We attended our first big-time college football game and it was awesome. What a way to enjoy a “barn-burner” game than Texas-OU at the Cotton Bowl on Saturday, October 7, 2023. While this is not my usual post, I wanted to share pictures of the “game/event.”
The four Liberty ships named for oil pioneers, SS Edwin L. Drake, SS Orville P. Taylor, SS Lewis Emery, JR, and SS Patrick C. Boyle, made many voyages across the seven seas during the war and all escaped sinking by Axis submarines and bombings.
The record of the war service of these ships, as furnished by the United States Maritime Commission, is an interesting piece of history associated with the Pennsylvania and New York oil fields.
Colonel Edwin L. Drake drilled the historic Drake well at Titusville in 1859; Orville P. Taylor, after several failures, drilled the first commercial oil well in Allegany County in 1879; Lewis Emery, Jr. was a pioneer oil producer, refiner, and able Pennsylvania legislator, and Patrick C. Boyle was one of the most brilliant and best-known pioneer oil editors and publishers.
The Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard delivered the SS Edwin L. Drake in September 1943. She sailed successively to the following ports: Norfolk, Alexandria (Egypt), Port Said, Gibraltar, New York, U. K., Clyde, Loch Ewe, Molotovsk, Kola, U. K. Barry, Avonmouth, Omaha Beach (France), Spithead, New York, Solent, Le Havre, Swansea, Milford Haven, Cardiff, New York, Clyde, Molotocsk, Kola, U. K., New York, Cape Henry, Baltimore, Norfolk, Gibraltar, Naples, Salerno, Naples, Gibraltar, San Juan Cristobal, to the Pacific, Buckner Bay, Okinawa, Tokyo, Balboa, Cristobal, New York, Philadelphia, Downs, Antwerp, Falmouth, Halifax, Kirkwall, Danzig, and carried cargo for UNRRA. The International Freighting Corp., Inc., New York operated the SS Edwin L. Drake for the War Shipping Administration, and three captains commanded the vessel.
Bethlehem-Fairfield delivered the SS Orville P. Taylor in September 1943. She was lend-leased to Great Britain, which renamed her Samothrace. The British Ministry of War Transport operated the Samothracey. She sailed to the following ports: Norfolk, Alexandria, Port Said, New York, Augusta, Naples, Taranto, New York, Norfolk, Suez, Karachi, Bombay, Colombo, Calcutta, Aden, U.K., Port Said, Aden, Cape Town, Rosario, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Casablanca, U.K., Gibraltar, Naples, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Madras, Vizagapatam, Rangoon, Port Swettenham, Padang, Belawan, Colombo, Singapore, Batavia. She was last reported under repair at Calcutta. Because the ship was operated by the British, the names and numbers of her masters are not available.
Following delivery from the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, Baltimore, in October 1943, the SS Lewis Emery, Jr., proceeded to New York to begin carrying military cargo. She sailed to the United Kingdom, Kola Bay, Back to Belfast, New York, Philadelphia, Cape Henry, Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, Bandar Shapur, Bahrein, Port Sudan, back to New York, U.K., Murmansk, Baltimore, U.K., Molotovsk, Kola, Belfast, Le Havre, Rouen, Solent, Flushing, Ghent, London, New York, Galveston, Gibraltar, Marseille, Cristobal, Panama Canal to the Pacific, Lingayen Gulf, Manila, Cebu, Pearl Harbor, San Francisco, San Pedro. She was in the Temporary Reserve Fleet moored in Suisun Bay, California. The Merchants and Miners Transportation Co, Baltimore operated her for the War Shipping Administration and was commanded by three different masters.
The Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard delivered the SS Patrick C. Boyle in September 1943. Boland & Cornelius of New York operated her for the War Shipping Administration. On her first voyage, she carried Lend-Lease and commercial cargo, to the Persian Gulf. She visited other ports including Bahrein, Karramshar, Abadan, and Port Sudan. During later voyages, she traveled to Marseille, Oran, Naples, Algiers, Loch Ewe, Toulon, Antwerp, Le Havre, Ghent, Manila, and Eniwetok. The Captain, Peter L. Hickey, reported that on several occasions, particularly while at anchor in Egypt, and while discharging cargo at Antwerp, the ship was under enemy attack. The vessel was in the service of the army at Yokohama.[1]
[1] John P. Herrick, “Liberty Ships Named For Oil Pioneers Eluded Axis Submarines,” https://www.alleganyhistory.org/culture/stories-and-folklore/original-stories/3146-liberty-ships-named-for-oil-pioneers-eluded-axis-submarines
Mason City Iowa school district ejects Friday Night Lights book from reading game.
The Iowa Senate File 496 requires every book available to students to be “age appropriate” and free of any “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” This regulation authorized the Mason City Community School District to remove H. G. Bissenger’s book Friday Night Lights to ban it from schools in the district.
How did the school district determine that the book was unsuitable? Did they have a group of educators in the district read the book? Did they ask a panel of teachers and parents to review the book? No! They used ChatGPT to provide a “textual analysis” of the title. They used the artificial intelligence (AI) platform to screen the book. The district said it was “not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements.” Wow! This is another black mark for AI.
Friday Night Lights is the bestselling book about the 1988 Odessa Permian football team. The book revealed the “prominent role high school football plays in society” and the intense pressure on the athletes in these programs. You could apply the lessons from the book to any “big-time” high school or college athletic team. The book inspired a movie and television series. The book helped lead coaches into coaching in Texas. The author said it was a “great book for kids” especially teenage boys who “don’t like to read anything.”
Author Bissenger was shocked at the accusation and subsequent ban. He said, “There is no sex at all. I’ve never depicted a sex act.” “I purposely stayed away from that.” Bissenger added, “Kids are supposed to learn.” “They are supposed to learn about the elements of our society.”
This application of AI to screen books could metastasize to other states. Previously, I have written about the flaws in AI. Using AI will only expose more of the software’s problems. Authors should fight this dangerous use of AI.
Vice President Kamala Harris declined Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ offer to “debate the merits of the state’s new curriculum on African American history.”
At an African American Methodist church in Orlando, Florida, Vice President Harris proclaimed, “There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.”
The new Florida school guidelines require teachers to instruct middle school students that “enslaved people developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied to their personal benefit.” Harris called it an “attempt to gaslight us in an attempt to divide and distract our nation with unnecessary debates.”
Rather than the slaves “developing beneficial skills,” slaves actually provided new farming methods to the South.
Georgia planters grew rice in swamps, employing methods that South Carolinians had learned from their slaves, including diking rivers to create impoundment ponds and building floodgates to regulate water flow. Yams were brought by slaves from Africa. Eggplant came from Africa to South America, from whence it was brought by Portuguese slave traders to the United States. Peanuts from South America were introduced into Virginia by African cooks who arrived onboard slave ships.<1>
The contributions of slaves to early American agriculture is discounted and ignored, mainly because of the lack of records prepared by the slaveholder. The plantation owner was mainly interested in writing to justify enslavement. However, many plantation owners relied on the agricultural knowledge that Africans brought over from across the Atlantic. Perhaps the best example of this is rice cultivation in South Carolina relied on indigenous West African knowledge of growing Oryza glaberrima. This specific knowledge was invaluable in transforming South Carolina into a rice-producing powerhouse. <2>
Slavery was the basis of wealth in the South. The value of land and slaves made planters the richest men in America. So like the Florida middle school curriculum, plantation owners tried to justify slavery.
Defenders of slavery:
To own twenty slaves in 1860 was to be among the wealthiest men in America, easily within the top five percent of southern white families. Almost three million slaves worked on farms and plantations in 1835. Most of the value of agricultural output of the South was produced on large cotton plantations. More than half of all enslaved men and women lived on plantations that had more than 20 enslaved laborers; about a quarter lived on plantations that had more than 50. <4>
Sources:
<1> Brian Williams, “Slavery and Southern Agriculture,” https://www.briangwilliams.us/environmental-history/slavery-and-southern-agriculture.html, retrieved August 16, 2023.
<2> “African-American history of agriculture in the United States,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_history_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States, retrieved August 16, 2023.
<3> “The Southern Argument for Slavery,” U.S. History – Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia, https://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp, retrieved August 16, 2023.
<4> “Planters, Yeoman and Slaves,” University of Cincinnati, https://www.uc.edu/content/dam/uc/ce/docs/OLLI/Page%20Content/Planters,%20Yeoman%20and%20the%20Rest.pdf, retrieved August 16, 2023.
I just learned about the Alliance of Independent Authors and I thought I would share some information about this international organization.
The Alliance of Independent Authors is a non-profit professional association for authors who self-publish. Their mission is ethics and excellence in self-publishing.
The Alliance of Independent Authors has a global team who, together with ambassadors and advisors worldwide, provide trusted, best-practice information and advice to the author community and provide our members with an extensive suite of benefits.
The Alliance of Independent Authors is global with members on all seven continents, and our outreach campaigns, self-publishing services center, guidebooks, live streams, podcasts, and blogs reach far and wide and have had an impact at every level of the wider author community.
The organization launched at the London Book Fair 2012 to foster excellence and ethics in self-publishing.
The Alliance of Independent Authors works in four areas:
The Alliance of Independent Authors has three levels of author membership. I have only included the first two levels.
Associate: $89/year
Associate members receive:
Author $119/year
Author members receive:
Income Comparison Between Self Published Authors and Traditionally Published Authors
In 2022, the median income of the Alliance of Independent Authors indie authors was $12,754.56. For seniors, the income was $10,000 for ages 55-64 and $3,000 for those 65 years and older.
The median income level for some of the genres in 2022. Income and sample size in parentheses.
Biography $795.59 (8)
Children’s $3,000 (89)
Crime/Thriller/Detective $18,893 (270)
Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Speculative $7,982 (330)
General Fiction $1,057 (64)
General Nonfiction $13,538.32 (54)
Historical Fiction $7,421.4 (129)
Horror $2,324 (24)
Memoir $2,474 (21)
Narrative Nonfiction $10,000 (13)
New Adult $145,448 (2)
Romance $38,800 (496)
Women’s Fiction $9,226 (45)
Young Adult $1,686 (35)
Other $10,000 (151)
Source: https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts/
I encourage readers to learn more about this organization, especially those interested in obtaining outside, fee-based help for your book.
I have been busy this year thinking about additional subjects to write about and writing two new books.
Bullets and Barrels is a non-fiction book about how American Civil War officers and soldiers helped develop the oil and gas industry. The book traces the growth of the domestic petroleum industry from Colonel Edwin Drake’s discovery well in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859 to Ida Tarbell’s The History of the Standard Oil Company in 1902 and her 1909 article in the American Woman Magazine titled “The American Woman – How She Met the Experience of War.”
Readers will learn how Charles Pratt built “America’s first modern oil refinery” in 1867 and the Confederate attack on Burning Springs in the Civil War. The book will describe how Civil War veterans like Amos Densmore, Edward L. Roberts, William W. Averell, and Samuel Jones introduced new technology into the fledgling petroleum business.
My plan is to publish Bullets and Barrels this winter.
The Traitor is the second installment in the Russell Conrad series of political thrillers. The story begins after Conrad returns home from saving the president’s life in The Analyst. Conrad is accused of treason for helping Israel thwart an Iranian missile attack. As the FBI transports Conrad to the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport, they are attacked by armed men who want to kill the SMU professor. Conrad is saved by a mysterious woman who whisks him to safety. Thus begins a frantic trip to the Texas Coast with the FBI in chase. En route to Port Isabel, Conrad and the women discover a terrorist plot that threatens the U.S. oil industry and the national economy.
My plan is to publish The Traitor early next year.
In the meantime, I hope you will check out my current publications.
I will obey the general and president’s orders.
These insults are from a time before the English language got boiled down to four-letter words. These insults from famous people had style, imagination, and class. I only wish that I could burrow some to inflict on someone.
1. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; Bring a friend, if you have one.” –
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill.
“Cannot possibly attend [the] first night, I will attend the second…If there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response.
2. A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease.”
“That depends, Sir,” said Disraeli, “whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
3. “He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr
4. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow
5. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
6.”Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas
7. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
8. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends..” – Oscar Wilde
9. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.” – Stephen Bishop
10.”He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright
11. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”- Irvin S. Cobb
12. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”- Samuel Johnson
13. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” – Paul Keating
14. “In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”- Charles, Count Talleyrand
15. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”- Forrest Tucker
16. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”- Mark Twain
17. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”- Mae West
18. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”- Oscar Wilde
19. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… For support rather than illumination.”- Andrew Lang
20. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder
21. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx.
22.”He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Winston Churchill
Source: The English Community
Colleen Hoover is an American author who writes novels in the romance and young adult fiction genres. She is best known for her 2016 romance novel, It Ends with Us. She self-published many of her works before she was picked up by a publishing house. Colleen Hoover has written 25 books in her 12-year career as an author. She is the founder of Book Bonanza with 2,700 readers, authors, and volunteers. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Hoover was born on December 11, 1979, in Sulphur Springs, Texas. She grew up in Saltillo, Texas, and she graduated from Saltillo High School in 1998. She married Heath Hoover in 2000 and they have three sons. Hoover graduated from Texas A&M-Commerce with a degree in social work. She worked various social work and teaching jobs before starting her career as an author.
Colleen Hoover
In November 2011, Hoover began writing her debut novel, Slammed, with no intention of getting published. She was inspired by a lyric, “decide what to be and go be it,” from an Avett Brothers song, “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise,” and she incorporated Avett Brothers lyrics throughout the story. Hoover self-published Slammed in January 2012. Hoover states that she published the novel so her mother, who had just gotten an Amazon Kindle, could read it.
A sequel, Point of Retreat, was published in February 2012. After a few months, Slammed was reviewed and given five stars by book blogger Maryse Black, and afterward, sales rocketed for Hoover’s first two books. Slammed and Point of Retreat reached #8 and #18, respectively, on the New York Times Best Seller list in August of that year. Atria Books picked up the novels and republished them on August 10, 2012. A third book in the series, This Girl, was published in April 2013. After the success of Slammed, Hoover quit her job in the social work field to become a full-time writer.
Hoover’s novel, Hopeless, was self-published in December 2012. The plot line, which is that of a girl who was home-schooled throughout her elementary education, before going to a public high school, reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list on January 20. It was the first self-published novel to ever top the list. A companion novel, Losing Hope, was published that July.
Finding Cinderella is a free novella that Hoover published in 2014. It features several of the characters from her novels, Hopeless and Losing Hope. A paperback was released with several bonus features, such as a new epilogue and Hoover’s own “Cinderella story.” Maybe Someday, published in March 2014, was the first novel in a small series about a boy and a girl who write music together and fall in love. Musician Griffin Peterson created a soundtrack to accompany the novel. Links in the e-book or a scannable QR code in the paperback led to a website, where readers could listen to the music.
Never Never, a 2015 collaboration with Tarryn Fisher, was originally split into three parts and sold as three separate books. The work was later republished as one complete book.
Hoover’s novel, It Ends with Us, was published in 2016. Hoover described it as “the hardest book I’ve ever written.” The novel concerns domestic violence, and, according to Hoover, it was written with the intention of advocating for domestic violence victims. The story was inspired by Hoover’s personal experience as a child growing up in a household with domestic violence, which carried through her adult life. The book’s main character, Lily, experiences domestic violence at a young age, witnessing her father’s abuse towards her mother, on top of experiencing it firsthand. Then, she ends up in a violent relationship, as an adult. In 2021, Hoover experienced a surge in popularity, due to attention from the #BookTok community on TikTok. As a result, in January 2022, It Ends with Us was #1 on The New York Times best sellers list. As of 2019, the novel had sold over a million copies worldwide, and it has been translated into over twenty languages. Filming of a movie adaption of It Ends with Us began in May 2023.
A sequel to It Ends with Us, titled, It Starts with Us, was published by Atria Books on October 18, 2022. Simon and Schuster released the details of the extensive marketing campaign for the novel, which became the publisher’s most pre-ordered book of all time.
In October 2022, Simon and Schuster UK acquired two standalone novels by Hoover, which are to be published in 2024 and 2026.
Alexandra Alter of The New York Times wrote, “To say she’s currently the best-selling novelist in the United States, to even compare her to other successful authors who have landed several books on the best seller lists, fails to capture the size and loyalty of her audience.”
“I can’t work on more than one thing.”
“Once I start and I get really into it, that’s my hyper-focus. And that’s all I do – just write 18 hours a day and sleep.”
Ms. Hoover’s success gives hope to all aspiring authors. Just because the big publishing houses ignore you doesn’t mean you can’t strike it rich by self-publishing your book.
Sources:
“From Bookstore to bestseller,” Dallas Morning News, June 24, 2023, pp 1B & 2B.
“Colleen Hoover,” Colleen Hoover – Wikipedia, retrieved June 26, 2023.
The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. The Proclamation changed the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to “be received into the armed service of the United States.”
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation.
I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do … order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion, against the United States, the following, to wit:
Lincoln then listed the ten states still in rebellion, excluding parts of states under Union control, and continued:
I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free… [S]uch persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States… And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
The proclamation provided that the executive branch, including the Army and Navy, “will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.” Even though it excluded areas not in rebellion, it still applied to more than three and a half million of the four million enslaved people in the country. Around 25,000 to 75,000 were immediately emancipated in those regions of the Confederacy where the US Army was already in place. It could not be enforced in the areas still in rebellion, but, as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the liberation of more than three and a half million enslaved people in those regions by the end of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners and their sympathizers, who saw it as the beginning of a race war. It energized abolitionists and undermined those Europeans who wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy. The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans, both free and enslaved. The proclamation encouraged many to escape from their masters and flee toward Union lines to obtain their freedom and to join the Union Army. [1]
The Emancipation Proclamation became a historic document because it “would redefine the Civil War, turning it [for the North] from a struggle [solely] to preserve the Union to one [also] focused on ending slavery, and set a decisive course for how the nation would be reshaped after that historic conflict.”[2]
Juneteenth (officially Juneteenth National Independence Day) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Deriving its name from combining June and nineteenth, it is celebrated on the anniversary of the order, issued by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. The celebration began in Galveston, Texas. Juneteenth has since been observed annually in various parts of the United States, often broadly celebrating African-American culture. The day was first recognized as a federal holiday in 2021 when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law after the efforts of Lula Briggs Galloway, Opal Lee, and others.
Despite the surrender of Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the Western Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until June 2. On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston, Texas to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the Department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its slaves and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves were free:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
Urban legend places the historic reading of General Order No. 3 at Ashton Villa; however, no existing historical evidence supports such claims. Although widely believed, it is unlikely that Granger or his troops proclaimed the Ordinance by reading it aloud: it is more likely that copies of the Ordinance were posted in public places, including the Negro Church on Broadway since renamed Reedy Chapel A.M.E. Church. On June 21, 2014, the Galveston Historical Foundation and Texas Historical Commission erected a Juneteenth plaque where the Osterman Building once stood signifying the location of Major General Granger’s Union Headquarters and subsequent issuance of his general orders.
Although this event has come to be celebrated as the end of slavery, emancipation for the remaining enslaved in two Union border states (Delaware and Kentucky), would not come until several months later, on December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. The freedom of former slaves in Texas was given state law status in a series of Texas Supreme Court decisions between 1868 and 1874.[3]
[1] “Emancipation Proclamation,” Wikipedia, Emancipation Proclamation – Wikipedia, retrieved June 17, 2023.
[2] “Emancipation Proclamation – Definition, Dates & Summary,” History, Emancipation Proclamation – Definition, Dates & Summary – HISTORY (archive.org) retrieved June 17, 2023.
[3] “Juneteenth,” Wikipedia, Juneteenth – Wikipedia, retrieved June 17, 2023.
Allen Mesch 