Surgeon, Medical Staff; Chin Field Force
Born: 25 December 1863, Jersey, Channel Islands
Died: 14 April 1950, Bristol

(London Gazette issue 25988 dated 29 Oct 1889, published 29 Oct 1889.)
I have many interests, so this is going to be a blog on lots of subjects. Submarines, my family, history, books I read, the space programme, archaeology, astronomy, current events, the occasional joke.... Just don't expect any politics, sports or deep philosophy, and we should get along fine.
Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti, who was killed in Afghanistan June 21, 2006, will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions in combat, his father, Paul Monti, told Army Times in a telephone interview Thursday.
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Sgt. 1st Class Monti, 30, was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, when he was killed in Afghanistan.
He will become the sixth service member to receive the Medal of Honor during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the first soldier to receive the nation’s highest award for valor in Afghanistan. Navy Lt. Michael Murphy is the only other service member to receive the award for actions in Afghanistan.
According to [1SG Gary] Hunsucker, Monti led a group of 15 scouts on a reconnaissance mission in Gowardesh. Hunsucker was in charge of planning the mission, watching back at the base. Monti was in charge of the soldiers.
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Hunsucker said Monti and another sergeant fought hard to keep the enemy from advancing. Monti then pulled Pvt. Brian Bradbury to a waiting medevac helicopter. But in the process, he was exposed to enemy fire. An RPG landed close to him, killing him.
When he died, Monti held the rank of staff sergeant, and was promoted to sergeant first class posthumously.
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (the 1923 winner, by Hugh Lofting) Rabbit Hill (1945, Robert Lawson) Strawberry Girl (1946, Lois Lenski) The Twenty-One Balloons (1948, William Pène du Bois) A Wrinkle in Time (1963, Madeleine L'Engle) It's Like This, Cat (1964, Emily Neville) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (1968, E L Konigsburg)So I began reading my way through the list. They're a very mixed bag. The first winner, The Story of Mankind (1922, Hendrik Willem van Loon) is a history of the world*. There are four biographies (of Louisa May Alcott, Daniel Boone, Amos Fortune and Abraham Lincoln), two books of poetry, and a book of short "plays" that might as well be poetry. There's a lot of historical fiction, ranging from mediaeval England (Adam of the Road, The Door in the Wall) to the American Revolution (Johnny Tremain) to the USCW (Rifles for Watie) to 12th-century Korea (A Single Shard) to 17th-century Spain (I, Juan de Pareja) to WWII Denmark (Number the Stars). There's a bit of fantasy, both high fantasy like The Hero and the Crown and modern-world-with-magic stuff like The Grey King, and I think A Wrinkle in Time is normally classified as science fiction. And, of course, there are plenty of "regular" books like Thimble Summer, Miracles on Maple Hill, Criss Cross and It's Like This, Cat. Some of them called for a bit of extra reading: Dicey's Song (1983, Cynthia Voigt), for instance, was the second in a series, The High King (1969, Lloyd Alexander) was the fifth, and The Grey King (1976, Susan Cooper) was the fourth, and I figured they'd make a little more sense to me if I read the preceding books first. As could be expected, there were some I liked and others I disliked. My favourites (in order of publication) were:
It's hard to name a single, number-one favourite, but Dicey's Song may be the one - I enjoyed it and its prequel, Homecoming, so much that I went on to read three other books in the series. On the other hand, I've read Frankweiler several times through the years....Rabbit Hill (1945, Robert Lawson)
Miracles on Maple Hill (1957, Virginia Sorensen)
Onion John (1960, Joseph Krumgold)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (1968, E L Konigsburg)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1977, Mildred D Taylor)
The Westing Game (1979, Ellen Raskin)
Dicey's Song (1983, Cynthia Voigt)
Number the Stars (1990, Lois Lowry)
Maniac Magee (1991, Jerry Spinelli)
Walk Two Moons (1995, Sharon Creech)
The Graveyard Book (2009, Neil Gaiman)
Smoky, the Cowhorse (1927, Will James)Fortunately, there were more books in the first group than the second! Smoky, the Cowhorse is just what the title implies: A book about a cow pony. Not a bad story overall, but the book is written in dialect. Not just the dialogue - the whole bloody book! A little of that goes a long, long way indeed. Dobry is about a Bulgarian peasant boy who wants to become a sculptor. Kira-Kira is about a Japanese family - two girls and their parents - living in rural Georgia in the 1950s. In both cases, I couldn't really develop an interest in either the protagonists or their situation. The White Stag is apparently based on Hungarian legend. I can't really say why I didn't care for it; I just didn't. Secret of the Andes is about a young boy raised high in the mountains as a heir to the Incas. I thought this one was just plain boring. Extremely boring. Ditto The Bronze Bow, which is about a band of Jewish rebels in early first-century Judaea. Out of the Dust is about a family in Dust Bowl Oklahoma. The mother and her baby die as the result of a rather horrible accident, leaving the daughter and her father to try to keep the family farm going. This could have been a very good book - both the plot and the characters were interesting - but unfortunately Hesse wrote the story not as a novel, but as a series of poems. I'm not all that big on poetry to begin with, and when I do I want both rhyme and metre. Blank verse just doesn't do a thing for me. I'm somewhat ambivalent about A Wrinkle in Time - I really enjoyed it when I first read it, back in fourth grade**, but when I tried rereading it a few years ago I couldn't finish it. It's one of the two books I'd read before that I haven't reread yet this year; we'll see what I think of it this time round. I couldn't make up my mind if I liked Criss Cross (2006, Lynne Rae Perkins) or not. My 13-year-old daughter agrees with me that it is a very peculiar story. Here's the complete list:
Dobry (1935, Monica Shannon)
The White Stag (1938, Kate Seredy)
Secret of the Andes (1953, Ann Nolan Clark)
The Bronze Bow (1962, Elizabeth George Speare)
Out of the Dust (1998, Karen Hesse)
Kira-Kira (2005, Cynthia Kadohata)
1922: The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik Willem van LoonAs you can see, a few fortunate writers have won the medal twice: Joseph Krumgold (1954 and 1960), Elizabeth George Speare (1959, 1962), E L Konigsburg (1968, 1997), Katherine Paterson (1978, 1981) and Lois Lowry (1990, 1994). Sharon Creech is the only author thus far to receive both the Newbery Medal (1995) and its British equivalent, the Carnegie Medal (2002, for Ruby Holler).
1923: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting
1924: The Dark Frigate, by Charles Hawes
1925: Tales from Silver Lands, by Charles J Finger
1926: Shen of the Sea, by Arthur Bowie Chrisman
1927: Smoky, the Cowhorse, by Will James
1928: Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon, by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
1929: The Trumpeter of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly
1930: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field
1931: The Cat Who Went to Heaven, by Elizabeth Coatsworth
1932: Waterless Mountain, by Laura Adams Armer
1933: Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, by Elizabeth Lewis
1934: Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women, by Cornelia Meigs
1935: Dobry, by Monica Shannon
1936: Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink
1937: Roller Skates, by Ruth Sawyer
1938: The White Stag, by Kate Seredy
1939: Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright
1940: Daniel Boone, by James Daugherty
1941: Call It Courage, by Armstrong Sperry
1942: The Matchlock Gun, by Walter Edmonds
1943: Adam of the Road, by Elizabeth Janet Gray
1944: Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes
1945: Rabbit Hill, by Robert Lawson
1946: Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski
1947: Miss Hickory, by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
1948: The Twenty-One Balloons, by William Pène du Bois
1949: King of the Wind, by Marguerite Henry
1950: The Door in the Wall, by Marguerite de Angeli
1951: Amos Fortune, Free Man, by Elizabeth Yates
1952: Ginger Pye, by Eleanor Estes
1953: Secret of the Andes, by Ann Nolan Clark
1954: ...And Now Miguel, by Joseph Krumgold
1955: The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong
1956: Carry On, Mr Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham
1957: Miracles on Maple Hill, by Virginia Sorensen
1958: Rifles for Watie, by Harold Keith
1959: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare
1960: Onion John, by Joseph Krumgold
1961: Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell
1962: The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare
1963: A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
1964: It's Like This, Cat, by Emily Neville
1965: Shadow of a Bull, by Maia Wojciechowska
1966: I, Juan de Pareja, by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino
1967: Up a Road Slowly, by Irene Hunt
1968: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, by E L Konigsburg
1969: The High King, by Lloyd Alexander
1970: Sounder, by William H Armstrong
1971: The Summer of the Swans, by Betsy Byars
1972: Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C O'Brien
1973: Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
1974: The Slave Dancer, by Paula Fox
1975: M C Higgins, the Great, by Virginia Hamilton
1976: The Grey King, by Susan Cooper
1977: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D Taylor
1978: Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
1979: The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin
1980: A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-1832, by Joan W Blos
1981: Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
1982: A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, by Nancy Willard
1983: Dicey's Song, by Cynthia Voigt
1984: Dear Mr Henshaw, by Beverly Cleary
1985: The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley
1986: Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan
1987: The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman
1988: Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman
1989: Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, by Paul Fleischman
1990: Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry
1991: Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli
1992: Shiloh, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
1993: Missing May, by Cynthia Rylant
1994: The Giver, by Lois Lowry
1995: Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech
1996: The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman
1997: The View from Saturday, by E L Konigsburg
1998: Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse
1999: Holes, by Louis Sachar
2000: Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis
2001: A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck
2002: A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park
2003: Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi
2004: The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo
2005: Kira-Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata
2006: Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins
2007: The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron, illustrated by Matt Phelan
2008: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz
2009: The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.
The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don’t conform. The law has hit thrift stores particularly hard, since many children’s products have long included lead-containing (if harmless) components: zippers, snaps, and clasps on garments and backpacks; skateboards, bicycles, and countless other products containing metal alloy; rhinestones and beads in decorations; and so forth. Combine this measure with a new ban (also retroactive) on playthings and child-care articles that contain plastic-softening chemicals known as phthalates, and suddenly tens of millions of commonly encountered children’s items have become unlawful to resell, presumably destined for landfills when their owners discard them. Penalties under the law are strict and can include $100,000 fines and prison time, regardless of whether any child is harmed.
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A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards. The blogger Design Loft carefully examines some of the costs of CPSIA-proofing pre-1985 library holdings; they are, not surprisingly, utterly prohibitive. The American Library Association spent months warning about the law’s implications, but its concerns fell on deaf ears in Congress (which, in this week’s stimulus bill, refused to consider an amendment by Republican senator Jim DeMint to reform CPSIA). The ALA now apparently intends to take the position that the law does not apply to libraries unless it hears otherwise. One can hardly blame it for this stance, but it’s far from clear that it will prevail. For one thing, the law bans the “distribution” of forbidden items, whether or not for profit. In addition, most libraries regularly raise money through book sales, and will now need to consider excluding older children’s titles from those sales. One CPSC commissioner, Thomas Moore, has already called for libraries to “sequester” some undefinedly large fraction of pre-1985 books until more is known about their risks.