The five most popular posts from March, according to you, my loyal readers. This month my funny drawings, a poor analogy that gave me a chance to talk about rock and roll, and my credulity take the top spots. Thanks again for all your support.

Cartoons, Super-Fantasy, and Theology

I suppose everyone thought I was I dead or something. Or maybe it was the friendly backlinks from Claw of the Conciliator. Maybe no one could figure out how that was Adam in the drawing and they kept coming back to look. My wife was right I should have kept the autumn leaves chasing Adam off to work.

Jacob who became Israel

I love Jacob. Odysseus, you’re a second-rater. I also, in a lesser way, love Superman. Add some amateur exegesis up with an illustration inspired by the premier cover of Action Comics and you get a popular post.

Covering Books

Do you believe in rock and roll? I do. I also believe, in hindsight, I based a lengthy post on a very weak comparison of sequels to song covers. Oh well, I had fun writing it – and what’s the internet without public embarrassment, eh? Check out the cool video links at the end of the post.

The Iron-veiled Moses

Ian: What did you think?
Priest: Very interesting, Ian, but why is Moses a robot?

Bob Dylan and Dr. Seuss

Elliot says it best in the comments: “Dylan sounds a bit too much like Dylan for it to be genuine, if you know what I mean.”

A California company named OCTAVO has been scanning the world’s greatest and rarest books for the last decade and offering them for sale on a beefed up CD with translations, annotations, hyperlinks and commentary. Sort of a digital preservationist society. Pretty noble stuff.You can view some of the raw scans, sans beef, at the Rare Book Room. That’s where the above image is from. It’s the title page of 1794 edition of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience – which you can read here.

Nineteen year old internet entrepreneur and author (I was making pizza at Chicken Chef when I was nineteen) Ben Casnocha reveals how he thinks about books:

First, we all learn and input information differently. For me, visually reading words is effective. Second, notwithstanding my admiration for Jeff Jarvis‘ crusade to digitize journalism efforts, I disagree with him that a book is outdated in today’s link-enabled world. True, a book is not interactive. However, for topics that require more serious thinking, or topics for which a comprehensive overview is more efficient than several shorter articles, a book wins. It’s a wonderful learning tool for some, and winning in the 21st century has much to do, I would argue, with life-long learning. On the fiction side, the case for a book is less compelling, especially if you read fiction books for entertainment value alone. Since I enjoy language and words, I still derive suitable entertainment (and intellectual) value from fiction. Also, it is reading fiction when you are more apt to explore interior dimensions….

Casnocha is coming at reading from a totally different than me but I think, essentially, we feel the same way about reading. Do I think about “winning in the 21st century” when I’m picking out books? No, not really. It depends on how you define winning. So, let me try again. Am I concerned about getting ahead? No. Am I concerned about living a complete, virtuous life and being a whole man? Despite how lame that sounds, yes. These thoughts go through my mind when I pick out books and when I read.

Check out Ben Casnocha’s photo at the top of this post then check out mine on my profile page. See any resemblance? No? Good, your eyes are working, there is none. Yet, strangely, we have similar advice:

I always read with a pen in hand. For non-fiction, I highlight and underline. For fiction, I highlight cool phrases or ideas. It’s amazing how focused you become when holding a pen.

That’s good advice. Myself, I usually use an envelope or tri-folded piece of paper for a bookmark and mark it up with notes and quotations using the pens that are always laying around my typical reading spots. I just started this habit last year. I recommend it.

N.B. I was publishing with blogger when I wrote this post and now it’s not at all accurate. Read at your own peril!

Prompted by a post at Myrtias here is an explanation, tour and review of the Upper Fort Stewart sidebar as it stands today. I say “as it stands today” because I just can’t leave the thing alone. I’m always tinkering with it, adding stuff to it, pruning it back and then rearranging it. All in an effort to make it more interesting and useful for you, my readers. I hope it is.

Updates

Here we have two options for viewing the RSS feed. What’s an RSS feed you ask? Good question. Every time I publish a post it’s also spit out across the internet in a Rich Site Summary, or RSS. Sort of like each post sent out in an open email to whoever wants to read it. You can catch this open email, or feed, in what’s called a feed reader. The two most popular are free and online: Bloglines and Google Reader. It’s a great, fast, efficient way to keep up with blogs and specialized news.

Sign up with Bloglines or Google Reader, come back to Upper Fort Stewart, and click on the Subscribe to the RSS web feed link to try it out.

Alternately, you can subscribe to the feed with a service provided by FeedBlitz. Enter your email in the field in my sidebar, click subscribe and they’ll walk you through the rest.

And if you’re currently reading this post in a reader: thanks for subscribing!

Upper Fort Who?

Hey, it’s me! Just a short bio so I’m not some anonymous weirdo on the internet talking about Batman and edification. Now, I’m the weirdo you know.

This is also where I keep the link to my Blogger profile and the link to my email. I’m really glad I included a link to my email. I worried about it for a week before I put it on but the spam to cool people ratio has, so far, been really low.

Labels and Blog Archive

Almost every post has at least one label. This one is labeled blogging. I have my labels displayed in what’s called a cloud. Labels in the cloud become larger and brighter as they are more frequently written about. Labels less frequently written about are smaller and duller. I won’t comment on the brightness or dullness of the actual content of the posts.

Try searching through the older posts by clicking on a specific label or by month in the Blog Archive.

Recent Comments

I love it when you comment on one of my posts. I love it so much I have a customized Recent Comments section that shows off what you have to say. Try it out – click on the comments link at the bottom of this post and have your say. Sample comments: “Ian, stop blogging about blogging.” or “Ian, I subscribed to your feed, thanks for the info on feed readers.” or “Ian, I really liked your keyboards with the Stones – what are you up to now?”

Recent Items of Interest

At least once a week and no more than once a day I select something to share with you and pop the link up under here. It’s usually something bookish, from a bookish blog, or amuses me enough to want to post about except it’s so terribly off topic I can’t bring myself to do it and place it here. If you’re curious, I use Google Reader to accomplish this magical feat of blogging-do.

Links

Bookish links and Not-so-bookish links. Click on them, won’t you? Excellent blogs and websites hide behind here. I think you’ll like them.

Recommended Books

It is here, under Recommended Books, that I plan on sharing any interesting books I’ve read that I suspect you may not have read and might like reading. They’re all links to Amazon pages that carry a little marker with my name on it. If you buy one of these books Amazon credits me and pays me back in books. I think that’s pretty cool – if you don’t, that’s fair, but I still want you to read these books! They’re all really good. Look for them in your locally-owned bookstores, bargain bins of big chains, and at the used book-sellers. That’s what I would do.

I can’t help myself. I try not to be mean and snarky but – but – but just read this:

Victoria Beckham, who just last summer admitted she had never read a book in her life, is allegedly starting up a Hollywood book club. A source tells the Daily Star:

“When Victoria told Katie Holmes about a book club, Katie thought it was a great idea, especially as she would love to learn more about British classics. Victoria has asked five of her friends, including Jennifer Lopez and Katie, to become members.”

We can expect the challenge of reading will be tough going for the former Spice Girl, who told a Spanish mag last year: “I haven’t read a book in my life. I haven’t got enough time. I prefer to listen to music, although I do love fashion magazines.”

Okay, Ian, say something nice.

Good for you Ms. Beckham. I’m glad to see that not only are you reading you’re making it a community activity and having fun with your friends too.

Sincere enough?

My son turned three on Friday. When we asked him earlier in the month what kind of party he would like, Jungle Book or dinosaur (his two obsessions), he chose the Jungle Book. My wife decided we should make large foamcore cutouts of the Jungle Book

characters and place them around the house. We even had a cake made up with Mowgli on it. My son loved this idea. He tells us the “Jungle animals” are his favorite present.

For your amusement, photos of the three main players, Bagheera, Mowgli and Baloo. We also had Kaa, Shere Khan, Grey Brother and the Bandar-log but these are my and my son’s favorites.

I once was a teenager with aspirations of becoming a comics artist. Above my drawing table, against the wall I would stare at blankly when I didn’t know how to draw what I didn’t want to have to draw, was a collage of Batman images meant to inspire me when I was feeling least inspired. There was something about Batman that clicked with me. Mostly he looked cool. But there was more. I would tell people that I considered Batman an excellent role model, mostly for humorous effect, of course – but only mostly, not quite only. I said I admired his can-do outlook and his lemonade from lemons attitude.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. Rabbi Cary Friedman thinks he’s a pretty good role model, too. He even wrote a book about it, Wisdom from the Batcave. Then, even cooler, he mailed me a copy! Thanks, Rabbi Friedman!

Wisdom from the Batcave is, in Friedman’s own words, a book “about recognizing the larger truths in a character of fiction¹.” He sees Batman in particular as a model of heroic truth and of virtues like friendship, persistence, and courage. And, you know, I couldn’t agree more. I recommend the book to anyone, comic fan or not. It’s fun. It’s edifying. It’s written by a Rabbi who worked for the FBI.

But I do have one problem with it. In conclusion Rabbi Friedman notes that:

It’s always seemed to me that the people who read Batman tend to be more confident of themselves, of their ability to get the job done and to make a difference in the world than, say, fans of Superman, whose story begins with a gift of enormous, and unearned, power.

What!? Say it isn’t so! Oh well – I like to think that when you combine the ideals of the two you wind up with The World’s Finest team².

1. Right on. I hope everyone looks for these larger truths in fiction. Otherwise, put the books down. Please. Just stop reading now.

2. A lame comic book joke. Don’t worry if you don’t get it. The people who do get it wish they didn’t.

From an interview published in published in Fanzing (The Independent Online DC Comics Fan Magazine), where Maggin claims he’s studying the Kabbala so he can learn how to fly, here’s Superman writer Elliot S! Maggin on Martin Buber’s I and Thou:

[Buber] was a religious liberal Jew … who used to love calling up his orthodox friends on Saturday morning (Orthodox Jews believe you shouldn’t talk on the phone on Saturday) and gleefully holler “Good Shabbas” over and over into the phone until his more ritually observant friends realized they were the butts of some sort of existential practical joke. I got a sense from Buber of the notion of spiritual religiousness as opposed to – though not necessarily in opposition to – ritual religiousness. He was a very modern old guy, I think. I and Thou is a very short volume that probably ought to be read more slowly than I – as a guy wrapped up in a vital civilization and entangled in a growing culture – would be inclined to do so.

You know, I can translate the premise of Vonnegut’s work to “Dammit, you’ve got to be kind.” But Buber writes pretty much in shorthand to start with. You can sit and ponder his choice of a preposition for hours – which is why I’d take it to isolation with me. It might use up a lot of time I’d otherwise waste learning how to shoot down coconuts with a home-made bow and arrow. (Maybe Ollie Queen would have had a happier life if he’d discovered Buber earlier.) But how’s this: An exploration of the relationship between the individual and his spiritual and sociological environment.

… I think if you want to know about Buber, you might do it by first knowing about Descartes. The Cartesian model first breaks apart everything the individual supposes but doesn’t know for sure, and eliminates it from contention. So what Descartes is left with is the simple understanding: “I think, therefore I am.” From that point, Descartes built a collection of premises based on the axiomatic “truth” of his own existence. Buber was much more spiritual, and I think he was more willing to acknowledge the existence of God than he was to affirm his own “reality.” I kind of like that about him…