Day 317: more Random Topics

The second one that came up (after Fun With Poodles) was "The Secret Life of Benjamin Franklin".

I don't think it is all that secret that he was an inveterate flirt and womanizer, especially in France, as Ambassador.

What I remember enjoying about Ben Franklin was a young adult fiction book about him by one of my favorite 1940s/1950s authors, Robert Lawson, who is probably most famous for writing Rabbit Hill, but who wrote a number of other excellent books as well, including a sequel to that one. His books remind me of the ones by Robert McCloskey, who overlapped with him, though Lawson was much older (b. 1898, d. 1957). Lawson illustrated The Story of Ferdinand, the pacifist bull, which is older than I thought, having been published in 1936. Anyway, it looks like the very first book he wrote as well as illustrated was Ben and Me (1939), which was about a mouse who lived in Benjamin Franklin's headgear, a sort of capacious fur hat. It was an enjoyable biography and mouse adventure. Seems to me there was a long spate of time during which tales about talking mice were all the rage in the 1930s through 1960s. He also illustrated Mr. Popper's Penguins and Adam of the Road. I was never that fond of the former, but the latter was one of the many books set in the Middle Ages that I loved.

Other excellent books actually by Robert Lawson:

I Discover Columbus (1941)
Rabbit Hill (1944)
Mr. Revere and I (from the perspective of Paul Revere's horse) (1953)
The Tough Winter (sequel to Rabbit Hill( (1954)
Captain Kidd's Cat (1956)
The Great Wheel (1957) -- about Robert Ferris who designed the huge ferris wheel for Chicago's Columbian Exposition... a really nice book.





And this one is the scarred old veteran rabbit, Uncle something or other, lecturing the young fry about the dangers of dogs. From Rabbit Hill. Or possibly from The Tough Winter. I wonder if any of these are available as ebooks? I'll have to look.

Day 318: late entry

Well, I guess 317 was the actual late entry, since I skipped yesterday inadvertently. I will again consult "Random Meme Topic Generator", since that is easier than thinking for myself. The first topic to come up was "Community or Private College?" That's kind of odd. Those two things seem somewhat incommensurable (incommensurate? I don't remember, sorry Northwestern University class "The Philosophy of Natural Science", Karl Popper, paradigm shifts, etc.) -- or at the least, they seem to be the opposite ends of a spectrum. It was the choice I was offered as a senior in high school. My father told me in all seriousness that if I wanted to go to college without taking loans, there were two ways (I am actually not sure loans were even mentioned. He just said I had the following choice.) I could go to Oakton Community College, the local community college, which cost about $1200/yr. Or I could go to Northwestern University, which cost the same. For him. Because he was the archivist there. It wasn't much of a choice. Every faculty or staff brat kid I knew at Evanston Township High School -- except two, maybe -- made that choice. I mean, I doubt many of the rest of them were offered OCC as an alternative. But almost all of them went to Northwestern.

If you can, because you're a faculty or staff brat, then by all means opt for the private college, damn. Who wouldn't? If you don't have that benefit... I guess go for as many scholarships as you can and see how much the best state school is. Community colleges seem to me to be best only as two year springboards, or as a place to take the odd self-expanding class in something you want to learn. Not a great place to get a great, deep education. I mean, personally, if I could have, I would have gone to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But I couldn't manage out-of-state tuition. So I am by no means saying that private schools are better than big state schools, at all. I want to be clear about that. But yeah, appreciate them though I do, as offering an affordable alternative, I am kind of dissing community colleges. Obviously they're a mixed bag. Some rich suburbs have incredibly funded community colleges, like Diablo Valley Community College in Orinda or Moraga or wherever it is, and like the community college I interviewed at in Traverse City, Michigan.