Ann Patchett pulls me into the lives of "The Dutch House"

Ann Patchett's novel "The Dutch House" was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. First place went to Colson Whitehead's "The Nickel Boys." I have yet to read Whitehead's novel but did read his amazing "The Underground Railroad." 

"The Dutch House" was my first Patchett novel. I don't know what took me so long. She's an amazing writer and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville. Novelist and bookstore owner -- two full-time jobs. I read Patchett's novel via Kindle from Amazon as I require large-print books or enlargeable print e-books for my clunky eyesight. In the future, I will acquire my print books at indies such as Parnassus. I can get e-books at Libby and a large assortment of large-print books at the Ormond Beach Public Library. It's crucial in these dark times to keep alive the light of good literature and the nonprofit literary world. The fact that Tom Hanks narrates the "The Dutch House" audiobook is enough for me to get it just to hear what Hanks does to the first-person voice of the narrator.

"The Dutch House" follows the lives of a family and their house from the title. The house was built by a Dutch family in Elkins Park just north of Philadelphia. It's ornate and weird, inhabited by others after the aging Dutch wife died with no heirs. Buyer was Cyril Conroy, a World War II veteran and man of seemingly modest means. He loves the place. His young wife hates it. And his children, Maeve and Danny, grow up obsessed with it after their father's second wife throws them out. The tale is told by Danny.

It has a Dickensian flavor to it. Both the house and the characters loom large. A  bit like the painting of Maeve on the cover of the book's first edition (painting by Noah Saterstrom). The setting isn't the gritty hovels of 1840s London but the polite environs of  Philadelphia and New York City. I was caught up in their lives and was heartbroken at the end. I loved the characters so much I didn't want to see them go. That takes skill, bringing a cast to life so we are bereft when they exit the final page. I don't want a sequel but do want them to hang around for a spell like the ghosts who inhabit the house. 

The book ends with the lingering feeling that we all live parallel lives in the houses we have inhabited. How many times have you driven by "the old place" and been hit with a sense of longing?

That's "The Dutch House." 

One final note: I downloaded a "Kindle Unlimited" post-apocalyptic novel to read following Padgett. I read all kinds of books. But this one was all action and style. I won't name the book because it's a book and there's a writer who worked hard on it and I don't want to hurt feelings. I've written many novels, all unpublished, and it is a lot of work. So, as I cast around for my next read, I won't settle. 

"Sergeant Salinger" by Jerome Charyn will rip your heart out

I was gobsmacked by an historical novel written about a famous author’s experiences in World War II.

“Sergeant Salinger” by Jerome Charyn is about J.D. Salinger, the most reclusive of American authors. His war experiences and the PTSD that followed helps explain why he kept his distance from his fellow humans for most of his adult life.

But that’s not the whole story. We first meet Salinger as a young single on the make in New York City. He dates Oona O’Neil, the vampish daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, and hangs out at the Stork Club with the likes of Walter Winchell and famous people we recognize by their last names or nicknames. Papa “Hem” Hemingway is one of them. Salinger writes radio scripts and short stories and readers like them but they are nothing to write home about. The letters home come later when he has something to say.

Salinger gets drafted even though he’d been previously diagnosed with a heart murmur. It’s the spring of ’42 and Uncle Sam needs everybody, even “half-Jewish writers with heart murmurs.” You’d think that Salinger (he goes by the nickname Sonny) would land in a cushy stateside job writing press releases or speeches for generals. What happens is something horrific and unexpected, even for someone like me who knows Salinger’s stories of PTSD veterans (“For Esme with Love and Squalor” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”). Salinger told these stories from the inside out. The author’s “Nine Stories” broke my heart when I first read them all in my 20s. Another heartbreaking story about returning vets is “Hemingway’s “A Soldier’s Story.” In “Sergeant Salinger,” there’s a scene when a jaded Hem visits Salinger in a Nuremberg psych ward and calls his own story “amateurish.” Hem groused that everything was behind him. He published “The Old Man and the Sea” in 1952 and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and Nobel Prize in 1954.

Lest you think Charyn has employed his magnificent storytelling skills to make it all up, think again. I did too. Until Part One: Slapton Sands, the section that follows Prelude: Oona. Salinger is a Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) NCO, who accompanies invading troops to interview prisoners and others who might spill the beans on Nazi war plans. He speaks German. He’s been drilled in all the tricks of the interrogator’s trade. While preparing for the D-Day landings, he’s witness to one of the army’s biggest tragedies. In a practice run for Normandy on Lyme Bay on the Channel side of England, a live-fire exercise goes astray and German’s Kriegsmarine speedboats sneak in an torpedo LSTs, spilling overloaded troops into the ocean. There are 749 casualties, some interred in mass graves, and Charyn documents it.

I told myself this couldn’t possibly happen. I looked it up. It happened. That’s when I knew we were off on a wild ride. We go to Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. Salinger is in the thick of it with the Fourth Division. They get into hedgerow battles with dug-in German troops and 82^nd Airborne “sky soldiers” (paratroopers) who are keen to even the score with Nazis who shot their comrades out of the sky when they dropped into the wrong spot. I looked that up too and it was much more gruesome than featured in “The Longest Day,” book or movie. Anywhere, for that matter.

Kudos to Charyn for doing his homework. He is a brilliant writer, one I’ve liked since getting hooked on his Inspector Isaac Sidel novels. We are in the shit with Salinger all the way through occupation duty in Germany. And he comes home which we all know. Salinger humped his “Catcher in the Rye” manuscript through Europe and wrote until he couldn’t write any more. The novel ends with the manuscript in his tiny retreat on Sleepy Hollow Lane, a street that Salinger invents because of its locale near the setting of the famous Washington Irving story. Nobody but family can find him there. Until he finishes his war-battered manuscript and it becomes a best seller. "Catcher in the Rye" still makes waves. 

Publisher is Bellevue Literary Press of New York, a small press with origins at Bellevue Hospital, noted for its Psychiatric Unit (the Ghostbusters were interned there, briefly) and the medical offices where Dr. Lewis Thomas wrote the best-selling “Lives of a Cell.” I haven’t read most of its authors who write, Bellevue notes, “at the intersection of the arts and sciences.” They’ve also published other books by Charyn, including his latest “Ravage & Son,” a “vintage noir” set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the turn of the last century. I have pre-ordered it. Charyn has other historicals. Look them up at his web site at jeromecharyn.com

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness a great read

Imagine it's 2009 and you're a 24-year-old newspaper reporter living and working in New York City. An exciting life, sprinting all over town for stories and interviews. At night, hanging out in bars with your main squeeze and young friends. One day, you wake up with bites on your arm and imagine that your body and tiny apartment are infected with bedbugs. Then you start to hallucinate. Paranoia grips you and you are convinced that your boyfriend is cheating. You have trouble speaking and then erupt in epileptic convulsions.

I'm going crazy. That's your first thought but it's wrong. You are in the beginning stages of autoimmune encephalitis. Your brain is on fire. Your immune system is attacking your brain. Seizures, convulsions, hallucinations are part of it. You speak in tongues, as it says in the Bible, and if you lived in medieval England, your contortions and babbling might be mistaken for demonic possession. If you lived in 2009 America, your loved ones might think you were in the grip of schizophrenia or some other mental illness. You might end up in an institution for the rest of your life, which could be short if you contract the illness in its most lethal form.

Susannah Cahalan was lucky. She found the right neurologist and became the poster child for the disease which, before her, had only been diagnosed 217 times. She recovered and, being a dedicated journalist, wrote a book, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. It's now a movie.

It's scary reading. Compelling. My daughter Annie gave me her copy. She is bipolar and devours books on mental illness or supposed mental illness. She intends to become a music therapist once she and her therapists get a handle on her illness. She will be a good one, too, as she has experienced a good decade of struggles within the mental health system. It's not really a system. It pretends to be but not enough attention or time is devoted to it. We tend to warehouse those with mental illness, especially those who have the more challenging schizophrenia or schizo-effective disorder or are bipolar, which used to be known as manic-depression.  These people are challenged every day. They can be treated but it takes so much time and attention and money which could be spent on more important things,, such as a billion-dollar aircraft carrier to fight Islamic terrorists lurking in an alley in Mosul. Or more tax cuts to the ridiculously rich. Heaven help the needy amongst us now that Trump is running things.

I just finished reading Brain on Fire. It's well-written and, as I already mentioned, scary, especially for those of us who struggle with mental illness -- or have loved ones who do. Highly recommended. Not sure about the movie -- haven't got around to watching it. It screened in September at the Toronto International Film Festival and received lukewarm reviews. Read the Hollywood Reporter review here. Read the book instead. A 2012 New York Times review by Michael Greenberg offers insight.

"Sailor off the Bremen" shows that punching Nazis is nothing new

It's only a movie -- or is it? Indiana Jones punches a Nazi in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

USA Today offered its summary of the past weekend: "Analysis: One weekend, two Americas. Are we falling apart?" It examines this past weekend in the U.S., in which Trump was inaugurated as president and concerned citizens protested millions-strong around the the U.S. and the world.  

The article leaves us with chilling words from pollster Frank Luntz:

"We've never had as many people who don't trust the media, don't trust the politicians, don't trust economics, don't trust business," Republican political consultant Frank Luntz said on CBS' Face the Nation. "I think we're going to remember this weekend for a long time to come as not the end, not the campaign being over, but this is the beginning of the most tempestuous ... awful conflict between left and right, between men and women, between young and old." 

He warned, "I think we are breaking apart."  

Luntz works for Republicans. As a pollster, he interviewed scores of potential voters leading up to the election. I watched many of those segments on CBS This Morning, back when I was watching TV news. They were illuminating and scary. Give credit to Luntz for showing us the inklings of the cataclysm that was to come. 

What's next?

Punching Nazis. U.S. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was punched in the face Saturday during D.C. inauguration activities. It was filmed, and the vid went viral. The #punchingnazis hashtag became a sensation.  Facebookers posted old cartoon panels of Superman punching Nazis during WWII. Hitler memes were big. 

Liberals had a big laugh. Conservatives were silent. Nobody wants to be on the side of the Nazis, even though we thought that this abbreviation for German's National Socialist Party had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Now we call these people alt-right or purveyors of white pride or white identity or white nationalists. They shouted "Hail Trump" at their post-election rally. 

So why not punch Nazis? Because Trump will use public violence as an excuse to clamp down on public protest. One of the reasons we peacefully gathered out in the streets this weekend is that we fear that very thing. Vice President Pence has already stated that it is time to curtail protests. We knew this was coming. 

Punching Nazis is nothing knew. One of Irwin Shaw's best short stories is ":Sailor Off the Bremen." In it, Nazi sailors off the ship Bremen attack anti-fascist demonstrators on the New York docks. One demonstrator is so injured that some of his compatriots decide to punch Nazis.

Shaw has always been one of my favorite short story writers. He lived during the golden age of short story writing and publishing. Yes, short story writers got paid to write in the 1930s. Shaw was featured in some of the best mags of the era. He wrote for radio. He went off to war and kept writing. Many of his novels became best-sellers. One was made into a Brando movie, The Young Lions. Two were made into blockbuster TV miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggerman, Thief. Shaw lived in Paris. For the most part, he is not studied in M.F.A. writing programs due to his potboiler novels. A shame, really. Many of us could learn storytelling skills from this master.

"Sailor off the Bremen" serves up a pre-war cast of Nazis, communists and tough guys. Nobody really comes off as a hero. A young communist activist gets beat up at a protest against the Nazi-flag-flying Bremen. He loses his eye. His football-playing brother avenges the crime by beating a Nazi almost to death on the streets of New York. Nothing gets solved. The war will begin in September. The beatings and killings will commence on a global scale.

A white nationalist gets punched in the face in D.C. We cheer. White nationalists in Whitefish, Mont., target the Jews in their community. How do we respond to that? Peaceful protest may be the answer. Until it's not.

Lawrence Block included "Sailor off the Bremen" in the 2008 anthology he edited for Akashic Books, Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics. It's a good thing. Shaw's stories are hard to find these days. 

I leave you with a quote by James Fallows from the latest issue of Atlantic Magazine Online. Fallows recently spoke at a conference in Cheyenne. In the Atlantic article, he mentioned Laramie as one of the many places where local citizens are transforming their communities. At the same time, they hold a jaundiced view of national politics.

Fallows wrote this:

And now we have Donald Trump. We have small-town inland America—the culture I think of myself as being from—being credited or blamed for making a man like this the 45th in a sequence that includes Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. I view Trump’s election as the most grievous blow that the American idea has suffered in my lifetime. The Kennedy and King assassinations and the 9/11 attacks were crimes and tragedies. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq were disastrous mistakes. But the country recovered. For a democratic process to elevate a man expressing total disregard for democratic norms and institutions is worse. The American republic is based on rules but has always depended for its survival on norms—standards of behavior, conduct toward fellow citizens and especially critics and opponents that is decent beyond what the letter of the law dictates. Trump disdains them all. The American leaders I revere are sure enough of themselves to be modest, strong enough to entertain self-doubt. When I think of Republican Party civic virtues, I think of Eisenhower. But voters, or enough of them, have chosen Trump.

How many of our fellow citizens do we have to punch to make this right? If you punch, are you prepared to be punched back? Or worse?

Sunday morning round-up

Anyone out there had norovirus, gastroenteritis, the intestinal bug, stomach flu, the cruise ship curse? It's all the same thing. Unpleasant but fast moving. I should be fine by start of work on Monday. Last year at this time, I was told by my doc that my stomach cramps were the onset of the bug. He gave me a nausea shot and sent me home. Meanwhile, my heart kept revolting and I didn't get help until the new year. Yes, I keep bringing this up. And no, I won't stop. Not because I blame my doc. But because heart attack symptoms can be almost anything. A pain in the ass? That's probably something else, such as watching too much Fox TV or spending too much time with that Tea Party relative. But unexplainable pains in the stomach, side, arm, head, back? As my old Wyoming pal Dick Cheney says: "When in doubt, check it out." That doesn't go for weapons of mass destruction in a troublesome foreign country whose initials are I-R-A-Q. But it does for the H-E-A-R-T.

The Broncos play in Oakland today.  Normally this would be a cause of great drama, but the Raiders are only a shadow of their former selves and the Broncos have Peyton Manning. This used to be one of the greatest rivalries in the NFL, but you almost have to go back to the John Madden days for that. Howard Cosell belittling the Broncos on Monday Night Football. All those crazy fans in the rickety south stands of the old Mile High Stadium. The fans used to get on Madden, but he has said on national TV that he and his team would always get revved up to play in Denver. Madden, now a video-gaming gazillionaire, probably has softened with time. Those games could be brutal. Gradishar and Alzado and Jackson and Hayes and Stabler-to-Biletnikoff and Morton-to-Moses. My late brother Pat, the only one of us five brothers to play football in high school, was a Raiders fan. He liked the Broncos, too, but only when they weren't playing the Raiders. Wonder what he'd think of the present-day Raiders? I'll think of you today, Pat, when I'm watching the game, especially if (when) a fight breaks out.

I hear that Florida will soon bypass New York as the third most populous state. Not surprising, considering that millions of New Yorkers have deserted Syracuse and Buffalo and Albany for the Sunshine State. I spent about half of November in Florida and experienced first-hand that population boom. Orlando traffic is crazy. A commuter line, SunRail, is being built by Canadians (the original snowbirds) but even that may not help alleviate the congestion. I'm going to central Florida in a couple weeks for my niece's wedding. The difference this time is that I'll be driving instead of leaving that to others. Wish me luck. I live in a small city, one where drivers think nothing of stopping in the middle of the road to chat with neighbors. Our new two-lane roundabout has caused apoplexy in some old-timers who see it as a commie plot against the all-American tradition of streetlights and running those very same lights to cause horrible crashes. As I said, wish me luck.

Have a happy and healthy new year.

And when in doubt, check it out.

Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" opens Nov. 30

The Cheyenne Little Theatre Players opens a new show this Friday at bthe Mary Godfrey Theatre. It's Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers." It's directed by John Lyttle.

Here's a cast list:

Grandma - Lois Hansen
Bella - Paige Bowman
Louie - Rory Mack
Eddie - Ryan Braman
Gert - Erin Kendall
Jay - Mac Rogers
Arty - Brendan Threewitt

Here's a description of the play from the CLTP web site:

Neil Simon’s LOST IN YONKERS is a coming of age tale that focuses on brothers Arty (13) and Jay (16), left in the care of their Grandma Kurnitz and Aunt Bella in Yonkers, New York. Their desperate father, Eddie, works as a traveling salesman to pay off debts incurred following the death of his wife. Grandma is a severe, frightfully intimidating immigrant who terrified her children as they were growing up, damaging each of them to varying degrees. Bella is a sweet but mentally slow and highly excitable woman who longs to marry an usher at the local movie house so she can escape the oppressive household and create a life and family of her own. Her brother Louie is a small-time, tough-talking hoodlum who is on the run, while her sister Gert suffers from a breathing problem which cause is more psychological than physical. 

Show dates: November 30-December 16; Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM; Sundays at 2 PM
Tickets: Adults: $21; Students & Seniors: $16; Children: $11
All Matinees: $2 Off
Special Discount Thursday December 6 at 7:30 PM when all tickets are $10.
Order tickets online here.

Ol' Blue Eyes says (sings) it all about "New York, New York" in 2011

Creativity is Occupy Movement's middle name

I didn't see "Cheyenne" or "Wyoming" flash on this building but maybe next time...

Here's what this is all about:

One of the most impressive moments of yesterday's Occupy Wall Street marches, was when someone projected a giant 99% "bat signal" on the side of one of lower Manhattan's skyscrapers as thousands of people swarmed across the nearby Brooklyn Bridge. New Yorkers know the Verizon Building as the windowless, concrete eyesore that looms over the bridge and mars the downtown skyline, so seeing it used is such a way certainly got a lot of attention. 

But who did it? And how were they able to project the stories-high words on the building just as the protesters made their way over the span? Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin spoke to Mark Read, one of the Occupy Wall Street organizer who pulled together a team of friends and artists that arranged for the projection to happen. 

Read says he got help from two video projection artists, Max Nova and JR Skola, who used a 12,000 lumen projector and programmed the software needed to properly program the message. He also found an apartment in a nearby housing project from where they safely angle the projection on to the building. He says he offered to rent the apartment from a single mother of three, but when she found out what they wanted to use it for — and saw what happened during the eviction of Zuccotti Park — she refused to take their money.

Music by Hans Zimmer, To Know My Enemy. 

Some of this is new to me. There is now a category known as "video projection artists?" And a 12,000-lumen projector? It must be huge. 

Why have the police resorted to violence against Occupy Wall Street protesters?

Following last month's police brutality in Oakland, and today's summary eviction of the Occupy Wall Street camp (and don't forget Seattle and Denver -- see above photo from Oct. 29 by Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post), American activists are reaching the conclusion that "police protect the 1%". More at Police Violence Reveals a Corrupt System (The Guardian via Common Dreams).

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, November 15, at Westlake Park. Protesters gathered in the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street after marching from their camp at Seattle Central Community College in support of Occupy Wall Street. Many refused to move from the intersection after being ordered by police. Police then began spraying pepper spray into the gathered crowd hitting dozens of people. A pregnant woman was taken from the melee in an ambulance after being struck with spray. Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO / SEATTLEPI.COM

Retired cop tells NYPD: "Don't be Wall Street Mercenaries"

Captain Ray Lewis (Ret.) of the Philadelphia police has joined Occupy Wall Street. His sign is perfect: “NYPD: Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries!” That's exactly what the NYPD has become, as we witnessed throughout the day today. (Thanks to Cognitive Dissonance in Laramie for the photo.)

Occupy Wall Street occupies your TV

SEIU brothers and sisters join Occupy Wall Street

My brothers and sisters in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are now joining Occupy Wall Street. I'm a member of the Wyoming Public Employees Association, an SEIU affiliate. It's comprised of state employees such as myself. Kudos to these brave union members:

The United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, Workers United and Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 have said they will participate in the protest next Wednesday [Oct. 5].

More at http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/29/unions-and-liberal-groups-to-join-occupy-wall-street-protest/

For everything (even 9/11) there is a season

As always, the arts were front and center during this morning’s televised tenth anniversary of trying to make sense of 9/11.

Performances by choirs and singer/songwriters and classical musicians punctuated the reading of the names at the Twin Towers memorial. Each of the politicians who spoke referenced a poem or a Biblical verse, which is another type of poetry. You might even say that the reading of the names is a very long epic poem. The readers themselves ended their recitations by remembering their loved one who died on 9/11. A short personal haiku amidst the epic poem.

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani read the verse from Ecclesiastes that was put to song (“Turn, Turn, Turn”) by anti-war and environmental activist Pete Seeger in 1959 and made famous among non-Bible readers in 1965 by rock-era legends The Byrds.

Ecclesiates 3 1-8

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

This only seems to emphasize the fact that, while poems and music and Biblical verses bring some comfort and understanding to tragedy, they don't seem to make grief any easier to bear. Sometimes they bring up issues that still desperately need to be faced.

After Giuliani’s speech, Paul Simon sang "The Sound of Silence" accompanied only by his guitar. Simon began composing the song after the Kennedy assassination. It became one of the standards of Simon & Garfunkel performances and nearly every young person alive in the sixties knew the words. This morning, Simon’s words and guitar chords echoed eerily off of the big buildings still under construction. His words argue that “silence like a cancer grows” and many prophetic warnings are gobbled up by the sounds of silence. Sounds a little bit like what we’ve seen the past 10 years in the U.S. The silence, however, is really the sounds of millions of screaming voices blaring out of the Tower of Babel worlds of the Internet and Cable TV.

The famous hymn “Amazing Grace” was performed by flautist Emi Ferguson. “Amazing Grace” was co-written by repentant slave ship sailor John Newton and renowned British poet William Cowper. It’s now performed often on bagpipes, notably at the funerals of fire fighters and soldiers. I heard many pipe band renditions of this standard over the weekend at the Scottish Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park.

It’s no namby-pamby verse. The author is crying out in anguish, thanking God’s “amazing grace” for saving “a wretch like me.” This takes humility. This takes courage. Something that we saw plenty of in those who gave their lives for others on 9/11/01.

Karen Cotton's New York City photos on display at Clay Paper Scissors Gallery starting Sept. 8

I've known the multitalented Karen Cotton for ten years. She's not only a fine musician and writer, but this Green River native has a warm spot in her heart for New York City. 

In honor of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Clay Paper Scissors Gallery & Studio will present “New York City: Rising from the Ashes.” This exhibit features photographs by Karen Cotton taken four years after the attack on New York City’s Twin Towers. The mix of images combines the vibrant resiliency of New York with haunting images of ground zero, and memorials.

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Opening reception is Thursday, Sept. 8, 5-8 p.m./, as part of the Art Design and Dine art walk. A second reception will be held during the next AD&D night on Oct. 13. The exhibit continues through Oct. 23.

The gallery is located at 1506 Thomes Ave., Suite B. It's in a renovated historic warehouse off of 15yth Street across from the railyards. Open every Saturday from 1-5 p.m. or by appointment. Call 307-631-6039. 

The Irish diaspora brought us The Great Shame and -- for many -- much better lives

Looking for some especially depressing books to read during St. Patrick's Day week, I chose The Great Shame, and the triumph of the Irish in the English-speaking world by Thomas Keneally. Keneally is an Australian of Irish descent who wrote such great books as Schindler's List, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and To Asmara. I've met Keneally several times and he looks a bit like a leprechaun (see book jacket). A leprechaun who can write!

It's an old story. Irish peasant gets sideways with his landlord, goes to jail and is convicted, and eventually is deported to Australia. Hugh Larkin was his ancestor who was shipped away in chains and, strangely enough, into a better life. He missed the Great Potato Famine, for one thing. There were jailers and landlords in Australia but not nearly so many. A man with grit and wit could make it there.

That's what so many Irish found during the diaspora. If they survived.

Thomas O'Shea, who somewhere along the line changed his surname to Shay, was born in County Clare, Ireland, on Dec. 20, 1815. He died in Clear Creek Township in Johnson County, Iowa, on May 14, 1879. According to his very precise gravestone at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Iowa City, he was "63 years, 4 mos, and 24 days." Not sure about the hours and minutes.

His wife was Ann (Anna, Annie) Agnes Burns, born somewhere in Ireland about 1825. My daughter Annie bears her name. My daughter was born on March 9, 1993, in Cheyenne in County Laramie, USA. Wonder how much of the Irish Annie is in our Annie? She's stubborn as hell and beautiful and smart. I wonder if she would have made it to the U.S. intact from famine-ravaged Ireland. I think so.

Annie and Thomas emigrated around 1850. It could have been earlier. But the cause is clear -- threat of starvation. The 1850 New York census shows Thomas Shay, 30, and Annie Shay, 23, living with their three children in Brockport in Monroe County, just a bit west of Rochester. The family left for Iowa about 1859, just in time to avoid most of the Civil War.

The 1870 federal census records show that Thomas Shay owned real estate worth $4,000 in Clear Creek Township, Iowa. It was 96 acres. He and Annie, 43, now had eight children. The youngest was Michael, 6. The family owned three horses, four mules, four milk cows, four "other cattle," and 18 swine. He and his family farmed wheat, corn, oats and (of course) "Irish potatoes." They harvested 15 tons of hay and produced 300 pounds of butter and 30 gallons of molasses.

Beats the hell out of eating weeds or grass, the only crops growing in the Irish countryside. Not an easy journey across the ocean and across half of the country. But, in the end, Thomas probably thought it was worth it.

Ann Burns Shay was buried next to her husband in 1909. By then, her youngest son Michael's first-born son Raymond was 16. Raymond's son Thomas was born in 1923 and, after he married Anna Marie Shay in February, 1950, I was born 10 months later.

There are many family stories mixed in with the data. And so many relatives named Michael and Patrick and Molly. Show a little imagination people! Our names are traded like baseball cards. My father was named after his great-grandfather Thomas from Ireland and his uncle Thomas, who died in 1918 from the Spanish flu. He was in the Iowa National Guard at the time with his older brother Ray. They were in France with the AEF. More Johnson County boys died of the flu than died in battle during World War I.

My middle name is Thomas. I have a younger brother Thomas. We call him Tom or Tommy. I have a nephew Thomas who is trying to get into medical school. My sister Molly is his mother.

We've done pretty well here in the States. My parents never traveled to Ireland to look up relatives. Neither did I. Maybe we're beyond that. The Republic of Ireland, until recently, was known as the Celtic Tiger and some Americans of Irish descent traveled back to The Old Sod to work. They may be back soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day on Thursday.

I'll raise a pint to the dear departed -- here's to you, Pat! -- the living, and all those Michaels and Annies and Patricks and Mollys yet to come.

Condolences to Keith Olbermann and family -- with a shout out to James Thurber

From Keith Olbermann's blog on Saturday:

My father died, in the city of his birth, New York, at 3:50 EST this afternoon.

Though the financial constraints of his youth made college infeasible, he accomplished the near-impossible, becoming an architect licensed in 40 states. Much of his work was commercial, for a series of shoe store chains and department stores. There was a time in the 1970's when nearly all of the Baskin-Robbins outlets in the country had been built to his design, and under his direction. Through much of my youth and my early adult life, it was almost impossible to be anywhere in this country and not be a short drive to one of "his" stores.

My Dad was predeceased last year by my mother, Marie, his wife of nearly 60 years. He died peacefully after a long fight against the complications that ensued after successful colon surgery last September at the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. My sister Jenna and I were at his side, and I was reading him his favorite James Thurber short stories, as he left us.

My condolences to Keith and his family. My father, too, was a fan of James Thurber's short stories. Thurber was a fine writer, funny and irreverent. He wrote for The New Yorker, but his stories were made to be read aloud, unlike most contemporary stories featured in that magazine.

Here's the beginning to "The Night the Bed Fell" from the July 8, 1933, New Yorker:

I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation (unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times) than it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a dog, to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it did take place.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1933/07/08/1933_07_08_011_TNY_CARDS_000228579#ixzz0iINK1E1r

Read it, and remember the power of good writing.

Live HD opera comes to the big screen

I've never seen a live opera. Never really interested me. Besides, to actually see one, I have to travel to the spiffy new opera house in Denver, pay a fortune for tickets, get dressed up, and probably pay for a fancy dinner. If it was a priority, I'd do it.

Today, I traveled to Cinemark in Fort Collins to see a simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera's "La Sonnambula." My friend Bob lives in Fort Collins and is a long-time opera fan. He spends part of each summer at the Santa Fe Opera. He has season tickets to Colorado Opera. He goes to the Met's simulcasts. He's an opera "Deadhead," travelling across the West, following Verdi and Bellini and even Wagner. I admire that sort of dedication.

I met Bob and his neighbor Art at the Cinemark. Art used to sing opera as a hobby when he was an engineering professor at Ohio State (a.k.a. The Ohio State). Art saw opera at La Scala in Milan in 1973. La Scala is to opera what City Lights Books in North Beach is to beat poets. Or Ryman Auditorium is to C/W musicians. You get the picture. Bob, of course, has seen dozens of operas and studies up on it in his semi-retirement. I'm a novice. Still educating myself in the fine arts -- a lifelong pursuit.

I paid $20 and joined 200-some people to see the opera on-screen. As we have always suspected, technology is a wonderful things for the arts. Sure, we've seen dire warnings about our teens' brains turning to jelly from playing too many rounds of "Halo" or "Resident Evil." But tech geeks also invented the HD camera and iPods and LCD projectors to enhance the artistic experience.

As I watched a 300-year-old opera live in high-def, I thought to myself: "Technology could help opera make a comeback." Yes, most of the people in the crowd were older than my 58 years. And yes, the graying of the performing arts audience is a major concern of arts groups all over the world. Whenever I go to a local symphony performance, the sound of old people snoring competes with strains of Beethoven and Mozart.

But things may be looking up. Did you know that opera has its own version of "American Idol?" It's true. At today's simulcast, we saw a preview of "The Audition," a documentary based on a 2007 nationwide search for the next big opera voice. The singers were almost all in their 20s, with one man coming in at the ripe old age of 30. They all have wonderful voices. The search has conducted regional auditions and the winners all go to the U.S. competition. That winner gets to sing at the Met.

I haven't spoken much about the opera itself. Bellini set his original in a small 17th-century town in the Swiss Alps. The new version takes place in a NYC rehearsal space, with the players dressed in contemporary clothes rehearsing for a performance of "La Sonnambula" set in a Swiss village. Kooky.

But what impressed me most is how the Metropolitan Opera, one of the oldest and stodgiest institutions in one of the oldest and stodgiest areas in the performing arts, is modernizing through technology and by borrowing ideas from reality shows such as "American Idol." Purists will be shocked. Bob tells me that the Mary Zimmerman, director of this new version of "La Sonnambula," was booed when introduced at opening night The Met. However, the place was filled to capacity for today's performance. And much applause was flung at the leading tenor and soprano. Even Bob, an old-line opera lover, loved the changes. And if we learned anything in our most recent past, change is good.