Armchair Travel
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Tag Sale Day in Deerfield
We had a real orgy of tag sales in Deerfield Saturday -- more than sixty!
It all started when my entrpreneur cousin Max, founder of the Deeerfield Attractions website, went to a town-wide tag sale in New Jersey and thought he would try out the idea up here.
The idea really caught on and people all over town decided to take the plunge and get rid of their old stuff. I think everyone is always on the verge of having a tag sale, so it just took a little nudge to push them over the edge.
There were a lot of neighbors meeting neighbors and everybody had a lot of fun. I heard quite a few people say they hope it turns into an annual event.
Just goes to show what a little creative energy can do.
This picture is of the tag sale held by the NOMAD volunteers, who got their name because they used to have meetings at the GoNOMAD Cafe. They are some energetic young people who go around the world doing good deeds. I invited them to write up their travels for GoNOMAD.com.
Tag sailing is a lot of fun for me and my mom, who made me bookish. I go in for books and records, tools and clothes. She goes for smarmy statuettes and plates with poems on them.
We get a lot of residual enjoyment out of it too, because I'll go by the next day and she'll say, "Look what I found!"
¶ 8:22 AM 0 comments
Monday, October 06, 2008
Mridula's Tag
I got this list from Mridula's award-winning blog Travel Tales From India. The idea is to bold the books you have read, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish and underline the ones you read in school.
The list reminded me of a lot of great books I haven't read yet.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote - plan to read
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey - I love the blind Greek guy!
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov - brilliant
Guns, Germs and Steel - I use this as a reference work. It's so long!
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assasin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo - brilliant
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984 - just bought this to read
Angels and Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Miserables
The Correction
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince - read parts of it
The Sound and the Fury - great (confusing, though)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir - listened to it on tape
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present - read parts of it
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces - great
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners - plan to read
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five - great
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud
Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Nortre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow - couldn't finish; loved his other two books V and Crying of Lot 49
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers - great ¶ 9:08 AM 1 comments
The list reminded me of a lot of great books I haven't read yet.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote - plan to read
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey - I love the blind Greek guy!
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov - brilliant
Guns, Germs and Steel - I use this as a reference work. It's so long!
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assasin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo - brilliant
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984 - just bought this to read
Angels and Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Miserables
The Correction
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince - read parts of it
The Sound and the Fury - great (confusing, though)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir - listened to it on tape
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present - read parts of it
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces - great
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners - plan to read
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five - great
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud
Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Nortre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow - couldn't finish; loved his other two books V and Crying of Lot 49
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers - great ¶ 9:08 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Lea's New Book
¶ 10:25 AM 0 comments
I went to a poetry reading and book signing at Mocha Maya's in Shelburne Falls last week. Lea Banks was signing copies of her new book All of Me, available through Booksmyth Press, Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.
Twenty years ago, Lea and I founded The Writer's Circle in Henniker, New Hampshire, which, we understand, is still meeting at the library every Wednesday night. Our other collaboration, Sarah Banks Hartshorne, turned out pretty well too, and she turned up as well.
Here's a selection from the book's title poem:
It's a spontaneous belief in sadness:
the charred life we live. It's the wolf.
It's the rabbit. It's a dim sparkling of sex
and little earthquakes. It's that heave
of light through small spaces at night.
It's a tightening. It's a loosening.
The clutch, the knot. The ease.
¶ 10:25 AM 0 comments
Monday, September 22, 2008
Back From Elko Full of Balloon Juice
We were watching a movie at the Western Folklife Center called 'Why the Cowboy Sings' and it's a matter of fact that a good number of the hard-boiled journalists, myself included, were downright teary-eyed listening to people talk about how much they love the land and their way of life and one another.
¶ 8:14 AM 1 comments
I just got back from a quick trip to Elko, Nevada, and I'm full of balloon juice, having been pumped up by Baxter Black, former large-animal veterinarian and legendary cowboy poet.
I stayed at a real-live ranch and rode the range with a real-life cowboy, and you can't beat that. But I and the other reporters on the four-day tour also got a chance to talk with real-live ranchers and their families about the cowboy/buckaroo way of life and why they love it so much despite all its vicissitudes.
We were watching a movie at the Western Folklife Center called 'Why the Cowboy Sings' and it's a matter of fact that a good number of the hard-boiled journalists, myself included, were downright teary-eyed listening to people talk about how much they love the land and their way of life and one another.
But Baxter Black was all about the humorous side of ranching, especially the vicissitudes. He says he has two kinds of audiences, generic and 'cowy,' and with the cowy audiences he doesn't have to explain the jokes about oysters, and there's a lot more blood and snot.
And you don't get more cowy than Elko, so we got the real show complete with prolapsed uteri and exploding methane gas.
And you don't get more cowy than Elko, so we got the real show complete with prolapsed uteri and exploding methane gas.
Baxter is one of hundreds of cowboy poets and musicians who attend the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. And in that time it has been a real focus for western folklore; two to three hundred similar gatherings are now being held all over the West.
So over the next couple of weeks I'll be hammering out a story about it.
Everybody knows that inside every Easten liberal arugula-chomping, NPR-listening elitist there's a little kid who wants to ride and rope and cuss and spit like a real-life cowboy. But what's not so well known is that inside every real-life cowboy there's a poet.
Part of the fun was crossing the Great Salt Desert with Ann Terry Hill of Travel Savvy News, who covers all kinds of destinations around the country, particularly Out West.
Part of the fun was crossing the Great Salt Desert with Ann Terry Hill of Travel Savvy News, who covers all kinds of destinations around the country, particularly Out West.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Sad End of Russia's Imperial Family
It has been hard to blog about the second half of Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massey as the young tsarevich Alexis, 14, and his sisters, Olga, 22. Marie, 20, Tatiana 18, and Anastasia, 16, approach their execution, along with their parents, with revolvers in a cellar. How gross is that?
Trotsky wanted a nationally broadcast radio trial of Nicholas, which proved impossible because of military advances by "white" Russian armies, and also because of the Czech Legion, the greatest footnote in the history of the world, guys who fought their way from the Balkans to Vladivostock and back again. Do read up on their amazing accomplishment.
Through no fault of their own, the Czech Legion made the Ural Soviet (soldier/worker council) in Ekaterinberg very nervous. Indeed, the Soviet had to flee later when the Czechs and the "white"Russians took over the town.
The Ural Soviet obtained approval for what they did from Lenin's interior minister, and clearly from Lenin and Trotsky, but, understandably, they didn't want anyone to know what they had done. That's how proud they were.
They bought a lot of lye to decompose the bodies, but they didn't know that the tsarina and the grand duchesses had sewed precious jewels into their corsets. They didn't imagine that the belt buckles of the tsar and his son would not be dissolved. And they left entire the body of Anastasia's spaniel Jimmy.
An investigation by the "white" army that took over Ekaterinberg, together with testimony from the executioners, left no doubt about the details. Thanks to Lord Mountbatten, a cousin of the imperial family, we have 20th-century mitochondrial DNA evidence that confirms the whole disgusting story.
When Woodrow Wilson learned of the death of the imperial family, he changed his mind about Lenin and Bolshevism. I guess you could say the same for me. If they weren't ashamed of what they'd done, why did they buy all that lye?
My impression from this book was that Lenin was a cold-blooded bastard who was no good for the human race. And as everyone knows, Stalin was worse. A murderous bastard, but he crushed Hitler as no one else could have done.
This much seems to be documented: Nicholas and Alexandra lost their thrones because a majority of the people thought Alexandra and Rasputin had betrayed their country to the Germans.
Lenin did betray Russia to the Germans. He rationalized it by saying he expected a revolution in Germany very soon, but that was a lie. He kowtowed to the Kaiser for years after that, and used the Germans wherever he could to help him crush his enemies.
I confess I am no scholar of Russian history, but it seems obvious to me that Lenin was by far the greater traitor than Alexandra or even Rasputin. When I get to heaven, I'm going to spit in his eye.
And I'm going to give Winston Churchill some serious shit for murdering Franklin Roosevelt; but that's another story. ¶ 8:40 PM 0 comments
Trotsky wanted a nationally broadcast radio trial of Nicholas, which proved impossible because of military advances by "white" Russian armies, and also because of the Czech Legion, the greatest footnote in the history of the world, guys who fought their way from the Balkans to Vladivostock and back again. Do read up on their amazing accomplishment.
Through no fault of their own, the Czech Legion made the Ural Soviet (soldier/worker council) in Ekaterinberg very nervous. Indeed, the Soviet had to flee later when the Czechs and the "white"Russians took over the town.
The Ural Soviet obtained approval for what they did from Lenin's interior minister, and clearly from Lenin and Trotsky, but, understandably, they didn't want anyone to know what they had done. That's how proud they were.
They bought a lot of lye to decompose the bodies, but they didn't know that the tsarina and the grand duchesses had sewed precious jewels into their corsets. They didn't imagine that the belt buckles of the tsar and his son would not be dissolved. And they left entire the body of Anastasia's spaniel Jimmy.
An investigation by the "white" army that took over Ekaterinberg, together with testimony from the executioners, left no doubt about the details. Thanks to Lord Mountbatten, a cousin of the imperial family, we have 20th-century mitochondrial DNA evidence that confirms the whole disgusting story.
When Woodrow Wilson learned of the death of the imperial family, he changed his mind about Lenin and Bolshevism. I guess you could say the same for me. If they weren't ashamed of what they'd done, why did they buy all that lye?
My impression from this book was that Lenin was a cold-blooded bastard who was no good for the human race. And as everyone knows, Stalin was worse. A murderous bastard, but he crushed Hitler as no one else could have done.
This much seems to be documented: Nicholas and Alexandra lost their thrones because a majority of the people thought Alexandra and Rasputin had betrayed their country to the Germans.
Lenin did betray Russia to the Germans. He rationalized it by saying he expected a revolution in Germany very soon, but that was a lie. He kowtowed to the Kaiser for years after that, and used the Germans wherever he could to help him crush his enemies.
I confess I am no scholar of Russian history, but it seems obvious to me that Lenin was by far the greater traitor than Alexandra or even Rasputin. When I get to heaven, I'm going to spit in his eye.
And I'm going to give Winston Churchill some serious shit for murdering Franklin Roosevelt; but that's another story. ¶ 8:40 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
My Mom, Who Made Me Bookish
My mom, who made me bookish, is about six years old right now. About a year ago she knew who Shakepeare was. Today she can't remember where she went an hour ago. Alas, she can't read, as she always used to do. Her house is filled with books.
I worked with a woman with dementia several years ago when I worked for a company called Barton's Angels, and the owner, Nancy Barton Whitley, taught me an important lesson. She and I took this client, was completely disoriented, to a gathering at Nancy's house, and she was the life of the party! She had a swell time, and so did everyone else.
She didn't have to remember anyone or anything.
It's a very sad thing that my mom is going back in time, but there's no time right now to think about how sad that is. On the flip side, she's six years old and I can make her happy every day.
I'm going to have some parties. Mom's still great at making friends.
Here's a little ironic twist: I have this old mirror at my house and I kept thinking I would stencil on it those lines from T. S. Eliot: "There will be time/ There will be time/ To prepare a face/ To meet the faces that you meet," and give it to my mom for the upstairs bathroom in the old house.
Wouldn't that be cool, on a mirror? I knew my mom would love it, being a teacher of literature. But I never got around to it.
So I guess the lesson is: don't postpone those home handicraft projects; you never know when they'll become moot. ¶ 8:58 PM 0 comments
I worked with a woman with dementia several years ago when I worked for a company called Barton's Angels, and the owner, Nancy Barton Whitley, taught me an important lesson. She and I took this client, was completely disoriented, to a gathering at Nancy's house, and she was the life of the party! She had a swell time, and so did everyone else.
She didn't have to remember anyone or anything.
It's a very sad thing that my mom is going back in time, but there's no time right now to think about how sad that is. On the flip side, she's six years old and I can make her happy every day.
I'm going to have some parties. Mom's still great at making friends.
Here's a little ironic twist: I have this old mirror at my house and I kept thinking I would stencil on it those lines from T. S. Eliot: "There will be time/ There will be time/ To prepare a face/ To meet the faces that you meet," and give it to my mom for the upstairs bathroom in the old house.
Wouldn't that be cool, on a mirror? I knew my mom would love it, being a teacher of literature. But I never got around to it.
So I guess the lesson is: don't postpone those home handicraft projects; you never know when they'll become moot. ¶ 8:58 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 05, 2008
The Mathematics of Revolution
At the beginning of World War I, Russia had plenty of food, but just about enough railroad transport to make it available throughout the empire, to Petrograd, for example, their capital, renamed from the German form of the name, St. Petersburg.
At the beginning of World War I, according to Robert K. Massie, Russia had 20,071 locomotives and 539.549 freight cars and this barely provided for the basic needs of the population. By early 1917, they had 9,021 locomotives and 174,346 freight cars. Then, thanks to 35-below weather, the boilers burst on 1,200 locomotives burst and 57,000 freight cars became inacessible.
And then there were the six million men at the front, who had to be supplied and the coal that had to be brought from central Russia that the Russians used to get from Cardiff.
Rasputin had clearly foreseen this and warned the emperor and the empress about it. But if you're the rulers of an empire, should you really need a holy man to remind you to take care of the food supply?
When the revolution took place, the lefty groups were entirely unprepared. Lenin, in Zurich, was giving up. He wrote that he didn't expect to see the coming revolution in his lifetime.
But when there was no bread, the women began to march through the streets, and bakeries were broken into,
Then the soldiers were ordered into the streets to shoot down the populace, but they refused. I think the world ought to give credit to a sergeant name Kirpichnikov of the Volinsky Regiment who shot a captain who had struck and insulted him the day before when the trooops had refused to fire on the crowd.
Soon after, the Volinsky Regiment took to the street, with their marching band at the head of the procession, and red flags attached to their bayonets. All the soldiers in Petrograd follwed them.
If you're an absolute monarch and you can't get soldiers to shoot down their fellow citizens in the street, you're in a darn embarassing situation. The tsar sent regiments from the front to restore order, but their trains were surrounded before they even stopped and they all joined the revolution.
Then the tsar agreed to do all the things he refused to do before, and it was way too late. A week before he could have kept his crown, but now the Palace of Justice, and all the police stations, were in flames.
Right up to the end, his minister of the interior, Protopopov, kept him thinking that everything was just fine. He tried to rescind the legislative immunity of Fedor Kerensky so he could arrest and kill Kerensky.
One day later he was begging Kerensky for his life -- and Kerensky spared him!
Here's what a feeb Protopopov was -- after Rasputin's murder, he claimed to have seen visions of Rasputin in the night, hoping to hoodwink the empress, as Rasputin had done.
Although she has to go down in history as the most gullible person who ever lived, she wasn't buying any of Protopopov's nonsense, even when he fell on his knees and cried, "Excellency! I see Christ behind you!"
I guess somewhere, somehow, there's a limit to anyone's credibility. It's never anything I want to count on, though.
You have to give Nicholas and Alexandra credit for uniting public opinion in Russia. Everyone agreed they had to go, including every political party and all their relatives, including Nicholas' mother, and especially the cousins who were next in line.
And the people hated the empress as well, so when the food supply was cut off, things all fell into place. It certainly wasn't something planned by revolutionaries. It was simply a breakdown of government. The certain outcome of a mathematical equation.
Still, let's drink to Sergeant Kirpichnikov. It's he who deserves our thanks. ¶ 8:29 PM 1 comments
At the beginning of World War I, according to Robert K. Massie, Russia had 20,071 locomotives and 539.549 freight cars and this barely provided for the basic needs of the population. By early 1917, they had 9,021 locomotives and 174,346 freight cars. Then, thanks to 35-below weather, the boilers burst on 1,200 locomotives burst and 57,000 freight cars became inacessible.
And then there were the six million men at the front, who had to be supplied and the coal that had to be brought from central Russia that the Russians used to get from Cardiff.
Rasputin had clearly foreseen this and warned the emperor and the empress about it. But if you're the rulers of an empire, should you really need a holy man to remind you to take care of the food supply?
When the revolution took place, the lefty groups were entirely unprepared. Lenin, in Zurich, was giving up. He wrote that he didn't expect to see the coming revolution in his lifetime.
But when there was no bread, the women began to march through the streets, and bakeries were broken into,
Then the soldiers were ordered into the streets to shoot down the populace, but they refused. I think the world ought to give credit to a sergeant name Kirpichnikov of the Volinsky Regiment who shot a captain who had struck and insulted him the day before when the trooops had refused to fire on the crowd.
Soon after, the Volinsky Regiment took to the street, with their marching band at the head of the procession, and red flags attached to their bayonets. All the soldiers in Petrograd follwed them.
If you're an absolute monarch and you can't get soldiers to shoot down their fellow citizens in the street, you're in a darn embarassing situation. The tsar sent regiments from the front to restore order, but their trains were surrounded before they even stopped and they all joined the revolution.
Then the tsar agreed to do all the things he refused to do before, and it was way too late. A week before he could have kept his crown, but now the Palace of Justice, and all the police stations, were in flames.
Right up to the end, his minister of the interior, Protopopov, kept him thinking that everything was just fine. He tried to rescind the legislative immunity of Fedor Kerensky so he could arrest and kill Kerensky.
One day later he was begging Kerensky for his life -- and Kerensky spared him!
Here's what a feeb Protopopov was -- after Rasputin's murder, he claimed to have seen visions of Rasputin in the night, hoping to hoodwink the empress, as Rasputin had done.
Although she has to go down in history as the most gullible person who ever lived, she wasn't buying any of Protopopov's nonsense, even when he fell on his knees and cried, "Excellency! I see Christ behind you!"
I guess somewhere, somehow, there's a limit to anyone's credibility. It's never anything I want to count on, though.
You have to give Nicholas and Alexandra credit for uniting public opinion in Russia. Everyone agreed they had to go, including every political party and all their relatives, including Nicholas' mother, and especially the cousins who were next in line.
And the people hated the empress as well, so when the food supply was cut off, things all fell into place. It certainly wasn't something planned by revolutionaries. It was simply a breakdown of government. The certain outcome of a mathematical equation.
Still, let's drink to Sergeant Kirpichnikov. It's he who deserves our thanks. ¶ 8:29 PM 1 comments
