Google's Classic Book Downloads

Some Interesting News...

Have you had a chance to check out Google's free book downloads? They are offering PDF files of many classic volumes. These are page images of antique books that are in the public domain, not just text files of their written content. It's the next best thing to holding the book in your own hands.

This Google feature should provide many hours of interesting browsing.

The Library of Congress American Memory website has some interesting and informative magazines, periodicals and books from America's past. I've always been amazed that in most cases, the libraries or universities that digitized them put a copyright on the page images that restricts anything but educational or personal use (example).

It doesn't seem right to me to claim copyright on something that's in the public domain. I'm glad that Google isn't putting restrictions on the use of their page images -- or at least I couldn't find any copyright restrictions in the information.

I'm also glad that the downloads are small enough that even an internet user with dial-up can enjoy some of the books.

Here's the Google Blog post about the new service, and here's an example of an antique book that's available for download -- Ella Lincoln: Or Western Prairie Life, An Autobiography.

To find public domain texts, go to the book search and choose to search in "Full Text". As you visit the various results, any that offer a "Download" are in the public domain.

Photoshopping Wrongs?

Some Interesting News...

CNet has posted a photo gallery titled "Photos: Pictures That Lie" that is interesting to look through. It shows some well-known photo alterations that have appeared in the news and others that I had not seen before. The gallery certainly illustrates that it's not necessarily paranoid to view media images with skepticism.

Starkweather Remembered

All In The Family... Another Trip Down Memory Lane... A Small Detour from the Cheerful Ramble

The launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellites in late 1957 and the Starkweather murder spree of early 1958 are two of the first news events that I remember.

I remember feeling curious about the Sputniks and looking into the sky at night hoping to see them. My memories of the Starkweather murders are much more sinister.

Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate were a teenage couple from Lincoln, Nebraska, who killed eleven people in an evil spree of murder and robbery in January of 1958. I was 7 years old and a first grader then, living with my family on a ranch south of Johnstown in north-central Nebraska.

I remember my mother and father listening to the radio to hear the news about Starkweather and Fugate. I was worried that they might come to my house. I think I remember my father keeping a shotgun near at hand when he went to bed, but I don't know if that is true or if I was just hoping that he did.

I remember the obvious relief of my parents when Fugate and Starkweather were finally caught in Wyoming, and I too was thankful to know that they were no longer roaming around killing people.

Of course, I didn't realize all that was happening. Tonight, I read the story of Charles Starkweather in Court TV's Crime Library. This passage was particularly interesting to me, because it describes the news my parents were hearing on the radio. Nebraska was in a state of emergency after the murder of C. Laurer Ward, his wife Clara and their maid, Lillian Fencl (the eighth, ninth and tenth Starkweather killings).

Governor Anderson was notified immediately of the savage attack on his friend. Shortly afterwards, he called out the National Guard, "and they were soon cruising the streets with jeeps armed with mounted machine guns. Parents with guns drawn rushed to the schools and took their children home. The city was completely sealed off. A block by block search began. The FBI started an investigation. A thousand-dollar reward was offered by the mayor. Aircraft were sent up to help look for the Wards' black Packard." (Allen, William, Starkweather: The Story of a Mass Murderer. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.) Source

Because of Starkweather and Fugate, I became aware of the word "murder" (a word with an ugly sound and meaning,) and I learned about the electric chair. In my children's lives, I think the school shootings at Columbine and at Heath High School in nearby Paducah, Kentucky, were similar but infinitely more frightening events.

Technorati tags:

Starkweather
1950's
fifties

Scenes of Late August

Life in Christian County, Kentucky...

Smoke in the barns

Languid in the warmth

Yellow in the cottonwood leaves

Red in the sassafras

Technorati tags:

autumn
Christian County, KY
Kentucky scenery

No More Slugs!

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... The Rural Life...

We've had a rainy summer here in Kentucky's Pennyrile. It hasn't been an extremely wet summer, but the rains have been regular. In fact, we had rain showers again today. Many years, we stop getting rain sometime in July and it's dry until sometime in late September or even October.

I'm glad that the farmers are harvesting a good corn crop and that they have a good crop of soybeans still growing, but I'm ready for dryer weather myself. For one thing, I'm tired of mowing the lawn. I started mowing regularly in early April, and it looks like I'll be mowing regularly through October.

I'm also afraid all this regular moisture might get the slugs started again. We used to have an unbelievable slug problem here, and I don't want a recurrence.

When we first moved out here, the slugs were everywhere, and there were lots of them. It was impossible to walk outside at night without stepping on them. One night I forgot and went outside barefoot. I felt a slug under one foot, recoiled in disgust, and stepped on another slug with my other foot.

These were not tiny creatures. Many of them were two inches in length, and some were three and even four inches long. In the garden, they wreaked havoc on the lettuce and other tender leaves and vegetables, and sometimes, I even found one inside the house, always in the catfood dish. Wherever they slithered, they left a shiny slime trail behind.

Some people said to shake salt on them to kill them, but after doing that I felt like a murderer. It seemed a horrible death, even for a slug. Yeast-water traps attracted them in the garden, but there was no end to the hordes. I've never wanted to use pesticides on the scale it would have taken to seriously decrease the population. We just accepted that the yard was full of slugs. I figured that all of Kentucky was like this.

Then we had a terribly hot, dry summer. The leaves turned brown on many trees before the first of August. Some trees even died from the drought, and we certainly didn't have to worry about lawn mowing. We were afraid that our well might go dry. Apparently the lack of moisture was hard on the slugs and they either died or weren't able to lay eggs because I haven't seen a slug in the yard since.

I think the reason the slugs got so overpopulated was that the farmland around us was in the CRP (Crop Reduction Program) for years. It was mowed once a year, and the hay was left lying on the ground. All that overgrown vegetation with the rotting underlayer of hay made a cool, damp habitat for slugs to breed and shelter in. I base this theory on something I read about slugs getting bad in fields that were no-till farmed for many years. Plowing the ground every five years or so is recommended to keep the slugs under control.

The land is now in active use, partly plowed and partly grazed, so we probably won't have another slug infestation even if the weather is wet for a year or two. At least I hope not!


- - - - - - - - - -

University of Kentucky fact sheet on slugs
CDC fact sheet about a parasitic disease you can get from raw slugs and snails


Technorati tags:

slugs