This Morning's Reading

Updates included

Browsing online newspapers, magazines, and blogs this morning, I gleaned some interesting information:

• Watch the Animals: At The New York Times, Richard Coniff reminds us that we don't have to travel to Serengeti to benefit from watching wildlife. I knew this, of course, being a watcher of animal life here in my urban neighborhood, but a reminder can make one become more attentive and appreciative. Coniff concludes in his editorial, "The Consolation of Animals" that "[a]nimals are built to watch other animals, and for animals like us, otherwise separated from the natural world, there’s consolation in it. Television is in truth a poor substitute." So go watch some animals today.
  
  
• Don't Smile: Most of us like to have a pleasant picture on our driver's license, one that doesn't make us look too old or too grumpy. Well, an article in The Washington Post describes how the state of Virginia is insisting that its citizens not smile for the driver's license photo. Citizens are told to maintain a neutral expression. The state wants to develop "a facial recognition system that could compare customers' photographs over time to prevent fraud and identity theft." A smiling face evidently gums up the works of such a system. Getting a driver's license is becoming more and more like a visit to the local precinct for a line-up: both require the mug shot and the finger-printing.
  
  
• Nurture Relationships: Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're going to be happy, Suze Orman told the audience on Oprah yesterday. Of course, she amended, being poor can make you miserable, too. According to the LA Times, Peter Falk, who made his money in television and movies, most memorably as Columbo, in the eponymous series, has developed dementia, and his daughter and wife of thirty years are disputing who has custodial rights of the man. The step-mother suspects the adopted daughter of Peter Falk and his first wife wants to get her hands on her father's money; the daughter claims the step-mother has long prevented Falks' children access to their father. When the daughter visited her father during a court-mandated visit in February, she asked her father if he recognized her. "I want to," he replied.
  
  If you have money, spend it on your kids (or set up a fund for them) before you're old. That way they won't argue over the spoils when you're too infirm--or too dead!--to negotiate the disputes and to remind them how much you love them. Also, I've never understood the rich folks who leave more money to one kid than another. Even if one child has proven a disappointment in some way, why nurture resentment beyond the grave?
  
  
• Don't Look (or we'll be sorry, they say): I read this article yesterday, and since I had come across the details in other sources much earlier, this is not news to me--but it may be to others. Those some 2,000 torture photos [Update: These numbers are disputed; other sources mention only 21 photos.] that Obama has decided not to release reportedly include photos of a teenage boy being raped by an Egyptian translator and a female detainee being raped by an American soldier. Britain's Telegraph quotes Major General Taguba:

  These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan. The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.

  The photos were taken between 2001 and 2005 at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
  UPDATE: I have read several reputable bloggers who write that The Telegraph is not accurate in its depiction of the unreleased photos. There evidently is no proof that photos of the rapes described exist or even that these particular rapes occurred. Alex Coppell, at Salon's War Room links to a post by Michael Scherer at Time's Swampland blog: "The Daily Telegraph's Rape Photo Claim". A number of questions have been raised about the reporting for that Telegraph article. Scherer says that The Telegraph should seek further clarification from General Taguba, who is reported to have seen photos of rape (see quote above).
  
  
• Be Ornery: "There won't be any biographies of me," [Flannery] O'Connor wrote, "because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy." However, biographies abound, and in The New Republic Christopher Benfey reviews a new biography of Flannery O'Connor, Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. As a child Flannery O'Connor was uncommonly stubborn, creative, and funny. She hated home economics, and when the students were required to sew a completed outfit for the final exam, O'Connor showed up with her pet duck and beautifully sewn underwear and other clothing that fit the duck. She taught a pet chicken to walk backward. And as a student at Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville, she was the campus cartoonist. Reading these details of the young Flannery O'Connor (who died young, too, at thirty-nine years of age) inspires me to dip into her collection of letters again, The Habit of Being, which I have here within reach on my bookshelves.