June 16, 2026 Oklahoma Election

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Granger Meador

June 16, 2026 will be when I vote in my 68th election of the 21st century. I know the count thanks to the online OK Voter Portal, a service I recommend to my fellow Oklahomans to view their sample ballots.

Early voting at county-designated locations, such as the fourth floor of city hall in Bartlesville for Washington County, will be available on Thursday and Friday, June 11-12, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and again on Saturday, June 13, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. See the Oklahoma State Election Board for other election details.

Oklahoma Voice has a voter guide you might find useful with brief biographies of the candidates and links to their campaign websites.

Some people ask me about my own voting plans, so I’m sharing those here, subject to change as more information about the candidates appears. There will be a state question on all ballots, but regarding candidates I only analyzed the Republican choices. Given Oklahoma’s closed primary system, and as a practitioner of Realpolitik, I’m currently registered as a Republican since that maximizes my minimal influence in Oklahoma elections. These days few general election candidate races in Oklahoma are competitive, and the result is that Oklahoma has the lowest voter turnout of any state. You can look up your own available choices on 6/16/2026 by your county of residence and your party affiliation.

Caution: I do not revel in political debates. You may agree strongly or disagree sharply with various things in this post, or not give one whit. That is your privilege, and you are free to espouse your views on other platforms. If you’re looking for argument or discussion, please seek that elsewhere; I’m not allowing comments on this post for a reason. I’m just sharing my takes, and your level of attention or agreement is your decision to make.

This post reflects my biases, so know that I am among the oldest members of Generation X, and my political typology is that of Outsider Left in the Pew Research Center’s Political Typology Quiz. 90% of my fellow citizens are of a different political type, and that’s A-OK. Like George Washington, I consider political parties the bane of our republic, and I have no loyalty to any of them.

Disclaimers: I am retiring at the end of June, and this post does not reflect the views of Bartlesville Public Schools. It also does not necessarily reflect the views of my wife, Wendy, who registers as she sees fit and forms her own political opinions…something I encourage you to do as well.

Cheat Sheet

PDF version

Below are my explanatory notes on:

State Question 832
Republican Candidates for Statewide Offices
Republican Candidates for Congress
Republican Candidates for Legislative & County Offices

State Question 832: YES

Everyone, whether they are registered as a Republican, Democrat, or Independent, will be voting on State Question 832. It was deliberately placed on the June primary election date by Governor Stitt because Republicans have much greater turnout in Oklahoma’s primary elections, given those far more competitive races for elected offices. Stitt hopes that will help defeat SQ 832.

My first job in 1985 was as an office boy at the Oklahoma Department of Tourism at the then minimum wage of $3.35 per hour. Although I was getting free room and board from my parents, I still couldn’t afford to eat regularly in the capitol cafeteria. Adjusting for inflation, I was making $10.35 per hour in 2026 dollars, or about half of the living wage in Oklahoma for a single adult. The minimum wage in Oklahoma in 2026 was set way back in 2009. At $7.25 per hour, it is below the poverty wage for a single adult with no children.

SQ 832 would increase the minimum wage to $12 in 2027, to $15 in 2029, and then provide automatic annual inflation adjustments. The change is statutory, not constitutional, so the Oklahoma legislature could override it at some point. However, they should be cowed for awhile if it passes.

I don’t understand people who complain about freeloaders but then don’t support a living wage for full-time workers. I have no problem with raising the minimum wage to $15, which would still be below the living wage for a single adult with no children and would be just barely above the poverty wage for a single adult with two children. I love the idea of it being indexed to inflation, which is something we already do for social security benefits.

SQ 832 Resources | Some naysayers

Republican Candidates for Statewide Offices

NOTE: The following reflects my limited choices in the closed Oklahoma primary. In the general election in November, I will also have Democratic and probably some independent candidates to select from, so that will be a reset for me, even though Republicans will likely sweep all statewide offices. Sadly, given the state of Oklahoma politics, the general election is far less important than the closed primary.

Republican Candidate for Governor: Drummond

The share of Oklahomans approving of President Trump declined from 61% in April 2025 to 54% a year later. His net approval fell to only 1% among all of the state’s adult citizens but was 17% among those who voted in 2024. More importantly for the closed primary election, his approval rating among Republicans was still 85%.

So it is no surprise that all of the Republican gubernatorial candidates enthusiastically embrace Trump and his policies. Of course, what really matters are their stances on state issues.

The only viable candidates are Drummond, McCall, Keating, and Mazzei, who are all rich male egotists. McCall, Keating, and Mazzei have each loaned their own campaigns millions of their own money, while Drummond spent millions on earlier campaigns for attorney general.

Drummond is the front-runner. While he aligns himself with Trump by picking on Muslims and immigrants, he does have a proven record of fighting corruption and enforcing Oklahoma’s constitutional separation of church and state, and he recognizes that tribal governments should be partners, not adversaries. That makes him the most moderate of the viable candidates for governor.

McCall is a politician who shamelessly picks on the state’s miniscule trans community. He seeks to capitalize on the ceaseless culture war that appeals to far-right and some ultra-religious primary voters. After all, that worked for the abominable Ryan Walters, the former state superintendent who kept Oklahoma’s education ranking and cultural reputation at rock bottom. Ick.

Keating is relying on name recognition from his father, a former governor who could be a jerk but was better than his Republican successors. Daddy decamped to Washington, DC after his terms as governor, following the money. The younger Keating goes by “Chip” since his real name of Francis Anthony Keating III sounds too country-club. He claims he would “fix” education while also advocating changes that would eliminate a huge chunk of state revenues, which is absurd. No thanks, retread.

Mazzei does not come across as a dummy, yet his revenue policies are inane. He brags about past votes to cut income taxes, failing to mention how the consequent inadequate funding put Oklahoma’s education and health care rankings in the cellar. He comes across as another supply side economics grifter, who next wants to cut property taxes, which are already among the lowest in the nation and are crucial to supporting schools. Yet he claims that he would pay teachers tops in the region. Uh, that math doesn’t work, Mike. A mere glance at his website revealed misleading language. Get lost, liar.

Republican Candidate for Lieutenant Governor: Flores

This office matters little unless the Governor falters. Otherwise, one hopes the officeholder will serve as a cheerleader for tourism, economic development, and the like.

I presume T.W. Shannon is the front-runner since he received Trump’s endorsement. He is a former Oklahoma Speaker of the House who lost mightily in later races for the U.S. Senate. As Speaker, he led tax cuts that set the stage for the state’s later budget crises and the statewide school closures in 2018 to pressure the legislature into finally raising some taxes to stave off ruin. So I will never vote for him.

State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd would have been my choice, but she smartly shifted to the race for State Treasurer after Trump endorsed Shannon, and thankfully she could do more good in that role.

J.J. Humphrey is perhaps the best known after Shannon, as a redneck who loves cockfighting, culture wars, hunting for Bigfoot, and supports marriages below the age of 18. He raves incessantly about the Department of Corrections, after being investigated for being on paid sick leave as a parole officer while still working in a drug court, etc. He’s a drama queen, and nothing about him is good for tourism or economic development.

The others have little name recognition. Weaver is vague, Ostrowe was a Stitt guy, and Hill strikes me as a religious nut. Victor Flores is similarly obscure, but he is a partner in a national accounting firm and small business owner in Edmond who has served on nonprofit boards and wants to improve the relationships among the tribes, state agencies, and the executive branch, with a focus on economic development. So he will get my vote.

Republican Candidate for Attorney General: Starling

Jon Echols was once the house floor leader, and he has endorsements from the Oklahoma and Tulsa county sheriffs, although that is not a plus in my opinion given their incessant controversies. His website highlights culture war issues, which is a real turn-off.

Jeff Starling is an energy industry lawyer and similarly highlights some red meat issues, but at least he comes across a bit less cynical than Echols and would be new to political office.

I’m tentatively favoring Starling since I’m tired of career politicians, but a debate between the two on May 18 will be livestreamed on NonDoc’s Facebook page, and I’m expecting a summary article on NonDoc after that to help me re-evaluate my choice.

Republican Candidate for State Treasurer: Byrd

I’m not a particular fan of Cindy Byrd, given the years it took her office to complete audits of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority and the State Department of Education, although that no doubt reflected understaffing. I also didn’t care for her gripe about following state law regarding an audit of Tulsa Public Schools, even though I have no trust in that district.

That said, I’ll happily vote for her over Todd Russ. He has been repeatedly sued about open records requests, use of encrypted messaging apps for state business, and his handling of state contracts. Attorney General Drummond said he improperly steered a contract to a politically connected firm, and Russ has injected culture war politics into investment decisions, harming the finances of cities and retirees.

Republican Candidate for State Superintendent: Franklin

There are a slew of candidates in this race after the bizarre mess Ryan Walters created for Lindel Fields to try to clean up, and there is little name recognition with the public. Oklahoma Voice is doing a series of articles on the candidates, releasing those in alphabetical order.

I want a state superintendent with meaningful experience as both a public school teacher and administrator. My preferred candidate was Rob Miller, but he dropped out of the race after the death of his wife.

Adam Pugh is a state senator who has taken the lead on various education issues, but he strikes me as another arrogant politician who thinks he is an expert on schools without the requisite background. His failed attempt to divert a big chunk of funding the legislature allocated years ago to shore up the still-underfunded Teacher Retirement System showed him to be fiscally irresponsible and lacking sufficient respect for educators who spend their careers serving in Oklahoma’s under-resourced public schools.

John Cox has run for the job repeatedly, under different political banners, and I just don’t trust his background in a tiny dependent school district.

Taylor is a pastor, Herlihy is a research analyst, Crozier is an old weirdo and is not a viable candidate, and Hasenbeck is another politician, who at least has teaching experience, but she was never an administrator, and some of her messaging is like a weaker version of Walters (shudder).

Robert Franklin has been a teacher, principal, assistant superintendent in Sand Springs, and Associate Superintendent at Tulsa Tech, and he is an inductee in the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame. He was on the right side of history and the law during his service on the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board. He’s the obvious choice, and we are lucky to have someone of his caliber willing to lead a damaged and abysmally underfunded department.

Republican Candidate for Commissioner of Labor: West

Oklahoma is one of the worst states for employees, and I don’t expect Republican candidates to care much about protecting workers, improving wages or leave provisions, or tackling the real-world issue of child-care affordability. Their ideology just doesn’t orient toward benefiting workers.

Oklahoma Voice article on the candidates

Pfeiffer is a long-time state representative who is a rancher and doesn’t seem interested in solving workers’ issues. Janloo is a homeschooler and former city Chamber of Commerce VP who offers few specifics. Swinton was an HVAC mechanic and developed a smart watch app for football referees, but he does not strike me as a viable candidate.

West is a term-limited state representative. He builds cabinets, and he is the only candidate with an adequate platform. I have no use for him in culture warrior mode on the non-issue of Critical Race Theory in public schools or his efforts to criminalize types of medical and reproductive care. However, he’ll get my vote for labor commissioner unless the others step up with more and better specifics.

Republican Candidate for Insurance Commissioner: Sullivan

Oklahoma has been poorly served by incumbent insurance commissioner Glen Mulready, who thankfully is term-limited. He has not been up to the task of addressing Oklahoma’s lousy homeowners’ insurance market, which is increasingly unaffordable. All four Republican candidates to replace him have experience in the insurance industry.

Oklahoman article on the candidates

Merideth says he would focus on mitigation and resiliency strategies aimed at reducing losses and improving long-term affordability. He would also prioritize competition by ensuring oversight allows for rate adequacy while protecting consumers and system-wide accountability. I am alarmed, given the abuses of State Farm et al., that he wants to curtail litigation.

Sullivan says he has seen carriers leave the state, leaving some industries with only one insurer option and contributing to higher home insurance rates. He says he is running to restore competition, reduce costs, and improve the claims experience.

Shuler‘s stated priorities include rate fairness and transparency, consumer education and advocacy, scrutiny of price optimization, community partnerships, and disaster preparedness.

Quinn served in both chambers in the legislature and would focus on ways to drive competition and improve transparency, accountability, and claims processes. He says he would work to stop insurers from dropping homeowners’ policies because of roof age or a single claim, and he has positioned himself as a supporter of tort reform.

Merideth’s market-driven approach lacks teeth to bite into the real-world failings of Oklahoma’s insurance system. Quinn chaired the Senate Insurance Committee and failed to adequately address the problems in that role. Shuler doesn’t seem to recognize the crisis. That leaves Sullivan as the only one who seems to “get it” on what consumers are facing, so he will get my vote.

Republican Candidate for Corporation Commissioner: Hornback

It matters who serves on the commission. Consider that two of the three commissioners allowed utilities to charge Oklahomans like me over $2,500 for just one winter storm in February 2021. You read that right: I have an $8.45 “Winter Event Cost Recovery” charge on my monthly gas bill that will endure for a quarter century. That sort of ludicrous price gouging reflects commissioners who are ideologically unsuited to regulating industries. The commission also has a long history of failing to adequately address oil well pollution.

There is now a vacancy, with the term-limited Todd Hiett leaving office. In 2024 he got extremely drunk at a hotel bar and groped a man whose company does business with the commission, but he shamelessly refused to resign. And yeah, he’s one of the two jerks who effectively charged me over $2,500 for natural gas during one winter storm because they refuse to properly regulate the fossil fuel industry.

Tulsa Flyer article on the candidates

Boles is the former mayor Marlow, He has authored legislative bills to allow large data centers to build their own infrastructure off the grid and seeking to protect ratepayers from rising costs connected to data center infrastructure. However, he is also a rich guy who has received thousands in donations from political action committees backed by the utility and energy companies he would be regulating.

Hornback is a pipeline welder and three-time commission candidate who has raised just under $17,000 versus hundreds of thousands for Boles, including a $100,000 loan that Boles made to himself. I’m sick to death of wealthy politicians who are bought and paid for by utilities, so I’ll vote for Hornback.

Republican Candidates for Congress

NOTE: The following reflects my limited choices in the closed Oklahoma primary. In the general election in November, I will also have Democratic and probably some independent candidates to select from, so that will be a reset for me, even though Republicans will likely sweep all of the state’s federal offices. Given the state of Oklahoma politics, the general election is far less important than the closed primary.

Republican Candidate for U.S. Senator: Abstain

Everyone expects Hern to win this one. He will never get my vote, since he backed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. He got rich franchising McDonald’s locations and is worth somewhere between $36-110 million. I’m no fan of lying McCongressmen.

England and Ragain are quite vague, Buckner is more specific, and Hankins is a MAGA anti-establishment firebrand. I don’t care for any of them, and I fully expect Hern will win, so I plan to leave that one blank in the primary.

Republican Candidate for U.S. Representative in District 2: Webb

Brecheen was a protégé of former Senator Tom Coburn. He supports cockfighting, wanted to deregulate pet breeders, likes to fearmonger with nonsense about Sharia Law, is an anti-evolution creationist, ad nauseam.

Will Webb of Eufaula is a self-described moderate conservative. Webb will get my vote, but I realize the incumbent has an immense advantage.

Republican Candidates for Legislative & County Offices

NOTE: The primary will determine these offices, as there are no other candidates.

State Representative District 11: Kane

I know John and his family, and while our politics are divergent, I respect him. I have followed both candidates’ past performances in this office, and Kane will get my vote.

Bonus Choice for State District 10: Strom

While Arrowhead Acres, where we live, is in District 11, other parts of Bartlesville are in District 10, and if we lived in that district, Judd Strom would get my vote. Again, we often differ politically, but he has earned my trust and respect.

Washington County Assessor: Campbell

Most of our county’s offices have unopposed candidates: Treasurer Thornbrugh and Commissioners Antle and Dunlap. However, there is a race for assessor.

When Todd Mathes retired, the county commissioners appointed Steve Campbell as assessor in September 2024. He had been the head field appraiser for a couple of years by then, and before that spent almost 20 years as an assistant manager at Lowe’s.

Standridge worked in the assessor’s office for 13 years.

I don’t have much to go on for this race. I’m not aware of problems with the assessor, so unless I learn something more, I’ll go with the guy the commissioners selected.

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Leavetaking

Posted on May 23, 2026 by Granger Meador

I cleared out my office this week, a few days after a retirement reception at which I enjoyed reconnecting with colleagues, former students, and friends of education. I have always felt appreciated in Bartlesville, and I am grateful to call it my adopted home.

I still have a few weeks of official employment left, which beyond answering emails will include some time in the Technology Services department and the high school outfitting Chromebook carts, but, for the first time in 37 years, I no longer have an assigned classroom or office.

Clearing out of the Education Service Center had both similarities to and differences from clearing out of Bartlesville High School in 2017 after teaching physics there for 28 years. Back then, I was leaving behind a laboratory we had opened in 2003 and for which I was involved in every detail of its design, construction, and furnishing.

The lab I left behind had every cabinet stuffed with physics equipment accumulated over decades, and I was lucky to have two different Teachers of the Year (TOYs) inherit the program and carry it forward, and the current TOY is planning for her own eventual retirement by preparing one of my former students to carry on the long tradition of phun physics at BHS.

My physics lab in 2017 — My physics lab in June 2017 after I had moved out of it

Nine years later, I have left behind an office built a quarter century before I came to town, filled with cabinets and furnishings I had no role in selecting, save for an air purifier I added during the pandemic plus my purchase of a used Aeron chair to replace the hideous desk chair I found upon my arrival. Over the past few weeks, the Aeron had been shedding bits of plastic, as if it sensed that the end was near.

Office in 2017 and 2026 — My district office in 2017 and in 2026 after clearing out
(as a tech guy, I notice that the iPhone 17 Pro takes better panoramas than the old iPhone X did)

The file cabinets barely visible at the far left are now mostly filled with vintage physical media I collected from across the building and digitized for an online archive. The wooden cabinets below the counter on the opposite site once held boxes of cables, tools, and equipment which have migrated down the hall to Technology Services, as the office’s new occupant will have different administrative roles.

Back in 2017, I left behind my entire physics curriculum for later instructors to use or discard as they saw fit. This time I am leaving behind many spreadsheets and instruction documents, along with a log of my daily actions since June 2024. I linked all of those documents to Google’s artificial intelligence via Notebook LM to create a GrangerBot, which might ease the transition as my former administrative roles are dispersed among a handful of central office folk.

Office shelves — My office shelves before and after clearing out

Actuarial analysis says that I have about a 50% chance of living to age 88. Were I to last that long, I would have spent a quarter of my life before becoming an independent adult, one-third of it teaching, one-tenth of it as an administrator, and the final third of my lifespan in retirement.

All I am guaranteed, of course, are the years I have already enjoyed. I charted my six different jobs over the past decades on top of annual portraits to provide me with some perspective on their relative durations.

I have worked in education-related jobs for over 40 years, and the conclusion of my 37 years with Bartlesville Public Schools prompted a profile in Bartlesville Monthly Magazine, which prodded me to look back at my work life here.

Coming to Town

I came to Bartlesville at age 23, lured here by one of the very few full-time high school physics teaching positions in the state. I had turned down other science teaching opportunities in Sapulpa, Ponca City, and Moore, holding out for one in physics, and fortune smiled on me.

The only reason little Bartlesville had five sections of physics was because it was then the headquarters for Phillips Petroleum, a Fortune 500 company. Moving from the OKC metro where I had always lived to a town over 20 times smaller in population, and 35 times smaller in area, was an adjustment.

I didn’t know anyone in town, although a few of my father’s cousins lived in the area. I remember going to the movies here with someone back in 1989, and curious students peppering me with questions about us the next school day. After that, I often drove to Tulsa to regain some big-city anonymity in my entertainments.

In 2002, Conoco and Phillips merged and the corporate headquarters shifted to the Houston area. The consequent demographic changes meant that teaching physics full-time in Bartlesville was not possible after 2005. An ongoing departmental chairmanship sufficed to fill out my work schedule until 2016, when it became apparent that it was finally time for me to leave the classroom.

Leaving the Classroom

As I was ending my 27th year of teaching physics, Chuck McCauley, who had risen through the administrative ranks from a vice-principalship at the high school in 2001 to the district superintendency in 2016, asked me to join his leadership team. He wanted me to spearhead a 1:1 Chromebooks initiative in grades 6-12 and take the lead on district technology and communications.

One final big project was converting spaces at our high school and middle schools into state-of-the-art STEM labs

I had earned a master’s degree in Educational Leadership back in 1999, but I had never applied for an administrative position, feeling I was far better suited for teaching and leading the science department than being a school site administrator. I had instead channeled my administrative skills into the science department, various bond issue projects, leading a $1.7 million Phillips 66 grant to develop STEM courses and facilities across grades 6-12, and serving on about four dozen committees over the years, along with leading the certified staff contract bargaining team. I’d also used my technology and communications know-how to create the high school website since 2004 and the district website since 2012.

When Chuck posed his question, acknowledging that in the past I had always demurred from pursuing administrative positions, I instinctively knew that it was time to leave. In the 1990s, the school offered 5-7 sections of physics, but with demographic changes it seemed inevitable that eventually I would be burdened with a third laboratory science preparation, on top of Inquiry and AP Physics. Also, Wendy and I had married in 2016, and an administrative salary would improve our long-term financial security.

Administrative Challenges

Distributing Chromebooks at one of the elementary schools

I spent a transition year teaching three physics classes in the morning, with the afternoons spent leading district communications and developing a multi-year technology expansion plan. When I left the high school for the Education Service Center, my immediate focus was on Chromebooks and the Canvas Learning Management System, but soon a state education financial crisis developed.

I played my part in addressing that in 2018, by which time I was in my early 50s and qualified for full teacher retirement after 29 years of service. However, a salary cap on my earnings from 1989 to 1995 would have impacted my pension, and it took another four years of service to “wear away” that cap.

19 of the 87 Chromebook carts we deployed in 2020

In 2020, Covid-19 struck, and I chaired the district’s response for several years, which included expanding to 1:1 Chromebooks across all grade levels. I remember us preparing 87 carts with 2,175 Chromebooks that fall.

By 2023, the pandemic had eased, and I could have retired with my full pension. However, I was still over two years from being able to tap into my personal retirement savings accounts without an early withdrawal penalty, five years from being able to claim Social Security, and eight years from qualifying for Medicare. So I stayed on.

Taking My Leave

A year later, Chuck confirmed to me that he would be retiring as superintendent in June 2026. Being four years younger than I am, he planned to continue working after that, just not in public education. I immediately responded that I too would retire in June 2026, but I’d be retiring from work, period. I knew that would be the time to leave, as I had accomplished my missions, and a new superintendent could repurpose my administrative position. One of my last projects was creating an immense digital archive of old media that had survived the ravages of time at the central office.

Here’s a visual summary of my career at BPSD:

Now I’m past the 59.5 years of age required to withdraw from retirement savings without penalties. I invested 20% of my career gross salary into those savings, so with my pension I can safely retire. Wendy is nine years younger than I am, with a less generous pension, so she won’t qualify for even reduced early retirement for some years, and she plans to keep leading the Chromebook repair class at the high school.

Forty years ago I answered a calling I keenly felt to serve in my home state’s public schools. Three years later, I arrived in Bartlesville. Now that call has been fully answered; I am content.

Posted in history, random | 3 Comments

Anna Katharine Green

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Granger Meador

One of the first female authors of detective fiction was America’s Anna Katharine Green. She is now nearly forgotten, but I loaded some of her works onto my Kindle and read her first novel, which was a big hit almost 150 years ago.

Anna Katharine Green’s 37 books were published between 1878 and 1923, so they are all now out of copyright. I discovered that Standard Ebooks had four of them, while Project Gutenberg had 41 of her works, including some story collections. In comparing the sources, the Project Gutenberg version of her first novel included some floorplans and other illustrations that Standard Ebooks had omitted. So I read PG4047-IMAGES-3, which is the 4,047th eBook at Project Gutenberg, and is much better known as The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story.

The Leavenworth Case

Green’s first novel was published in 1878 when the diminutive, plain, and sheltered woman was 32 years old. It became a hit, with George P. Putnam’s Sons selling hundreds of thousands of copies, and the book being pirated by no less than three other publishers.

Green created what became well-worn tropes in mystery fiction, including the nosy spinster Amelia Butterworth, who inspired Christie’s later Miss Marple. Green also created a teenage detective, Violet Strange, echoed in Nancy Drew et al., along with various plot devices. Her work had faded a couple of generations later in the Golden Age of detective fiction from 1920 to 1940, but her influence was both apparent and acknowledged. Sadly, Green is now nearly forgotten, and I read mysteries for decades before coming across any mention of her work.

T.S. Eliot was evidently an avid consumer of mystery fiction, but he disparaged The Leavenworth Case as “simply popping over with sentiment” in a manner that did not afflict Doyle’s later Sherlock Holmes tales, which did not debut until after Green had published it and three additional novels featuring detective Gryce.

I began the book immediately after finishing Louise Penny’s A Fatal Grace, the second of her Chief Inspector Gamache series. I had been struck by the modernity of that tale, with its sometimes over-sharpened wit and opinionated sensibilities, contrasting with the older tales I was used to from Edith Pargeter (usually writing as Ellis Peters), Agatha Christie, and Mary Roberts Rinehart. I have found Rinehart, the oldest of those authors, to also be the fustiest, so I wondered how dated The Leavenworth Case would read, nearly 150 years after its debut.

I greatly enjoyed the book’s introduction of detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force, who would appear in a dozen more of her novels by 1917:

I shuddered⁠—“the murderer must have been in the house all night.”

Mr. Gryce smiled darkly at the doorknob.

“It has a dreadful look!” I exclaimed.

Mr. Gryce immediately frowned at the doorknob.

And here let me say that Mr. Gryce, the detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book, or button. These things he would seem to take into his confidence, make the repositories of his conclusions; but as for you⁠—you might as well be the steeple on Trinity Church, for all connection you ever appeared to have with him or his thoughts. At present, then, Mr. Gryce was, as I have already suggested, on intimate terms with the doorknob.

“A dreadful look,” I repeated.

His eye shifted to the button on my sleeve.

“Come,” he said, “the coast is clear at last.”

I immediately had a feeling I would like Ebenezer Gryce. His given name of course elicits memories of Scrooge from Dickens’ 1843 A Christmas Carol, and that led me to wonder how common it once was as a first name. One source claimed that in 1840 it was the 68th most popular name, but I was sad to see 11 fictional Ebenezers in the Wikipedia page on it as a given name, but not Green’s creation. So I added him to make a dozen. I’ll admit that corruption of the Hebrew אֶבֶן הָעֵזֶר from 1 Samuel sounds dreadful to my ear, but perhaps that is mainly due to the association with Scrooge.

This debut novel is the only one of Green’s works to have a meta-ranking at The Greatest Books, coming in at 5,193 versus 191 for Christie’s And Then There Were None with eight additional Christie works ranking above Green. As for Edith Pargeter, better known by her pen name of Ellis Peters, her A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of the Brother Cadfael books, ranks at 4,220 while her non-mystery By Firelight novel ranked at 4,986.

The novel has twists and turns, deftly using circumstantial evidence to throw suspicion on one character, then another, and another. The revelation of the actual murderer was a surprise, with a lengthy explanation and confession.

The age of the work was most apparent in the class-conscious behavior of most of the characters. It was indeed melodramatic, but multiple well-drawn characters and the fun idiosyncrasies of detective Gryce kept me engaged. I enjoyed the book, and I plan for my next Green book to be the eighth Gryce novel, That Affair Next Door, so I can experience the character of Amelia Butterworth.

Mystery author Patricia Meredith has compiled interesting information on Green, and I enjoyed her presentation about “The Mother of the Detective Novel” for the Spokane Public Library.

Meredith’s timeline of Green’s life led me to purchase from AbeBooks a used hardback of Patricia Maida’s biography of her, Mother of Detective Fiction. I have tucked it away as a reading possibility if I end up liking more of her works.

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Comparing eBooks

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Granger Meador

From now until 2073, any books published over 95 years earlier are public domain under U.S. copyright law. So in 2026, anything published in 1930 or earlier can be freely distributed. I’ve taken advantage of three different services to freely access such works, and I’ll share a bit of history on each of them.

To illustrate how their products differ, I include examples from each service of portions of The Leavenworth Case from 1878, the first mystery novel by Anna Katharine Green, who was the Mother of the Detective Novel. That will illustrate, pun intended, their different handling of relevant additions to the text in its original 1878 print edition. I eventually read and reviewed the work.

Project Gutenberg

A Model 33 teletype from the UIUC lab where Hart typed the first eBook

Back on July 4, 1971, Michael Hart of Urbana, Illinois was given a free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. He had access to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and he was inspired to sit at a teletype station and manually type in the Declaration’s text for transmission via electronic mail to the people he knew about via the Internet’s predecessor, ARPAnet.

That simple act led to 20 years of evangelizing the concept of electronic books, with Hart compiling 100 titles by 1991, including historical documents, reference and literary works, and more. Hart founded Project Gutenberg, which by 2026 had grown to over 75,000 free eBooks, mostly of works that had fallen out of copyright.

From Project Gutenberg’s eBook of *The Leavenworth Case*

Thousands of volunteers digitized and proofread the eBooks, with digital files in various formats. While one can go to their website and read books there in a web browser, they also offer files in the EPUB3 format, and one can use Amazon’s online Send to Kindle service to have it convert that and add the resulting book to your eBook library, making it readable on dedicated Kindle devices as well as free Kindle apps on smartphones, tablets, and personal computers.

I’ve shown how a Kindle Windows app rendered Project Gutenberg’s eBook of The Leavenworth Case, which was released in 2003 and most recently updated in 2022. It took a minute or two for the EPUB3 file to enter my Kindle library via the Send to Kindle service.

Michael Hart was a friend and inspiration to Brewster Kahle, who founded the Internet Archive in 1996, which began as a preservation of web pages but evolved into a huge collection of digitized material.

Michael Hart (1947-2011) and Brewster Kahle (1960-), fellow public domain evangelists

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive provides free access to collections of digitized media including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual, and print materials. Its emphasis for public domain books is on scanning versus manual typing and proofreading into eBooks. It acquires most of its materials from donations, and materials not in the public domain are sometimes lent to patrons worldwide one at a time. However, a negotiated judgment in 2023 barred the Internet Archive from digitally lending copyrighted books for which electronic copies are on sale.

Its Open Library has the full texts of approximately 1.6 million public domain books, out of more than 5 million in the main texts collection. Below is a scan of 1902 London reprint of The Leavenworth Case, which was scanned in 2008 with funding from Microsoft. The Internet Archive does not offer an eBook version of that work, but it does have multiple different scans from various publishers across the years.

One of *The Leavenworth Case* scans in The Internet Archive’s Open Library; there are several to pick from

If you examine the scan I show here and compare it to the eBook, you’ll notice that the London reprint lacks the excerpt from Macbeth which Green opened Chapter V with in the original book. Old hardcopy reprints often suffer from such omissions.

Standard Ebooks

Greg of Another Bibliophile Reads recommends the releases of Standard Ebooks over those from Project Gutenberg, as they are supposed to be more carefully curated and formatted.

Alex Cabal is their Editor-in-Chief, and the service is a volunteer-driven effort that focuses on consistent design and typography. It boasts the use of careful typesetting, cover images, and title pages following a consistent style guide. It began in 2015, and by April 2026 they had about 1,400 titles.

Their preference is that one manually load their AZW3 files and optional cover thumbnails onto a dedicated Kindle device using a USB cable. I did just that with my Mac Mini, having to find a compatible cable, download and use a Send to Kindle application for MacOS I found at amazon.com/connectmykindle, loading the AZW3 files into my Kindle Paperwhite’s documents folder and the associated cover thumbnails into its system/thumbnails folder.

The converted EPUB3 version of *The Leavenworth Case* from Standard Ebooks

The end result was nice, but I found that downloading the EPUB3 version of The Leavenworth Case from them for use with Amazon’s online Send to Kindle service also worked fine. The few graphics were not as nice that way, but the text looked good, and more importantly to me, it was then available across all of my Kindle apps as well as the Paperwhite, with everything kept in sync with Amazon’s Whispersync service.

Various Shortcomings

The different versions of the book differ in some other more significant ways, however. In its original edition, there were a couple of floorplans and an illustration of strips torn from a letter. The latter was interesting enough to earn a spot on the cover of the first edition, and the contents of that letter, with blanks for the missing portion, was included in the text of the book.

Floorplans are particularly helpful in some mystery tales, and several, but not all, of the scans of different editions at The Internet Archive did include them. However, the Standard Ebook version, which is supposed to reflect more careful preparation, omitted that entirely in both the AZW3 and EPUB3 versions. The Project Gutenberg EPUB3 version did include the floorplans, labeling them as footnotes.

Some of the scans of the book included the helpful floorplans, as did the Project Gutenberg version

At least one scan at the Internet Archive preserved the illustration of the scraps of letter.

However, the Project Gutenberg edition let me down in that case, omitting that illustration while including others, and its reproduction of the text version, with its many dashes, was as unimpressive as it had been in the print versions.

Gutenberg formatting — How Project Gutenberg formatted the letter with missing portions

The Standard Ebooks edition had similar shortcomings, but it did have better typesetting.

Standard Ebooks formatting — How Standard Ebooks formatted the letter with missing portions

The typeset versions are far less evocative than the original illustration, so in this case the Internet Archive scans would win hands down, save that there are multiple scans of the book and it isn’t all that easy to distinguish them. Plus you can’t read those scans on a Kindle, but instead must use a web browser with the many limitations that brings.

Another interesting difference was that the only version I came across with illustrations of scenes was the Project Gutenberg one. I liked having eight illustrations scattered through the text, even if they weren’t particularly well done, but what a shame that they bothered to include illustrations while omitting showing the torn letter.

A downside to the Project Gutenberg edition is also visible here. In the Kindle app, its title is not The Leatherwood Case, but instead the cryptic PG4047-IMAGES-3. I realize that means it is Project Gutenberg’s 4,047th eBook and has images, but that is of darn little use to the end reader, and I did not find a way to rename it in the app. The solution is to rename the EPUB3 file before using Send to Kindle.

Also, the cover of the Project Gutenberg edition is downright ugly with a plain green background (green for Green?) and a hideous font, while the Standard Ebook one is tasteful, albeit uninspired.

The covers of the Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks versions

Paid Options

Many public domain works have cheap paid versions for Kindles available at Amazon. There was a $2 Start Classics version falsely claimed to be a Penguin Classics book, but it had no floorplans. A $1 version from Xist Classics had the same issue, while a $1 Panetela Press Presents version also omitted the floorplans and, far worse, admitted it has been “lightly edited for the modern reader”…ugh, no thanks.

Cost does not correlate with quality in these cases, as there was a $5 edition with no floorplans and, unlike the others, omitting the quotations that should begin each chapter. A $3 version had 35 Anna Katharine Green novels, bizarrely arranged in alphabetical, rather than chronological, order.

A $3.58 version (go figure) claimed to have “original Illustrationsand Annotated” [sic]. With that sort of poor handling of the title, one’s confidence wavers, but lo and behold, it did have floorplans! I found another $2 version that had both illustrations and floorplans.

The Verdict

So which of the various versions did I end up reading? I certainly wasn’t going to pay for any of the ones I saw on Amazon, and I didn’t try to read a scanned version at The Internet Archive, as I want an eBook that is synchronized across my Kindle apps and Kindle Paperwhite device. That left Project Gutenberg, which had superior embedded illustrations but slightly inferior typesetting, vying with Standard Ebooks. The illustrations won the day, and I read the Project Gutenberg version.

Going forward, when there is Standard Ebooks version, I will compare that to what Project Gutenberg has on offer. If the Gutenberg version doesn’t have an edge on graphics, then I’ll go with Standard Ebooks, sending its EPUB3 version through Send to Kindle rather than manually loading its AZW3 version on my Kindle Paperwhite.

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A James Blish Fix-Up

Posted on May 8, 2026 by Granger Meador

After reading A.E. van Vogt’s fix-up novel Mission to the Stars, I was still in the mood for some classic science fiction, but I hoped for something of higher literary quality. Matt of Bookpilled has described James Blish as one of the most erudite science fiction authors, so I looked for any award-winning works by him.

Two Types of Awards

The two big science fiction awards are the Hugos and Nebulas. Since the 1950s, the World Science Fiction Society has given out Hugo Awards each year in various categories for the best works in the genre published in the previous year. There are now Hugos in over a dozen categories, with the best novel, novella, and short stories being the most prominent. Since they are awarded based on popular votes by fans, they reflect the popularity of various works.

Hugo and Nebula Awards — The two major science fiction awards are the Hugos and the Nebulas

They are named after the Golden Age publisher and editor Hugo Gernsback. Although he was certainly one of the fathers of the genre, he was also a shady businessman who did not treat authors well. So it is not surprising that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) chose, in 1966, to establish their own Nebula awards, which are peer-based authorial awards that emphasize literary quality.

There is considerable overlap where some works win both the Hugo and the Nebula in their category. For example, over the past 59 years, 26 novels have won both the Hugo and the Nebula, starting with Frank Herbert’s Dune and extending to notable works like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Larry Niven’s Ringworld, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

Of course there were many works published before those awards began, and back when I was in high school I read The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964, a 1970 anthology of 26 classic science fiction short stories selected by the SFWA to honor works predating the Nebulas.

One of those stories was “Surface Tension” by James Blish, which originally appeared in the August 1952 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction, although I frankly don’t remember that tale of a crew of human colonists who crash-land on a planet and genetically engineer a race of microscopic aquatic humanoids to colonize a landmass covered in shallow puddles of water. Its selection reflects that fellow authors did respect some of his work.

Blish and Star Trek

However, Blish is best known for work which pleased him the least: a dozen books that novelized most of the episodes of the original series of the Star Trek television show. I have owned 11 of those collections for decades, but I quickly gave up on them once I realized they were based on draft teleplays and thus often have significant differences from the broadcast episodes. Blish did the first ones without ever having seen an episode, and that hampered the tonal alignment of the early volumes with the actual show.

The only one which I recall reading was the adaptation of Spock’s Brain in Star Trek 8, and I was pleasantly surprised how that silly episode read much better on the page, as a humorous sendup of pulp science fiction, than the off-putting episode itself played. If the direction for the actors had them playing their roles more broadly, to bring out the humor in it, that might have salvaged the premiere episode of the show’s compromised third season, but the reality was that the Bright Knight Batman series of 1966-1968 handled camp far better.

Star Trek 1-6 — James Blish adapted *Star Trek* draft teleplays in his first six collections

Blish had studied microbiology at Rutgers, and he authored short stories throughout the genre’s Golden Age. Along with Asimov, Pohl, Wollheim, Kornbluth, Knight, and Merril, he was one of the Futurians, an influential group of science fiction fans, writers, and editors. He married fellow Futurian Virginia Kidd in 1947.

James Blish when he was older — Smoking probably killed Blish a decade early or more

Blish adapted to the decline of science fiction pulp magazines by pivoting to novels, fix-ups, and literary criticism. To make ends meet, he worked for the Tobacco Institute as a writer and critic from 1962 to 1968. He and Kidd divorced in 1963, and the next year he married artist J.A. Lawrence and moved to England.

While he generally despised tie-ins, the Star Trek adaptations, at $2,000 per volume, provided Blish financial stability. However, Blish’s willingness to write for the tobacco lobby not only dovetailed with his smoking, but also with him developing lung cancer in his early 50s. As his health declined, his second wife, along with her mother, assisted with the adaptations after Star Trek 6. So I’m not sure how much Blish’s background as a Golden Age writer assisted with bringing out the pulp fiction send-up that was Spock’s Brain in Star Trek 8.

Star Trek 7-12 — Later *Star Trek* episode adaptations were sometimes handled by his wife, J.A. Lawrence

Blish did, however, write the first independent adult novel based on the television show. 1970’s Spock Must Die! earned him a $3,000 advance. I read it decades ago, and I disliked it, finding it did not meld well (pun intended) with the series, which by then had been cancelled. Blish was so done with Star Trek by 1974 that he did not write any of Star Trek 10. Fellow Futurian and Bantam editor Fred Pohl was unaware of Lawrence’s contributions until sometime in 1973, and Star Trek 12 of 1977, published after Blish’s death in 1975 at age 54, was co-credited with her.

J. Scott Phillips did a nice overview of the great cover art for Blish’s Star Trek adaptations, and he also reflected on Blish’s standalone Star Trek novel.

After Such Knowledge

Although nominated a few times, Blish never won a Nebula, but A Case of Conscience won a Hugo for best novel. It was an expansion of a novella which later won a Retro-Hugo.

Blish identified as an agnostic, but he was still profoundly interested in theology. That motivated him to write multiple novellas and one full-length novel with religious themes, which were later packaged as After Such Knowledge, consisting of the A Case of Conscience in novel form, the sequential novellas of Black Easter and The Day After Judgment, and the historical novel Doctor Mirabilis.

The inherent friction between the scientific method and religious faith have led to several interesting works. Notable examples include Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz and Frank Herbert’s Dune. When I was young, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s classic novel Childhood’s End, in which alien contact brings about a peaceful utopia and a consequent collapse of human religions. That made sense to Clarke, an outspoken atheist, but I was unable to suspend my disbelief and accept, despite my alignment with many of Clarke’s philosophies, that religions would collapse in the face of logic, contrary physical evidence, or an idyllic existence. Since religions rely on unprovable, supernatural, and often scientifically contradictory claims and have proved adaptable across centuries, I expect some of them to continue to exist, even as their scope waxes and wanes. Several old religions have lost all of their believers, but about three out of four people worldwide identify with a religious group.

Some years ago, I enjoyed the mix of science fiction and religion in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos novels, with their cruciform parasites which become essential to interstellar travel. The Catholic Church becomes a dominant force in that series, and it certainly figured in Blish’s After Such Knowledge works.

I purchased a used mass market paperback of After Such Knowledge, but it was too thick, even with small text, for my comfortable use. I’ve been spoiled by Kindles, and while I could readily purchase Kindle editions of Black Easter, The Day After Judgment, and the novel-length expansion of A Case of Conscience, I could only find a PDF of Doctor Mirabilis from a questionable source.

So I gritted my teeth and began reading Doctor Mirabilis in the mass market paperback. It dropped me into Oxford, England in 1231 in the company of Roger Bacon, and I read the first of its sixteen chapters and then abandoned the work.

I wasn’t in the mood to be embedded in medieval England in a historical novel with no science fiction elements. Yes, I loved Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, set in a fictional Italian monastery in 1327, but that was a historical murder mystery with a protagonist who was a mix of Sherlock Holmes and the Franciscan friar and philosopher William of Ockham. I also enjoyed the many Brother Cadfael novels by Ellis Peters, with a mystery-solving monk. However, what Blish was offering was the life of a real-world Franciscan friar who was caught up in political intrigue and battled the Franciscan Order for freedom to study, possibly leading to temporary imprisonment. Er, no thanks, and I’m not surprised that work has no Kindle edition.

I didn’t abandon the entire effort, however, as Matt of Bookpilled had greatly enjoyed the other three works, and A Case of Conscience had won a Hugo. So I took that up next in its Kindle edition.

A Case of Conscience

Book One of the novel was the original A Case of Conscience novella that first appeared in the September 1953 issue of If magazine and received a Retro-Hugo in 2004.

It started strong, with a Jesuit biologist helping treat a physicist during their first contact stay on a world populated by tall intelligent reptiles. I immediately noticed striking similarities between Blish’s reptile Lithians and Becky Chambers’ Aandrisk reptiles in her Wayfarer series published 60 years later. At first, the novella drew me in with its world-building, but all too soon it devolved into a talk-fest.

Four human characters spent page after page debating their verdict on opening the planet to human contact. The Jesuit could not help but filter his recommendation through his faith, with differences from current Catholic faith explained as reflecting fictional future doctrines. The Jesuit recommends a quarantine, as he concludes the planet is a trap created by Satan to cast doubt on Earthly religious faith. I admired how the story confronted the real-world issues that geocentric religions would face if intelligent aliens made contact, but I found the long discussion among the scientists a bit stultifying, and their verbal dialogue did not seem realistic. Most importantly, I could not suspend my disbelief to accept a race of beings who live without crime, conflict, ignorance, or want.

The Fix-Up

Blish later added a novella-length addition to create the novel version of A Case of Conscience, which won the Hugo back in 1959. Book Two dealt with an immature Lithian who was sent back to Earth with the human contact team. Multiple reviewers thought Book Two was weaker than Book One, but I found the opening chapters of it quite interesting. First you are in the mind of the young Lithian, and then you are taken through a sybaritic party which reminded me of an amplification of the crazy party in Midnight Cowboy. Its intensity struck me, as an introvert, as a segue into social horror, with a considerable amount of sardonic humor.

Blish built out, back in the 1950s, a very different future Earth of 2050 than what I expect as someone living in 2026. His projection of a “Shelter Race”, in which nations invested heavily in underground cities as a defense against thermonuclear war, reflected the fallout shelter craze of his era. It made me want to listen to Donald Fagen’s New Frontier.

The novel ended with the young alien making use of commercial telecasts to incite social unrest. Heinlein’s bizarre Stranger in a Strange Land came to mind, and not in a good way. I did not find Book Two of Blish’s novel any more believable, and it suffered mightily from providing paltry explanations of the alien’s personality and motivations.

As with so many classic science fiction stories, characterization in general was sorely lacking, especially for the few female characters. While the novel had some interesting ideas, the execution was poor, and I’m dreadfully tired of dystopias, as I’m living in the prolonged childhood of one here in Joklahoma.

I would much rather read classic and more optimistic tales of Known Space by Larry Niven or David Brin’s Uplift Saga. That desire already led me to start Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series, Google Gemini has recommended Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, and I know that I should try reading an Andy Weir novel.

A Case of Conscience was rated the 11,698th Greatest Book of All Time, with Black Easter coming in higher at 3,281th and The Day After Judgement at 3,531st. The only other Blish book ranked in that meta-rating system was Cities in Flight at 15,574th. The higher ratings for the other two works in the After Such Knowledge collection did not convince me to read them, however, as they are more in the realm of fantasy, horror, and the occult than science fiction, and if I were going to read horror, I already have on my Kindle The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas, and for fantasy I might try Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, which won the Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula, since he wrote that to be interpreted as either science fiction or fantasy.

I doubt I’ll read any more of Blish, and he left me needing the comfort of an author who could deftly sketch characters and craft a believable mise-en-scène, so I jumped into Wildfire at Midnight, Mary Stewart’s second short tale of romance suspense.