You are what you read, like it or not

Time stops when you read books about the past and, better yet, written in the past. Sorry, but I am biased beyond belief about the quality of books now when compared to then. Some notes regarding a couple of the books in the photograph: Mari Sandoz is a woman I could not agree with philosophically, but is one I would worship for her strength and intelligence. "Old Jules" centers on her father. "Pine Ridge 1890" is nonfiction about the battle at Wounded Knee (I refuse to call it a massacre because of the causalities on both sides), and consists of first-hand newspaper accounts written from the battlefield. Live it, breathe it. The books balancing on top are among those written by O.E. Rolvaag. His novels are about Norwegian immigrants to the U.S. a century and more ago, any one of which is worth a dozen of the typical novels published today. This I do not think, rather, this I know. You are what you read.

Once upon a time, men were & so were women

It rather surprised me the other day when people started rattling off the names of their "favorite living" poets. I did not think that many people actually read poetry these days. (Well, I guess I still do not believe many people read poetry; but, instead, a "very select" crowd comes to visit me who actually are seekers and searchers.) Neither did I think there would be many (maybe not even any) who had a favorite living poet.

No one seemed to disagree with me, however, that the predominant form of poetry today seems to be found in musical lyrics.

Reflecting further on this, I realized that I no longer have a favorite living novelist, either. I always have been hard to please, says he, not at all facetiously. Norman Mailer probably qualified as my last living favorite (unless I have forgotten someone still here among us), although 20 years ago he would not have been at the top of my list. Basically, he got there by being the last man standing. Other "more favored" writers were around back then.

Most novelists I read are well established. Many fall under the category of writing "literature" as opposed to "popular" stories. Some few, I think actually fall into both categories. I am more and more into reality the older I become, although science fiction and historical fiction were once among my favorites, and I still dabble with them now.

Five or six years ago, I began concentrating on reading books written during or about the last 50 or so years of the 19th Century and the first 50 years of the 20th Century, with the focal point being those closest to the year 1900. It was as much a research project as a reading exercise. I wanted to know, through books, what it would have been like to live during that time frame. Without a mechanism for time travel, books are all we have to accomplish that sort of a "jump."

Among novels, I read Jack London beyond what I had during college. More (all) of O.E. Rolvaag and most of Ambrose Bierce. I became acquainted with Mari Sandoz and Willa Cather. Reading their novels and others spilled over into reading biographies of the authors, which spilled again into reading travelogues of journeys in America by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry M. Stanley.

Most people (then again, maybe not) probably have heard Stanley's famous quote, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" which he made upon locating the Scottish missionary in Africa. Few know (well, I have been wrong before) that he traveled in frontier America in places like Kansas and kept a journal. Will Bill Hickok and General George Custer are a pair of the contemporary gentlemen of whom he wrote while touring America during the magical era of the latter 1860s.

Such was the tip of my reading iceberg. I assume you get my drift. With mountains of material from which to learn how things once were, why spend much time on the popular fiction of today? Especially for a history fanatic like me? I already know today. I am here, and am perfectly capable of doing my own interpretation of now, thank you. Give me what I do not know.

Somehow, I do miss not having a "favorite living" poet and a "favorite living" novelist. It is a most difficult role to play, being he who is hard to please. Still, I am not so sure the blame about not having a favorite rests upon my shoulders alone. It might be the inevitable result of the actual quality of the writers and the publishers of today.

When all is said and done, so what? I am a reader, not a blind follower. This should be the role each of us should play. No matter what I say. No matter what anyone else says. Pick up a scent and get onto the trail. Find your own books, just as you find your own life.

Music Note: Listening to a Christian band, Stryper
Specifically, "To Hell with the Devil" ....
Some lines from "Calling on You:"

Inside of me there is a lonely place
Sometimes I just don't know it's there
But when I'm all alone
That's when I have to face...

The part of me that needs someone
To be by my side that's when I call on...

You, You make my life complete
You give me all I need
You help me through and through
I'm calling on you

I can't explain just what You do to me
My love grows stronger everyday
You give me love, You give me company
And when I have to face the rain
You bring sunshine into my life

Thinking of grandfather & re-evaluating art

Happy birthday, grandfather of mine ....

Today is my grandfather's birthday, on my mother's side. He was German, and loved being German. He is long gone now.

This evening, I will eat a German meal: Pork chops, potatoes and sauer kraut, washed down with beer. That was among his favorite dinners.

I will remember him as he swiftly seemed to become an old man, listening to polka music on his radio on Sunday afternoons: In the winter, sitting in own father's chair, his stocking feet on the oven door of an ancient wood/coal-burning stove, reading; in the summer, sitting in that same chair, outside under the shade of a tree, reading.

I'm not certain if most grandfathers are beneficial or not to their grandchildren, but I think he was for me. He turned his daughter, my mother, into a reader, and she passed that along to me. He gave me my first dog when I was four, telling my mother that all boys need dogs. (My mother went along with it.) He gave me my first shotgun, one of his, and trusted me enough to turn me loose with it when I was 10. (My mother went along with it.)

He showed me how to be patient, but he also taught me how to roar. When I was a teenager, he would pass a few dollars to me for gas money so I could visit my girlfriend in a neighboring town. More than anything, he was a man and he knew the score.

He knew things only an old man could know from years of experience living life, and he offered them to me as I moved through my teenage years. I listened to him because, even then, I understood that as his life was drawing down, he was giving me an honest gift: The benefit of knowledge he had earned from living through depression and war; through manual labor under scorching sun and in raging blizzard; through the loss of loved ones. He had crystal clear vision.

Can old art be re-born through technology?

A few nights ago, I saw more in the paintings of Henri Matisse than I had seen before. I think it was more the hypnotic music and the superb, creative video used to display the paintings than it was the actual work of Matisse which brought about this feeling, but .... I really do not know. Believe me, I have a few relatives who are art majors and who practice their art and who actually make some ridiculous amounts of money selling their stuff -- so, I am not a newbie to art. Explain to me then, why am I seeing today what I was not seeing yesterday?

When I wrote about Robert Louis Stevenson last night, I saw more in the painting of his face and his eyes than I ever had seen before in a photograph of him. I think I saw his actual persona and understood him. I also saw the frailty of his body. It seemed obvious to me he wanted to show it, as if to say it was his mind that really counted. Is all this massed together in the painting the extension of him .... or is it a particular talent of the painter who produced the portrait .... or is it some insight within me I did not possess only a few days before? Does this mean art is catching up to me and running me to ground? Sort of fun to consider.

But, before I collapse completely, allow me to regain my former composure and Spartan masculinity by once more quoting Stevenson: "I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse -- ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."

Yes, that is more like it.

Music Note: Listening to Cinderella ....
Specifically, "Night Songs" ....
("Nobody’s Fool" -- you better believe it, baby)

Born too late to cross the Plains ....

Robert Louis Stevenson. He traveled across America.

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson
From: "Requiem"

From Scotland to San Francisco & beyond ....

I finished a book a few days ago and was reminded yesterday (coincidentally, not intentionally) that I had not started another. So, I pulled out a book I purchased a few months ago, but had not yet opened: "The Travels and Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson." It is proportioned into three sections, "The Amateur Emigrant," "Across the Plains" and "The Silverado Squatters." The book first appeared in print in 1892. My copy is a later edition -- 1899. (Love old stuff.)

My assumption is there should be no need to explain what Robert Louis Stevenson is primarily noted for, but many people do not realize he was a prolific traveler as well as a prolific writer. In fact, he died far away from his birthplace in Scotland, on Upola, one of the Samoan islands. He is buried there. Between birth and death, Stevenson's travels included crossing the Atlantic Ocean by ship and journeying from New York to California by train and stage coach.

There should be no doubt this trip across America was made in part from the love of traveling, but Stevenson also was on the trail of a married woman, and that involved an even deeper love. While exploring France in 1876, Stevenson met Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne at the artists' colony of Grez. She was ten years older than Stevenson, and from San Francisco. (That city just keeps showing up out of the blue.) It was apparently love at first sight for him. He returned to England, but promptly went back to France, where they began "their life."

(Break time: Lynyrd Skynyrd with "Free Bird" came on the radio. Stop. Time out. Listen. Close eyes. Drift on the clouds.)

Back again: Fanny returned to America in 1877. Stevenson did a walking tour of Europe. By 1879, Stevenson must have decided that enough was enough (that expression is my personal property), and he set out after her (so is that one). She was divorced by the time he arrived in San Francisco. They married in 1880. The book I am about to open is Stevenson's account of the sea voyage (Amateur Emigrant), of traveling the breadth of America (Across the Plains) and of a summer-long honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp (Silverado Squatters).

In 1888, the Stevenson family began three years of cruising the Pacific Ocean on a chartered yacht. He suffered from bad health, which was the primary reason he bought property and settled on an island in the Samoan group. No winters. (Yes-s-s-s.) Stevenson died in his home in 1894 at the age of 44, probably from a cerebral hemorrhage.

The reason I bought this book is because I particularly wanted to read the "Across the Plains" segment. (I think I will start in "the middle" of the book with that story.) I keep a lookout for first-hand accounts about 19th Century travel from the Mississippi River to Montana or to the West Coast. You see, I want to know what I missed by being born too late to experience the Plains country wild and natural.

Music Note: Still have the radio on a classic rock station ....