"Stress the help. Not detention — help."

One of my current reads is Our Children's Children, a 1974 novel by pastoral sci-fi author Clifford D. Simak. As the story opens, thousands of humans from the far future are streaming into present-day Earth using portals of some sort. This is causing an immediate crisis for world governments, because what are you supposed do with all of these newcomers in need of basic human resources and care?

I began reading more closely, considering parallels with our current moment.

Here are some passages from the opening chapters:

• "They count upon your sufferance," said the man. "They are refugees."
• "An invasion, you might call it. but not a warlike invasion. They are coming emptyhanded. They are quiet and peaceable."
• [U.S. president speaking to Secretary of Defense] "Use every resource at your command. You have inflatable shelters. How about transportation and food. ... You'll have to handle it on an emergency basis until we can settle on some plan. Don't worry too much about procedures. If you have to bend a few them, we'll take care of that."
• [U.S. president speaking to White House press secretary about informing the press] "Tell them we're trying to find out. The situation is under study. You can tell them the armed services are moving rapidly to help these people. Stress the help. Not detention — help. The guard may have to be called out to do the job."
• "Children of our children," said the President, "many times removed. If they're truly from the future, they are our descendants. We can't turn our backs on them."
• "Just ordinary people, sir. Far as I can see. No different from us, except that they got a sort of funny accent. They dress funny. ... But they are polite and cooperative. They don't give us no trouble."

So we'll see where the tale goes from here...

I did peek ahead to some of the comments and reviews on Goodreads, and this excerpt from Cheryl in July 2020 stuck out: "I love stories with 'no bad guys' ... I mean, yeah, there is a threat, but all the people from both eras are just doing the best they can. I'm glad Simak didn't live to see our divisiveness that enabled the election of Trump. I do note that southern Wisconsin, Simak's home, voted for him, but they were desperate for jobs iirc and believed the charm of the businessman. I wonder if we'll ever have the kind of world, or even country, that Simak saw as a possibility."

50 years ago today: Crazy curl perms & "Crazy Mama"

Just for the halibut, here are some headlines and advertisements from the Friday, July 25, 1975, edition of the Worthington (Minnesota) Daily Globe:

• Main story on A1: Yellow gas knocked out astronaut
• House rejects lifting ban on sale of arms to Turkey
• Voting rights act extension passes; Ford plans to sign
• Americans pay more than ever for beef
• CIA reveals how it monitored U.S. mail
• Dairy, swine judging held at Osceola County Fair
• Ford presented Mayaguez wheel
• Accused rapist will press charges against avenging feminists

Strath Haven's David Letterman Club

In February 1988, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about the coolest club we had at Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Pa. Yes, indeed, we had a David Letterman Club, in which students gathered after school to watch VHS tapes of his shows on a rolling AV cart.

The Inquirer story was reported and written by Gloria Hoffner¹, with a group photo that was taken by Al Tielemans. I'm way in the back of the photo and clearly in need of a haircut. This wasn't my only appearance in the Inquirer. I was also mentioned numerous times, in conjunction with the Steve Jeltz Fan Club, in Jayson Stark's Baseball Week in Review. And a ridiculous full article about that club, with a photo of me wearing a tie, was published by the Inquirer in, I think, the summer of 1990. I'll have to dig that one up.

Here are some excerpts from Hoffner's article:

• Each Wednesday afternoon, about 20 Strath Haven High School students gather around a TV set in science room 211. But instead of of watching the usual educational-television fare, they watch stupid pet tricks.² Did someone sabotage the videotape? Nope. It's Late Night with David Letterman, and it's no mistake.
• Armed with a fast-forward control button, the club members search past the commercials³ for the meat of the programs. They say their favorites are the animal acts and the sports foul-ups.
• Rick Kosel, a Strath Haven science teacher and the club's adviser, said that "about three or four years ago" Jamie Hooper, a resident of Swarthmore who is now attending Dartmouth, asked if we could have a club to watch taped videos of David Letterman because the show comes on at 12:30 p.m., and he didn't want to stay up that late. "We have a school policy that if a student comes up with a club idea, has 10 interested students and an adviser, then it can be considered an after-school club," Kosel said.
• "When I heard about the David Letterman Club, I thought it was a good idea because there are many students from one-parent homes or from homes where both parents are working, and this was a place they could go while waiting for their bus," [Activities Director Charlotte] Higler said.
• [Higler] said the David Letterman Club costs the district about $200 a year — the cost of Kosel's adviser's salary of $11 per hour. Kosel pays for the tapes, and the school already owned the videotape player.
• "I think it is a good thing because this way the kids who love David Letterman don't stay up until 1 a.m. watching, and it keeps their minds on their homework rather than on TV," Higler said.

That was 37 years ago. In 1993, Letterman left NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and began hosting Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. He retired in May 2015 after more than 4,200 episodes at CBS, including being the first talk show to return after 9/11. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert took over the famed Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan after Letterman retired, and Colbert was still going strong when CBS abruptly announced Thursday that his show will be canceled effective May 2026. There are strong indications that CBS's announcement represent a form of appeasement to the president of the United States, who has long expressed disdain for Colbert. Silencing comedians who poke fun at you is apparently what we do now in our democracy.

Speaking of the president, this is what David Letterman himself had to say about him way back in an interview with The Associated Press published on July 10, 2017:

QUESTION: Speaking of the current administration, late-night seems to have become mostly Trump jokes and tirades. Do you miss not being part of that?

LETTERMAN: "Here's what I keep saying: We know there's something wrong, but what I'm tired of is people, daily, nightly, on all the cable news shows telling us there's something wrong. I just think we ought to direct our resources and our energies to doing something about it. And other people have made this point: If the guy was running Dairy Queen, he'd be gone. This guy couldn't work at The Gap. So why do we have to be victimized by his fecklessness, his ignorance? But it's just the behavior is insulting to Americans, whether you voted for him or not — and I feel bad for people who did vote for him because he promised them things that they really needed and one wonders if he's really going to come through. I know there's trouble in this country, and we need a guy who can fix that trouble. I wish it was Trump, but it's not, so let's just stop whining about what a goon he is and figure out a way to take him aside and put him in a home."

That was eight long years ago. Which paradoxically seems even longer ago than when I was watching Letterman VHS tapes at Strath Haven in 1988.

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Footnotes

1. What a cool story Gloria Hoffner has! Here's an excerpt from her About the Author page on Amazon: "When I was a little girl my dream was to be an astronaut. So in 7th grade I wrote to NASA to ask what I needed to study in high school and college to travel into space. NASA sent me a form letter. It said study Latin and German, the language of scientific papers at the time, to study physics, math etc. Then as I reached the bottom on the page, in blue ink, handwritten, was a note that said, 'Of course we do not accept women into the space program.' It was 1967 and discrimination against women was legal and accepted. So, I turned to my second love, science fiction, and decided I would be the next Jules Verne. I read and wrote stories constantly(asked my teachers, family and friends to read them) and planned my career. I met a science fiction writer in high school and applied to college. I realized that I needed a full time job as I worked towards a career in fiction, so I majored in journalism." That led her to a career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and later she published the award-winning book Science for Seniors: Hands-On Learning Activities.

2. Some "Stupid Pet Tricks" trivia from Wikipedia: "When Letterman left [for CBS], NBC asserted their intellectual property rights to several of the most popular Late Night segments. ... Notably, however, 'Stupid Pet Tricks' originated on Letterman's 1980 early morning show The David Letterman Show, to which Letterman, not NBC, owned the rights. This meant 'Stupid Pet Tricks' was able to cross over to the CBS show with its name and concept unchanged."

3. Nowadays those commercials would make those VHS tapes (if they still exist) pure gold. VHS tapes are making quite the comeback, as I plan to delve into later this summer. But even more valuable and collectible than certain commercial VHS tapes are home recordings of shows, movies and live sporting events onto blank tapes. They can contain commercials, news broadcasts, bumpers and other content that would otherwise be long lost. If you have these from the 1980s or 1990s, they usually sell for a decent price on eBay.

Sunny day shelfie miscellany

Sunny day
Sweeping the clouds away
On my way
To where the air is sweet

1979 middle school book: "The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401"

• Title: The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401
• Author: Burnham Holmes. He also authored the Contemporary Perspectives book about Nefertiti, plus books about the Third Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, Edward Hopper, Paul Robeson, Cesar Chavez and George Eastman. In May of this year, he retired from Castleton University in Vermont. As Emily Ely wrote for the student newspaper, the Castleton Spartan: "After nearly three decades of teaching, mentoring, and storytelling, English professor Burnham Holmes is retiring, leaving behind a legacy that’s impossible to summarize with a single title. 'Oh, a man of all the wonders. He is insane. He’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met,' said junior Nickels Thomas. That sentiment echoes across generations of students and colleagues who have learned from Holmes, not just about writing or speaking, but about life itself." Holmes is also on Instagram. His most recent post calls poet Frank O'Hara his "Lodestone."
• Cover and interior illustrator: Abel Navarro
• Publisher: Contemporary Perspectives Inc. 
• Year: 1979
• Pages: 48
• Format: Hardcover
• Topic: On December 29, 1972, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, traveling from New York to Miami, crashed into the Florida Everglades.¹ There were 101 fatalities, including the three cockpit crew members, and 75 survivors. Then came the ghost stories. As Wikipedia explains, "In the months and years following the crash, stories began circulating that numerous employees and passengers of Eastern had reported sightings of deceased crew members ... sitting aboard other [Lockheed] L-1011s. ... These stories speculated that the sightings were connected to the fact that parts of the crashed aircraft were salvaged after the investigation and refitted into other L-1011s. The reported hauntings were said to be seen only on the planes that used the spare parts." There was a 1976 book, The Ghost of Flight 401, by John G. Fuller, and a TV movie in 1978 (starring Ernest Borgnine and Kim Basinger) that helped the ghost stories become even more widespread in the late 1970s, perhaps leading to the publication of this middle-grade book, which I remember reading at the wonderful C.E. McCall Middle School library in Montoursville in the early 1980s.
• 
  Excerpt #1: The heavy clouds and cold air were only the first of many strange incidents aboard the Eastern plane. A stewardess on plane 318 saw something that looked like a cloud. It formed near where she was standing. At first, she thought it was only water vapor condensing. It could have been caused by a change in temperature. But the cloud wasn't like anything she had ever seen before. Little by little, the features of a human face took shape in the cloud.
• Excerpt #2: In none of the stories about the ghost captain and second officer was anyone hurt — in fact, quite the opposite. Some airline people even wanted to work on planes where Loft and Repo had appeared. They felt safe. They felt that the ghosts would protect them from harm.
• Excerpt #3: Very few people today have ever really seen ghosts, but there have been many legends and stories throughout history of people who have. Until Flight 401, never had so many different people — at different times — actually witnessed the appearances of the same ghosts.
• Reviews and memories: I couldn't find any reviews of this book on Goodreads, Amazon, Kirkus, Newspapers.com or Google search. And that's weird, because I know of lot of kids from my generation read this book, and used copies now sell for a pretty penny. I did find a 2022 Facebook post in the Vintage Airliners group. One commenter states, "I was a young guy when I read the book and it totally gave me the creeps." But it's not 100% clear whether he's talking about Fuller's book or Holmes' book. Maybe this post can become the go-to site for folks who want to remember and comment upon Holmes' book. Please comment!
  

My copy was circulated quite a bit at the public library in tiny Duncan, Arizona (in the southeastern part of the state) between 1987 and 2003. So perhaps millennials have some thoughts, too.

Previous Contemporary Perspectives books covered on Papergreat:

• This House is Haunted!
• The Case of the Ancient Astronauts
• Visions of the Future: Magic Boards
• The Abominable Snowman

(Note: Those four books are all Contemporary Perspectives Inc. (CPI) books distributed by Raintree Children's Books, Milwaukee. The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401, which follows the same format, was not distributed by Raintree. Instead, it was distributed by Silver Burdett Company of Morristown, New Jersey. Purely speculative on my part, but I wonder if Raintree didn't want to be associated with such a recent and horrific air disaster and its subsequent exploitation for ghost stories. I held some long misgivings about doing this post for that reason.)

Somber footnote

1. I can't help but connect old books to current events. The 1972 crash site of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 in the Everglades is only about 20 miles from the newly constructed Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp. 

Writing for the Guardian yesterday, columnist Moira Donegan noted: "It has long been a feature of Trump’s regime that displays of domination and cruelty have to be made in public, in a style of vulgar, over-the-top obviousness. Branded like a low-budget movie, the Everglades site combines the extraordinary racism and contempt for human rights of the Trump anti-immigration effort with the sleazy camp of his movement’s style of masculinity."

Andrew O'Hehir, the executive editor of Salon, wrote a July 6 column about Alligator Alcatraz that featured the subhead: "Yeah, it's a concentration camp. It's also a meme, a troll and an especially ugly distillation of American history." O'Hehir writes: "To describe this evil little zone of exclusion as sadistic, despicable and insulting, or as a symptom of incipient or actual fascism, is accurate enough. But it’s most definitely who 'we' are in 2025. If we claim that such a thing is 'un-American,' then we’re the ones who haven’t paid attention to history."

And the Miami Herald reported this morning that hundreds of immigrants with no criminal charges in the United States are already being held under tents and in chain-link cells at Alligator Alcatraz: "The information ... suggests that scores of migrants without criminal records have been targeted in the state and federal dragnet to catch and deport immigrants living illegally in Florida," the Herald notes.

George B. Leiter's Ring-A-Peg

Finally making good on a promise I made way back in November, here's a little more about Ring-A-Peg, a game manufactured in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by George B. Leiter of Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

This information is gleaned from a copy of the trademark document for the game, which was registered on December 1, 1891. The document lists it as a "parlor game" and features an illustration of small pegs inside a circle. Small rings can be flipped into the circle, in an attempt to get them around the pegs, using a device that looks like the squidger in Tiddlywinks. (It's called a "snapper" on the trademark document.) So the game is basically an indoors, tabletop version of quoits.

The image on the trademark sheet indicates that a patent had been applied for. I don't know if it was ever granted.

The most detailed history of Ring-A-Peg can be found on the North American Tiddlywinks Association website by Rick Tucker (a fantastic site to lose yourself on for an hour). If you scroll down the page on the game's origins and evolution, there's a section on Leiter's game.

It states, "George B. Leiter, then of Norristown, Pennsylvania, registered a U.S. trademark for Ring-a-Peg on 23 September 1924, 33 years after the claimed first use of the mark on 13 May 1891." And I'm not going to dispute any of that information, because Tucker is the expert and I'm just a guy parachuting in for the afternoon on this topic. I highly recommend Tucker's history page, which also includes the Ring-A-Peg rules sheet.

Here's a detail from the 1891 trademark document, followed by the full document. For more on Leiter, see last November's post. 

Thoughts from American historian Frederic L. Paxson 99 years ago

United States historian Frederic L. Paxson (1877-1948) researched and wrote some weighty volumes of history during his lifetime, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning History of the American Frontier, The Civil War and American Democracy and the World War.

In 1926, he penned a very short volume for the American Library Association's "Reading with a Purpose" series.

I wanted to briefly share some passages from Paxon's writing of 99 years ago during this volatile summer of 2025. I believe there is some insight for us today. (The underlining is mine.)

"It is not easy to be a good democrat. 

"It is easy to enjoy the privileges of democracy, for these are handed to the citizen as things to which he is entitled. But when it comes to duties that he owes because of the privileges, he is apt to find that the more seriously he takes them the heavier they become.

"We are bound as citizens to be honest. We need to be as intelligent as we can. And we we must have information. The complicated society that we live in will not run itself, and at every corner stands someone, able and aggressive, who knows what he wants and is quite willing to run things for his own advantage. It is not enough for democracy to take as its goal the abolition of special privileges; it must also undertake to provide a good government, adapted to the needs of the people, changing as the problems of life change, and always making its decisions in light of real knowledge of the essential facts.

"Whenever the citizen goes to the polls on election day he casts his vote on some question of fact in which both sides cannot be equally right. ... The citizen neglects his duty if he fails to take every opportunity to inform himself upon the facts of the world he lives in and helps to rule.

"History thus becomes one of the foundations of good citizenship. ... It is the historian's business to serve citizenship at this point, and to provide the orderly knowledge of important facts and conditions that is needed for the formation of sound judgment. He serves to light up the dark ages. But the darkest of all the ages of history is never in the remote past. It lies in the thirty years that ended last night, and that run back to the infancy of the present generation of middle-aged people.

"These are the hardest years in all history to study."

[skip to the end]

"Life and government are two matters in which change is the order of every day; and every moment is to be judged whether it is a fair or an unfair balance between the ideal and the possible. What one can aim at, and what one should, is to avoid the clumsy errors that have defaced the past, to see the present as a reality, fully and without passion, and to perform the duty of the citizen with understanding and sincerity."

Little Free Library in the Catalina Foothills

We came across this Little Free Library, which was combined with a Little Free Garden Stand of plants desperately in need of a drink, in the Catalina Foothills during our family day trip to Tucson yesterday. It was heartening to see that there were actually quite a few LFLs in the area, unlike where we live in Florence. We were able to add some books that otherwise would have good to Goodwill (which is also a good cause).

This desert library, standing amid dust, rocks and catci, was "wallpapered" with book pages, had a cup of bookmarks and included numerous Greek-language books. We added the Raggedy Ann book and one other.

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