Michael Bates: February 2023 Archives
Galloway's Plan of Union: Wikipedia
Union: Joseph Galloway, Plan of Union
At the 1st Continental Congress, Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway proposed a union of Great Britain and the American colonies, with an American colonial parliament called the Grand Council "for regulating the general affairs of America," under a President General appointed by the King. A similar plan was ultimately put in place for governing the overseas dominions of the 2nd British Empire.
Songs Of The Letter People (1972) - YouTube
The original Letter People songs, from back in those simple times when boys were consonants and girls were vowels. (This was deemed an offense to equality in a later edition. And don't even ask Mx. Y about xir pronouns.) These songs were used with posters and inflatable figures of the Letter People to teach phonics to kindergartners. My mom, Sandy Bates, had a set of these for her Catoosa kindergarten classroom. (I helped blow up the Little People when she first got them.)
Winterflight : a novel : Bayly, Joseph : Internet Archive
Joseph Bayly was inspired by the Roe v. Wade abortion and Baby Doe infanticide decisions to write this dystopian novel set in the US in the near future. Originally published by Word in 1981, this Victor Press edition from 2000 adds an afterword, added shortly before the author's death, addressing complaints about the book's appalling ending which is reminiscent of Nevil Shute's On the Beach. The book imagines an America in the mid 1990s with socialized medicine, a one-child policy, mandatory euthanasia at age 75, organ harvesting from social undesirables and the defective (the sort of thing no happening in Xinjiang), and no way to escape. The author attempts to deal with Christian complicity or indifference to government intrusions and the proper application of Romans 13 to an unjust government. He raises an interesting point that being too effective in fortifying the border against illegal immigration may turn the US into a prison for citizens trying to escape medical tyranny. It seems like the author got tired before he could write the ending implied by the title: There was no flight and the book ended before winter.
