Richard Nash at Bookslut on a new way of connecting authors and readers: "So I'm also working on figuring out a new infrastructure that would allow not just me but a whole bunch of visionary intermediaries to effectively connect writers with the readers they deserve and vice versa."

More thoughts from Richard on 21st century publishing at his blog where he also discusses the recent SXSW interactive panel on the subject that was less than impressive (and links to folks who were there).

Boing boing picked up this story of minor league baseball player John Odom who was traded for bats in a business deal that should have meant nothing but was so heavily publicized that he literally couldn't live it down and died in an accidental overdose six months later. He was 26 years old.

The medical examiner’s office figured out Odom’s fame when they saw a tattoo on his right elbow over suture marks that read “Poena Par Sapientia”—a rough Latin translation of “Pain equals wisdom”—and did a Google search.

They were never used.

Ripley's is hoping to buy the bats and build an exhibit around them. John Odom will thus be laughed at forever.

I just finished reading The Next Rodeo, an essay collection from William Kittredge that was amazing. He tackles a lot of our myths about the west - what Americans have historically thought about it, what we continue to believe about it and how we constantly seek to control it. Here's a bit that really made me think about the people in Choteau, MT who are hoping to attract oil drilling:

Choteau looks to be as well off as anybody in rural Montana. Their eagerness to develop the wild country seems to be driven by greed. You have to wonder if they really want the whole boomtown package: oilfield roughnecks with thousands of bucks a month in their pockets, and the fine good times, cocaine, and overloaded sewage systems and schools. You wonder if the folks in Choteau have consulted with old-timers around Evanston, Wyoming or Wamsutter. The oil path boomed down there about 1980. It lasted three years. They're still getting over it.

This endless pursuit of myth - even in the face of everyone else's reality - mystifies me. All too often seeing is not believing (something both the newspaper and publishing industries should both understand).

An excellent YA novel from a teen boy perspective is Funny How Things Change by Melissa Wyatt. It will be in my June column. It's a great look at reasons to leave home versus reasons to stay (without involving any abuse, death or depression) and also has an environmental angle involving mountain top removal. It's the first book in ages I've read set in West Virginia that is not a joke, very well done.

Smithsonian has an article on Harry Bingham, a diplomat who did his job in the face of superiors who didn't want the job done. He is credited with saving 2,500 Jews in Nazi controlled Europe at the price of his foreign service career. A few of them were very famous: Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt and Max Ernst. Bingham's eleven children never knew until after his death:

While cleaning out a dusty closet behind the main fireplace in the 18th-century farmhouse, William discovered a tightly bound bundle of documents that outlined his father's wartime service. Thus began a campaign to vindicate his father. And as his rescue efforts came to light, he was embraced by the same government that had cast him aside.

From Orion magazine, the battlefield in Verdun is still dangerous - almost 100 years later:

“There’s nothing like Verdun. This is a place where the world changed,” says Christina Holstein, a British historian. Over 60 million shells were fired into this area between February 21 and December 18, 1916, killing 305,440 men out of 708,777 casualties.

Everyday we are reminded that we can not force the earth to bend to our will; if we make a mess then sooner or later we are just going to have to clean it up.