all seen cases where the builders paved first only to find trails blazed through the grass thereafter.  By this system, law would emerge through judicial rulings: case law.  I have long disliked case law as creating bad precedents (e.g. Plessy v. Ferguson, Rowe v. Wade, etc.), but those eventually fell away by the same process that brought them into being.  Could this be a reasonable means of enacting law?

Bruno Leoni was an Italian economist who was unfortunately murdered at the age of 54.  However, such economists as James Buchanan and Friedrich Hayek - both Nobel Prize winners - credit Leoni for influencing their work.  Had Leoni lived longer, his works might be as well-known as theirs.

The idea of law emerging like a market seems backwards, but it does harken back to how it was done in earlier days.  There was a time when people would bring their disputes to the ruler and ask him to decide.  His decision became law.  As societies grew larger, this method became impractical.  Or did it?  Let the law emerge through judicial rulings.  Other judges may adopt the reasoning of a deciding judge or overrule it.  Over time, those muddy paths that persist will be paved while those that don't will see the grass return.

Seeing where legislatures have brought us, it looks like Leoni has a point.  A legislator is there to legislate.  That we already have far too many laws is beside the point.  If you are a hammer, all you see is nails.  If you are a legislator, you need to make laws.  It might be that the US had hit the perfect number and balance of laws in 1972 and everything since has just been busywork for bored lawmakers.  On the other hand, a judge exists to rule on the law.  The judge could give the same ruling scores of times, further paving that well-tread path.  The judge only needs to rule on those issues that are presented in court by plaintiffs, not write law suggested by lobbyists.  Leoni is onto something here.

Outstanding episode and highly recommended.

Rogue Elements (2024)

In Estonia, a CIA team attempts to extract an informant.  The operation is compromised, and the team is either killed or captured.  Volkov, who is in charge of the Russian forces, suddenly finds himself targeted by an unseen sniper.  He escapes though not all of his men survive.  A video showing the interrogation and execution of the captured CIA agents was sent to Langley.  Volkov was most interested in discovering who rescued Maras from a Siberian prison; Ryan Drake's name was offered.  The CIA director is not happy.  Ryan Drake is sent to recover the informant, which will probably end up being a trap.  His teammates are less than eager.  Drake and Frost - who is the computer whiz of the group - infiltrate the warehouse while Deitrich - who is fluent in Russian - provides a distraction at the front gate.  Things go mostly smoothly until Frost realized there are Rogue Elements involved.  The mysterious sniper from the opening returns to finish the job.

The story takes place sometime after the events in Redemption.  Anya, AKA Maras, was tortured by Volkov and she intends to settle that score.  She owes Drake a debt for her extraction but she's not going to let him get in the way of her vengeance.

Drake and his team come across as only moderately competent.  The same is true of the Russians.  The original CIA team was clearly incompetent to have been so easily surprised and taken down.  Even Anya, who has the most experience, makes some boneheaded blunders.  Most surprising was how the female characters repeatedly stood toe to toe with larger men while brawling.  Sorry, not going to happen.  The idea of Frost holding the knife away from her neck while a man twice her size is shoving down with his weight is just unbelievable.  Clearly, the makers knew that which is why the villain says, "I'm not even trying."  Yeah, okay.

In his Critical Drinker persona, I doubt Will Jordon would speak favorably of this.  It's a run-of-the-mill espionage story with a predictable plot and uninspiring characters.  Given the time constraints - it is only 40 minutes, there isn't much room to develop the characters or have an intricate plot.  Of course, this is basically a pilot, an effort to get something more going for his Drake series (9 books so far).  I would watch episode 2, which makes this a success.

When the States Joined

One accomplishment that is usually listed under the record of a president is the states that were added during his term.  The last state added, Hawaii, was during the Eisenhower Administration.  Which president oversaw the most states added to the Union?  Surely, Washington would be the obvious guess.  But that would be incorrect!  Let's have a look from the least to the most.

ZERO STATES

John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, FDR, and Harry Truman added no states during their tenure.  Of course, anyone after Eisenhower is clearly in the zero states camp as well.  That would be JFK, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.  

ONE STATE

- Thomas Jefferson added Ohio, the 17th State, in 1803.

- John Tyler added Florida, the 27th State, on March 3, 1845.  He left the Presidency the following day.

- Millard Fillmore added California, the 31st State, in 1850.

- Andrew Johnson added Nebraska, the 37th State, in 1867.

- Ulysses Grant added Colorado, the 38th State, 1876.

- Grover Cleveland added Utah, the 45th State, in 1896.  This happened in his second term, which is noteworthy because it was not consecutive with his first.

- Theodore Roosevelt added Oklahoma, the 46th State in 1907.

TWO STATES

- James Madison added Louisiana (18th) in 1812 and Indiana (19th) in 1816.

- Andrew Jackson added Arkansas (25th) in 1836 and Michigan (26th) in 1837.

- Abraham Lincoln added West Virginia (35th) in 1863 and Nevada (36th) in 1864.  It is noteworthy that West Virginia had been part of Virginia and chose to breakaway as a new state to join the Union.  Of course, Lincoln also lost a number of states but that's a topic for another blog.

- William Howard Taft added New Mexico (47th) and Arizona (48th), both in 1912.

- Dwight Eisenhower added Alaska (49th) and Hawaii (50th) in 1959.

THREE STATES

- James K Polk added Texas (28th) in 1845, Iowa (29th) in 1846, and Wisconsin (30th) in 1848.

- James Buchanan added Minnesota (32nd) in 1858, Oregon (33rd) in 1859, and Kansas (34th) in 1861.  Interestingly, he added Kansas after South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana had already seceded.

FIVE STATES

- George Washington added North Carlonia (12th) in 1789, Rhode Island (13th) in 1790, Vermont (14th) in 1791, Kentucky (15th) in 1792, and Tennessee (16th) in 1796.  The first eleven states - Delaware (1), Pennsylvania (2), New Jersey (3), Georgia (4), Connecticut (5), Massachusetts (6), Maryland (7), South Carolina (8), New Hampshire (9), Virginia (10), and New York (11) - had already been recognized as part of the country by ratifying the Constitution.  This happened before Washington was president.

- James Monroe added Mississippi (20th) in 1817, Illinois (21st) in 1818, Alabama (22nd) in 1819, Maine (23rd) in 1820, and Missouri (24th) in 1821.

SIX STATES

- Benjamin Harrison added North Dakota (39th), South Dakota (40th), Montana (41st), and Washington (42nd), all in the first two weeks of November in 1889.  Idaho (43rd) and Wyoming (44th) were added in July of 1890.  In a little more than 8 months, Harrison added 6 states.  It is also noteworthy that the US Census of 1890, which took place during Harrison's only term, declared an end to the American Frontier; the West was settled.

Maybe the Parties Did Flip?

Recently, someone noted that Trump, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk all used to be Democrats.  In fact, Ronald Reagan had been a Democrat in his younger days.  Reagan often said that the party left him rather than he left the party. Tulsi had run for president as a Democrat during the 2020 primaries, but she soon broke with her party on topics such as LGBTQ, the border, and foreign policy.  Her views on all of these would have been mainstream Democrat in 2008 when Obama won the presidency, but were now viewed as 'far right' positions.  RFK Jr. has been an environmentalist for all of his professional life and a vaccine skeptic for nearly 20 years.  He was a Democrat through all that time until last year, when he became an independent.  Then he supported the Republican to Make America Healthy Again.  Why didn't his message resonate with his old party?  Elon voted for Biden in 2020.  However, the censorship that followed led him to buy Twitter.  Like RFK Jr., he is clearly on the environmentalist side of the aisle - traditionally aligning with Democrats - but he too switched to the Republican candidate.  Elon has tweeted this image to show how he didn't leave the party, it left him:

Remember, Obama opposed same sex marriage in 2008, the trans issue was on the far fringe, and Democrats were the anti-war party.  Today, Trump is anti-war, has no issue with same sex marriage, and opposes transgenderism with regard to minors.

When the party flip story is told, it is always about racism.  Democrats grew into anti-racists and Republicans - the party created to oppose slavery - adopted racism to win votes.  No.  That is false.  However, it does seem that the parties have traded some policies over the years.

Escape to Athena (1979)

It is 1944 in the Greek isles.  The Nazis are pursuing several escapees from the local prisoner of war camp.  Among them are Professor Blake (David Niven), Bruno Rotelli (Sonny Bono), and Nat Judson (Richard Roundtree).  The trio are brought back to the camp and the commandant, Major Otto Hecht (Roger Moore), talks to them like a disappointed father.  The SS Officer, Major Volkmann, would rather they were shot, but Hecht asserts his authority over camp prisoners.  Hecht is an Austrian art dealer who has found himself in the German Army.  In addition to the camp, he oversees the archeological site that provides valuable artefacts for the Third Reich.  Of course, he skims the best pieces for himself.

Charlie Dane (Elliot Gould) and Dottie Del Mar (Stephanie Powers) are American entertainers who were recently captured and routed to the camp.  Otto is quite pleased to welcome Dottie and arranges for her to have a private room where he visits.  Dane, who is obviously Jewish, he allows to arrange a show to entertain the guards.  In the nearby town, Zeno (Telly Savalas) leads the Greek resistance.  He plans to first capture the POW camp, then the town, and finally assault the communication station that has been setup at the monastery on Mount Athena.  Sounds like an exciting action movie in theory, less so in practice.

The movie suffers from too many characters and not a clear villain.  Early on, Major Volkmann is generally the villain.  Then the villain becomes a Nazi at Mount Athena.  Nor is there a central hero.  Though Zeno is the man behind all the action, he is tight-lipped and doesn't tell anyone what is happening.  As such, some events come as a surprise to his allies - Charlie, Bruno, & Nat - though not to Zeno.

Roger Moore is miscast as a German/Austrian officer.  He himself said as much.  However, the movie offered an opportunity to 'vacation' in the Greek isles with his friend David Niven and have nights on the town with Telly Savalas.  I imagine this movie was a lot of fun to make.

Charlie is a fast-talking goofball who somehow transforms into a wisecracking commando.  The transition from one to the other was quite sudden and entirely unbelievable.  Of all the men Zeno could take on his assault on Athena, he chose Charlie?  Of course, Charlie didn't want to be a commando, but there was the promise of vast piles of gold.  Crazy as it was, Charlie proved to be a highlight of the movie.

There are a couple of love stories in the mix.  Major Hecht pursues Dottie, which is awkward considering he is her jailor.  Then there is Zeno and Elena (Claudia Cardinale), the madam of the local brothel.  In addition to his love interest, she plays his conscience.  Yes, she is less than keen on his risking lives of Greeks on his grand designs.

The finale turned into a Bond film, as the Nazis deploy a rocket from a secret base to sink the allied fleet.  What?  As if this film wasn't bonkers already.

Light, mindless, popcorn fun.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Recently, I clicked on video about the movie Barry Lyndon, something along the lines of why it is a great movie.  Of course, I have long viewed it as the worst movie Kubrick ever made, at least of the ones I've seen.  Yes, the cinematography is glorious, the lighting magnificent, the costumes outstanding, and the setting astonishingly well realized.  However, Barry Lyndon is a terrible human being.  If he had been shot dead by the highway robbers at the beginning of his story, the world would have been a better place.  The only time I even mildly respected Lyndon was when he fired his shot at the ground rather than blowing the head off his insufferable stepson.

In many ways, the movie reminds me of Martin Scorsese films.  The hero is actually a villain but is glorified on film.  There is no empathizing with these sociopaths.  I want a hero's journey, not a villain's journey.  It's not even a morality tale, warning the viewer away from such behavior.

Because I clicked on that video, I have been fed more and more Barry Lyndon-related videos, all of them painting it as a wonderful film, maybe Kubrick's best.  Ugh.  He had wanted to do a period piece and had been working on a Napoleon film.  However, Waterloo (1970) was released as a box office loser, nixing funding for more Napoleon films in the near future.  He shelved Napoleon and switched to Barry Lyndon.  Oh, the tragedy!

Only the devoted Kubrick fan - who wants to see all his films - should waste time on this travesty.  Thumbs way down.

The Fictional Party Flip

Democrats are always eager to explain away the past dark periods of their party by explaining how the parties flipped.  Post Civil War, blacks supported the Party of Lincoln, the Republican Party.  Democrats may have been forced to surrender slavery, but they imposed Jim Crow as soon as Reconstruction ended.  This continued for decades, especially since the Republicans held dominance in the government from 1861 until 1913.  In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated president and reintroduced segregation in federal workplaces.  He was an apologist for the South and screened Birth of a Nation at the White House.  However, when FDR was elected in 1932, he retained segregation.  In 1948, Harry Truman desegrated the military.  In 1954, during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Court overturned the policy of 'separate but equal.'  Eisenhower set about enforcing this with the National Guard and pushing both the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts.

By the time JFK arrived in office, the writing was on the wall for segregation.  It was doomed and any Democrat with sense was going to abandon it.  Where Republicans had argued to just treat blacks like everyone else, Democrats embraced a strategy of one-upmanship.  Not only would they pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act (with strong bipartisan support), but they would also implement affirmative action.  Though a noble goal, it assumed employers were guilty of discrimination if the pool of employees did not match local demographics.  So, the Democrats went from discriminating against blacks to now discriminating in their favor.  Low grade reparations?  Though Republicans continued with the same old policy of just treat everyone the same, that now meant repealing quotas.  That's anti-black!  Sigh.

The Democrats have spent decades claiming that Republicans are holding blacks back and yet, most blacks live in cities that have been governed by Democrats for all those decades.  For instance, Detroit hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1962.  Whose fault is the decline of that city?  What about St. Louis?  Last Republican mayor left in 1949.  Philadelphia?  Last Republican mayor left in 1952.  The modern Democrats are the same as the old Democrats, they have just changed their tactics.  The Democrats have trapped blacks in a new kind of plantation - harvesting their votes during election season by blaming the Republicans for their misery.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2015)

Gilbert Norrell (Eddie Marsan), who claims to be a practical magician (i.e. can cast spells) has been buying every book on magic throughout England.  Theoretical magicians (i.e. those who don't cast spells but merely study the history of English magic) have complained.  Moreover, they accuse Norrell of being a charlatan.  Mr. Norrell offers to perform practical magic.  However, he demands that the Learned Society of York Magicians disband should he be successful; if he fails, he will renounce his claims of being a practical magician.  After Norrell's magnificent display of magic and the York Society's disbandment, Norrell goes to London where he hopes to revive English magic.  His first noteworthy feat is to resurrect the recently deceased Lady Pole.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Strange (Bertie Carvel) finds himself gifted with two spells by a crackpot named Vinculus.  As a lark, he attempts to cast one of the spells and it works!  He is one of the two magicians foretold by Vinculus' crazy prophecy.  He soon joins Mr. Norrell in London, where he becomes an apprentice magician.

But all is not well with English magic.  Norrell was always wary of fairies but dared call upon one (Marc Warren) to revive Lady Pole.  Norrell has kept silent about his indiscretion, but the fairy is now free to roam England and create mischief.  Bit by bit, the fairy enchants various people and carries them away to the land of fairy, Lost Hope.  Can Norrell and Strange summon the Raven King to oppose the fairy or are they doomed to die from some fairy curse?

This 7-epsiode epic does a surprisingly good job of adapting the book.  In fact, it improves upon the book in many ways.  Firstly, it is not necessary to constantly refer to the fairy as 'the man with thistle-down hair.'  He is never named in the series and that is not a problem at all.  There is only one time when he is described as the man with thistle-down hair and that comes as something of an insult from Lady Pole.  Nice.  Many of the minor characters are completely absent.  Excellent.

Eddie Marsan is terrific as Norrell.  Bertie Carvel makes an outstanding Jonathan Strange.  Marc Warren is perfect as the fairy.  The lesser characters are also wonderfully cast and play their parts well.  This is a great production.  Like the novel, it ends with the potential of a sequel, though that has yet to happen.  Of course, Clarke didn't write a sequel.  Not yet, anyway.

If you liked the book, you'll enjoy this.  Highly recommended.

Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987)

Nick Randall (Rutger Hauer) is a former top espionage operative who has become a bounty hunter based in Los Angeles.  For those who watched the 1950s TV show of the same name, Nick Randall is a descendent of Josh Randall (Steve McQueen).  Randall is living well, having a huge building for his office, and a comfortable boat for his home.  He has a girlfriend, Terry (Mel Harris), who might be wife material.  A couple more big jobs and he could invest in a life at sea on his boat.  Yes, life is looking up until his old life intrudes.

Malak Al Rahim (Gene Simmons) is a terrorist who Randall failed to kill during his espionage days.  Malak has arrived in Los Angeles and begun a bombing campaign.  He has also sought to assassinate his former adversary.  Philmore Walker (Robert Guillaume), a former associate when Randall was a spy, hires Randall to hunt down Malak.  Randall agrees as long as he is allowed to work solo.  Director Lipton (Jerry Hardin) views Randall as bait to draw Malak out of hiding; if Randall is killed in the process, Lipton would view that as a bonus.

A standard 80's action flick that hits the normal beats.  There are explosions, gun battles, car chases, and fist fights.  The story is run-of-the-mill, the acting is adequate, and the action is average.  Even so, it is fun to watch.

Street People (1976)

Salvatore Francesco is a mafia boss in San Francisco.  He is tired of being a boss and had tried to retire from the life several years earlier.  His nephew, Ulysses (Roger Moore), takes care of all the legal and financial aspects of Sal's businesses.  Sal paid for Ulysses to go to college and served as a father figure when he was growing up.  To demonstrate that he isn't all bad, Salvatore anonymously paid to have a Sicilian crucifix imported to the United States for his church.  However, someone used his gesture of goodwill to smuggle millions of dollars' worth of heroin inside the crucifix.  Furious, Father Francis, the local priest, confronted Salvatore and excommunicated him!

Sal put his nephew on the case to find out who was responsible.  Ulysses called in his racecar driver friend, Charlie (Stacy Keach), and the pair commenced the investigation.  While Ulysses flew to Sicily to find the link on that end, Charlie went hunting for rumors of the heroin in San Francisco.  With Ulysses' list of names from Sicily and Charlie's gumshoe work, the pair are soon on the track of the three goons.  But who do they work for?

The movie has a few flashbacks to 1930s Sicily where we see a young Salvatore thrilled to be an uncle and how he brags to Francis (the same Francis who would later excommunicate him) about that.  There are also scenes of Ulysses as a toddler and Ulysses' English father.

Stacy Keach steals most scenes that he is in.  His demolition derby of a test drive with the chief goon's car is great fun.  He's a happy-go-lucky thrillseeker and lots of fun.  By contrast, Moore is charming but uninspired.  The role is not well-written and his kinship to Salvatore not well-established.  The audience is told they are close but it does not seem that way in their interactions.

The plot is a mess.  There is a good story to be had here, but the execution is poor.  Though the truck chase was entertaining, there was no explanation for it.  How did the sniper know to be on the roof?  How was it that two trucks were ready to intervene if the sniper was followed during his escape?  There are a lot of people taking part in this cover-up.  Gee, who did those truck drivers work for?  Maybe we could follow that lead?  Yes, it isn't meant to make lot of sense, but it was exciting as it progressed.

Mediocre.

Wild Swing in Participation

As everyone knows by now, Donald Trump has won the election and thus will be the second president to serve non-consecutive terms.  Grover Cleveland served as both the 22nd and 24th President.  That's interesting, but what I find more interesting is the vote totals in the last several elections:

These are the vote totals for Democrat and Republican candidates over the last 5 elections.  As this doesn't consider 3rd parties, it is just ballpark but useful.  Here it is as a chart:

2008 was a banner year, the biggest turnout ever in which President Obama won nearly 70 million votes but his reelection in 2012 saw a drop off in participation of roughly 2.5 million voters.

2016 exceeded 2008 in total voters (Trump and Hillary drove a surprising number of voters to the 3rd parties) but the two parties only received about 2 million more votes than in 2012.

2020 blew the doors off all previous elections, seeing nearly 27 million more voters than 2016!

As of this writing, 2024 has seen a stunning drop of 16 million voters.  Where did they go?  Is this a matter of apathy, tougher voting requirements, or something else?  A ballot arriving in the mailbox while everyone was quarantined by COVID offered a distraction whereas today voting was just a hassle?  This will be a topic for the history books in the not-too-distant future.

But Georgia is not called for Trump?

 

Reporting percentage is greater than in Virginia but still no call.  Interesting.

Strange that Virginia is already called for Harris

 

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

This is a quirky, slow-paced novel with features that commend it and failings that detract from it.  The pacing is hard to overcome.  Generally, I maintain a rapid pace through fiction, but this was a long hard slog.  No sooner do you get involved in one storyline than Clarke plods off to some other character.  Steven Black, Lady Pole, Arabella, and the Graysteels were more often speed bumps than enjoyable characters.  By and large, they were helpless victims, which is rarely fun to read.  On top of that, many of the other characters lacked any redeeming qualities (e.g. Drawlight, Lascelles) and were therefore also a slog to read.  Moreover, if the words “I dare say” were removed from the book, it would probably be 20 pages shorter.  Why must everyone begin their sentences with ‘I dare say?’  That got old really fast.  On several occasions, Clarke would restate something obvious (e.g. ‘they left the dining room, where they had been convened’).  Um, yeah.  I was just reading how they were convened in the dining room, so you don’t need to explain to me that they had been convened there now that they are leaving.  Gads.  Early in the book, she also had a nasty habit of refusing to use pronouns.  Then she had some odd devices (thankfully abandoned in the later part of the book) such as suggesting conclusions to the reader rather than just stating them.  At one point, a lady is speaking and the author as a parenthetical note “who we must now presume to be Mrs. Wintertowne.”  Why must we presume?  Tell us or don’t tell us but this is almost insulting, as if I wouldn’t have figured it out on my own.  Finally, the narrative is murky.  The author refers to herself more than once but then drifts back to generally a 3rd Person Omniscient.  The footnotes give the impression that this is a scholarly work.  Then, there is the use of ‘we’ that includes the reader so that perhaps it should be viewed that she is reading to us in the drawing room, adding her comments as she goes.  Messy.  Distracting.

Jonathan Strange is clearly the hero of the novel and he is generally a likeable character.  However, he is curiously incurious about some things that should have demanded his attention.  Mr. Norrell had been brought to the pinnacle of success by having revived Lady Pole.  Despite several years as Norrell’s apprentice, Strange apparently never asked how Norrell achieved this feat.  Oh, he argues the minutia of a dozen other things but shows no curiosity over the defining achievement.  This is made all the more troublesome when Strange’s wife dies.  Gee, if only there was a way to bring her back.  Hey, Norrell did it!  I’ll ask him.  No, such does not happen.  Why?  Perhaps there are good reasons that he didn’t consider reviving his wife but that should be explained to the reader.  Speaking of his wife’s death, there was so much that was peculiar and yet he never saw magic in it.  He had credible reports of his wife in two places at the same time but never considered magic.  He had dueled with some invisible magician but never thought that magician would trouble him again, perhaps stealing his wife.  While trying to locate his missing wife with magic, he determined that she was not in England, Ireland, Scotland, or France but it didn’t occur to him that perhaps she had been magically spirited away.  No, he fully accepted that his wife had inexplicably wandered the snow-covered hills over several days and that led to her fatal illness.  Too often, this supposedly smart man was profoundly stupid.

Who was the man with Thistle-down hair?  Oh, he was a fairy but what was his history and how did he relate to the Raven King?  Clarke showered us with deep discussions on the history of English Magic, footnotes on obscure stories about minor magicians, and countless legends about the Raven King but she never explains who the villain is.  During the novel, we are told that a curse will end with the death of the person who cast the curse.  Okay, that’s good to know.  So, is Strange freed of the man with thistle-down hair’s curse?  No.  Why not?  And what kind of curse is that anyway?  It’s always nighttime around you?  Sure, it causes the candle bill to go up but that’s about it.  Strange seemed just fine otherwise (excepting the self-inflicted insanity).

There is a lack of focus.  Much attention was placed on the shopkeeper who had a crush on Steven Black and then, after the glowing coins incident, she simply vanishes.  The same can be said of Strange’s apprentices who are important for a while then, poof, he leaves them behind and, except for the brief incident of the disappearing book, they are not seen again.  Why did we get such a strong introduction of Jeremy (Strange’s servant) and his dealings with Strange’s father only to have him devolve to a very minor character?  Clarke feels compelled to provide massive character sketches for people who will soon vanish from the book or be relegated to minor support characters.  In many ways, the book can be seen as a number of short stories stitched together to make an overlong meandering novel.

It was nice to finally see the Raven King though his role was quite small.  However, we are led to believe that the prophecy that Vinculus repeated for the three concerned parties (Norrell, Strange, and Steven Black) was in truth just part of a spell to dislodge the Thistle-down man from Lost-Hope.  Could not he have been a bit more direct?  Am I to take it that John Uskglass arranged everything to work out just as it did?  Why didn’t he crush the Thistle-down man himself?  Why this roundabout solution?

It was hard to like any of the characters.  Norrell, who dominates the first part of the book, is extremely unlikeable.  Here is a man whose stated goal is to return magic to England and yet he spends most of his time squashing would-be magicians and concentrating all sources of magical learning in his own private collection.  Yes, he wants the return of English magic as long as he is the sole practitioner.  Hardly a return at all.  Worse still, he knows exactly what has happened to Lady Pole and makes no effort whatsoever to rectify the situation.  He takes on an apprentice and then intentionally misleads him about the true breadth of magic, best exemplified by the discussion over magic rings.  Norrell is to magic knowledge what China is to the internet.  As Norrell’s pawn, Childermass was usually on some disreputable task.  However, he developed into a far more likeable character than Norrell.   By the end of the book, I wanted to see more of Childermass.  Norrell’s other disreputable associates, Drawlight & Lascelles, were scum who took far too long to die.  This too speaks volumes about Norrell.  I have already discussed the problems with Strange.  Lady Pole starts off with promise but simply becomes a shrew – with cause certainly but a shrew, nonetheless.  John Segundus is rather bland and unexplored.  He has promise but his appearances are too far apart.  It is clear that he has some natural talent for magic (e.g. he sensed the labyrinth at Norrell’s home, he invaded the dream with Strange, he saw the rose over Lady Pole’s mouth, etc.).  Vinculus was the breakout character, fun in his every appearance.  A fraud, a charlatan, a bigamist, a mystical book, a vagabond, a prophet, and apparently unable to die (for now); this character was more interesting than any three other characters combined.  Unlike most character, he had real purpose, one that he diligently performed in his peculiar manner.  The rest of the characters are just victims, helplessly waiting for the mean Norrell or the oblivious Strange to rescue them from their captivity.  When they were finally rescued, I really didn’t care.  They had become nothing more than useful plot devices for the story, not actual characters that the reader should care about.

Clarke does a good job with Lord Wellington.  I enjoyed his appearances, such as they were.  Of course, the presence of Strange in Wellington’s army can’t help but diminish Wellington.  The book posits that Wellington would surely have lost Waterloo but for the help of Strange.  In truth, he won without Strange.  Still, that is a minor quibble that only a stickler for history would mention.

The massive background for English magic is amazing.  There is much on the history of John Uskglass the Raven King, as one would expect.  However, there are details on the Golden Age Magicians, then the Silver Age Magicians, even talk of the merely theoretical magicians, the qualities of Fairies, the lands of Fairy, and tales of Martin Pale, Catherine of Winchester, Ralph de Stokesey, Thomas Godbless, and others I have forgotten.  The depth and breadth of magical history is unparalleled.  I am reminded of Tolkien’s appendices that detailed the rulers of Gondor over the millennia.  With this impressive foundation, Norrell and Strange fit much more easily in England during the Napoleonic Wars.

The book ends in such a way as to provide plenty of room for a sequel.  There is the oddity of Childermass reviving the Learned Society of York Magicians to decode Vinculus the Book.  There is Strange assuring Arabella that he will return to her once he and Norrell undo the curse.  There is the tantalizing fact that the Raven King is still active though we saw but a glimpse of him.  However, I am unlikely to read anything else from Ms. Clarke on account of her failings.  If I had one suggestion for her, it would be to repeat Shakespeare’s observation that "Brevity is the soul of wit."  She needs a better editor who can cut away the vast excess in her narrative and keep her on point.

Two stars.