WSJ Articles Yet To Be Read -- Energy Related

"Will Truckers Ditch Diesel?"

"Chesapeake Raises Big Bet in Ohio"

"Why Oil Prices Keep Falling" -- op ed

If you have time to read only one article, start with the third. It is a very, very bullish Bakken op-ed.

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A Note To and About The Granddaughters

One of the reasons I enjoy blogging is the history and trivia I come across.

Back on November 21, 2010, I posted a story about the Shell oil company and murex shells.

Yesterday, the granddaughters (ages 8 and 5) and I spent the day at the Boston Aquarium. It was an outing of the "Birding Club" so our focus was on the penguins at the aquarium. We put together a mnemonic to remember the 18 breeds of penguins, including the Emperor, the King, the Royal, the Macaroni, the Northern and Southern Rockhoppers, and twelve more.

For the past few weeks I have been reading Richard Fortey's Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms. The book is a bit challenging to read because of the author's writing style, but his chapter on horseshoe crabs is outstanding. I have always been curious about the horseshoe crab and now feel comfortable with it. Unbeknownst to us, the aquarium was having a "special" on horseshoe crabs yesterday. First of all, in the touch tank there was a horseshoe crab which we picked up and turned over to see the Edward Scissorhands' prototype. Then we went back downstairs where one of the aquarium staff members was showing and describing the horseshoe crab. The grandchildren already knew much about the crab and asked some very good questions. The younger granddaughter spent 30 minutes engaged in conversation with the marine biologist talking about the "crab." She was impressed with the way the tail acted as a lever to turn the crab over if it ended up on its back.

Instead of taking the subway directly home, we walked back to the Boston Commons, passing a bookstore of used/rare books. I cannot pass a bookstore without stopping. We were only there ten minutes because I don't want to bore the granddaughters. The older one stopped in front of a section titled "Earth's Disaster." The younger one joined her, and I came by to see what they were up to.

The younger one, at that very moment, happened to spy a book at eye level that captured her interest. It was thin, like a child's book, and it had a unique red cover with no title on the binding. She said she wanted that book. She had not looked inside the book and did not know what it was about. Nor did I.

But to humor her, I pulled it out. Wow! Fate! I don't follow horoscopes or believe in such stuff, but this made me wonder all over again. Thousands of books in this little bookstore, maybe tens of thousands, and the 5-year-old points to a red book with no title, and says that's the one she wants. That was the only one she pointed at, and she was quite adamant that she wanted it, even before we pulled it off the shelf. Only the spine of the book was showing.

The book? The Scallop: Studies of a Shell and Its Influences on Humankind. Wow. Published in 1957, and something I will probably never see again (interestingly, it is available at Amazon.com). The cost: $10. Bought.

From the foreward:

On 18 October 1917, The 'Shell' Transport and Trading Company, Limited will celebrate the sixtieth year of its existence. A Diamond Jubilee, marking as it does the passing of two generations, cannot but give pause for reflection...

Ten years ago, on the occasion of the Company's Golden Jubilee, the story of Shell's progress and expansion was the subject of a booklet ...

In the chapters which follow, each by a distinguished author on the topic he has chosen, there are revealed some of the lesser-known aspects of the story of the scallop shell, of its uses in ancient times, as a symbol in heraldry, in art ...

The preface to a book of this nature would, I feel, be incomplete without some reference to the reasons which inspired Marcus Samuel, who with his brother Samuel Samuel (no typo) founded our Company and became its first Chairman, to select a shell as the Company's badge and title. There can be no doubt that he drew his inspiration from the ornaments decorated with sea-shells which were sold by his father Marcus the elder, in Victorian days.

So, pure serendipity. The five-year-old loves sea shells and many of her paintings include shells and sea scenes.

But it was a book on the scallop shell commissioned by the chairman of Shell Oil Company, the "Rt Hon. Lord Godber, Chairman, The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company, Limited as part of a Shell company anniversary. Incredible.

We had an incredible day at the Boston Aquarium, and came home with a most unexpected piece of memorabilia.

P.S. The book is outstanding. I did not know the scallop was one of the better marine swimmers, and that it had up to 100 eyes, each well developed with its own lens and retina.



Swimming scallops