Armchair Travel

Looking for Lincoln

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:05:00 +0000

We have a nice new housemate, so I'm trying to tidy up around the house and get rid of some clutter, and I tackle this pile of magazines from my mom's house, old New Yorkers where I've already read the cartoons. Maybe I could get rid of them.

I open up the first one and there's one of those great New Yorker drawings, full page, of two little kids, one white and one black, playing on their skateboards in front of the Lincoln Memorial. One of them is looking up at the statue, checking it out, possibly wondering, "Who's that guy?"

Then there's the article, "Set in Stone: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Memory" by Thomas Mallon. I read on a bit and find it's about a book called Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr.

Great! That means that not only can I not get rid of the magazine, I have to go out and buy the book. See why I never get anything done around here?

This blog is about used books -- great reads for a quarter -- but as Archie Goodwin says, "There are times when a principle should take a nap." This is a book that everyone who admires Abraham Lincoln and should go out and buy new.

It's about how our country, in an effort to patch things up with the South, went back on just about everything Lincoln ever stood for. Blog entries aren't too great for going into detail, but here's one: in 1908 one of Lincoln's friends, a bootmaker named William Donnegan, was lynched in Springfield, Illinois.

A year later Springfield held a 100th birthday party for Lincoln and no African Americans were invited. The country was yearning for reconciliation and the rights of black people seemed a small sacricifice for that great end.

The book also chronicles the career of Lincoln's son Robert, who declined to go to Ford's Theater with his parents o that fateful night because he had to study Spanish. Oddly enough, he was present at the assassinations of both Garfield and McKinley, in 1881 and 1901. How weird is that?

The Kunhardts are scholars of the first order, chips off the old block of their father (and grandfather) Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., the editor of Life magazine for many years (and also the creator of People).

Their grandmother, Dorothy Kunhardt, was the author of Pat the Bunny, a perpetual bestseller, and an avid collector of Lincoln memorabilia, especially photographs.

The Enemy is Retreating; It's Time to Charge

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:30:00 +0000

I believe it's time to take over the party of Abraham Lincoln and restore it to its original principles. I believe the best thing people of conscience can do right now is to join the Republican Party.

I am an ardent supporter of President Obama, but that's because he's carrying our flag. He's carrying the flag of the very first Republican president. Need some time? He's on the money.

I don't know a single Democrat who has not at one time or another been disgusted by a party that is wedded to futility. You probably don't rememberr Eleanor Roosevelt refusing to support JFK and throwing her support to two-time loser Adlai Stevenson, but we all lived through the last expensive months of the Hillary Clinton campaign...

On top of that, a significant percentage are on the take, as you can see clearly from the health care debate.

What if we had principled opponents on the other side of the aisle instead of right-wing nut jobs? The answer is (and Charles Dickens noticed this in 1840) that the principled candidates gain no support... Why? Not enough moderate Republicans.

What if we had a wave of moderate Republicans? Especially a wave of moderate women Republicans? That would be a nightmare for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, because they would no longer have a party organization to glorify them.

The first thing that's needed is to get moderate Republican candidates into the pipeline as school committe members and selectmen and city councilors and state reps. We should have a (chaperoned) internship programs to educate moderate Republican young people who have an interest in serving their community and their state and their country.

At this early stage, they might have to serve their internships with Democrats, but that's only because, as I said, the Democrat are carrying the flag of Lincoln.

Now the Republican strategists, if they're smarter than I think they are, might counter by running a bunch of right-wing nutjob Democrats like Joe Lieberman. But I don't think they have the resources to do that, and if they do, the Lincoln Republicans can always cross back over.

If you want to identify a moderate Republican, you need only ask one simple question: "Do you believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years?" A moderate Republican will answer yes.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Who's with me? The enemy is retreating in disarray. Let's fix bayonets and charge. I'm speaking here for Abraham Lincoln and Vesta Roy and Susan McLane. Let's cleanse the Augean Stables and restore the party of Lincoln to the principles of decency.

Hadley History

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:12:00 +0000

I went to two very interesting lectures in Hadley yesterday. Hadley is just south of Sunderland, where I live, and the town recently celebrated its 350th birthday.

Part of the observance was the publication of a book called Cultivating a Past: Essays on the History of Hadley, Massachusetts, edited by Marla R. Miller, which I'm rarin' to read.

Two essay authors spoke at the Senior Center Sunday, Elizabeth Chilton, who co-authored the chapter on Hadley from 100,000 BC to 1700 AD -- quite a span! -- and Alice Nash who wrote about the multi-faceted interactions of Europeans and Native Americans.

I love reading about history and archaeology, but it's even more fun to have actual real-time conversations with historians and archaeologists. Both talks were really fascinating for an archaeology / history buff like me, and I learned a lot I never knew before.

Moments of Delight

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:31:00 +0000

My daughter Sarah is just back from Oaxaca, Mexico, and I'm just tickled that she went there for GoNOMAD and had a great time. It's not exactly a free vacation, because it's work, but it's the kind of work you want.

Just talking about Sarah, I noticed this urge to shut up. It goes back to her earliest childhood. I told some other parents that Sarah liked to play happily in her crib until seven or eight or even nine o'clock in the morning. They gave me nasty looks and never liked me after that.

Then Tyra Banks picked her for her model show, and if you want people to not like you, try bragging about that for sixty seconds. Frankly, my reaction was, "God made them all. They're all beautiful."

There are lots of ancient taboos against bragging about your kids, and there's a lot of sound reasoning behind them.

I just want to make an exception for moments of delight. I think when people experience moments of delight, they should tell their fellow humans all about it so everyone can be on the lookout for them. They're easy to miss if you're not on the lookout.

And studies show people who have been delighted are less likely to commit crimes and more likely to make important contributions to society.

When Sarah was a toddler, she would toddle into my room in the morning and say, "Daddy, the darkness is over." That was a moment of delight, every time -- little apostle of the sun.

Sarah's first day in first grade, a big girl pushed her down and called her 'buttface.' We talked about it.

"Do you think she made that up herself?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I think someone did that to her." Sarah figured out that the big girl didn't have any friends, so she made friends with her. When I spoke to her teacher about it, she said it made her job a lot easier.

When she was in fourth grade she tutored second graders in reading and the parents of the second-graders said she helped their kids as much as the remedial reading teacher.

When she was thirteen, she found that Grace Metalious, in her bestseller Peyton Place, actually plagiarized several paragraphs from an earlier book, There's One in Every Town by James Aswell.

I was thinking about Sarah's year in first grade because my feelings were hurt this week by some close friends -- no sense in going into particulars. But I remember when some boys were teasing her on the bus, and we talked about it, and she went in the next day.

And they teased her and she told them that they hurt her feelings, and then she said, "I feel sorry for you because you don't have any feelings."

I wasn't there, but I gather that shut them up. Just hearing about it definitely counts as a moment of delight in my book. And now, many years later, I see that I am glad I have feelings that can be hurt, and I feel sorry for those who don't have any.

Baby With Spaghetti

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:16:00 +0000

This photo is by Jordan Kauffman, whom I do not know. My Groton buddy Stanley Matthews posted it on Facebook.

Cornelia Hancock's Rosy Cheeks

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:46:00 +0000

I'm learning a lot from Cornelia Hancock, the 23-year-old New Jersey woman who arrived at Gettysburg three days after the battle. [Letter of a Civil War Nurse] She almost didn't get there. In Baltimore her party met Dorothea Dix, superintendent of Army nurses.

"She looked the nurses over and pronounced them all suitable except me. She immediately objected to my going farther on the score of my youth and rosy cheeks... In those days it was indecorous for angels of mercy to appear otherwise than gray-haired and bespectacled."

Miss Hancock settled the issue by getting on the train, and apparently it was decided that it would be too indecorous to drag her off it by main force, especially considering there were acres and acres of dead and dying men to be attended to.

So we get a sense of who Cornelia Hancock is before she arrives, and I think that's important because then, when she describes what she sees and hears and smells, it's like you're hearing it from someone you know.

And her account -- in letters to her mother and sisters that she never intended to publish -- is exactly the kind of thing that keeps me foraging in old book bins. This book is a resource for anyone who wants to understand war and its human cost, and, for that matter, anyone who wants to find insights into the human spirit.

She tells us about heroism in its true form -- gravely wounded men urging her to tend to a comrade in greater need. And she notes that the regiments that played the most heroic part in the battle suffered the most casualties.

She finds a town denuded of food, clothing and everything else necessary to life. She sits with dying men and writes their letters home.

It's a walking tour of the battlefield at Gettysburg, one of the greatest fields of carnage in human history. When Lincoln gave his famous address there five months later, arms and legs were still sticking up out of the ground.

By the way, Dorothea Dix's concerns about Cornelia Hancock were entirely unfounded. She was as safe as she might have been at home, and there is documentary evidence to show that the wounded men of the 12th New Jersey Regiment had no objection whatsoever to her youth or her rosy cheeks.

Futile Care

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:37:00 +0000

When my mom was in the hospital in Springfield, we asked them to provide what is called "comfort care only." That means they don't do a lot of invasive tests and IVs and catheters.

A doctor came over to us and told us we were doing the right thing for Sally and he wished more families would do what we did.

A huge percentage of American health care costs are incurred in the last year of life, and much of it is what can be called "futile care" that might make life a little bit longer, but not better.

Here's what an experienced nurse has to say: "As a retired hospice nurse, I can validate the beauty and effectiveness of palliative care. Both the patient and the family get the kind of individualized support and care that makes the end of life a time of peaceful letting go in the serenity of a calm, well-supported family. As an ex-ICU nurse, I can tell you that we not only waste incredible amounts of money on futile care, we torture our dying patients."

President Obama has taken a lot of flack for even discussing the idea of palliative care. He's been accused of organizing "death squads" to decide which elderly people shall be deprived of care and left to die.

But anyone with any actual knowledge of end-of-life situations understands that prolonging life at all costs doesn't help anyone, except the people who get rich from it, and it often amounts to torturing people who just want to die in peace.

Spartacus and the Essene

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:51:00 +0000

He stuck up for the lowly and the oppressed. He preached a new kingdom of peace and justice. He was crucified but he lives on. You know who I mean... Spartacus!

I'm reading The Gladiators by Arthur Koestler and I'm getting caught up in his rendition of this famous story. He has Spartacus, early on, meet up with an Essene prophet who ended up in Rome. That was the group that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and plagiarized the words of Jesus before He was even born. Shocking!

The Essene traces a long line of people who have spoken up for truth and justice for the little guy, starting with King Agis of Sparta, who was hanged, and a bunch of others through the ages who met a variety of grim fates. I wonder why that is? Cui bono -- who benefits?

The Essene prophesies as follows: "Neither their silver nor their gold shall save them in the day of the wrath of Y...., but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy.Woe unto them that join house to house and field to field till there is no room, till they possess alone the lands of the earth.

"Woe unto them that decree false laws and take the right from the poor of the people so that these poor may be their prey. Woe for your heads [magistrates] judge for reward, your priests teach for hire, and your seers prophesy for money.

"For he is come, sent by Y...., He who is anointed by the Lord to mend broken hearts, to bring light to the eyes of the blind, to free the oppressed."

"I never heard of a God that curses like that Y.... of yours," says Spartacus.

"Prophecies do not count," says the Essene. "He who receives them counts."

"He who receives them will see evil days," says Spartacus.

"Aye," says the Essene. "He'll have a pretty rotten time."

Made me think of Lincoln and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Benigno Acquino.

This is turning into a heck of a book.

The Will of God Almighty

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:35:00 +0000

I have written before about my friend Daoud Nassar, the founder of the Tent of Nations near Bethlehem, a center for international peace and understanding.

The Israelis have been trying to seize Daoud's land, despite the fact that his grandfather paid taxes to the Ottoman Turks and has the receipts to prove it. Still he has to pay thousands of dollars to go to court in Israel to prove that his family owns the land.

Saturday 25 soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces broke through the gates on Daoud's farm and rousted out his family and 45 international visitors at gunpoint. (Daoud was not there at the time.)

Kay Plitt of the Friends of Tent of Nations, North America writes, "The family members who were present were made to leave the house and stand outside in the cold and dark. There were 45 volunteers and international visitors sleeping in the tents, including a group of young German women ages 18-21 and their group leader.

"The group leader was lead outside and held at gunpoint as the soldiers went through the house and the compound searching for who knows what! This took a couple of hours, and was, of course, a terrifying experience - which it was intended to be."

One particular focus of the soldiers' frustration was a large rock inscibed with the words "We refuse to be enemies." They tried to efface the inscription, but were unsuccessful, so they rolled the rock into a crevasse.

I read in the Bible that the Israeli army is doing the will of Almighty God, but it does make one curious why Almighty God would be annoyed by a rock with some writing on it.

The Most Beautiful Road in the World

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:35:00 +0000

I just took a drive down what for me is the most beautiful road in the world, New Hampshire Route 153. For some it's the road to Freedom (about four miles south of Eaton) but for me it's the road to South Conway, where I have traveled for more than 50 years.

We had a wonderful memorial service for my mom in Tamworth on Saturday for all her friends in the Mt. Washington Valley. On Sunday we went to the family home in South Conway to look over and start thinking about what we're going to do with Sally's books and papers and other family stuff.

I took a kind of preliminary inventory of Sally's books and papers, found some priceless mementoes and set off down Route 153. It was a beautiful fall day with not a cloud in the sky.

I stopped to say hi to her pal Phil at the Eaton Store -- he's a big Boston College guy and she taught there -- and then drove on past the beautiful little Eaton Church, past the place that used to have the sign we always noticed that said "Rideing."

Past Round Pond where my dad and I caught a huge trout on a fish eye, and Long Pond, where I foolishly went fishing on an island barefoot and cut my foot open on a broken bottle and was rescued by a former Navy medic who dressed my foot and took me to the hospital.

Past the chain of ponds that make up Purity Springs Resort in East Madison, where many families have been going for more than forty years, a place where time has stood still.

Past a little stand in Effingham where I remember buying my daughter Sarah an ice cream cone when she was a little girl.

Then I turned onto Route 25 in Ossippee where Sarah and I collided with and killed a mother bear -- five feet tall, 350 pounds of solid muscle. Some guy stopped and helped straighten out my bumper so I could drive on, so I gave him the bear. What would I have done with it after all?

Then down Route 16 to the Ocean Job Lot discount store Sarah and I always stop at which we call Oceans Eleven, then onto Route 28 past Small World Miniatures, where they have everything for your doll house, including tiny dart boards and tiny money and even -- get this -- tiny toilets.

On down Route 28 past Chiang Kai Shek's old sumer place and the the WWII museum with the tank busting through the brick wall, past the giant pet cemetery in Alton Bay to the Epsom Circle where the clever Indian guy patched our tire, to Concord, where I worked in the State House...

You build up a lot of memories over 50 years and I was taking them in for maybe the last time. I didn't feel like taking pictures. I believe I can remember them well enough.

Ministrations of Mercy

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:57:00 +0000

I've been reading Letters of a Civil War Nurse by Cornelia Hancock, and it's really absorbing to walk with her around the battlefield at Gettysburg after the Union Army had moved on, a scene of unimaginable carnage where 300 surgeons worked for five days performing amputations, filling wagon after wagon with severed limbs.

It was the kind of situation where people show what they are made of and Cornelia, a strong-willed Quaker lass from Pennsylvania, certainly does that.

In one letter she admits guiltily that the soldiers in her tent hospital chipped in and bought her a silver medal worth twenty dollars. These men had nothing; they hadn't been paid in months.

"Miss Cornelia Hancock," read the inscription, "presented by the wounded soldiers of the 3d Division, 2d Army Corps. Testimonial of regard for ministrations of mercy to the wounded soldiers at Gettysburg, Pa. -- July 1863."

To her mother she writes, "I know what thee will say, that the money could have better laid out. It was very complimentary, though." When you think about it, she couldn't possibly have refused it.

One of her patients later wrote to her at the tent hospital, "You will never be forgotten by us for we often think of your kind acts and remember them with pleasure. Please excuse a soldier for taking the liberty to write to you, for although we are Soldiers we know how to appreciate a kind act."

"It seems to me as if all my past life was a myth," she wrote to her mother, "and as if I had been away from home seventeen years."

But, she reports, "I am black as an Indian, dirty as a pig and as well as I've ever been in my life... There is all in getting to do what you want to do, and I am doing that."

This reminded me of a passage by Ernie Pyle, in his book This Is Your War, about a hospital from North Carolina that was transported lock stock and barrel to North Africa during the American invasion in WWII, where the doctors and nurses described the same kind of exhilaration at living in primitive conditions and giving help to those in dire need.

So I picked up that book again and got completely absorbed -- again. I'll post some excerpts in my next entry.

Biting Your Nails in Aquitaine

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:14:00 +0000

Funny the stuff that sticks in your head. At Groton School I played the third priest in a production of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, directed by Carl Tucker, who also played the part of Thomas Becket.

Philip Kunhardt the third also turned in a stellar performance as the Inquisitor and Peter Williamson, ditto, as one of the killer knights -- the loquacious one.

The third priest has a heck of an invocation at the end, speaking of Becket's killers, including King Henry:

"Go, weak sad men, lost erring souls, homeless in earth or heaven.
Go where the sunset reddens the last grey rock
Of Brittany, or the Gates of Hercules.
Go venture shipwreck on the sullen coasts
Where blackamoors make captive Christian men;
Go to the northern seas confined with ice
Where the dead breath makes numb the hand, makes dull the brain;

Find an oasis in the desert sun,
Go seek alliance with the heathen Saracen,
To share his filthy rites, and try to snatch
Forgetfulness in his libidinous courts,
Oblivion in the fountain by the date tree;

Or sit and bite your nails in Aquitaine.
In the small circle of pain within the skill
You still shall tramp and tread one endless round
Of thought, to justify your actions to yourselves,
Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
Which never is belief: this is your fate on earth
And we must think no further of you."

Looking back on it today, I guess I'd have to go with the part about snatching forgetfulness in the libinous courts of the heathen saracen. I'd like to take a shot at that one.

A Paragraph by Barbara Tuchman

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:32:00 +0000

I bought a box of about forty volumes of American Heritage -- bone dry, no mold -- for eight dollars. So I've been reading about Commodore Vanderbuilt's two sons, and General Knox's estate in Thomaston, Maine, as well as an article by Barara Tuchman, written in 1970.

She was by that time established as a preminent historian after John F. Kennedy was seen with a copy of The Guns of August.

Anyway, here is one paragraph from her story about the Japanese invasion of China:

"Determined to make an example of the capital that would bring the war to an end, the Japanese achieved a climax to the carnage already wrought in in the delta below. Fifty thousand soldiers hacked, burned, raped, and murdered until they had killed, by hand and in person, according to the evidence witnesses and collected by missionaries and other foreigners of the International Relief Committee, a total of forty-two thousand civilians in Nanking. Groups of men and women were lined up and machinegunned or use alive for bayonet practice or tied up, doused with kerosene, and set afire while officers looked on. Reports by missionary doctors and others, dazed with horror and helplessness, filled church publications in America. Much of the photographic evidence that later reached newspapers abroad came from snapshots taken by the Japanese themselves which they gave for developing to ordinary camera shops in Shanghai, where copies made their way to the correspondents."

Not only is this paragraph an extraordinary example of the skill of my favorite historian, it is equaled by the brilliance of the paragraphs around it.

How did the USA react to this news? Were people outraged? Not exactly. Congress immediately took up the Ludlow Resolution, which would have reguired a national referendum before the country could declare war. Think about that. It almost passed.

FDR understood what was happening in China, and wanted to impose an embargo on the Japanese. Not a chance.

"It's a terrible thing," he told a friend, "to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead and find no one there."

An Epic Sea Battle

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:52:00 +0000

The following is a story by Steve Hoyland, Sr. in Sea Breeze in Bayside, Texas, sent to me by my friend Sevie Ashley, editor of 008 Magazine in Lafayette, Louisiana:

Two weeks ago a group of four men, Steve Hoyland Jr. with friends Bruce, Ken and Erik, set off on an overnight offshore fishing trip. They left at noon on a Tuesday and went about 120 miles out into the Gulf (of Mexico).

They were having a great night of fishing, catching big snapper, grouper, ling and kings. About 3 am, two of them went down below to catch some sleep. The two remaining on deck were catching fish and drinking beer, enjoying the warm tropical night air.

All at once, Bruce got a big run on his line. This thing went all around the boat and took more than twenty minutes to bring up to the surface. When they got it up to the surface, they could not tell what it was. It looked prehistoric.

Steve Jr. put a gaff in it and the two men dragged it aboard the 33-foot boat. As soon as the creature hit the deck, it went crazy, attacking them. It was an eel over 6 feet long weighing close to 100 pounds. It had a mouth full of sharp teeth and was extremely pissed off.

The eel was later estimated to be sixty years old. Bruce said it came at him and Steve Jr. like an anaconda, rearing its head up and striking at them like a rattlesnake. It was highly agitated and quite energetic.

In the midst of thrashing around, the creature fell down below onto the floor between the two sleeping men, Erik and Ken. When they heard the thud and turned on the light, the eel raised its head right above Ken's face.

Erik rolled over and grabbed his 9 mm pistol. Steve Jr. started yelling, "Don't shoot the gun in the boat! We're 120 miles from land!" Next thing you know, all four fishermen were on the deck and the gigantic eel had sole possession of the bottom of the boat.

The four needed to work up a plan of action, so they drank beer while considering a strategy. It was determined that Steve Jr. would distract the eel because he had drank the most alcohol and believed he was bulletproof.

He opened up the sliding door down below to see what the "monster" was doing. As the door opened, the eel came up the two steps biting at anything along the way. The four brave men then ran to the wheelhouse like women and slammed the door shut. They never did identify which one of them scrreamed like a girl.

Inside the wheelhouse, they started calming down and decided they would drink a couple more beers. Then they hatched a new battle plan. Steve Jr. went out on the deck to get the beast's attention. The eel attacked and Steve Jr. climbed up on top of the captain's chair.

Ken threw a blanket on top of the giant eel while Erik and Bruce beat the hell out of it with a steel gaff and a large ice chest lid. After the creature was finally subdued, they put it into a large ice chest and closed the lid on it.

The four brave sailors all got themselves a beer and were laughing at the situation when the lid of the ice chest was suddenly knocked off and the eel sprang out onto the deck and resumed his attack. Bruce stated that the eel was clearly out for vengeance. The four men each picked up something and the fight was on.

After beating the creature with gaffs, ice chest lids and fire extinguishers again, they once more subdued the massive carnivore and put it back into the ice chest. This time, they tied the lid down and put another ice chest on top of that one.

Eighteen hours later they returned to the dock and started unloading the boat. None of them was anxious to open the lid to the ice chest, in fact, they did "rock, paper, scissors" to determine who would pop the lid!

Above is a picture of Bruce Gordy with the eel that he caught and bravely fought in that epic and desperate battle for control of the high seas.

Literary Comfort Food

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:42:00 +0000

I want to continue blogging about some books I've started: Letters of a Civil War Nurse by Cornelia Hancock, The Lobster Coast by Colin Woodard, Maine Memories by Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Arundel by Kenneth Roberts.

But after my trip to Chicago and my mom's memorial service, I've been working at getting back to boring old normal, so I've reverted to literary comfort food, and for me that means books I read before that I enjoyed.

Right now I'm rereading my Sue Grafton books, because Kinsey Milhonne and her "little kingdom" in Santa Theresa suit me right down to the ground.

We're kindred spirits, Kinsey and I. We both like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. We both have elderly landllords that we're very close to. And we both treasure our solitude, Kinsey and I.

As I have said before, Sue Grafton, in the Kinsey Mihonne series, has provided a valuable counterpoint to the American deification of the family as the be-all and end-all of virtue, love, and happiness, a stereotype that is contrary to all the evidence we see before us every day.

If someone is murdered, it's better than even money the killer is someone they were married to or 'in a relationship with.'

Almost every book in the Kinsey Milhonne series revolves around destructive family dynamics that have led to murder and lifelong misery for most of the characters, all seen through the eyes of Kinsey Milhonne, a woman with no family to speak of, whose parents were killed in a car crash when she was five and who was raised by her Aunt Gin, who has passed away.

Kinsey has found a family in Santa Theresa: her landlord Henry, a retired baker, and Rosie, who runs the Hungarian restaurant, but like any family, they have... dynamics, and what keeps them together is love. And sometimes they hide it or withhold it; that happens in the best of families, but when push comes to shove they make each other's lives happier.

I think that's the true measure of a family.

More Joy Than Sorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:36:00 +0000

We held a wonderful memorial service for my mom this weekend where those who loved her shared their remembrances of a remarkable woman who spent her life making the world a nicer place.

I think everybody there, myself included, learned a lot that they didn't know about Sally Hartshorne, and every presentation helped round out the picture of the person we were celebrating.

We really lost Sally, the Sally all these people knew, two years ago, but for many of them the loss was more recent. We had a chance to share with them our experiences with the Child Sally we have known for the last year of her life.

We didn't really have time to mourn the loss of our mom because she was still with us and we could still make her happy and she was still a wonderful person who made us happy, too.

I remember her last days in the nursing home. Beside her bed were her glasses and her watch. And all of a sudden I realized that she wasn't going to need either of them ever again.

It dawned on me that my mom was dying, but what I felt was, 'My mom is dying bravely.' I was more proud and happy than sorrowful.

The memorial service gave us a chance to embrace so many people who loved Sally, too, and it brought us a feeling of finality.

Over the next few months, I guess it will sink in that she's really gone. But you know what? No one is really gone.

Bringing Bloggers Together

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:21:00 +0000

I just came back from a really fun and interesting trip to Chicago for the Orbitz First Annual Blogger Day -- I'm calling it that because I hope it becomes an annual event.

Bringing bloggers together for real-time conversations is a good cause, and one of the things we learned this week was that Orbitz likes to support good causes.

I was really glad that GoNOMAD was being honored in this way. Bloggers labor in obscurity, hoping somebody somewhere will grok what they are saying, and to be recognized by an internationally known company like Orbitz is a big deal for us.

I met a lot of incredibly knowledgeable writers from all over the blogosphere, and even though I couldn't understand half of what they were talking about, I expanded my little world in a big way.

I was surprised that I was invited, since this blog is primarily about used books, but I realized that Orbitz was really recognizing GoNOMAD.com, a website started in 2000 by Lauryn Axelrod that my cousin Max purchased in 2002 which he and I have been working on since 2005 with the invaluable assistance of our webmaster Joe Obeng.

Buoyed by the creativity of hundreds of writers all over the world, we have put together a site that will give you a bunch of different perspectives on any country in the world.

We have had the privilege of publishing lots of talented writers for the first time. And when they go on to write for the Atlantic Montly or the New York Times or Time Magazine, that's a great feeling that validates what we do.

Max and I both worked as writers for longer than we've been editors, so we know what it's like, and it gives us a real boost to help fellow writers on their way.

We also publish lots of great material by experienced travel writers. I'd give examples, but they're all great and I couldn't begin to mention them all in this space.

We have learned that Arthur Frommer likes our site, which we consider a singular honor, and we've had favorable mentions in the NY Times, National Geographic and the BBC. People from the weird-food-guy show, Andrew Zimmern, called to find out what they eat in Ethiopia. Anthony Bourdain's people follow Max on Twitter.

So we gradually soak up the idea that we're doing the right thing, and that makes it even more fun to come to work.

Orbitz Blogger Day

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:37:00 +0000

Had a great time at the Orbitz first annual Blogger Day at the company's headquarters in Chicago. It's great to see a corporation with a conscience.

Met the president and CEO Barney Harford and learned about the company's commitment to equal rights for all Americans, and their support for lifting the embargo on Cuba.

And they're leading a drive to collect signatures to take to Congress to get the Cuban embargo lifted. You can sign up at a website they've set up, opencuba.org. They've already got 95,000 signatures and they're just getting started.

This is very important since so many other groups that might be expected to speak up have hesitated to get out front on this issue.

They also have genuine corporate initiatives for sustainable travel, green hotels and carbon offsets.

We also had a boat tour on the Chicago River where docent Charles T. Sanford told us all about the architecture of the city, and about Chicago's first settlers, Haitian-born Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable and his wife, a member of the Potawatomi Indian tribe.

I've been staying at the Amalfi Hotel, which has a real commitment to customer service. Friendly helpful employees, free internet, even free computers in their business center. Just printed out my boarding pass, and I'm all set to get home to the Happy Valley.

Cornelia Hancock, Angel of Mercy

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:35:00 +0000

Here is another excerpt from Letters of a Civil War Nurse, by Cornelia Hancock, who arrived in Gettysburg three days after the battle. She is seeking the hospital of the 12th New Jersey regiment in which her brother is serving:

"As we made our way to a little woods in which we were told was the Field Hospital we were seeking, the first sight that met our eyes was a collection of semi-conscious but still living human forms, all of whom had been shot through the head, and were considered hopeless.

"They were laid there to die and I hoped that they were indeed too near to death to have some consciousness. Yet many a groan came from them, and their limbs tossed and twitched.

"The few surgeons who were left in charge of the battlefield after the Union Army had started in pursuit of Lee had begun their paralyzing task by sorting the dead from the dying, and the dying from from those whose lives might be saved; hence the groups of prostrate, bleeding men laid together according to their wounds.

"There was hardly a tent to be seen. Earth was the only available bed during those first hours after the battle."

Historians seem to take off with the Union Army in pursuit of Lee, a worthy endeavor, to be sure. You don't hear much in the history books about the mountains of carnage left behind. But it's lucky for humanity that there are heros like Cornelia Hancock to come in and deal with them.

"Our party separated quickly, each intent on carrying out her own scheme of usefulness. No one paid the slightest attention to us, unusual as was the presence of half a dozen women on such fields; nor did anyone have time to give us orders or answer questions.

"Wagons of bread and provisions were arriving and I helped myself to their stores. I sat down with a loaf in one hand and a jar of jelly in another; it was not hospital diet, but it was food, and a dozen poor fellows lying near me turned their eyes in piteous entreaty, anxiously watching my efforts to prepare a meal.

"There was not a spoon, knife, fork, or plate to be had that day, and it seemed as if there was no more serious problem under Heaven than the task of dividing that too well-baked loaf into portions that could be swallowed by weak and dying men.

"I succeeded, however, in breaking it into small pieces and spreading jelly over each with a stick. A shingle board made an excellent tray, and it was handed from one to another. I had the joy of seeing every morsel swallowed by greedily by those whom I had prayed day and night I might be permitted to serve."

And that's just the beginning. Here's where she becomes a true angel of mercy:

"An hour or so later, in another wagon, I found boxes of condensed milk and bottles of whiskey and brandy. It was an easy task to mix milk punches and to serve them from bottles and tin cans..."

Letters of a Civil War Nurse

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:26:00 +0000

I went up to Montague last Saturday for some flea markets and an auction. There was a bookstore there with books three for a dollar. I had the feeling that if they didn't go for that price they might be... disposed of. So I went through them carefully.

I picked Ordeal by Slander by Owen Lattimore, The Gladiators by Arthur Koestler and Letters of a Civil War Nurse by Cornelia Hancock, edited by Henrietta Stratton Jaquette.

These are all great finds, but the latter is one of those books that shows why all that rummaging is worthwhile.

Cornelia Hancock is a courageous Quaker woman from New Jersey who, by hook or by crook, finds her way to the battlefield at Gettysburg three days after the battle.

"Every barn, church and building of any size in Gettysburg had been converted into a temporary hospital. We went the same evening to one of the churches where I saw for the first time what war meant.

"Hundreds of desperately wounded men were laid out on boards stretched across the high-backed pews... Thus elevated , these poor sufferers faces, white and drawn, were almost on a level with my own. I seemed to stand breast high in a sea of anguish.

"The townspeople of Gettysburg were in devoted attendance, and there were many from other villages and towns. The wounds of all had been dressed at least once....

"Too inexperienced to nurse, I went from one pallet to another, with paper, pencil, and stamps in hand, and spent the rest of that night writing letters from the soldiers to their families and friends. To many mothers, sisters, and wives I penned the last message of those who were to become the 'beloved dead.'"

But the wounded in the town were a tiny fraction of the men wounded in the battle. The rest were spread out over many acres in so-called hospitals that didn't even have tents.

Cornelia asked to be taken to the hospital of the Twelfth Regiment of New Jersey, in which her brother was serving.

"As we drew near our destination... a sickening , overpowering, awful stench announced the presence of the unburied dead, on which the July sun was mercilessly shining, and at every step the air grew heavier and fouler, until it seemed to possess a palpable horrible density that could be seen and felt and cut with a knife."

Maybe it's hard to see why I relish this kind of thing. I guess it's because I get a perspective you're not likely to find in most history books. I'll have a bunch more selections from this courageous woman, who was also an excellent writer.

The Sun Wheel at UMass Amherst

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:24:00 +0000

I've always enjoyed looking at the standing stones behind the UMass football stadium, but I never knew who put them there or what their purpose was.

Tuesday I met astonomer Judith Young, the driving force behind the sun wheel, as it is called, who explained why the stones were placed where they were and how the early peoples who built stone wheels used them as calendars.

A group of about 30 people learned all about solstices and equinoxes, sunrises and moonrises, even the 26,000 year cycle of the North Star. Seems even the pole star moves, but not enough so you'd notice it in a fleeting human lifetime.

Solstices are the longest and the shortest days of the year and equinoxes are when day and night are equal.

I've always heard that after the winter solstice, the days get longer by about one minute per day on average, and I've always wondered if they get longer by one minute every day or do they grow longer faster at some times and slower at others.

Professor Young explained that the days grow longer very slowly around the solstices in December and July and much faster around the equinoxes, which you would think would come exactly halfway between solstices, but you'd be wrong because the earth's orbit around the sun in not perfectly round, but slightly elliptical, and on top of that the earth's axis is tilted.

But the answer to my question is that the days get longer faster in the middle of the winter.

You can find out more about the Sun Circle at Young's website.

A Great Year for Good Reads

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:02:00 +0000

I've found a lot of great reading this summer, more than enough for several winters. For one thing, I found a box of American Heritage -- about forty volumes -- for eight bucks, and, you collectors out there will appreciate this: it's bone dry.

You find boxes like this all the time, but the slightest bit of moisture and they're moldy stinky trash.

I opened the first one and there's an article by Barbara Tuckman about Vinegar Joe Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek. Bingo. And one about the legal battle over Cornelius Vanderbuilt's last will and testament.

I've mentioned a few book titles like The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Maine Memories, and The Lobster Coast.

This weekend I was in Montague at a dealer where the books were three for a buck. I selected The Gladiators by Arthur Koestler, a very interesting guy, it turns out, tho I didn't know it at the time. I'm just interested in historical fiction about Rome to stimulate my imagination for my opera about Rome.

Number Two was Ordeal by Slander by Owen Lattimore. I thought he had done a translation of Homer's Iliad, but that's Richard Lattimore. Owen Lattimore was FDR's liaison to Chiang Kai-shek during the war and was accused by Joe McCarthy of being the number one Soviet agent in the US.

And the third great read for 33.3 cents was Letters of a Civil War Nurse, one of those accounts historians cherish, a firsthand account of some historic event, what's known as a primary source.

Cornelia Hancock was a young woman from New Jersey who bluffed and blustered her way to the battlefield at Gettysburg three days after the battle, determined to help the wounded. Her letters to her family and friends provide an eyewitness account of the carnage there.

Every building in town had been converted into a hospital and the wounded had been spread out into acres and acres of 'hospitals' that didn't even have tents.

"As we drew near our destination," Miss Hancock writes, "a sickening, overpowering stench announced the presence of the unburied dead, on which the July sun was unmercilessly shining, and at every step the air grew heavier and fouler until it seemed to possess a palpable horrible density that could be seen and felt and cut with a knife."

There's a whiff of this amazing narrative, which continues when Cornelia Hancock begins work at the "contraband" hospitals for the slaves freed by the Union Army, where conditions were deplorable.

"When you see the men in charge here," she writes, "you could not help thinking where are all those good abolitionists that do so much talking and so little acting."

I'll have some more selections from Cornelia Hancock coming up. What a find!

Maine Memories and Spider Migrations

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Maine Memories (1971) by Elizabeth Coatsworth is a real treasure. Besides the great stories I mentioned before, there are personal recollections of her life in Nobleboro with her husband Henry Beston.

One afternoon while they were out canoeing on Damariscotta Pond, they saw what they thought, in glaring sunlight, was a turtle. It turned out to be a squirrel swimming across the pond, which is actually more like a large lake.

"He looks tired, like an exhausted man," Beston said.

"Certainly he eyed us eneasily," Coatsworth writes, "but as we paddled beside him, he refused to deflect his course. He swam steadily on, only his anguished eye admitting our presence. At a boulder, he emerged nimbly enough, but leaping to the shore, he miscalculated the weight of his wet body and fell into the shallows again, scrambling out in a jiffy."

Then when they enter their little cove, they encounter "stranger and more ethereal travelers." The southeast wind was so soft that it "never stirred the water or brushed a leaf," but it was just right for a certain class of travelers: spiders.

"The sunny air was crossed by glints and slivers of light, some floating parallel to the water, four or five feet in the air, a few in fine half circles, and more at spearlike angles advancing with one end high in the air, and the other nearly or quite touching the still surface."

"The almost imperceptible breeze carried the threads at a surprising rate."

They paddle up close and notice that thanks to surface tension, some spiders are actually paragliding, leaving a V-shaped wake as their windborn strands carry them along.

What's going on here is a spider migration, previously observed by the seventeenth-century preacher Jonathan Edwards, famous for being kicked out of Northampton, later president of Princeton, who got innoculated against smallpox to show everyone it was safe and promptly died. You remember him -- Aaron Burr's grandfather.

Anyway, Edwards actually observed the spiders spinning webs to get themselves in position, then letting out a long strand of filament into the breeze. Then, at just the right moment, each spider has to cut the strands of his earthbound web and fly off on the windborn strand, not an easy call to make, when you think about it.

Edwards declared it was a good metaphor for the human soul in its quest for salvation, and although I don't go in for that sort of thing much, I have to admit he has a point.

Sally Hartshorne

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Sarah Jane Dickson Hartshorne - Sally, as she was known - died peacefully September 6 at the Center for Extended Care in Amherst, Massachusetts.

She was born October 27, 1928, in Montclair, New Jersey, to Charles Keith Dickson and Anne Brown Dickson. She grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut, and attended Rosemary Hall in Wallingford. She graduated from Vassar College in 1948.

In 1949 she married Robert Doremus Hartshorne, Jr. and they lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later moved to Dedham, where they raised four sons.

Sally was a member of St. Paul's Church, the Dedham Choral Society, the League of Women Voters and the town's Fair Housing Committee.

In 1978 she earned a Master's Degree from Boston College, where she taught for many years. She also taught at Brown University, where she was awarded a PhD in Literature in 1990. She published a number of scholarly papers about American women writers including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Willa Cather, and Marilynn Robinson.

She loved to share her love of learning with others and acted as a mentor and supporter to many students, colleagues, and friends.

In 1990 Bob and Sally moved to Waterbrooks, the home in South Conway, New Hampshire, where they had spent vacations for many years. Sally was an active member of the South Conway Club and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Conway Public Library, where she helped to oversee a major expansion.

She was a member of the Democratic Party and an early and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama.

Her interests included tending her beautiful gardens, climbing in the White Mountains, sailing on the coast of Maine, traveling the world, cross-country skiing, tennis, bicycling, and above all, reading. She was also a lover of animals and kept numerous dogs, cats, rabbits, and even a pet quail.

She was known to friends and family for her kindness, her lively wit, and her support and understanding in times of need.

During the last year of her life she lost her memory and most of her faculties, but hung on with determination to her love of life, her sense of humor, and her love and consideration for others. She was always ready to make a new friend and have a good laugh. When at last she could no longer speak, she could still smile.

She is survived by her husband Robert, her sons Robert, Stephen, Paul, and Charles, her daughers-in-law Laurie Ellis and Allison Foster, and her granddaughters Sarah and Joanna.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, October 3, at 2 p.m. at the South Deerfield Congregational Church. A second memorial service will be held October 31 at 2 p.m. at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Tamworth, New Hampshire.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Conway Public Library.

Sally's granddaughter and namesake has a wonderful entry on her blog, Erratic in Heels.

For Real Comfort, There's Northing Like a Shroud

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Hartshorne) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:48:00 +0000

I saw a book I couldn't pass up at the South Hadley flea market last week, Maine Memories by Elizabeth Coatsworth. It's a series of stories about life on Damariscotta Pond, where she lived with her husband, naturalist Henry Beston.

This is a fantastic book. Coatsworth includes a lot of stories that she heard from the older members of the farm families in and around Nobleboro, and they're great reading. There's something about a story that's been seasoned by telling and retelling and becomes part of the fabric of the community. Here's one:

"There lived many years ago in a neighboring town a solitary woman who, they say, 'wrote.' No one has the least idea what she wrote, but the memory of desk, ink, and pen clings to her story. As she got on in years she made herself a shroud, to have on hand for her burial if she should sometime be taken suddenly ill."

There came a spell of very hot weather and the lady decided the shroud would be loose and easy to wear during the hot spell "and could be put to some use before it took on its grimmer duties."

Then she started wearing it in the garden, and then when she rode her horse around town.

"She discovered there was nothing like a shroud for real comfort, and in summer she was rarely to be seen in anything else. She wore out shroud after shroud, and when she finally died, the neighbors had to make one for her, as there wasn't a shroud in the house fit to be worn."