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Missive #476 Published 9 April 2025

It was almost a decade ago that Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways ) followed the trail of Lewis and Clark in River Horse ; in the first section of his latest peripatetic writings, he and his wife, Q, trace the lesser-known Dunbar-Hunter Expedition of 1804 through the southern half of the Louisiana Purchase, searching out the head of the Ouachita River in Arkansas. Least Heat-Moon's fans will find this territory, and that covered in the five other “journeys to places a goodly portion of the American populace would call 'nowhere,' ” instantly familiar, as he and various companions take digressive paths from one small opolis (“where anything metro was clearly missing”) to the next in search of “quoz” (an 18th-century word meaning “anything out of the ordinary”).

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Missive #475 Published 5 April 2025

Continuing The Federalist Papers.

Federalist No.44
Restrictions on the Authority of the Several States
Author: James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:

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Missive #474 Published 4 April 2025

81. Nasruddin on the Roof

A man down on the ground was shouting to Nasruddin up on the roof. “Please, sir, come here!”

Nasruddin climbed down and asked the man what he wanted.

“I need money,” the man explained.

“Why didn’t you just say so?” said Nasruddin. “Instead, you made me climb down.”

“I was embarrassed to shout it out loud,” the man explained.

Nasruddin told the man to come up on the roof. Then, once they were both up on the roof, Nasruddin told the man he had nothing to give him.

“Why didn’t you just say so?” the man asked.

Nasruddin just smiled.

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Missive #473 Published 3 April 2025

A loving mother. A notorious murderer. They both have reasons to hide their secrets in a novel of escalating shock and suspense by New York Times bestselling author A. R. Torre. Perla Wultz lives with her husband, Grant, and their precious daughter, Sophie, in a gated Pasadena community. Affluent, sociable, and accomplished, Perla plays the part of loving wife and mother to perfection.This is another good suspense book, not as good as The Wronged Sons or The Patient’s Secret. I’ll be adding the author to my To Read list and see what some of her other books might be like. It seems an ideal life, if not for a decades-old crime that has become Perla’s dark and consuming secret obsession.

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Missive #472 Published 1 April 2025

What would you do if the person you loved suddenly vanished into thin air? Catherine’s cosy life as a housewife and mum-of-three is quickly thrown into disarray when husband Simon disappears without explanation. She is convinced he hasn’t left by choice as confusion and spiraling debts threaten to tear her family apart.

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Missive #471 Published 30 March 2025

Continuing The Anti-Federalist Papers

Cato VI
by George Clinton
To the People of the State of New York:

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Missive #470 Published 29 March 2025

Neoreaction is not your grandfather's conservatism, but the web 2.0 era marriage between modern engineering principles and classical anti-democratic thought. Its central tenet is that the Enlightenment was a mistake, and in The Dark Enlightenment, Nick Land burns progressivism to the ground, salts the earth around its ashes, and raises an altar to anti-humanism in its place.

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Missive #469 Published 28 March 2025

80. A Token of Friendship

Nasruddin had a friend he’d known for a long time.

“You’re quite the trickster,” Nasruddin’s friend said, “but I’ve seen all your tricks. You can fool everybody else, but you can’t fool me.”

Nasruddin scratched his head thoughtfully and then he said, “Wait here! I think I know a way to fool you. I’ll be right back!”

“Okay,” the man agreed. “You can try if you want, but I’m going to be on my guard!”

The man stood there and waited.

And waited.

And as he was waiting, he realized … Nasruddin wasn’t coming back.

Nasruddin had fooled him after all.

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Missive #468 Published 25 March 2025

The ordeals faced by a group of pioneers journeying from Illinois to California in 1846. Jacob and George Donner knew that the trip from Illinois to California would be long and difficult, but they had read a bout a newly discovered shortcut that would make the trip somewhat easier. Even so, the going was rough.
This is a short book that tells the story of the Donner Party which as been told at great length by other authors. A good quick read. .

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Missive #467 Published 24 March 2025

A long out-of-print classic, Lower Piedmont Country is set in northeastern Alabama, although the narrative encompasses the region form the Mississippi Delta to the Virginia Tidewater. The book surveys the history, politics, religion, economy (both rural and industrial), and folkways of the hill-country people as the author knew them during the Depression and war years.

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