Never the Twain shall meet (a turkey)…
Pencil sketch of Mark Twain
by Samuel Johnson Woolf, 1906.
With an eye to the digestive challenges that many readers will likely be facing tomorrow, (R)D will be on holiday hiatus, to resume on Black Friday… In the meantime, a Thanksgiving gift: Mark Twain’s “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey.”
When I was a boy my uncle and his big boys hunted with the rifle, the youngest boy Fred and I with a shotgun—a small single-barrelled shotgun which was properly suited to our size and strength; it was not much heavier than a broom. We carried it turn about, half an hour at a time…
Readers will find links here to download the full story (as a pdf) or to read online at the Library of America’s site… and will realize that the real gift here is the link on that page to subscribe to their wonderful “Story of the Week” list— a free, downloadable short story, like this one, selected each week from the extraordinary trove of treasures in their stock. The perfect post-prandial pleasure!
###
As we prepare to loosen our belts, we might send safe and satisfied birthday greetings to Jesse Ernest Wilkins, Jr.; he was born on this date in 1923. The youngest ever undergraduate at the University of Chicago when he was admitted at the age of 13, he went on to earn his doctorate there, and thus to become the first African-American PhD in mathematics. He went on to earn both Masters and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering at NYU.
Wilkins was involved in the Manhattan Project during World War II, then developed mathematical models to calculate the amount of gamma radiation absorbed by any given material (a technique of calculating radiative absorption still widely used among researcher in space and nuclear science). He then developed the radiation shielding used against the gamma radiation emitted during electron decay of the Sun and other nuclear sources.
Your correspondent, for one, will be using that shielding in his oven tomorrow.
