Crystalline Entities: Webpages Devoted to Crystalline Glazed Porcelain
WEBSITES AND TEXTS OF PERSONAL INTEREST
AIRORF: American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Page
Devilbunnies
James Randi Educational Foundation
National Association of Scholars
The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia. Calculate links between/among famous people. Play the Oracle of Baseball.
Favorite Books and Authors
The Alexander Botts Stories
Upson, William Hazlett, The Fabulous Saga of Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor (2001). Reprint of Upson's earliest stories, which were published in the Saturday Evening Post beginning in 1927. Botts billed himself as "the world's best natural born salesman" and worked his way up from the sales force to General Manager of the Earthworm Tractor Company. Follow his adventures through his correspondence with the perpetually apoplectic Mr. Henderson, who originally hired him (but as a mechanic) and fired him regularly throughout his career. The letters contain much clever but gentle satire of such things as marketing, the French, personnel departments, the legal system, the South, the North, farmers, city folk and Botts himself, who is an unquestionably unique literary character.
See also Mathematical Fiction, S. Berliner's Tractor Page, Botts at Sea (an Alexander Botts story), and the film Earthworm Tractors (1936), based on the Botts stories and starring Joe E. Brown.
Bibliography:
The Big Book of Caterpillar (includes a reprint of the first Botts story)
Holder, Stephen C. That Botts Business: Earthworm Tractors and Much More, Journal of Popular Culture, June 2002, at 134.
Upson, William Hazlett, Alexander Botts: Earthworm Tractors (1929). First book edition of the stories.
Upson, William Hazlett, Alexander Botts; Great Stories from the Saturday Evening Post (1978)
Upson, William Hazlett, The Best of Botts (1967?)
Upson, William Hazlett, Botts in War, Botts in Peace (1944)
Upson, William Hazlett, Earthworms in Europe (1931)
Upson, William Hazlett, Earthworms Through the Ages (1947)
Upson, William Hazlett, The Fabulous Saga of Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor (2001)
Upson, William Hazlett, Keep 'Em Crawling (1943)
Upson, William Hazlett, Hello, Mr. Henderson (1949)
Upson, William Hazlett, No Rest For Botts (1951)
Upson, William Hazlett, Original Letters of Alexander Botts (1963). Includes "Tax Haven", previously unpublished.
Upson, William Hazlett, Saturday Evening Post stories
Note that many websites and books about tractors (including CAT--erpillars) include reprints of one or more of the Alexander Botts stories.
