Author: jameswharris

The Mystery of the Stolen Eggs

by James Wallace Harris, 6/24/24

We had a Carolina wren build a nest in a metal pitcher on our front porch. The pitcher stood on a stand that was about three feet high. I knew it wasn’t a safe place to build a nest. One morning I discovered the metal pitcher knocked to the ground. The eggs were gone, not even broken shells. And there were no feathers or any sign of a struggle. I assume the wren flew away, and some animal ate the eggs.

But the event wasn’t caught on my security camera. My camera catches bugs, birds, cats, squirrels, and other small animals, why didn’t it catch the attacker? I asked my friend Mike who is a birder, and he said a fox can steal eggs. But how did the attacker get by the camera? We had a fox living in our neighborhood years ago. Maybe if the attacker moved slow enough it could have fooled the camera. I don’t know. The nest was under the camera, so out of range. But to get to the nest the attacker would have had to cross the porch and the field of the security camera.

This got me to wondering what kind of animal might be living in my yard. I bought a cheap trail camera on Amazon. Here’s what I discovered on my trail camera video.

According to this site, raccoons do eat bird eggs. So, I might have solved the mystery. I’m disappointed it wasn’t a fox.

It might also explain why my neighbor’s dogs love to get out of their fence and run around my backyard. I caught the dogs many times on the trail cam.

I also know I have a possum living in my yard too, because it came up to my back door to look at me and my cats. I’m hoping to catch it on the trail cam too.

There’s a line of trees on my block that separate the two sides of the block. My neighbor behind my house put up a privacy fence but didn’t come all the way to the property line. There’s a bit of land that’s gone wild between three of the houses on my side of the block, and two of the houses on the other side.

I wonder what else lives in that bit of wilderness?

JWH

What I Learned About Myself by Being Interviewed for a Podcast

by James Wallace Harris, 6/18/24

I was interviewed by Alex Howe for A Reader’s History of Science Fiction podcast about my Classics of Science Fiction list I’ve been maintaining since 1989. I was surprised by how much I learned about myself from the process.

I’m used to writing essays where I have all the time in the world to compose my thoughts. That’s not true in a conversation. I realized while I was being taped, and even more when I listened to the podcast, that conversation leaves no room for composing or editing thoughts on the fly. At my age I need lots of time to think. I also need time to find words I can’t remember.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I’m amazed by how some people can talk at length presenting a clearly organized topic without stumbling over their words. I know some TV talking heads work from scripts, but I’m not sure that’s common for podcasts and YouTube videos.

Some people are simply great talkers. They can clearly enunciate words and thoughts at a fast speaking pace. I can’t. I’m surprised by the number of people who want to be talking heads on TV, both as interviewer and interviewee. It requires skills I admire. Being interviewed revealed all those skills I lack.

After a couple of years of watching YouTube videos it’s also become apparent that even though anyone can host a YouTube channel, not everyone should. I’m astonished by how media ready some folks are, and how others are not. I’m not.

My mind is suited for print.

I was getting over a cold on the day I was interviewed, so my voice sounds rough. But that doesn’t bother me too much when I listen to the podcast. What makes me worry about my aging mind is how I failed to answer Alex’s questions clearly. I’m not sure anyone will understand our statistical system for identifying the most remembered science fiction books. On the other hand, I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to describe it in printed words well either.

One thing that Mike and I learned from building the database and generating the reports is visitors to the web site seldom read the supporting documentation. In fact, we dropped most of the documentation from the current system because, so few people read it. We now aim to make the database as simple to use as possible.

My failure to explain how our database works is more than my lack of verbal skills, but even with that excuse, I do think I should have expressed the concept better.

I’ve been interviewed before, about twenty years ago. Somehow The New York Times learned I listened to a lot of audiobooks and a reporter came to my office to ask me about that. I was one of several people they profiled. This was in the early days of Audible.com, and I guess they thought it news that people were switching from reading to listening. The reporter asked me several questions, but only some of my answers ended up in the paper. The amount of editing is the difference between print journalism, television shows, and podcasts.

The reason I prefer to express myself in an essay is I can edit my own thoughts. Being interviewed for a podcast was fun, and I thank Alex Howe for the honor. However, I’m not sure I’ll do it again.

JWH

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

by James Wallace Harris, 6/16/24

It’s a rare movie I can watch by myself now that I’m old. I’ve developed an affliction where I can’t focus on a movie unless someone is watching it with me. But sometimes I do find a film I can mentally latch onto by myself and stay with until the end. A Matter of Life and Death was one yesterday. And when I do find such a movie, I feel I should write about it.

You can watch A Matter of Life and Death on YouTube. It’s also on Tubi and TCM.

Even though I’m an atheist and assume there will only be existential darkness after death, I’m a sucker for old metaphysical movies about angels, heaven, the personification of death, and fantasies about possible afterlives. Somehow, I’ve never seen A Matter of Life and Death before, a 1946 British film with David Niven and Kim Hunter. This is kind of surprising since A Matter of Life and Death places #20 on BFI’s Best 100 British Films. It’s also #78 on Sight and Sound’s list of The Greatest Films of All Time. This is probably due to spending most of my life watching American movies. In recent years, I have been getting into English films, and this one makes me want to watch even more.

I wouldn’t rate A Matter of Life and Death as high as #20 or even #78 on my list of favorite films, but who knows what I will discover if I give it another spin or two. The movie did make an impressive first impression. I was enchanted by its novel approach to portraying the afterlife, with some very imaginative sets and philosophical twists. I assume A Matter of Life and Death is a reaction to all the deaths in WWII, but not in the same way that American films about angels did in the 1940s.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger wrote, produced, and directed A Matter of Life and Death and were careful not to use the words heaven and angels. They picture the afterlife run with military precision guided by Enlightenment ideals, rather egalitarian, favoring no national or ethnic group. This British version of the afterlife is more intellectual and less sentimental than how Americans present it. They don’t use the word angel, but new arrivals in this afterlife are issued a set of large white wings in clear plastic bags.

However, this heavenly bureaucracy does make a mistake by not promptly escorting Peter Carter (David Niven) to the afterworld when his Avro Lancaster is shot up over Germany. Instead, he survives an impossible to survive death and falls in love with June, an American radio operator in the U.S. Army Air Force.

When Conductor 71 (Marius Goring), this film’s designation for a guiding angel, informs Peter of the mistake and demands he come along to the other side, Peter refuses. The rest of the film is about Peter’s legal battle in an otherworldly court, pleading to continue living on Earth with June. Peter makes a case that it’s heaven’s fault he wasn’t retrieved, and because he got to fall in love before the mistake was corrected, his death should be postponed.

There are four major male parts in this film. Niven is the British pilot and is considered the star. Marius Goring, the angel Conductor 71, is an effeminate Frenchman who had been beheaded during the French Revolution. He’s the go between the other world and Earth, functioning like Clarence, Dudley, and Mr. Jordan from those famous American angel flicks. Then there is Raymond Massey as Abraham Farlan, the prosecutor who believes Peter can’t stay on Earth beyond his allotted time. Finally, there’s Roger Livesey as Dr. Frank Reeves, a brilliant neurologist, who believes Peter is suffering from an earlier concussion and all his talk of the afterlife a delusion.

Roger Livesey, I know from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. I felt his character Dr. Frank Reeves was far more charming and dashing than David Niven’s, and I wished Livesey had played Peter Carter, Niven’s character. I think I’m hard on old David Niven because I’ve always wanted to see Niven play Dudley in The Bishop’s Wife to see if he could have acted the romantic part. It was just too easy for Cary Grant to play that part, and I’ve been curious if Niven had the acting chops to have pulled it off. (And I would have loved to see if Grant could have pulled off the stuffy bishop’s part.) Now I get to see Niven in a similar metaphysical romantic role, and I was disappointed. Reeves and June reveal far more chemistry than June and Peter. I just didn’t believe June would fall instantly in love with Niven’s Peter. That’s one weakness of this picture, they rushed the falling in love part.

I don’t want to give away too much so I’ll stop talking about the details. I will say A Matter of Life and Death is a cross between Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and A Guy Name Joe (1943), a couple of my favorite angel films. A Matter of Life and Death is filmed in beautiful technicolor except for the other world scenes, which are in a pearly black and white, the reverse of The Wizard of Oz (1939).

A Matter of Life and Death isn’t as moving as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) or as charming as The Bishop’s Wife. However, it offers several unique takes on the afterlife that’s not in other films. I really enjoyed the cinematography, and some of the sets and arrangement of extras in heaven remind me of Busby Berkeley productions.

TCM recently had David Byrne as a guest programmer, and he presented A Matter of Life and Death and Wings of Desire as a double feature. I thought that an excellent pairing. Wings of Desire is another of my favorite movies about heaven, metaphysical beings, and angels. Just for grins, here’s a list of all the metaphysical movies that made me feel good about death or the afterlife. It’s a shame that in modern times, angels aren’t always that angelic. Although Michael (1996) and Dogma (1999) were fun.

JWH

What Susan and I are Watching in 2024

by James Wallace Harris, 6/14/24

For over a year now, Susan and I have developed a routine of watching television together every night at nine o’clock. After forty-seven years of marriage, it’s become extremely hard for us to find television shows we both enjoy. When we were younger and more romantic, we’d watch what the other liked even if we didn’t enjoy the show ourselves. But as we’ve gotten older and set in our ways, we both know what we like, and it’s seldom the same kind of TV series or movie. We now find it a challenge to pick a television we want to watch together. But when we do find one, it’s fun and bonding. We’ve recommended these shows to our friends, and we’ve gotten many positive reviews back. They are all recommended.

We just finished A Gentleman in Moscow based on the novel of the same name by Amor Towles. We subscribed to Paramount+ to see it because so many of my friends told me about loving the novel. It’s a wonderful story about a Russian aristocrat, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, surviving the communist revolution. The party would have executed him but thinks he wrote a revolutionary poem, so they condemn him to live in a luxury hotel for the rest of his life. If he leaves, he will be shot. The story covers the decades Rostov lives at the Hotel Metropol. The story started rather slowly but quickly became enchanting. I bought the novel but haven’t started listening to it yet.

Currently we start the evening with an episode of Why Women Kill on Paramount+. We love this show, which is a quirky light-hearted story about murder. It was created by Marc Cherry who also created Desperate Housewives. Normally, neither one of us likes watching TV involving gratuitous violence, but this one is an exception. Both of us look forward to seeing a new episode each night and we’re both going to be depressed when we finish all twenty episodes.

After Why Women Kill, we watch two episodes of Leave it to Beaver. We’re currently in season four. Beaver ran six seasons for a total of 234 episodes, and is available for free on many streaming services, but we watch it on Peacock+. We’re willing to pay $11.99/month to keep from having commercials interrupt our fun. I’m surprised by how much Susan, and I like this show, even though it’s incredibly old, and rather simplistic. And we don’t watch it for nostalgia, since neither one of us were fans of the show growing up.

It’s amazing how creative the writers are producing story after story set within a limited setting and story structure. I remember seeing some episodes when I was a kid back in the 1950s, and my memories left me believing Leave it to Beaver was all about the kids Beaver and Wally, but we’ve discovered it’s just as much about Ward and June, the parents.

I recently read an interview with Jerry Mathers who said the show intentionally avoided going for big laughs. If any scene turned out too funny, they cut it. They didn’t want the show to be about jokes. I’ve been looking at a few episodes of Make Room for Daddy (later renamed The Danny Thomas Show) that ran concurrent with Beaver, and thought it was often spoiled by setting up scenes around an all to obvious joke.

Leave it to Beaver is about parenting in the 1950s. It’s fascinating to see how much our culture has changed since then.

Before Why Women Kill and Leave it to Beaver, we watched Franklin and Manhunt on Apple TV+ and We We the Lucky Ones on Hulu. Susan and I have a lot of luck with TV series based on history. But I have issues with fictionalizing real events. These shows were quite compelling and enjoyable, but they made up stuff that didn’t happen. Manhunt is about the hunt for Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Unfortunately, it makes us believe Edwin Stanton did things he never did. I should read the book it was based on.

We Were the Lucky Ones is also based on a novel by Georgia Hunter inspired by the true story of her Jewish family surviving Hitler’s occupation of Poland during WWII. The Kurc family was immensely lucky, but they endured years of horrible suffering before they could say that. Again, I want to read the book.

I have read a couple of biographies of Benjamin Franklin but did not know all the details revealed in Franklin on Apple TV+. The miniseries is about the eight years Franklin spent in France trying to convince the French to support the American Revolution. Again, I’ll have to read a book to find out if the show played fair and square with history.

We also caught up on several PBS Masterpiece shows, including MaryLand, Ridley Road and Mr. Bates vs The Post Office. All of these were excellent.

Maryland is about two sisters, Becca and Rosaline learning their mother, Mary, has died on the Isle of Man. When they go to identify her body, the police tell the women things about their mother they can’t believe. The two then discover their mother had a secret life on the Isle of Man that they and their father did not know about. The story was wonderful and is about what family members don’t tell each other. The Isle of Man was a beautiful location.

Ridley Road was about a fascist movement in England during the early 1960s, and how a Jewish family infiltrated the group. It was based on real events, but like most historical fiction, I’m not sure things happened the way they are portrayed. Again, I’d like to study these events in a book.

Finally, Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office was amazing. It’s based on a true story, about how the upper management of the British post office covered up problems with their computer system by prosecuted hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters for theft. PBS also is showing a documentary that covers the same events, and many of the scenes in the miniseries were directly taken from film clips from the news. You wouldn’t think this story would be interesting, but it was. The first episode was slow, but after that got to be a delightful story about real people. The scenic landscapes made me want to live in England.

Another show we absolutely loved was Lessons in Chemistry, on Apple TV+, but that was at the end of 2023. I loved the show so much I read the novel, which was even better than the miniseries.

JWH

Another Way Amazon Impacts Used Book Buying

by James Wallace Harris, 5/28/24

I was just at my library’s Friends of the Library bookstore, called Second Editions. They sell used books people have donated to the library. It’s probably the second-best used bookstore in Memphis. Today, the place was in a mess. It had just been picked over by an Amazon used bookseller. They had spent over a day scanning every volume in the store that had a barcode and bought nineteen boxes of books.

This is great for Second Editions. The Friends of the Library have two giant, four-day sales every year, and keep a bookstore open in the main library five days a week. Evidently, this still doesn’t put a dent in the donations. The staff today was hauling up cartloads of books to fill in all the empty places on the shelves.

However, I was a little miffed. I went hoping to snag something specific. I often find recent bestsellers in hardback, usually in fine condition for $4 in a dust jacket. I was hoping to snag a copy of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles because we’ve been enjoying the limited series on TV. I’ve often seen it at Second Editions. But not today.

The cheapest used hardcover copy in very good condition at Amazon, with shipping is $10.74. Those guys who sell used books on Amazon should make a good profit if they found a $4 copy at Second Edition. The cheapest good condition hardcover at ABEbooks is $9.16. The cheapest softcover copy is $7.47. Those usually go for $3 at Second Editions.

Amazon used booksellers buy Friends of the Library memberships so they can go to the preview day sales for members. Whenever my friends and I go to those preview sales we see hordes of Amazon resellers with scanners grabbing everything they can as fast as possible. Us bargain shoppers resent that.

However, I do admire their enterprising efforts. The guys who cleaned out Second Editions were in a truck from Texas and were driving around on a mission. If I were younger, and needed money, I would consider doing the same thing. I used to dream of owning a bookstore.

Evidently, most of these resellers rely on scan codes and software to tell them if the book is worth buying. They ignore books before ISBNs. I admire old-style book dealers like Larry McMurtry who knew the books, their history, and values without a computer.

Still, today, I had a decent haul. All books without ISBNs.

  • Letters From the Earth by Mark Twain. Original hardback, but it has no publication information. Wasn’t listed as a Book Club edition. This copy had a worn dustjacket.
  • Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. Book club edition in dustjacket. Very good condition. Cloth binding.
  • The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch. Paperback, Berkley Medallion, December 1965. Near fine.
  • Sex and the High Command by John Boyd. Paperback, Bantam, September 1971.

I could have easily bought all of these online, but for a good deal more than $7.63 I paid for them at Second Editions.

It’s fun to shop at used bookstores. But I depend on serendipity for what I’ll find. When I want something specific right away, online bookstores are the best.

I guess Amazon resellers are good for local used bookstores because they buy a lot of books. And they are good for book buyers who want specific books. Shopping on ABEbooks or Amazon for used books is like instantly searching thousands of used bookstores all at once.

However, it kind of ruins the fun for us bargain hunters who like to shop locally.

JWH