Madeline Brandeis revisited

I had almost forgotten that I wrote about some of Madeline Brandeis' books ten years ago. I guess that's par for the course for my brain, which has been turned to oatmeal by current events, these days.

I thought I had just this week learned that the children's author was also a director, taking the helm of 1918's silent fairy tale film The Star Prince. But I guess I had known that, too, as I wrote in 2015: "In her amazing and too-short life, she was also a pioneer filmmaker. You can read about those efforts at the Women Film Pioneers Project." You can also read about Brandeis' The Star Prince in this review from one of my favorite film bloggers, Movies Silently. That review notes: "The story is heavily influenced by fairy tales and there are bad aspects to that as well as good. Equating beauty with goodness is not such a great lesson, nor is making the main villain a dwarf. I think Brandeis’s heart was in the right place but some of the decisions do not exactly work."

Anyway, I was reading up (refreshing my memory) about Brandeis because I'm selling some of her books on eBay as part of Resimplify Me. It's a small collection that includes volumes from her Children of All Lands and Children of America series for younger readers. Hopefully they will make nice additions to someone's collection.

As part of putting that listing together, I came across these neat old inscriptions in a few of the Brandeis books, which I'll share here for posterity...

Above: Inscription inside The Little Dutch Tulip Girls

Above: Inscription inside Little Rose of the Mesa.

Above: Inscription inside Little John of New England.

Psychedelic book cover: "Tongues of the Moon"

• Title: Tongues of the Moon
• Additional cover text: "A plot to set the stars on fire ... chilling science fiction"
• Author: Philip José Farmer (1918-2009)
• Cover illustration: Unknown!! It would be really nice to sleuth this one out, so the groovy artist can be acknowledged for the record.
• Publisher: Pyramid Books (T2260)
• Year of this edition: Second printing, July 1970
• Original publication date: 1964 (also by Pyramid Books, with a different cover)
• Pages: 143
• Format: Paperback
• Cover price: 75 cents
• Back cover excerpt: "This is Science Fiction — but — perhaps less Fiction than Science ... Man's fate has always been to play deadly games with the enormous forces of the universe ... tempting doom. And now it may be too late ..."
• Grim opening passage: Fireflies on the dark meadow of Earth ... The men and women looking up through the dome in the center of the crater of Eratosthenes were too stunned to cry out, and some did not understand all at once the meaning of those pinpoints on the shadowy face of the new Earth, the lights blossoming outwards, then dying. So bright they could be seeen through the cloudmasses covering a large part of Europe. So bright they could be located as London, Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen, Leningrade, Rome, Reykjavik, Athens, Cairo ... Then, a flare near Moscow that spread out and out and out. ...
• Excerpt #2: Earth, dark now, except for steady glares here and there, forest fires and cities, probably, which would burn for days. Perhaps weeks. Then, when the fires died out, the embers cooled, no more fire. No more vegetation, no more animals, no more human beings. Not for centuries.
• Excerpt #3: "He'd have to be a raving maniac to do that!" said Broward. "He's a maniac all right, but he knows what he's doing and how to do it," said Scone.
• Excerpt #4: Broward patted her back and said, "I know, sweetheart. Try to forget what's happened, think of it as a nightmare. Now we're awake and in a world that needs to be gardened and needs love as never before." 
• Rating on Amazon: 3.6 stars (out of 5). 
• Rating on Goodreads: 2.97 stars (out of 5). 
• Goodreads review #1: In 2023, Jim wrote:  "One of PJF's earlier books, from 1964, and not one of his better books, but still of interest. In this one, Earth is destroyed in a nuclear war — but the war is not over. There were Earth colonies on the Moon and Mars, and led by power-mad dictators, are going to continue the war. Our hero, Broward, is one man who wants to stop the fighting ... and killing. Farmer has a rather cynical view of human nature — much like Mark Twain. However, in this story, he gives us a hero who has the courage to stand up against the insanity of war."
• Goodreads review #2: In 2019, Dave wrote: "Awful! Lol. I was hoping for a little cheesy sci-fi but this was terrible! No chapters, just one long run on story with weak one dimensional characters. Unbearable. I pity the Little Free Library that will house this. Not only will it cheapen the company of the other books where it resides, but some poor soul may choose it thinking it a small hidden masterpiece. Only when they reach home and crack it open will they realize their fate. I can’t even bear to stash it during daylight; one night, soon, I’ll be off to some darkened street to hide this poor mistake of a story."
• That's really harsh: Agreed. There's no need to disparage books that are placed in Little Free Libraries. Let readers explore and decide for themselves. A much more in-depth and thoughtful review of the strengths and weakness of Tongues of the Moon can be found in this 2022 post on MPorcius Fiction Log, which has been going strong since 2013 and already has 42 posts (!) this year. MPorcius writes: "I like the broad outlines of the plot of Tongues of the Moon, and its themes and ideas.  All the Biblical references and the theme of an atheist acquiring faith are a good change of pace from the references to Greek and Norse mythology and to Shakespeare, and the insistence that religion is a scam, that is the norm in the science fiction I generally read. ... There is a lot of talk about culture and ethnicity in Tongues of the Moon, and while it seems Farmer admires all the various people of Earth, and the whole point of the book is that we should all get along, some of his depictions might be considered uncomfortably stereotypical." 
• Related headlines from this morning, 61 years after the novel's publication: Trump says he’s "angry" at Putin’s remark questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy: The president said he would mull secondary tariffs on Russian oil if Putin stalls the peace process with Ukraine ... and ... Elon Musk’s Mission to Take Over NASA — and Mars (Musk & government officials have discussed a scenario in which SpaceX would give up its moon-focused Artemis contracts to free up funds for Mars-related projects) ... and ... Nuclear risk from military AI prompts calls for US, China and others to seek agreement

Stripe and Bandit are checking out the grooviness.

1910 letter inside "Legends & Tales of Old Munich"

This letter, dated May 27, 1910, in Munich, was typed and placed inside a gift copy of Legends & Tales of Old Munich, told by Franz Trautmann (1813-1887) and translated by Amelia Curtis Stahl. 

The letter states: 

"To one who knows, loves, and embellishes the ancient, historic, and beautiful City round which the legends therein contained cluster, THIS BOOK is offered, for her gracious acceptance, by Her sincere friend,"

The last name on the signature looks like Soltau.

As to the recipient, it may be the name written on the title page (see below). I can't figure out the first letter, so it could be Meülholtz or Neülholtz or Heülholtz, or ... 

But none of those is a common German last name, so I'm clearly misinterpreting the century-old German cursive. If we toss out the first "L," the most likely name would be Neüholtz. Anyone wish to weigh in?

The chapter titles include: Concerning the Origin of the City of Munich, The Cross in the Wieskapelle, The Little Faust Tower at Sendling Gate, Dragon Corner on the Market-Place, The Spoon Landlord behind the Rathhaus, The Black Footprint under the Organ of Unser Franen, The Monkey on St. Laurenz, The Hunger Bell in Theatine Monastery and the Theatine Clock, and Concerning Ghosts and Apparitions in Munich. 

There are no online reviews of this 1910 book, but, just last summer, Lunte Books in Eugene, Oregon, did a 23-minute examination of the book on its YouTube channel. Very cool and valuable for the historic record! 

A commenter on the video states: "Now this is the kind of travel book that I truly enjoy — To learn about a country's culture, and not just see sites or read descriptions of buildings — This fuller picture makes the destination much more compelling. Thanks for discussing this book, and for giving so many fascinating details."

Phillies Opening Day 2025

It's Opening Day for Major League Baseball, but it's hard to get truly excited at this moment, given the unsettling nature of how things are unfolding in the United States, on multiple fronts.¹  But I'll be a trouper and take a swing at it.

Sitting atop the desk in my bedroom were these old Philadelphia Phillies media guides, which may or may not end up on eBay (they wouldn't fetch much). 

Media guides were incredible handy for sportswriters back in the days before the internet began to fill up with our accumulated human knowledge and history (now being replaced by our accumulated misinformation, disinformation, AI garbage and alternative history).

Decades-old media guide sell for a couple dollars apiece, usually in bulk lots. Folks mostly don't want them, and they'd rather have other things taking up shelf space. I get it. They're no different than old encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, etc. Curiosities that add to clutter. I reckon that, in my case, one or two aren't a huge space commitment, though.

Here are some images from inside these guides (from 1981 and 1988).

The Phillies open their 2025 season against the Washington Nationals this afternoon. One thing I do like about Arizona is getting Phillies games earlier in the day (three-hour time difference). It's especially nice with weekend afternoon games, which may start at 10 a.m. my time and be over before lunch, leaving the rest of the day open.

The Phillies' lineup today will be:

SS Trea Turner

1B Bryce Harper

3B Alec Bohm

DH Kyle Schwarber

C J.T. Realmuto

LF Max Kepler

RF Nick Castellanos

2B Bryson Stott

CF Brandon Marsh

SP Zack Wheeler

They have a very good team this year. I'm more optimistic than the average Philadelphia sports fan, who thinks the Phillies should have gutted the team after losing to the New York Mets last October. I guess I can be bold like John Doll 96 years ago and make some predictions for the upcoming season:

DIVISION WINNERS:

AL East: Baltimore

AL Central: Detroit

AL West: Texas

NL East: Philadelphia

NL Central: Chicago

NL West: Los Angeles

WILD CARDS:

AL: New York, Boston, Cleveland

NL: Atlanta, New York, Milwaukee

AL Pennant: Baltimore over New York

NL Pennant: Los Angeles over Philadelphia

World Series: Los Angeles over Baltimore

Not exactly going out on a limb there, of course.

Maybe, in a weird way, it will be nice to have a predictable summer on the baseball diamonds across the United States, when much else is in disarray and despair. Then, this autumn, we'll have One Battle After Another.

Some previous baseball posts

• A neat piece of Phillies history (1970 hex sign giveaway)
• John Doll's 1929 baseball predictions
• Down memory lane with 1983 Topps Baseball Sticker Album
• Collection of Phillies ticket stubs
• Baseball-themed advertisements from a 1953 Phillies scorecard
• Inside the 1973 Spartanburg Phillies program
• Some Phillies Fever from the Bicentennial summer of 1976
• It's been five years since Harry Kalas, the Voice of the Phillies, died [2014]
• Steve Jeltz's greatest day (Phillies 15, Pirates 11)
• Connie Mack has some advice for the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies
• For Opening Day, great Phillies hairstyles of the late 1970s
• Ches Crist, baseball player
• It's Opening Day! Do you have Phillies Phever?
• Philadelphia Phillies spring training photos from March 1984
• 1959 Fleer baseball card showing the "Ted Williams Shift"
• Baseball program ads for Coca-Cola and Hires
• An all-star lineup of Camel smokers from 1954
• Postcard: The haunted hotel that spooks Bryce Harper

Grim footnote

1. For example:

• Charlotte Clymer: "If you think what happened to Rumeysa Ozturk can't happen to you because you're a citizen and she's not, you are sorely mistaken. Ozturk was snatched off the street not for being a national security threat but for having a wrong opinion. If we don't put a stop to this, it's coming for all of us."
• Gillian Branstetter: "No matter your station in life, there is astoundingly little separating you from those men in that cage behind Kristi Noem. No charges, no attorneys, no hearings, no trial. Just conjecture and brute force could be enough to justify completely dehumanizing you, too."
• Erin Reed: "It’s not just trans and gender nonconforming people who should be worried — most every marginalized group will be impacted by this measure, as well as huge impacts on married women."
• Prem Thakker: "So the position of the Trump-Vance administration — and every member of Congress unless they explicitly say otherwise — is quite literally you do not have guaranteed free speech rights in America if you say things they don't like. That is the headline."
• Andrea Pitzer: "As long as thugs in hoodies can disappear people from our streets, we do not have a functioning democracy."

James Baldwin, 62 years ago

In light of the weekend headlines¹, I thought I'd share this compelling passage at the start of an essay that James Baldwin penned for The Saturday Review of December 21, 1963 ("A Talk to Teachers").

 Footnote

1. For example:

• Greenland is hard to defend. As Trump threatens, the Danes are trying.
• New Trump memo seen as threat to lawyers, attempt to scare off lawsuits
• Autocrats worldwide rolling back rights and rule of law — and citing Trump's example
• Musk and Trump ratchet up involvement in Wisconsin Supreme Court race
• Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts
• IRS nears deal with ICE to share addresses of suspect undocumented immigrants
• ICE in Florida detaining Cubans during immigration appointments
• White House seeks corporate sponsorships for Easter event
• After losing millions in federal funds, Texas food banks must now rely on donors 
• Trump turbulence leads allies to rethink reliance on U.S. weapons
• Germany unlocking billions to supercharge military
• Russia launches massive drone attack on Kyiv ahead of ceasefire talks
• Bernie Sanders is drawing record crowds as he pushes Democrats to 'fight oligarchy'
• Bernie Sanders and AOC draw huge crowd to Tucson’s Catalina High School
• Iowans Are Backing Trans People After Lawmakers Legalized Discrimination
• RFK Jr. Vows To Make Measles Deaths So Common They Won’t Be Upsetting Anymore [The Onion, but not wrong]

Book cover: "A Dream of Dracula" — plus other vampire stuff

• Title: A Dream of Dracula
• Subtitle: In Search of the Living Dead
• Author: Leonard Wolf (1923-2019). He was featured in a 2023 Papergreat post about another book of his: 1968's Voices from the Love Generation.
• Dust jacket design: John Renfer, using a 1941 photo that's copyrighted by RKO Pictures.
• Publication date: 1972
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 327
• Dust jacket price: $8.95 (which would a steep $67 in February 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Dedication: "This book is dedicated Bram Stoker on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of DRACULA."
• Excerpt #1: "Meanwhile, somewhere in that field of desire and Coca-Colas, hashish, LSD and old-fashioned, ordinary picnic pleasure, a child is born." [Wolf is writing about the Altamont Free Concert of 1969.]
• Excerpt #2: "Dracula is from the moment that we meet him in Bram Stoker's novel a dry horror, which is a way of saying that he is intelligent evil, unlike the wet, slime-covered things that slide through our instinctive dreams."
• Excerpt #3: "Vampires have even been reported in Outer Mongolia. And if Hollywood is any prophet, they will be found waiting for mankind on planets where our rocket ships have not yet landed."
• Excerpt #4: "Christopher Lee is the best and most famous screen Dracula since Bela Lugosi. I sat in his London living room, which felt as if all of its mirrors, couches, tables and walls had been dipped into a tasteful sea-green dye. Lee had the color television on and was watching an important cricket match. ... He spoke more or less nonstop, in a rich but curiously charged voice. It was at once evident that he took the role of Dracula with great seriousness and had read all about Stoker and the folklore of vampires. He had very clear opinions about his relationship to the role. He pointed out that he had nothing to do with the scripts of the films he made."
• Excerpt #5: "Dracula, then, is a novel that lurches toward greatness, stumbling over perceived and unperceived mysteries: Christianity, insanity, identity, a spectrum of incest possibilities, marriage, homosexuality, immortality and death." 
• Excerpt #6: "The vampire fascinates a century that is as much frightened as it is exhilarated by its rush toward sexual freedom. ... He kiss permits all unions. ... Moreover, his is an easy love that evades the usual failures of the flesh. ... And it stands for death."   
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.68 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2014, Aric Cushing summed it up thusly: "A personal journey through a landscape of childhood dreams, melancholy, and vampire sentiment."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.1 stars (out of 5) 
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2004, mirasreviews wrote: "'A Dream of Dracula' is a meditation on the novel 'Dracula' and its 20th century progeny — literary, cultural, and personal — published on the 75th anniversary of Bram Stoker's novel, in 1972. A few years later, author Leonard Wolf would publish the most elaborately annotated version of 'Dracula.' Wolf is one of the world's foremost 'Dracula' scholars, but the novel has touched him more intimately than other academics. 'A Dream of Dracula' is a collection of ruminations on 'Dracula,' vampires, blood, and death, often is a stream of conscious style, all connected, directly or loosely, to the 19th century gothic novel whose popularity is set to survive longer than even its vampiric villain did. The book's ten chapters weave in and out of the past and present."
• Other views: The book is discussed by "Tinhuviel Artanis" in a 2006 LiveJournal post: "This is ... one of the best books on the subject of vampires, vampirism, the folklore of the the vampire, and the vampire's influence on popular culture. Published in 1972, it has that air of revolution, the quest for freedom, and the celebration of the absurd wrapped neatly in its poetry." ... And Alex Bledsoe wrote about Wolf's book on his blog, stating: "Wolf was actually born in Transylvania, and the book is a dive into both the legend of Dracula in popular culture, and into the psyche of Leonard Wolf. One is obviously more interesting now than the other, but even the personal asides and extended vignettes have their entertainment value. Wolf was writing at the end of the Sixties, so some of his interviewees actually use phrases like, 'groovy' and 'turned on.'"

But wait, there's more

I've been keeping some vampiric tidbits tucked away, but they'll never make their own standalone post, so I'm posting them here:

A 2023 tweet:

Mark Hodgson of the website Black Hole wrote in 2014 about 1921's Drakula halála, a now-lost film that predates Nosferatu as an adaptation of Stoker's novel. Hodgson writes: "While the plot doesn't follow Stoker's novel, many situations are familiar from it. Dracula's immortality, his castle, his brides, Mary's suffering health after meeting him, the asylum ... possibly the story elements were juggled to dodge any copyright issue?"

Also in 2014, Hodgson wrote a fun post on Black Hole about visiting Bela Lugosi's former home.

And speaking of Lugosi, here's a photo I took recently of a Lugosi life mask mounted on the wall at Terror Trader, an amazeballs horror-themed store in Chandler, Arizona.

Receipt tucked inside 1978 Radio Shack computer programming book

Truly interesting paper receipts are going by the wayside. They were already being phased out when I launched this blog in 2010 (I think this is the first one I wrote about), and now the demise of this kind of ephemera is rapidly accelerating. We get emailed our receipts. We crumple them up and toss them in the wastebin on the way out the door. Or we get crappy little receipts with few details. But there's still the old stuff out there for us to stumble upon. In drawers. In desks. Or tucked away inside books.

This receipt remained inside 57 Practical Programs & Games in BASIC since the day it was handwritten by the sales clerk at a Tucson, Arizona, Radio Shack in October 1980. It tanned the two pages it was stuck between at the front of the book. It was a fairly pricey book for the time: $3.95 in 1980 is about $15.25 today. But, then again, home computing was a pricey hobby. And Radio Shack was probably the go-to spot for home computer enthusiasts. It remained so for quite a while. I purchased my first PC from a Radio Shack in Gettysburg in either 1993 or 1994. 

This book was written by Ken Tracton and published by Radio Shack in 1978. The subtitle on the front alluringly states "Programs for Everything from Space War Games to Blackjack ... from Craps to I Ching!" But that's a bit misleading. By my quick count, only 6 of the 57 programs in the book are games. (And I Ching isn't really a game.)

Most of the "practical" BASIC programs included probably sound very dull to today's computer users: Annular Sections, Bubble Sort, Compounded Amounts, Fibonacci Numbers, Gaussian Probability Function, Hydrocarbon Combustion, Inverse Hyperbolic Functions, L-Pad Minimum Loss System, Points on the Circumference, Vector Cross Product. These are programs, though, that provide quick results that otherwise would have required a lot of handwritten math, a scientific calculator, a reference book and/or an accountant to work out. The whole book appears to be available on the Internet Archive, if you're interested. Commenting on Goodreads in 2015, Jerry states: "I tried a couple of the programs in HotPaw BASIC on the iPad, and they still work. Why wouldn’t they? So now I have a BASIC program on my iPad to tell me the day of the week from any date post-1752."

If it's computer games you wanted more than mathematical nerdness, there were other books at the time, such as 1978's BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl, and, by 1984, there was COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventure Games if you wanted to try your hand at creating something akin to Pirate Adventure, Zork or Planetfall.

March 2025 Postcrossing updates

Some Sunday afternoon postcard updates as I try to figure out why the theme song from 1975's Almost Anything Goes is stuck in my head — and why that early precursor of all of today's reality show nonsense has a rating of 8.5 on IMDb. I love 1970s culture as much as anyone, but sheesh. Anyway...

Postcrossing Arrivals

Gavin from Scotland, who works on technology that services pipelines, sent a photo postcard of snow-covered Castle Fraser and added in the message on the back: "We have actually had sun all week for a change. So hopefully spring is on its way." Alas, "Spring" is on its way here in the desert, too, as the forecast says we'll be in the mid-90s by the end of March.

Anke from Germany has a cat named Louis Vuitton and mentions that she's from Friedberg, which has a huge historic castle complex and a special connection to Elvis Presley, who was stationed there during his time in the U.S. Army.

Bona from Hong Kong, who prefers "chill" video games, writes: "It's pretty hot here too, but we are surrounded by water."

Victoria from Manchester, England, sent a postcard that features King Charles III's "Diversity and Community" postage stamp, one of four marking his new reign. Victoria writes: "I have a cat called Willow. She is the cutest in the world! When I adopted her in 2022 she had been there the longest as she was so timid, but she's really come out of her shell now. I think she's ready for a friend. I've been inquiring about kittens to join our family!"

Lothar from Germany, who is a retired mechanical engineer and works on model trains, also sent a great castle postcard featuring Meersburg. He added: "We visited it several times during our holidays in that region, but not in winter." He mailed the card with a stamp celebrating 500 years of the Wasunger Carnival.

Thanks and messages

from Postcrossing postcard recipients

Ari from Italy writes: "I received your lovely postcard (at the speed of light, too), thank you SO SO SO MUCH!! I love it, it truly made my day. And thank you for writing part of it in Italian, it warmed my heart so much. We are also very worried about the US's current situation, but I hope you'll be able to be hopeful towards the future; the world has known progress, peace and cooperation before, and I believe that oppression and violence won't survive for long."

"B" from Belgium writes: "I have recently received your postcard. I don't dare to say anything about the political trends in the US. All I can say is be patient during four years. ... I am a federal civil servant. In my country, the status of a federal civil servant is threatened. The current government want to eliminate it. I have already done a strike day. I have the impression that this is a general movement of which DT represents the hardest face. Thank you for your sending and for your words in my mother tongue. I appreciate it."

SimLing from Malaysia writes: "Hello Chris! Thank you for your cute postcard of your cats, it makes my day. I am so happy to receive the very first postcard from you since this account started. It will be the cover page of my collection. I've listened to 2025 remaster version of 'The Lamp lies down on Board Way' [sic] which just releases few days ago. Artistic!! And will always pay attention to the artist."

Jasmin from Germany writes: "Thanks a lot for your postcard! Your three cats on the picture are really cute. And I really appreciate your words. Well, D.T. is on the news every single day. And everyday I ask myself again: what the hell is he doing today? How he treats Selensky, how he speaks about Ukraine as if Ukraine caused this war. I spent some days in Hamburg last weekend and did not watch any news. But then one evening I suddenly read a headline that said Selensky was booted out the White House. And some people had annotated the article, complaining about his outfit — because he was not wearing a suit. I mean — what?? Everybody knows that what he is wearing is his kind of uniform. He even met King Charles wearing this 'normal' clothes ... Oh my goodness. As if there was nothing more important in this world. So I continued reading and started book no. 9 this year! Last year I read 55 books."

Lena from Latvia writes: "Hello Chris! Already felt the slight excitement and joy of receiving a postcard letter! I am 60 years old and writing letters to loved ones and acquaintances was a common thing once upon a time. I am glad that there is such a community of people postcrossing. It was nice to read some of the text in Latvian. (The content of this snippet is not joyful, though). A person always makes a choice where to direct his attention and with this attention feeds and supports an event, a phenomenon, a state. Just thinking out loud. ... I'm glad to live on this Earth! Every day is a gift! And people, all people are connected to each other like a single cloth, the fabric of being. We influence each other and we can do it consciously. You have powerful professional opportunities to influence the inner state of people, the vector of attention can be directed to the beautiful aspects of life. There are so many of them around! I seem to be getting carried away ... I've worked in different fields — now a school librarian. Today I taught a class at an elementary school about Astrid Lindgren's books and was pleased that some of the children took the books to read. For some reason, Fahrenheit 451 came to mind."