Hans Holzer's "Charismatics"

Here's another in an occasional series about the more obscure paperbacks penned by parapsychologist and ghost hunter Hans Holzer. The most recent post before this examined The Psychic World of Bishop Pike.

In bad news, this copy of Charismatics was pristine when I got it, but it had clearly never been read and it was dry as a bone. Through the mere process of me opening it and examining it, it fell apart at the binding. But at least now it's more documented in cyberspace than it was previously. There's almost nothing about it on the internet.

• Title: Charismatics
• Additional cover text: "How to make things happen for you by developing your untapped Sensory and Extrasensory powers...!"
• Author: Hans Holzer (1920-2009)
• What is Charismatics: According to the back cover, it was created by Holzer and is "a new approach to a magnetic personality which lets you use both your sensory and extrasensory powers to create a new and exciting identity, expand your mind, and develop a better, strong, more convincing You!"
• Publication date: 1971
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 190
• Cover price: 95 cents
• A few of the chapter titles: "The Art of Giving and the Art of Receiving," "Charismatics and the Sex Drive," "Charismatics and Illness," "The Nature of Sleep," "How to Expand Your Mind," "How to Apply Charismatic Techniques Without Even Half Trying" and "The Seven Deadly Hang-Ups."
• First sentence: "Charismatics is an attempt to bridge the gap between concept and reality and to help individuals a little further toward the desired goal of perfection."
• Last sentence: "When the basis for greed is removed, when guilt no longer has validity, when there are no suppressed feelings or desires left, man can indeed speak to man almost as clearly as nature speaks to us all, if we would only listen."
• Questionable excerpt #1: "If you are a woman, you have another avenue of fortifying your charisma. Perfumes and aromatics are not merely adornments or fashionable expressions. They are quite definitely supporting tools to personality relationships in that scents penetrate through the aura of electromagnetic field of the human personality and create emotional responses. ... A friend of mine in California who is a high priestess of a witchcraft coven uses specially brewed perfumes to stimulate sexual response."
• Questionable excerpt #2: "Marxism, one of the forms in which materialism appears among us, has always put forth the theory that the physical part of man is practically all there is of him. The mind exists, to be sure, even to Communists, but it is somehow still a physiological adjunct to the body.  ... But there are now eight schools of learning in Russia where parapsychology is a legitimate science and where matters of mind are studied seriously."
• Less questionable excerpt #3: "To begin with, we should become aware of the fact that we are not always good observers. One of the first exercises consists of learning how to observe properly. I suggest that one stand in front of a store window with paper and pencil in hand. Look at the window for thirty seconds, and then write down everything that you have observed inside the window, price tags if any, color, size, anything in the way of detail. Then check back with the observed details and see how much you have missed."
• What are the Seven Deadly Hang-Ups? They are all based around fear. Holzer writes, "The medieval church created the idea of the seven deadly sins. ... I would like to replace the seven deadly sins with today's seven deadly hang-ups ... fear of death, fear of sex, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of loneliness, fear of ridicule, and fear of responsibility. ... When you have removed the seven deadly hang-ups and are free from the fears that have until now caused you to fail, and when you have learned the techniques of charismatics to advance your aims more forcefully and more successfully, you will find that you are living a much fuller life, and with this realization comes a sense of well-being and joy. You are getting closer to the natural concept of what human life is all about."
• Ebullient online review: The only review I found was on Amazon, written in 2014 by Dragonrand: "Undeniably Remarkable! I have had this book for years! It is a tome of brilliance and enlightenment. In the aspect of a melancholy society of which clouds society today, this book is a muse on the ear of the creatively drained."

If this post has piqued your interest, the good news is that you don't necessarily have to track down a crumbling 1971 paperback to learn more about Charismatics. The book is available on Kindle and Audible (read by Beth Stewart, who also narrates Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi)

BONUS: Here are some of the advertisements from inside Charismatics, which no doubt helped Ace Books to underwrite its publication. (See more of the psychedelic Kotex Kotique advertisements on Retro Musings.)

Cat postcard from Russia

I can't send Postcrossing cards, or any other mail, to Russia. But I can still receive Postcrossing cards from the residents of that country. 

This card from Vika arrived in my mailbox today after traveling for 38 days. She's a 31-year-old who likes Hayao Miyazaki films, weird houses and baking pies. Her postcard to me features the cat-filled artwork of Katya Maush. 

This was Vika's typed message on the postcard: 

Hello, Chris :) Warm greetings from Abakan, which is located in the south of Siberia. My name is Vika, I am 31 years old. I live with my husband and our cat named Nyura. I live in a small town, but with very beautiful nature. Abakan is surrounded by the Taiga Forest and the Yenisei River. In winter, the Yenisei never freezes because of the strong current. So on the Yenisei is one of the largest hydro-electric power stations in Russia. It is called the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro-electric station. The beginning of summer turned out to be very hot for us :) although I don't really like summer, I prefer autumn more :) but at the same time we rejoice at every warm day, since our summer is short. I wish health to you and your family. Sincerely, Vika.

The postcard had this pretty nifty fairy tale stamp, too. I spy Baba Yaga.

Book cover: "Dangerous Island"

Mom loved this book when she was a kid, and she shared it with me when I was a kid, so it's my go-to example of a book that bonded us because we both enjoyed it in our childhood. From some of the comments on Amazon and Goodreads, it's clear that we're far from the only family in which this book was beloved across generations.

• Title: Dangerous Island
• 
  Author: Helen Mather-Smith Mindlin. There's very little on the internet about her, but the dust jacket gives us some background: She was "born in Kansas City, Missouri, but spent most of her life in California, Hawaii and Florida, with some time in New York, Chicago and St. Louis. At present, she lives in Boca Raton, Florida. She attended school in both Illinois and California." Additionally, "she has written scenarios in Hollywood and feature articles for King Features Syndicate and for the Los Angeles Times Magazine Section. Her interests include not only writing but also yachting, fishing, dogs, wild animals and playing the accordion." The only other books I found her associated with were Inside Our Earth, Strange Animals (illustrated by Charles Mather-Smith) and 1958's Volcano Trap, which features the same characters as Dangerous Island and is a followup adventure, presumably involving a volcano.
• Illustrator: Manning de V. Lee (1894-1980). His full name was Manning de Villeneuve Lee. He was born in Summerville, South Carolina, and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There's a lot of information about his life on the Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists.
• Publication date: 1956
• Publisher: Dodd, Mead & Company. (This is the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club edition.)
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 178
• Dust jacket price: $2.75
• Dust jacket excerpt: "A delightful combination of high adventure and fantasy that might almost be true. When the mooring on their raft breaks loose from the Jersey shore, three young children, two boys and a girl, are carried out to sea and become castaways on the most amazing island. ... A most satisfactory book."
• Author's dedication: To my son.
• First sentence: It had been terribly hot in Philadelphia and as it was just the beginning of summer, with even worse weather ahead, Mr. and Mrs. Warren had decided that Frank and Dorothy should be in a cooler spot.
• Last sentence: In fact, some people believed there never had been a Rock Island!
• Paragraph from the middle: As the children walked back to the cave, they noticed their Bath Tub rock was not longer there, either. It had been at the ocean's edge and now, it too, was completely covered with water. This seemed to be another warning that they were positively sinking, but the fact that it was still a clear day, with no fog anywhere in sight, gave them fresh hope of rescue.
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.21 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt #1: In 2020, Heidi wrote: "My fourth grade teacher read this book to the class (1957). We were all spellbound and loved every minute. Over the years I remembered the story but couldn't remember the title properly. Another librarian helped me to rediscover the book and I was delighted to have been able to obtain a decent, used copy."
• Goodreads review excerpt #2: In 2011, Dave wrote: "I read this abomination under duress, back in '76 -- and I hold a grudge against my teacher to this very day. Tearing a fourth-grader away from his Poe, his Tolkien, his Stoker (and his totally cool books on dinosaurs, Indians, knights, rocks, plants, folktales, ghost stories, etc.) and forcing him to read this kind of dross is child abuse."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.9 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt #1: In 2020, "Kindle Customer" wrote: "This was one of my mom's favorite books as a child, she even signed it in 5th grade in the 1950s. Thirty years later, I read Dangerous Island and fell in love with the adventure, and also added my elementary aged signature to the front page. Last month, I read it to my 8 year old — he's now added his signature under ours. 
• Amazon review excerpt #2: In 2011, W. Thompson wrote: "I was telling my kids about this book and how my mom read it to me every summer from the time I was five until I was able to read it myself (it was her copy when she was a child and her mom read it to her). ... I have since read this book several times to my children. A wonderful story that I hope my children will someday read to their kids. Too bad Disney never made this into a movie."
• Another mention: In a 2020 column praising mail-order book clubs for the Star Tribune in Minnesota, W. Scott Olsen recalls that Dangerous Island "was perfect for a young Midwestern boy. ... I am sure this book is responsible for my love of sailing stories and the Coast Guard. This book was Indiana Jones long before Indiana Jones. A trio of friends in danger? A bit of Harry Potter there. This book made me a reader." 

Japan tourism guide: "How to See Fuji, Hakone"

"How to See Fuji, Hakone" is a 32-page staplebound booklet that was published by the Japan Tourist Association. There's no date of publication, so I'm going to guess the early 1960s. Shown above is the illustration by Shin Kurihara, featuring Mount Fuji in the background, that spreads over the front and back covers. (There was a Shin Kurihara (1894-1966) who served as one of Japan's official war artists, according to Wikipedia, though I'm not sure if that's the same person.) 

Four regions are covered in the booklet, which features a fold-out map in the back. They are:

Hakone: This is described as "an extensive mountainous region between Mt. Fuji and the Izu Peninsula" and "one of the most celebrated holiday resorts in Japan."¹ That's due in part to the numerous hot springs, and it also doesn't hurt that area is bucolic, with rolling hills, grassy fields, a lake and lovely views of Mount Fuji. The booklet provides the specific seasons that are best for viewing cherry blossoms, maple trees and azaleas. Also mentioned is the Daimonji-yaki end-of-summer festival in which spectacular fires are lit to help guide ancestral spirits back to the afterlife. 

Five Lakes District: "The Five Lakes District, lying at the north base of Mt. Fuji, is so named because of the five lakes embraced within the area," the booklet notes. "The lakes, in the order of their location from east to west, are Yamanaka, Kawaguchi, Saiko (also called Nishi-no-umi), Shoji, and Motosu." The area is known for scenery, camping, swimming, skiing, skating and duck hunting. The lakes have their own festivals, the modern incarnations of which are featured in this post by Japan Wireless.

Mount Fuji: The booklet offers information and advice for those wishing to climb the 12,000-plus-foot volcano. For example: "Foreign climbers are advised to take food and drink with them as the supplies sold en route may not suit their taste. A raincoat and a sweater, or a woolen shirt or two to wear at night or in the upper part of the mountain are indispensible. Waraji (Japanese straw-sandals), put on over the shoes, will save the soles from the wear and tear of the cinders strewn on the paths.)" Fuji is typically a two-day hike, but this guide says that some people start at 4 in the afternoon and ascend throughout the night so they can reach the peak in the early morning and witness sunrise. This can still be done, but it's not the most advisable approach. 

Izu Peninsula: It's another area of hot springs! This region is quite the hot spot for tourists from home and abroad. "Owing to its historic associations, its hot springs and seaside resorts, and its wealth of natural beauty, the Izu Peninsula is a favorite region for visitors all the year round," the booklet gushes. Among the spa towns noted is Shuzenji, which dates to the 9th century. That town no longer exists by that name, as it was merged with other locations to form the city of Izu in 2004.

Here are some of the mid-century photos from the booklet...

Footnote 

1. Hakone is the topic of this 2015 post.

Sunday night shelfies after some straightening up

Book cover & more: "Willy Ley's Exotic Zoology"

• Title: According to the dust jacket, it's Willy Ley's Exotic Zoology. According to the title page, Wikipedia and elsewhere, it's just Exotic Zoology. There are about 5,000 Google hits specifically for Willy Ley's Exotic Zoology.
• Author: Quite clearly it's Willy Ley (1906-1969). His full name was Willy Otto Oskar Ley (no relation, to my knowledge). He was a unique mixture of science writer and cryptozoologist. He was born in Germany but fled that country in 1935, shortly after the rise to power of the German Reich. He later became a United States citizen. His other passion was rocketry, and there is a crater on the moon named in his honor. Ley was mentioned in passing in the Papergreat posts "1969 Ramada Inn newspaper ad to honor Apollo 11 moon landing" (as Willie Ley) and "Bad military idea from the past: Magnetic Plane Destroyer."
• Illustrator: Olga Ley (1910-2001), who was married to Willy. One of her illustrations is shown below.
• Jacket design: "The Shekerjians." That likely refers to Regina Shekerjian (1923-2000) and Haig Shekerjian (1922-2002), who did a lot of work as illustrators in the 1960s. I've linked to the in-depth biographies of both on the Lake Chapala Artists website.
• Publication date: Originally 1959. This is the third printing from January 1962.
• Publisher: The Viking Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 466
• Dust jacket price: Not sure, because it's been clipped.
• Dust jacket excerpt: "The extremely diverse inhabitants of Willy Ley's extraordinary zoo have one thing in common; about each of them there is, or has been, a mystery. Some of the mysteries have been solved. ... Then there are mysteries still unsolved but hopeful of solution — [including] the 'abominable snowman' of the Himalayas."
• Contents: According to the copyright page: "Portions of the text are derived from the author's earlier books: The Lungfish, the Dodo, and the Unicorn; Dragons in Amber; Salamanders and Other Wonders." Some of the chapter titles are "The Legend of the Unicorn," "The Sirrush of the Ishtar Gate," "The Curious Case of the Kraken" and "The Island of the Man-Eating Tree." (Sirrush is now written as Mušḫuššu.)
• Provenance of this copy: It was in the collection of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library before being withdrawn on an unspecified date.
• First sentence (not counting foreword or introduction): Of all the mythical animals that have ever inhabited the pages of old books or decorated the walls of castles, the most charming and impressive — I am tempted to write, the most mythical — is indubitably the unicorn."
• Last sentence: And the Congo peacock raised again the old but still open question: what else may be in hiding in the Rainy Forest ...?
• Random excerpt from the middle #1: Critics have said that the last sentence of this entry proves that Egede's sea serpent was the offspring of Olaus's midnight monster, but the whole tenor of the entry belies this interpretation.
• 
  Random excerpt from the middle #2: Actually, everybody seems to be right, depending on where you look. A number of moa-hunter campsites are indubitably Maori. Some are others are almost certainly not Maori of any cultural level; there seem to have been earlier castaways who settled on New Zealand but were not organized immigrants like the Maori of The Fleet. It is a deplorable fact that the moa hunters failed to draw pictures which would help us to visualize their victims.
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.26 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2012, Danya wrote: "This is my favourite book ... EVER!!! WARNING: do not lend this book ... it may not come back to you."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.1 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2012, Charles Hall wrote: "From reading this book you get the impression that as a child Willy Ley wandered the biggest library in town looking up odd animals ... and kept doing that for 30 years! This book covers lots of interesting animals that were at one time very mysterious, or still are. Willy has tracked down the earliest references to basilisks, dragons, plants that spawn mammals, etc. and tried to divine the truth. Modern science has solved many of these old mysteries (where do eels come from?), but others elude us still (kraken). What sets this apart from other 'I saw Big Foot' type books is that Willy really knows his stuff and has no axe to grind."

LP also seems to be a type of exotic zoology.

Cats and scorched Earth

July's illustration from the 2023 calendar featuring the work of popular Dutch artist Franciens Katten (website, Facebook page). I learned of her amazing work via her daughter, who I met through a Postcrossing exchange; we've been pen pals for several years now.

A Robin Jacques illustration from Ruth Manning-Sanders' A Book of Cats and Creatures (1981).

I got up at my standard hour of 5:30 this morning to check on the outdoor feral cats and start the indoor cat chores. Things are a bit less stressful on the weekends, because I'm not also juggling the start of my remote-work day with the Lancaster newspaper.

In these summer months, it's a bit more urgent to get the feral cats fed during the first couple of hours of light, because soon the temperatures will become brutal and they'll be off to the shadiest spot they can find to wait out the most scorching 12 hours of the day. Some of them start returning between 6-7 p.m.

This morning I had Cirque, Creamy, Fjord, Big Boi and Stubby at the door. Stubby is one of Cirque's five kittens, and it's the only one that comes here for food, to my knowledge. I spot the others in the neighbor's tree or atop the wall that divides our properties. I think Cirque (pictured) is still their main source of nutrition, so I try to make sure she gets access to as much extra food as possible. 

But, yeah, the weather is not really conducive to surviving outdoors at the moment, unless you're a saguaro. Phoenix and the southwestern United States have been making national headlines for this heat wave. These are from The Washington Post in recent days:

• Extreme heat wave bound for Phoenix and Southwest could be worst ever
• A Phoenix power outage amid a heat wave could possibly kill thousands, study says
• Extreme heat wave to shatter records this weekend over southern U.S.

The current Phoenix forecast is for 117° F both days this weekend, though other forecasts have predicted that 120° F is possible, especially on Sunday. We tend to run a few degrees "cooler" here in Florence. We're looking a mere 114° F this weekend. One of the other worst parts is that the night-time temperature rarely drops below 90° F anymore. In some areas, it remains as high at 95° F. 

Monsoon season has been late in arriving. I don't believe we've had any measurable rain here in Florence since mid-March. There is some fingers-crossed hope that we'll get some rain within the next week. Maybe the temperature will even drop a few degrees. One can hope.

Anyway, we're in an existential climate crisis. So this is just another tiny dispatch from that crisis, written from the privilege of my air-conditioned house. If you're interested in reading more, Jeff Goodell has just published the very timely book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.

I'm going to go check on the cats, indoor and outdoor, now. I can't do much to save the planet, but I can dole out some care and compassion in this tiny corner of the baking desert.

Dec. 26, 2023, caption for the above photo: That's Stubby, left, and Big Boi, pictured in July when they were feral cats. We trapped Stubby, son of Cirque, in late August and brought him inside with two of his siblings (Venus, Mercury) so they could be spayed/neutered and socialized for adoption. They are currently listed for adoption but haven't yet found their forever homes. Big Boi, meanwhile, was trapped by a neighbor in October and neutered. He's now been with us for about a week. The neighbor didn't think he was well enough to be put back outside. We're still assessing him as of this writing. He sleeps a lot and is very sweet.

Rowel Friers' endpapers and interior illustration for "The Obstinate Ghost"

I still need to get around to a full essay on the dandy 1960s ghost/folklore books by Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd. In the meantime, this post features some of the superb artwork by their illustrator, Rowel Friers (1920-1998). Shown above are Friers' endpapers illustration and his illustration for "Billy Bates's Story" from the 1968 collection The Obstinate Ghost and Other Ghostly Tales. Don't we all wish we grew up in a neighborhood with a house like that? Or lived in one now?

Friers was a cartoonist, painter, illustrator, set designer and actor. For a story on his funeral service in 1998, Neil Johnston of the Belfast Telegraph wrote:

"The church was packed with representatives from the arts, music, drama, newspapers and television. ... All of them referred to his humanity, his generosity of spirit, his charm, his talent as an artist, his work for charity, particularly Cystic Fibrosis, and the devastating way in which he used his gift for cartoons to attack pomposity, political cant, and sectarian bigotry wherever he saw it."

It seems that providing illustrations for children's books was just a minor side job for Friers, but we should be very glad it happened and that his contributions to these Palmer/Lloyd books exist.

Other endpapers illustrations

• Curious artistic endpapers from the 1912 novel "Corporal Cameron"
• Dubble Bubble Quiz tucked away inside an old schoolbook
• Birds wearing clothes to help children learn to read in 1930
• Sheep featured on endpapers of Elson Junior Literature book
• 1936's "Albanian Wonder Tales": Frontispiece and endpapers
• Cool map featured on endpapers of "At Camp Kee Tov"
• The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle
• Gorgeous endpapers in 1895's "The Young Conductor"
• "Joyce of the Secret Squadron: A Captain Midnight Adventure"
• 3 cool things: The Story of Siegfried (published 1931)
• Endpapers and title page for 1920 primer: "The Winston Readers"
• Nifty endpapers from a Nelson Doubleday Junior Deluxe Edition
• "A Child's Garden of Verses" and the work of Eulalie
• Book cover & endpapers: "Doctor Dolittle in the Moon"
• Book cover and alarming endpapers: "All About the Atom"
• Book cover: "The Vanishing Shadow"
• The joyous illustrations of Johnny Gruelle's "The Paper Dragon"
• Farewell to a book
• Book cover: "Little Pilgrim to Penn's Woods"
• Book cover: "The Mystery of the Shining Children"
• Remembering "Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful"
• Endpapers of 1915's "The Brownies and the Goblins"
• Colorful covers and endpapers of 1926's "Granny Goose"
• Carlos Mérida's delightful illustrations for "The Magic Forest"
• Wynn's dandy endpapers illustration for 1933's "Incredible Land"