thank GOD the Vatican isn't run by book reviewers...

...or we'd never have any Saints and Martyrs.

The book reviewers' world - amateur and professional - seems a material one , consumed by the almighty dollar figure on the cover of any book they choose to review.

Or so it seems : but there is actually a more acceptable reason for their surface shallowness.

Simply overwhelmed by all the books offered up for review, they share among themselves one simple - brutal - rule of thumb : if a book is really, really good a big canny commercial publisher would be offering it up for sale, at a hefty price.

If it is merely good, it would be at least published by some sort of commercial publisher or , if self-published, at least offered for sale at a hefty price on Amazon.

But a book researched, written and offered up for free on its own website, in an act of charity, merely because the subject of the book after all offered up his life in an act of charity ?

Interesting concept - worthy even - but we don't have time to review it.

Sorry.

So dear blog viewer, if you want to read all of "Life's Manhattan Project" for free - with colourful illustrations by the author to boot - cling to this blog site like a shipwrecked sailor clings to a log.

Otherwise, be prepared to pony up $9.99 and taxes to get the e-book version from Amazon Kindle : black and white text without the illustrations.

Or patiently wait for the off chance it might published in hardcover by one of the Big Six/ Five/ Four  publishers at $39.95 a pop.

On that lachyrmose day, it might be expensive enough to be dissected by even the very overwhelmed book reviewers at the New York Times....

Wartime Penicillin intended to be secret and synthetic

It ended up public and 'public domain' natural, thanks to Henry Dawson and his supporters.

The British War Department and the American OSRD (run by Vannevar Bush) had expected to quickly, cheaply and, above all, secretively mass produce synthetic penicillin.

Enough artificial penicillin to supply the Allied front lines in the big pushback against Tojo and Hitler, while the enemy had to make do with the rapidly failing Sulfa drugs or try to produce tiny amounts of impure natural penicillin.

The whole project depended on keeping accounts of penicillin's miracle cures away from the Allied public.

That would only create a public sensation , as it had earlier for Sulfa's first miracle cures, which the Axis would soon learn about , thanks to newspaper articles in Neutral papers.

Once alerted, clever German and Japanese chemists would also soon synthesize penicillin and negate the temporary military advantage the Allies had gained via secrecy.

So : the potentially morally shabby story of wartime penicillin : medicine as a weapon.

But when the normally-stodgy Henry Dawson actually dared to steal government-sanctioned war penicillin to successfully save some young 4F kids banefully abandoned by their government as just 'useless mouths' , word spread rapidly in the gossip-driven circles of wartime medical New York.

A young doctor with his own burden of prejudice from the anglo protestant medical elite to rouse his ire, Dante Colitti,  got the newspaper chain that invented yellow journalism (Hearst) to come to the defence of the yellow magic and no sooner than you could say 'that darling little Patty Malone', the jig was up for the OSRD and War Department.....

Read enough already of Death's Manhattan Project ?

Tired of seeing way, way, way too many books on wartime Manhattan's atomic death rays at your local library or friendly neighbourhood bookstore ?

Would you like to read instead of another wartime project from Manhattan ----- one  that radiated hope and life , instead of death and destruction ?

Not convince that all wartime Manhattan Projects must come from Mars , and none from Venus ?

Then I have a forthcoming book just for you :  "Life's Manhattan Project" ......

Superboard superdumb superbad

The CUPE union in Nova Scotia is right to raise an alarm over calls from two of the province's three visible registered parties to have a single Halifax based health board run all the hospitals in the rural part of the province.

Will the whole damn world, one day, be run out of one office at the UN ?

The disease of giantism and the view that bigger must mean better administration still has as many admirers today as it did in 1941 during the era (error ?) of big empires.

But Nova Scotian unionists have hardly been consistent on this issue.

When the NDP (union-supported) government tried to move some government jobs out of Halifax , to de-centralize some of these good-paying and stable jobs, unofficial blowback by union members crippled the project.

It maybe be something in union-brand Kool-aid, but sadly, union leaders would rather cut their own baby's throat than ever criticize their memberships' attitudes.

There is union democracy and there is courage and sometimes, the two must mix.....

The smallest 'small school' has no permanent school building at all

My small school proposals seem to be too radical for most in this inert little province by the restless sea.

I discovered this when I went before a Nova Scotia public inquiry  and suggested that public schools follow the example of the province's universities.

Our two biggest, Dalhousie and St Mary's both moved about a fair bit before settling in their current physical locales and even then their university centre could move about within the campus lands.

Dalhousie , for example ,has been at its present location for over a century but its original building ,the Forrest Building, is now but the Dental School portion of this now immense university.

But from locale to locale, building to building, Dal has kept its name and institutional history.

But close the present building of the Burlington Elementary School because it is far too big for just twelve students and the school nd its history disappears along with it.

I suggested to the public inquiry that instead of killing that school's institutional history (and link to the present students' grandparents own school days) stone dead by busing all the kids to a big new consolidated school thirty miles away, why not house the same school in a new locale - the local fire hall's upstairs meeting room for example.

My wife, Rebecca, happily attended a public taxpayer financed school that rented space in an Antigonish County church basement and she has no signs of physical or mental abuse as a result.

But the public commissioner was left unmoved by my comments - to him and his ilk, schools aren't about learning but about real estate.

To be fair - the very varied public (Dartmouth area) audience before him felt no differently - I heard no murmur of support behind me as I sometimes get when I make bold suggestions at public meetings.

British public ( ie private) schools feel as I do and are content to rent ---- maybe that is why they are more noted for their students' successes than for the quality of their plumbing and heating .....

The Small Party : North America's first and most radical 'green' Party

I seem to recall meeting Elizabeth May in the summer of 1979 at an environmental fair on Halifax's Garrison Grounds just after the 1979 federal election.

She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.

A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.

I was still an NDPer (democratic socialist) then but rapidly becoming disillusioned.

I catch the allusion to "Small is Beautiful" and heartily agreed: I wanted Nova Scotia to cede from Canada and go its small way alone.

Still do.

Seeing how all the huge mega-corporations and vaulting political empires have happily co-opted the word "green" , I wonder now if the move to the Green Party label was the right one.

It doesn't seem offensive enough now, as a name.

Rupert Murdoch can see himself saying he is pro-green but never saying that he is pro-smallness.

He'd rather kill himself first.

Maybe "The small Party" label needs to be brought back out of cold storage and ran past the Nova Scotia voters once again.....

I propose to a (book) editor.... in an elevator

Clutching my manuscript to my heaving chest (insert bodice here) I got down on one knee and said to her , "This Manhattan Project is from Venus ---- and so are most of your customers."

"So enough already on any more books about Manhattan Projects that kill. This wartime Manhattan P. saved lives : its all about life and love and the whole nine months."

"Listen to your mother, she says you won't even be here if it wasn't for penicillin : cheap, abundant, natural, non-patented penicillin."

"Now does that sound like how Big Pharma normally operates ?

Yeah, exactly --- this time, despite America being at war, Doctor Mom was in charge and she saw to it that it was done up right."

"If this book proposal has legs - and I think it does , try to think of those legs as being shapely, shaved and belong to an avid reader of character-driven narratives ."

"Besides, market-wise, isn't it long overdue for a Good News Story to come out of WWII's Bad News War ?"

"Give it a read and then get back to me before the bidding war gets heavy -----  'cause, baby, this here book project is all about peace, love and understanding...."