JOURNEY FROM SHANGHAI
by
Lucille Bellucci

The Roman autumn gave the city back to Italians. Colors changed. Women’s dresses and silk scarves graduated to rusts and crimsons. The huge chestnut burrs on the thirty-foot trees on Via Veneto and near the Bardinis’ home on the Lungotevere swelled and split to expose the reddish-brown nuts inside. On Via della Conciliazione, the broad central avenue leading to the Vatican, young seminarians walked in groups with their long black cassocks flying and hands clamped atop their black cartwheel hats. With their broad sashes, they, too flaunted various shades of red.
Mai-yeen Bardini yielded to the change in seasons with sadness. In October her garden went to sleep, and in a few weeks would be nothing but moldering flower beds to remind her that she had produced a garden at all. She did not like being shut indoors for months until spring. Winter was danger; it worked loneliness into cruel forms and there was no way to fight them. This condition became as seasonal as hay fever.
She missed more than the landscapes of her homeland. She knew enough Italian to manage the daily demands by herself, but her sentences were like wood when she uttered them and always the same set pieces. The only antidote she had for that was to read aloud from a volume of poetry by Wei Chuang until she had convinced herself that her mind had not turned into wood also, that she could make song out of words and use them at her will. She had not prized enough those inconsequential chats with other women in Shanghai over the garden gate or at the beauty shop. Such foolish, comfortable nonsense! Their gossiping had been more valuable than they knew; it had made them secure, bonded in a sisterhood of common language.
Her talks with Mrs. Wei, her only Chinese friend, were always about the same things, the family in Taiwan, the two recalcitrant sons, and invariably ended with Mrs. Wei bursting into tears. Mai-yeen had several times tried to speak of her own uneasiness over news received from her sister and foster aunt in Soochow but had given up. So she read to Rafaella the cold, proud letters filled with sinister words: Land Reform. Collectivization. Industrialization. Revisionist struggles.
“They seem to have become fervent Communists,” she said, meaning, They do not sound like my own family.
“It’s the only way to survive there, Mother,” Rafaella replied. She barely knew her relatives, having met them when she was a child. To her they were no different from the other hapless millions who were forced to conform to Mao Tse-tung’s edicts.
But Mai-yeen felt each defection of family personally. The last of her line in China was being transformed into something alien. Her sister’s children were seldom mentioned in the letters, as if it were understood they were busily growing up to be productive citizens with no use for their aunt in a foreign land. The year before, Mai-yeen’s brother-in-law had been promoted to commune leader. Since then, there had been no more salutations from him. The tone of the last letter was almost malevolent. “You may laugh at us in your imperialistic culture,” her sister wrote, “but for once we are all working together, and together we Chinese will show the world what we can achieve.”
I do not laugh, Little Sister. I miss you. Do not push me out of the family. Why do you say “we Chinese”? I am still Chinese.
There was never any mention of Matteo, the husband who had brought her to this country and then died, no matter how often Mai-yeen did so in her letters. Now there was no one with whom to share memories of him, except with Rafaella in his character as her father. Her own various characters drove her deeper into her state of isolation. To Rafaella’s friend she was Madame, to their landlady she was Signora Bardini, to her own Rafaella she was Mama. To the grocer she was the Chinese lady with strange bound feet. I am Mai-yeen, she thought. My name is Mai-yeen.
How complex was the state of loneliness.
###

The Shell Game by Steve Alten (Intro and Chapter 1) | Read Review
Apologizes on the formatting below:

PROLOGUE
Washington, DC
November 23, 2007
The hotel suite is richly decorated in cream-colored fabrics and matching carpet, the turquoise drapes drawn, blocking out the view of downtown Washington. A series of aluminum steam table pans situated on warming trays cover a small side table, the aroma of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns filling the room.
Ignoring the hunger pangs growling in his stomach, Colonel Graeme “the Bull” Turnbull, U.S. Army, directs his harsh, blue-eyed gaze at the two civilians seated directly across the small conference table. Ryan Gessaman, a rugged man in his forties, wearing a dark suit and matching bow tie, is a senior assistant to Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Perle, known around Washington power circles as the “Prince of Darkness,” is himself a close personal advisor to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and a major investor in a number of defense companies. Perle is also co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a political think tank, established in 1997, that promotes American dominance in world affairs.
Turnbull does not recognize Gessaman’s companion, an as-yet unidentified woman with thick, shoulder-length, blonde, curly hair and penetrating hazel eyes, her navy business suit partially concealing what appears to be an athletic physique.
“Colonel, are you sure we can’t interest you in some breakfast?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Well, if you change your mind . . .” Gessaman opens a sealed file. “I understand you’re currently stationed at Camp Anaconda. How long have you been in Iraq?”

“Since the beginning. I started in Afghanistan with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, the ‘Rakkasans.’ We were the first boots on the ground. Same for Iraq. Ne desit virtus—”
“—let valor not fail,” the woman translates. “When did Military Intelligence recruit you?”
“The day Psy Ops found out I spoke fluent Arabic.”
“So you were with MI two years, then Counterintelligence. Looks like you were quite busy . . over one hundred interrogations.” The woman’s
eyes narrow. “Tell me, Colonel, what’s the most interesting thing you ever learned from these ‘sessions’?”
Turnbull frowns. “You don’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Back in 2005, I reported that Bin Laden had escaped to the Hadhramaut
of Yemen, that he was being protected by Sayyid tribesmen. The info went up the food chain, but nothing ever happened. Seems the Sayyids of the Hadhramaut are allied with members of the Saudi Royal Family . . to go after him would have insulted our Saudi friends. Better to just pretend the number-one bad guy’s hiding in a cave in Afghanistan than confront the real enemy, huh?”
The woman nods. “I share your frustration, Colonel. Off the record, CIA ran an assessment of the blowback of a Bin Laden capture. Sometimes bad guys are better left alive than dead.”
“Is that why we’re funding Sunni insurgents with ties to Al-Qaeda?” Turnbull watches their expressions drop. “Yeah, I know about that, most of the other grunts in MI do too. Fact is, 45 percent of these foreign fighters
are Saudis, and half of them are involved in suicide bombings. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out where these guys are getting their money and weapons.”
“It’s a complicated situation, Colonel,” Ryan Gessaman replies.
“Not when you’re getting shot at.”
“Shiite radicals must be contained.”
“Look, friend, let’s get something straight: I ain’t in politics and the old ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ policy doesn’t fly with me, unless your definition of history is any period of time less than five years old. We supported Bin Laden to keep the Soviets in check, we supported Saddam to keep the Iranians in check . . now we’re supporting Al-Qaeda to keep Iraq from turning into a Shi’ite nation? Ever wonder why we’re not exactly being embraced these days?”

Continue reading Sneak Peak – The Shell Game by Steve Alten →

PublicLiterature.Org is proud to welcome Steve Alten, a New York Times Best Selling Author as our latest Featured Author. He is well known for his Meg series, a set of novels positing the survival of large Megalodon sharks. Alten holds a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s in sports medicine from the University of Delaware, and a doctorate in sports administration from Temple University.

We look forward to his latest work, Shell Game, to be released January 22. Welcome Steve and good luck with your latest work!

Read the complete book online | This work is in the public domain.

DRACULA by Bram Stoker

1897 edition

CHAPTER 1

Jonathan Harker's Journal

3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at
Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was
an hour late.  Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse
which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through
the streets.  I feared to go very far from the station, as we had
arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the
East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is
here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish
rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh.
Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale.  I had for dinner,
or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which
was very good but thirsty.  (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the
waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was
a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the
Carpathians.

I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don't know
how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the
British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the
library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some
foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance
in dealing with a nobleman of that country.

I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the
country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia,
and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the
wildest and least known portions of Europe.

I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality
of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to
compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz,
the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place.  I
shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when
I talk over my travels with Mina.

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct
nationalities:  Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs,
who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and
Szekelys in the East and North.  I am going among the latter, who
claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns.  This may be so, for
when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they
found the Huns settled in it.

I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the
horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of
imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting.  (Mem.,
I must ask the Count all about them.)

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had
all sorts of queer dreams.  There was a dog howling all night under my
window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have
been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe,
and was still thirsty.  Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the
continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping
soundly then.

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize
flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with
forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem.,
get recipe for this also.)

I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight,
or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station
at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we
began to move.

It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are
the trains.  What ought they to be in China?

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of
beauty of every kind.  Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the
top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by
rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each
side of them to be subject to great floods.  It takes a lot of water,
and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear.

At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in
all sorts of attire.  Some of them were just like the peasants at home
or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets,
and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very
picturesque.

The surface of the moon looks a lot like a desert. It’s dry, rocky, and sandy. There are no plants on the moon. Not even a small cactus.In the year 1969 human beings from planet Earth first stepped on the moon. They walked around a bit and collected some moon rocks to take back with them. By mistake, they forgot to plant the acorn.

They had brought an acorn with them, along with a watering can and some potting soil. They were supposed to plant the acorn a few hundred yards away from the spaceship, but they forgot. They plain forgot.

You can’t really blame them though. They had so much else to do. Every minute of every day they had something important to do. People from NASA were telling them what to do over the radio.

But what if they had remembered to plant the acorn? What if they had dug down a couple of inches in the loose soil, dropped some sweet-smelling potting soil into the hole, and gently placed the acorn in its new home? What if they covered the acorn with some more sweet-smelling potting soil, and gently watered it with their watering can?

An acorn doesn’t need a lot of things to grow. It needs water, it needs soil, it needs sunlight, and it needs carbon dioxide gas. Now, there’s plenty of soil and plenty of sunlight on the moon. But water and carbon dioxide are in short supply. That’s why the astronauts brought a watering can with them.

They also brought a small plastic greenhouse with them. The plan was to place the greenhouse right over the planted acorn. Then the greenhouse was supposed to be filled with carbon dioxide gas.

After the acorn sprouted, it would pop up through the soil right in the middle of the greenhouse. There would be lots of water, soil, sunlight, and carbon dioxide for the small plant to grow tall and strong.

Plants both produce and consume carbon dioxide. A plant placed in a closed bottle, with good soil, sunlight and water, can survive for years without any care from human beings. (If you don’t believe me, you can try this yourself at home.)

As the little oak tree grew, it would produce more and more carbon dioxide from its leaves. Its branches would reach out and bump into the walls of the greenhouse. One day, the top of the oak tree would poke its way through the top of the greenhouse.

When that happened, some of the carbon dioxide and oxygen would escape through this hole. But the strong plant would continue to grow and continue to produce more of these two gases.

So if you think of the moon’s atmosphere as a small glass bottle in space, it might be possible for an oak tree to grow in its soil If only the astronauts had not forgotten to plant the acorn.

Phil Shapiro

It’s common knowledge that modern civilization was forged in the factories of the industrial revolution. And these factories themselves were powered by the steam engine.

Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that steam engines ushered in the modern age. But where did the steam engine come from? Who was the inventor of this “mover of mountains?”

The steam engine was not so much invented as developed. To give credit to any one person would be to steal credit away from its many rightful owners. The steam engine was developed over a period of about a hundred years by three British inventors.

The first crude steam powered machine was built by Thomas Savery, of England, in 1698. Savery built his machine to help pump water out of coal mines. This machine was so simple that it had no moving parts. It also used up lots and lots of coal just to pump a small quantity of water.

To say it was a steam engine would be to stretch the world “engine” far beyond its current meaning. However, it would be fair to say tha Savery was the first person to find a practical way of using steam to perform useful work.

The next stage in the history of the steam engine was a result of the work of Thomas Newcomen, also of England. Newcomen knew that there must be a way of improvingon Savery’s inefficient steam powered pump. Newcomen built a machine where the steam actually pushed a movable piston in one direction. This true “steam engine” was also used to pump water out of coal mines. Neither Savery nor Newcomen had any grander purpose in mind for their machines.

This all changed in 1763, when James Watt, a Scottish engineer, set out to improve upon Newcomen’s design. Watt figured out a way to push a piston back and forth in its cyclinder. And more importantly, he found out a way to make this back-and-forth motion turn a wheel. By using a “crankshaft,” the steam engine could produce circular motion. Watt may not have realized it at the time, but he had just invented the first railroad locomotive.

Unfortunately, Watt didn’t have the money to develop his improved steam engine. However, he was able to convince and English manufacturer that building steam engines could become a profitable business. Together with his business partner, James Watt started a company to build steam engines. Of course he must have hoped this his improved steam engine would find many uses in factories. But little did he realize at the time that his machine would forever alter the course of history.
Phil Shapiro

Copyright 1995

All Rights Reserved

In many northern states the winters are so cold that the lakes freeze right over. In Minnesota, Michigan, and Maine, the ice in these lakes can freeze two to three feet deep.

When the ice is that thick it becomes possible to actually drive a car or truck across the ice. While driving on ice sounds like something that people would do just for fun, a lot of people drive across frozen lakes for very practical reasons.

For example, there are people who live year-round on islands within these northern lakes. In the middle of winter the only practical way of traveling to the mainland is by driving across the frozen lakes.

Actually, when the lake is frozen two to three feet deep, this is a perfect opportunity for people living on islands to transport large objects onto or off the islands. Say, for instance, you owned a cabin on a small island in the middle of a lake in Michigan. Suppose you decided that you wanted to build an extra room onto the cabin.

Transporting all the building materials onto the island using a boat would take a lot of work and expense. But if you waited until winter, you could easily drive all the building materials across the lake.

How can you tell if a lake is frozen solid enough to drive on? The surest way to know is to wait until several other cars and trucks have safely driven across the ice. Even then, you should always be extra careful when driving across a frozen lake.

It’s possible that one section of the lake has currents that prevent the lake from freezing solid. Or there might be a river or stream that brings slightly warmer water into one part of the lake. So even though most of the lake was frozen solid, one section of the lake could have thin ice.

Usually it takes at least two to three weeks of very cold weather before deep ice is formed on a lake. Here in the northern United States, deep ice doesn’t form until mid-January, at the earliest. (In northern Canada and Alaska lakes sometimes freeze solid as early as November or December.)

Do the tires of cars slip when they drive across ice? Yes, sometimes they do. But almost every car and truck that drives on ice has snow tires, which creates extra friction between the tires and the ice. Some people also choose to put chains on their tires, which gives the tires an even stronger grip against the ice.

After a few cars have driven across a particular path on a lake the ice actually becomes a sort of road. If you walked up to such a road and did not know that the road was traveling over a lake, you might never suspect that the cars and trucks are actually driving across solid ice.
Phil Shapiro

Copyright 1995

All Rights Reserved