Florida, the Moron State. It is a holiday, except you see, it is not a holiday. You don’t have to go to work, but you don’t get paid either. It is a day off without pay, which unless you are already wealthy, is not a holiday at all. The interest on your loans continues to accumulate, your rent is not pro rated and you would assuredly be taxed on any income for the occassion. So, for whom exactly does Labor Day represent a holiday?
While I’m beefing, why isn’t there any cream flavoring on the market? I can get artificial vanilla, orange, butter, cinnamon and banana; why can’t I get cream? If I put the flavoring in water and put that on my cereal, I taste cream. Maybe a conspiracy by the dairy farmers? They did it successfully against margarine at one time. As Wallace pointed out, margarine is only one molecule different than the container it comes in.
What disjointed topic? I can explain. Last night I made a huge pot of coffee and settled into the easy chair to review JP’s booklet. I punctually fell asleep and the pot was cold when I awoke. This AM I made flavored iced coffee, calorie-free until I got to the creamer. I hesitate to use the edible petroleum product, labeled “white death” by Marion. And so on. Now what do you want? The booklet? Sure, here goes.
JP picked up “Elizabeth: The Exiles of Siberia” at a swap meet, and it contains a publication date of 1828. The author is Madame Cottin and the book was originally in French. No other data, really, except for an address in Boston of “31 Washington St.” by a publisher named T. Bedlington. The inside cover leaf has written “To: Henry H. Pifrer, - in memory of Mrs. Julia P. Derby who died Nov. 17- 1911.” There are other washed out notes but the highest magnification I have here (10x) does not succeed.
Pardon me, under better lighting, I can see the name “Julia Pief….” and what looks like the date “Feb. 07- 28” indented into the paper, and another name that looks like “Lucretia E. Pif…dy.”. In the upper right corner is “60-“ (indicating this once sold at a used bookstore for sixty cents). The script is definitely the right period and very cursive. You will not be able to see the other writing, although I will try scanning it at very high resolution and blowing it up. I see I have just sparked a topic here, so I will go a little deeper into what I’ve tried so far.
I first scoped a variety of different enhancements. Many of them work only with the existing contrast of the original ink and paper, as shown nearby. Then a bunch of filters that always do so well on CSI (a popular TV program) but do nothing for me, much like CSI itself. I can crank my scanner to 600 dpi. You can view the results of this below.
A better choice, as I had difficulty explaining to JP, is let me read the book and see if there are any clues as to the originality. (I doubt anyone would counterfeit such an obscure work.) The grammar is surprisingly modern after 178 years but still solidly embedded in the flowery Victorian fiction of morality. Try “Virtue is so superior to all that can be said in its praise, that it would perhaps appear impracticable if it were
exhibited in its full perfection …”
Nothing about the first chapters helps; anything by Tolstoy or Dostoyevski could have sat for a model. However, the footnotes are beautifully revealing. The Artic Ocean is corrected called the Frozen Ocean, but notes correctly that the Russians called it “Ledovitoe Mone”. The setting, a city called Tobolsk (modern Tobol’ski), is actually on the very western edge of the Siberian Plain, not right in what we would call Siberia today. That makes sense, since the area had not yet been fully explored.
There are no obvious contradictions, another plus. Cottin correctly distinguishes between Cossacks and Kaissaks. China is called Chinese Tartary and there is reference to the “Uralian Chain”, plus a sentence that explains “ural” is a Tartar word meaning “girdle”.
To anyone who thinks that exile to Siberia originated with the Soviets, the book records that the emperors of Russia “send thither all the criminals of the empire … often without their having been summoned … or knowing the cause of their banishment”. However, the single most validating comment (to me) is the author states the Aurora Borealis according to one Mr. de Mairan “these phenomena are generally at an elevation of from three to nine miles”. You would have a hard time convincing me this book was written in any later period. Last, for now, is the comment that the Russian ruble is “equivalent to two shillings and twopence stirling”. That should be [relatively] easy to timestamp.
I’ve been testing JP’s Vivitar camera. It is actually easy to use but the display is confusing. When you turn it on, it is ready to take pictures but the display gives a variety of messages which you would conclude are asking you to change settings. The joke of an operator’s manual also under-explains most of the functions in Pidgin English.
Fred has got a fancy web page working with automatic rollovers, I have a copy. Like most current shortcut page generators, it takes the easy way out of producing tables. Tables are very difficult to maintain and be inflexibly assured all web pages will require maintenance. Also, the resulting menus are dependent on your browser allowing certain programming instructions that are not very mindful of your personal computer security. I think I can work around this and update Cowboy Mike’s web page.
