The Way-Out Wild West

                       by Lyn McConchie

     This is a collection of stories by Lyn McConchie dealing with the West in the USA not as it was but as Lyn has imagined it to have been. 

     Here there is some steam punk, a touch of the supernatural and more than hints of outer space activity on Earth. 

     The cover is a perfect illustration of what one might expect to come across inside these tales. Yes there are life and death moments. Yes there are mechanical horses. Yes time does play its role in a particular story and yes there is a woman within with extraordinary powers. 

     The stories may be fanciful but they are grounded in Lyn's own knowledge of farming her New Zealand property as well as her travels to the USA and also Mexico.  Lyn knows about horsemanship and has cattle, hens, geese and a cat on her land. She has quite a collection of books including novels from around the world. She also has an extensive understanding of weapons including firearms she can put to great use in her writing. 

      Of the stories the one that I liked most was Harry's Bad Man. It touched upon life and death matters. It was about a strange pack of near humans with their own unique sense of justice.  

      There was The Looking-Glass Girl in which I re-discover that, in the past, inheritance was not always divided up evenly between men and women. The women tended to get less or nothing at all because it was once viewed that a woman would be provided for by her husband and so would require less. I admit this was the thought of my own grandmother when she made out her will. I am glad times have changed. 

          There was Before All This Modern Stuff in which an evil man, sick of the present, journey's back in time only to face his past misdeeds head on. 

           Firedancer is about a gifted woman who is considered by some to be a witch and by others a potential saviour. 

           All considered, a brilliant collection.    

 

The 2nd day of March and lots more rain! Rain in the Illawarra, south co...

Rainbow Lorikeet

A young Crimson Rosella found in Corrimal, NSW, Australia

 The Associate by John Grisham

     This 2009 spy thriller has a lot of bite. The ending works though it may not fuller satisfy the reader. Two huge law firms have gone to war over a government contract for a special jet fighter. A young man coming out of law school finds himself in the middle of the action, forced to steal secrets for an unknown agency, his handler clever and mysterious. Thanks to an indiscretion from his past Kyle must do as he is told until he can figure out a way of saving himself from disgrace and possible prison. 

     All Kyle wants is the life of a small town lawyer like his dad. Unfortunately, he has to go in for a big time law firm as as associate with miserably long hours and duties that damage his sense of pride in himself. Can he get out of the mess he has been thrown into? Could those who were there when the indiscretions occurred help save him from a cruel fate? All answered by the end of the book though perhaps not in an expected way. 

     Are there law firms in existence in New York like the one Kyle is made to work for? I suppose there is that possibility. If I were a lawyer I certainly wouldn't care to work for them. 

     Among other things, Grisham's knowledge of New York and also how the law works in the USA comes to the fore. He also has a great grasp of modern gadgetry including spyware and bugs.

     The Associate is a great read, highly recommended.   

                    RIGHTS OF MAN by Thomas Paine

     Paine's take on the Rights of Man came after both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Back in the 1990s, good friend Don Boyd urged me to read what Paine had to say on the matter. I have since done so, digesting Paine's views on why a democratic government is superior to governments based either partially or completely on Monarchy.

     It appears Paine was writing before the French Revolution got bloody and long before the Napoleonic wars. In the beginning both the American and the French Revolution must have seemed the ideal way to go and Paine can definitely be marked down as an idealist.

     There was a lot wrong with how France had been governed before the revolution. The aristocracy didn't have to pay tax and so the tax burden was mainly put onto the shoulders of the developing middle-class. There had been previous unrest in France but this time the peasants had the middle-class on their side. Otherwise there could not have been success. The clergy remained, for the most part, on the side of the aristocracy and so paid the price for being so. To this day religious items are not welcome in civic buildings. There is still the separation of state and religion.  

      Among the accumulated woes of a century were wars that had gone badly for the French and disastrous money making schemes to do with colonization that had sent the Monarchy broke. The king tried on numerous occasions to get the Aristocracy to vote for their properties and general incomes to be taxed but they would have none of that. Meanwhile life in cities such as Paris were deteriorating. The uprising could have been prevented but that is not what happened. 

     Investing ultimate power in one man or one woman is argued against by Paine. Also he found the idea of providing a king or queen with millions to spend each year, out of the pockets of those being governed, an unjust expenditure. According to Paine, Washington wasn't paid to be president of the USA but did a great job anyway. Regardless, he had wealth and therefore security others of his day did not have.

         Paine makes much out of the aristocracy of a Monarchy being generally self-serving and yet, in this day and age, in order for someone to become president of the USA, it takes capital that has to come from somewhere including those born into wealth and wish to become wealthier. It also takes funds in the UK and Australia to run for Prime Minister as well as party support. People need to know who they will be voting for and why. Successful campaigns, especially in the USA, are not free. They have to be funded. So does this make those with money equivalent to the aristocracy of the past? I would say yes. 

     It should also be noted the role freemasonry played in US history. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was a freemason and cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. owed their financial prominence to Freemasonry. This doesn't seem to factor into any of Paine's arguments for Democracy, American style, being better than Monarchy. What's more, Freemasonry has also played a role in Australian society and no doubt also that of Canada and Britain. The compass and other symbols of freemasonry can be found today on buildings in various parts of Sydney, New South Wales as well as Bulli on the south coast of New South Wales.

     Paine remained hopeful that democracy together with capitalism would eventually outshine and replace Monarchy and dictatorship throughout Europe if not the entire world. The saving grace of democracy is that it is flexible and no one can be president or prime minister for life. There are elections and so the possibility for improvement always exists. Communism, as far as I understand it, can only work in small communities and not for any great length of time.

     One of the things Paine was interested in introducing to the British was the old age pension which would come about approximately a century after Rights of Man. He worked it out to be affordable and for the general good of all.

     Today the old age pension in Australia and no doubt elsewhere is slowly being replaced by superannuation. When I asked an economist a  few years about the money  already gathered by taxation for the old age pension for people reaching 65, I was informed it had already been spent by the government. 

    For generations now taxation has been the means of providing the poor right up to the middle classes with a way to live in their declining years. Can superannuation really provide an adequate safety net? 

     I know of a worker who had his super so reduced thanks to collapsing insurance companies and banks in the USA he had to continue working long after he wanted to retire. Could this happen again?  It is quite possible and so there may always be the need for an old age pension. 

     

 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby of the 

 Golden Age in American Art 

     The Superhero is about as American as you can get. No other country, including Australia and the UK, have ever been as successful with them. Gaudy costumes and plenty of biff was how it all started. One of the reasons why the 1930s and 1940s was called the Golden Age was because there was little in the way of censorship. Anything went that might get sales. 

      In 1930s USA, jobs for artists were hard to come by up until Superman and then Batman hit the newsstands in the latter half of this decade, opening up new, exciting possibilities. Not every costumed character was set to last long and neither was every publisher in the field who thought comic books were the way to make money. Pulp magazines were still flourishing but they were a hit and miss gambit. Most people in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand had radios. There was music and comedy. Also adventure stories containing mystery men such as The Shadow.

     Joe Simon and Jack Kirby teamed up, grabbing whatever work in the relatively new field of comic books that was going. They had a rugged style in which there was plenty of action, moving what were then simple plots along.

      Not every costumed character created by Simon and Kirby would be gold just as not every publisher they came to work for stayed in the game long enough to be a success. Characters such as The Black Owl, Stuntman and The Vagabond Prince are best remembered by collectors and comic book historians.  

   

     One thing they are best remembered for is the creation of Captain America for Timely which eventually became Marvel. There were other patriotic heroes but this particular one has outlasted many of his contemporaries.

     Even before the USA came into the 2nd World War, comic book artists, writers and editors had plenty to say about what was happening and had been going on in Europe. Many of them were the sons and daughters of migrants and still had relatives living in countries being taken over. Also, many of them were Jewish and were well aware of the NAZI dislike for Jews.

     The artists and writers of the 1930s and 1940s were mostly young men. When they reached the right age they enlisted in the military. Gene Colan, who became popular from his work in the 1970s Tomb of Dracula series for Marvel, was an MP stationed in Hawaii during the war. 

     Stan Lee's contribution to comic book patriotism, during the war, was a costumed spy called The Destroyer who worked with the German underground and other underground agencies to bring an end to the Nazi reign of terror.

      It can be noted that not all Germans were considered by the artists and writers to be bad but that was not true, as far as I am aware, when it came to the Japanese. They were depicted as yellow and evil. Back before the war, the Chinese, in some comic book and pulp magazines, were depicted this way but, since the Chinese were allies during the war, that changed. 

 

     After the war, the interest in costumed characters faded. In search of the next big thing, Simon and Kirby invented the Romance comic book which, for a while, was popular. In the 1950s there was a short lived revival of the superhero since someone, like Simon and Kirby's Fighting American, had to take on the Reds. Sales, however, were not good. Then there was self imposed censorship. Simon got out and went into advertising. Kirby teamed up with Stan Lee, launching the Marvel superheroes of the 1960s in the Silver Age of comics. Simon worked briefly with Kirby on The Fly for Archie comics but that, as far as I know, was their last team up in the comic book field. They remained friends even though they did go their separate ways.