the report and other procrastinations ~

for the 50bookchallenge:

no. 41: Lincoln and Episodes of the Civil War by william e. doster ~ i think i was doster in another life. for those of you who wouldn't recognize the name if it were emblazoned on a mountainface (and why would it be?), doster was the unfortunate provost marshall upon whose shoulders fell the impossible task of defending Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt during the conspiracy trial in 1865. his war memoir isn't all that interesting in terms of overview, but he does have some interesting observations in his journals about his job as the provost (dealing with contraband and curfews and cathouses). his accounts of bull run, chancellorville, and gettysburg all offer interesting tidbits. and his address to LeHigh University on Lincoln in 1909 is quite poignant.

sadly, his recollection of the trial is all written long, long after the fact. it's a pity he didn't keep notes during the trial (or else he destoyed them). it's very clear by his tone that he was very sorry and very bitter about the outcome and ends his book on a very strong assertion that had justice been served, there would have never been any hanging. he was very much convinced that all four who went to their deaths were never found guilty of the charges put to them and his frustration with the process is very evident. you can hear the exhaustion and resignation when he says:

More than all, it was the period proper for punishment of the rebellion, and somebody must be hanged for example's sake.

i cannot imagine the grief he must have felt over the helplessness of his charge. he was an admirer of Lincoln, a friend to abolition, but also realistic about the sorrowful insurrection and all the misery that came with it. "if Booth was aiming at tyrants," he says, "he shot the wrong man. I do not say there were no officers then at Washington who did use their powers tyrannically. Who they were and what their tyrannical acts were is, however, another story." (and one which he sadly never tells).

no. 42: The Landry News by andrew clements ~ i won this book for submitting to a survey about reading. it's a chapter book for gradeschoolers, very dated, very after-school-special. it was mildly entertaining, but nowhere near deserving of the rave reviews i've seen of it online. it's a good story, but pretty ho-hum in its execution.

i'll prolly finish March this weekend (and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain), but i don't think i will make it to 50 at this rate. the other books i have started are too long to finish. ah well ~ i gave it an earnest try. we shall see what happens in the next few weeks.

meanwhile: Orthopaedic Injuries of the Civil War: $40.51 (we'll break $39 by tomorrow!)

oh, and LookingLand is still lost. news at four.

: o p

it's four o'clock ~ do you know where your nameservers are?

the LookingLand.com dns have resolved.

this domain porting process is a little like watching ducklings hatch. only the end product is not cute and fuzzy. in fact it's nightmarish ~ like waiting to see what comes of long-term incestuous breeding of basset hounds (a gift for anyone who recognizes this reference).

i have had big crashes before. i have lost whole novels to the digital divide. i have recouped from system failures and disk errors and whole hard drive crashes. i've wiped out LookingLand once before.

i lived then. i'm sure i will live now. and perhaps it's time to move onward in a fresh way: shake off the mantle of ghosts that crowd my shoulders, throw out that dishpan of hopes i once had for that tiny little garden carved out of the ether.

start planting again.



God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.

i've got four animé scripts to write and a final paper due since last thursday. yet writing this blog entry is about the only thing i have accomplished so far today.

i'm gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps and get to work.

i'll prolly check in later.

the book has dropped another 6¢.

just because i've nothing better to do than post ~

click here to see what LookingLand reborn may look like in 2007.

that is, if the flash menu doesn't kill me first. i really want it to work, but i think my flash software is sadly out of date and i can't get the silly thing to render properly (so what you see there is just placeholder template until i can figger it out).

grumble

no, i haven't finished the scripts i am supposed to be writing.
no, i haven't written my paper.
no, i don't care.

p.s. points to inkidink who correctly guessed the source of the bassett hound reference (as i knew she would).

: D