Joe Jansen

Bad luck and good luck

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 22:40:00 +0000

It was 2008 when I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was a sinking feeling, the idea that I wasn’t even 50 and my life might already be coming to an end. I had a hard time speaking when I tried to tell my brothers and sisters about it. Jill had to finish my words.

This felt like bad luck. Really bad luck. Cancer? Me? I entered a course of radiation: five times a week for about three weeks. It burned. But you know what? It wasn’t that bad. I had a friend who had the same diagnosis around the same time. Jeff got radiation, too. But he also got chemotherapy. And stem cell transplants. Weeks in a hospital isolation room while his decimated immune system rebounded.

Myself, I went to my radiation treatments in the hospital basement and then stopped at Starbucks on my way to back to work. Even when the lymphoma came back 10 years later and required another dozen blasts of radiation, I thought, “This isn’t too bad. If I only have to do this once every decade, I can suffer that, no problem.” I told my friends that I actually felt lucky. If they put you up against a wall and said, “Son, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is we have to give you cancer. The good news is that YOU get to pick the kind.”

All told, I would pick this type. It was something I could live with, something I could handle. In a way, I felt lucky that I had this type of cancer and not another kind — say, a glioblastoma like my Aunt Karen had, or the leukemia that took my friend Michelle.

***
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh told a story about good luck and bad luck, retold from a Chinese parable dating to the 2nd century BCE. Found in a collection of essays called the Huainanzi, the parable is often referred to as "The Old Man Lost His Horse" — or "塞翁失馬" (Sāi Wēng Shī Mǎ).

In this parable, a farmer’s horse has run away. The people of the village consoled him: “Oh, such bad luck.” The following day, his horse returned… but trailing two other horses, which added to the farmer’s prosperity. “What good fortune!” his friends exclaimed.

The next day, the farmer’s son was riding one of the horses when he was thrown from the saddle and broke his leg. “How unfortunate,” the villagers said in sympathy.

Not long after, war broke out and young men from the village were being conscripted. All the men were drafted, excepting the farmer’s son with his broken leg. This broken leg, the villagers now claimed, was actually “good luck.”

***

Earlier this year while showering, I felt something new, something different on the side of my neck. It was barely palpable, but something was in there. Over the past 16 years, bathing has not been simply about good hygiene. With a history of “Lymph Nodes Gone Wild,” every shower includes a cursory exam for anything that feels different, feels like a lump, feels like anything that might signal another recurrence of lymphoma.

I watched this anomaly for not too long… a week, 10 days tops, before calling my lymphoma doc and asking to come in. “I’m feeling something I want you to take a look at,” I told him. As with previous visits of this type, he said, “Don’t tell me exactly where. I don’t want to be biased by your perceptions.” I said, “Good. Above the shoulders. Go…”

He did a close physical exam for several minutes. He stepped back. “I’m not feeling anything that’s giving me concern,” he said. “Okay,” I said, “give me your hand,” and placed his fingers in the vicinity of my concern.

He pressed more deeply. It wasn’t long before he began to nod slowly. “Yes, I see what you mean.” It was so small, so early, that it was nearly undetectable by a highly skilled and trusted oncologist who knew he was looking for SOMETHING.

This kicked things off. A consult with a head and neck surgeon. Biopsies. Scans. Scheduling surgery. This was not a recurrence of lymphoma, but something new: an oropharyngeal throat cancer requiring a da Vinci surgery to remove a tumor, along with a neck dissection to remove lymph nodes. Two nights in the ICU and six weeks recovery at home. (Short summary: all is well.)

I reflected how I was actually fortunate to have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma: an indolent, relatively benign variety of cancer, but which tuned my radar to be more aware of subtle changes. This heightened sense of awareness gave me a jump of weeks if not months on a more serious cancer, catching it before it spread further and thus helping me avoid post-surgery radiation or chemo.

It brought to mind that line from the closing pages of Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”: "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."

***

In closing his parable about the farmer and his horse, about good luck and bad luck, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote:

“It is not possible to judge any event as simply fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad, as this age-old story shows. You must travel throughout all of time and space to know the true impact of any event. Every success contains some difficulties, and every failure contributes to increased wisdom or future success. Fortunate and unfortunate, good and bad, these concepts exist only in our mind.”

Call Sign "Tamer" and Gates of Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 18:37:00 +0000

General Jim Amos was the 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps from 2010 to 2014. His tenure as leader of the USMC was distinctive on several measures.

The Marines typically select their commandants from the ranks of the infantry. Jim Amos, however, was the first (and to this date, the only) naval aviator selected to lead the Corps. His call sign “Tamer,” General Amos flew the muscular F-4 Phantom and later the F/A-18 Hornet.

He was one of only two commandants to have their careers punctuated by short stints in the civilian world: the 11th Commandant, Major General William Biddle, retired in 1914 but returned to service during World War I. General Amos got out in 1978 and flew commercially for Braniff Airways for a couple years before rejoining the Marines in 1981 (around the time I was a young lance corporal).

Another distinguishing feature of his service as Commandant had less to do with Jim Amos and more to do with his wife, Bonnie. She was known as a tenacious advocate for military spouses and children, working tirelessly to influence Marine Corps and DOD policies and programs that improved the well-being of military families. She was a legend herself: her pride in the Marine Corps came through in the enthusiastic tours she gave of the Commandant’s House at 8th & I in Washington, DC. She was known as "The First Lady of the Marine Corps," and her detailed tours of the residence even earned an informal brand: “The Bonnie Amos Tour.”

And General Jim Amos was a reader, as are most great leaders. We’ll come back to this.

The summer of 2019, some of our family had a chance to tour the Commandant’s House, courtesy of my brother John, a Marine lieutenant general who is getting ready to retire this year after 35 years of service. It was a brief walk-through, a half hour before the garden reception that preceded the weekly Evening Parade. It wasn’t a full-fledged Bonnie Amos-type tour, but a 30-minute historical overview, presented in the sitting room and music room by a young Marine docent by the name of Corporal Nathaniel Hunt-Kelly.

The corporal recounted some history of the Marine Barracks and the Commandant’s House, noting that while the Brits burned the White House, Treasury, and other buildings in Washington during the War of 1812, they did not burn the Commandant’s residence.

He checked off some likely historical explanations, one of which was that the Brits so respected the valor of the 200 Marines who defended the Barracks and the residence, they opted not to burn those buildings. I spoke up and said, “It’s a little reminiscent of Thermopylae, isn’t it?” (referring to a battle from Greek history where a small band of warriors held their ground against a numerically superior foe).

The young corporal cocked his head and said, “Since you mentioned it, follow me.” He walked us next door into the music room. Against the south-facing windows sat a piano with John Philip Sousa’s pen and inkwell on top, and a leaded-glass Tiffany lamp beside. On the walls hung portraits of past USMC commandants. As we circled around, Cpl. Hunt-Kelly gestured to the painting of General Amos and began talking.

Much of Jim Amos’s career had been atypical. No other commandant had come from the air wing. No other commandant had exited the Marine Corps to fly for an airline, only to rejoin and then rise to lead (what the biased among us would call) America’s finest fighting force. His official portrait would turn out to be atypical, as well.

The corporal pointed out some features in Tamer’s portrait that appeared in no other commandant’s. In the painting, General Amos stands in front of a bookshelf that displays only a few items. At his right hand (significantly) is an image of Bonnie. Corporal Hunt-Kelly said, “When the general said he wanted his wife included in his official portrait, he was told, ‘Sir, we don’t do that.’ The general responded, ‘We’re doing it on this one.’”

On the next shelf appeared the model image of the F/A-18 he flew, reflecting the distinction of being the only Marine aviator to have served as commandant. Above that, a folded flag in respect for all the Marines and others who’d given what Abraham Lincoln had called “the last full measure of devotion.”

The corporal then looped back to where we started. He told, in brief, the story of the battle in 480 BC between the Spartans and allied Greeks against the invading Persian army, fought at the narrow seaside passage known as “Thermopylae” (translated as “the hot gates,” for the sulphur springs that bubbled up from the ground there).

Cpl. Hunt-Kelly gestured to the books painted into the top shelf in the portrait. He said, “An author and Marine veteran by the name of Steven Pressfield wrote a novel, Gates of Fire, based on the battle at Thermopylae. General Amos held the book in such high regard that he had it painted into his official portrait.”

I looked across the room to Jill and our eyes met with raised brows. Steve had been a friend for several years by that point. I had mentioned to him that we were going to DC and would be getting a tour of the Commandant’s House. Steve had responded with his own story about being an overnight guest of Bonnie and General Amos at the residence, and how he enjoyed the accommodations in “The Chesty Puller Suite.”

At my first chance, I fired off an email to Steve: “Hey, man... I’m sure you know about this, but we just got out of this tour and yada-yada-yada your book, blah-blah-blah in General Amos’s portrait.”

Steve was surprised. And I was surprised that he was surprised. “I did NOT know about Gates of Fire being in his portrait,” he said. “But it makes an old lance corporal proud.”

Two writers who don't write about war

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 01:18:00 +0000

I have not mooched a cigarette from novelist Philip Caputo (A Rumor of War, Horn of Africa). I have not traded email with writer Karl Marlantes (Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War).

I have, however, spent a little time with Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato): I’ve cadged two or three of the Carltons he smokes incessantly and traded stories about spending time in casinos.

I’ve also corresponded with writer Steven Pressfield over the past several years, and could call him a friend I’ve never met in person.

Both Tim and Steve have inhabited the world of war as the stage on which they write, but neither of them would consent to be labeled “a war writer.”

Tim O’Brien has said, “Joseph Conrad wasn’t writing sea stories, and I’m not writing war stories. He was writing stories that were set aboard sea vessels, and those vessels served as a crucible. Similarly, I’m not writing about war. They aren't literally war stories. They’re stories about men at war. Ultimately what each of these stories is about is the human heart... under intense pressure.”

Some of Steve Pressfield’s most well-known stories are set amongst Alexander’s cavalry in 330 BC, or with the Spartans at the hot gates of Thermopylae in 480 BC. But his stories aren’t about “war” as much as they’re about the fraternity amongst warriors: by what code do they live, and how are their external battles a metaphor for the internal skirmishes we all fight – against fear, self-doubt, and the capital-R “Resistance” that stands between us and our true selves?

It feels coincidental that two writers whose work I greatly respect — and to whom I feel something of a personal connection — both have projects being released on the same day: 2 March 2021.

Steve’s newest novel, A Man at Arms, is set in the year 55 AD, two decades after the crucifixion of a Hebrew prophet whose followers continue to prove troublesome to the Roman Empire. The mercenary soldier Telamon of Arcadia (who has appeared in minor roles in several other Pressfield novels) now appears as a main character. Tasked with intercepting and capturing a religious dissident who carries a message that could bring down an empire, Telamon discovers something worth fighting for that’s more important than Roman coin.

***

Releasing the same day is a documentary produced by filmmaker Aaron Matthews, “The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien.”

Tim, a National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, hadn’t written a book in nearly 20 years, since before the birth of the first of his two sons at the late age of 59. The documentary follows Tim, wife Meredith, and young sons Timmy and Tad as Tim struggles to finish what might be his final book: Dad’s Maybe Book, which started as a collection of notes and letters from an aging father to the sons he expected would reach full adulthood only after Tim was gone.

Tim said he wanted to leave his boys something he wished his own father would have left him: some scraps of paper with advice or insights or stories about when the boys were little, or when, Tim said, “He himself was once a Timmy.” He wanted to leave scraps of paper signed, “Love, Dad.”

The documentary’s website summarizes the film:

"What makes wars worth fighting? How do we write about war? What are the obligations of citizens with respect to war? What are the after-effects of war on individuals and families? The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien follows O’Brien on the journey of his last book, as he reveals the everyday ties between duty, art, family, and the trauma of war."

I’ve read Steve’s book once (an advance copy), and liked it enough to immediately turn to page one and start reading a second time.

I’ve also got an affection for Tim, and plan to watch the documentary at my first opportunity. I may even go out and buy a pack of Carltons and smoke one in solidarity.

A Review of "A Man at Arms," by Steven Pressfield

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 16:53:00 +0000

Steven Pressfield’s newest novel, A Man at Arms, opens on a roadside in Judea in the year 55 AD, some two decades after the crucifixion of a Hebrew prophet whose followers continue to prove troublesome for the Roman Empire.

A caravan of merchants and other travelers pause at the foot of a grade, knowing from experience that the summit is a favorite spot for brigands, bandits, and thieves to lay in ambush. We’re introduced to the novel’s main characters. First, a local boy, David: “son of Eli, age fourteen, unlettered but of sturdy limb and abundant ambition.”

Among the pilgrims and peddlers milling about and fretting on how they might continue on the road to Damascus without being waylaid and robbed blind at the top of the hill, David takes note of a father with his young mute daughter in tow. David is “struck by the child’s apparition. Feral, dirty, with bare soles and hair so matted it seemed neither comb nor brush could be pulled through it, the girl seemed more a wild animal than a human being.”

David then spies “the most striking personage in the enclosure,” a solitary soldier with a tattoo on his forearm...

LEGIO X

...indicating his service in the Roman Tenth Legion. His countenance and equipage suggest he’s fought on the battlefields of many lands.

The boy observes that “the man’s weaponry was of legionary provenance, but adapted in a way David had never seen.” A Roman lance, but cut down and modified for close-in fighting. At his side, a short Roman ‘gladius’ sword. He carried a “bow of extraordinary length, constructed of the Amazon science,” nestled in a wolfskin case with arrows of the type used by Syrian and Parthian horse archers. He wields a leather throwing sling of the type employed by shepherds. His cap was wool, like those favored by seamen. The man-at-arms speaks Latin, Greek, and Aramaic. Thus we are introduced to the mercenary Telamon of Arcadia, and the two youths with whom his path will cross.

In an opening action scene that begs to be on the big screen, Telamon reluctantly provides aid to the column of travelers, dropping marauders and freebooters with the deadly efficiency of a skilled combat veteran – yet not out of compassion for their plight, but for the purse of coin with which he expects to be paid.

Post-skirmish, Telamon is taken into custody by a late-arriving Roman patrol, the mercenary running afoul of his former comrades when, seeing the feral girl-child about to be assaulted by a brute legionnaire, Telamon’s

“...face went black with fury. With a single violent stride, the warrior broke from the circle of spearpoints and flung himself upon the legionary.”

In the melee to save the child from violation, the girl and her father escape astride a stolen cavalry mount. Held responsible for their escape, Telamon is then pressed into service by the Romans. His directive, now with the boy David in tow as an apprentice, is to pursue and apprehend the child’s father, who Rome believes is carrying a message that could threaten the stability of the empire, before that message can be delivered to the seditious Christian underground based in Corinth, Greece.

These events set in motion an epic tale that matches or surpasses Pressfield’s earlier works of historical fiction like Gates of Fire, The Afghan Campaign, or Last of the Amazons. A Man at Arms is Pressfield’s 20th book and his 11th novel, and reflects his talent in creating a sense of place and realism. With sometimes sparse language, his prose can evoke a frisson of fear and apprehension. When seeing a workshop full of Roman crucifixes, sized to fit man, woman, or child, Telamon gestures to the wooden crosses and queries the Roman garrison commander:

“Does it work?”
“For what?” the garrison commander replies.
“To hold the populace by terror?”
The Roman considered this. “Not really. But it breaks the tedium.”

The story moves at the speed of a racing chariot -- short chapters around six or seven pages in length keep the reader embedded deeply in the first century. Nearly every chapter ends with a hook that elicited a margin note from me, like: “DANG!” or “The clock is ticking!” Or just “Wow.” I have more than one friend who’s read an advance copy and claims to be afflicted with sleep deprivation from being unable to stop turning pages, late into the night.

Telamon is rendered as a three-dimensional character, but equally as interesting is the nine-year-old mute girl, who plays a critical role in this story. We know there is something special about her and that she has a deep inner strength, which she shows straight away from the opening sequence. After the initial bloody skirmish where Telamon has dispatched the band of thieving marauders, all the itinerants and merchants have run for safety or taken cover – except for this young girl, who “alone stood forward, barefoot on the summit track, her gaze fixed upon the man-at-arms.”

Later when she is denied the chance to participate in a dangerous mission:

“The girl’s jaw worked hard. She had a fistful of stones and now hurled these one after another, hard, against the walls of the wadi. She did not throw like a girl.”

The relationship between Telamon and the child evolves. The novel’s plotline of “a man with a savvy young girl in his charge, embarking on a dangerous journey” may have readers hearkening back to this theme appearing previously between characters like Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross in True Grit, or between Moses Pray and Addie Loggins in Paper Moon.

Pressfield has written that he never consciously intended to create Telamon. The Arcadian arrived on the page unbidden as a mercenary and assassin in Pressfield’s 2000 novel, Tides of War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War, set in Greece around 430 BC.

Telamon appeared again 100 years later (the man yet unaged) as mentor to a young king and later a general in Pressfield's 2004 novel, The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great. It’s worth noting that at the end of that novel, Telamon took leave of Alexander’s service to follow a line of pilgrims into India to become, as we are meant to understand, a monk.

The mercenary even appears briefly in Pressfield’s 2011 near-future thriller set in 2030, The Profession, where a former Marine captain refers to “my old enlisted mentor, Master Sergeant Vaughn Telamon of Arcadia, Mississippi.”

Now in A Man at Arms, Telamon commands center stage – or at least shares it with a nine-year-old mute girl who, on some levels, is his equal. The mercenary Telamon has his arc in this story, much like the smuggler Han Solo in the Star Wars saga: out to get paid and concerned only for himself, until he finds something greater to care about. Telamon is even chastised for his selfishness by his former Legion commander, Marcus Severus Pertinax:

“What is that passage from your credo, Telamon? ‘Only fools fight for a flag or a cause’? Yes, that’s it.”

Yet in A Man at Arms, Telamon changes. He finds something greater to fight for.

In the run-up to the launch of A Man at Arms, Pressfield released a video series entitled “The Warrior Archetype." In these twice-weekly videos, Pressfield led readers on an exploration of how the “warrior ethos” applies not only to external wars and warriors, but to our own inner battles and struggles. The series led us to Telamon.

The Warrior Archetype also led to something more universal: to an investigation of how we, by necessity, evolve from archetype to archetype: son/daughter, wanderer, warrior. Then to lover, husband/wife, king/queen, sage, and finally, if we’re lucky, to mystic.

Steven Pressfield has mused whether Telamon the Arcadian is something of his own “alter ego.” As Telamon has evolved over the past two decades – from assassin to mentor to general to monk – and then to what he becomes in this novel, Pressfield’s books have reflected a deepening of insight over time, and a deep regard and respect for all religions as ways we try to understand our place in the cosmos.

His first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was based on a story from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita (the warrior Arjuna appearing as WWI veteran “Rannulph Junuh,” and the deity Bhagavan as “Bagger Vance”). His historical narrative The Lion’s Gate: Behind the Lines of the Six Day War and his biographical An American Jew: A Writer Confronts His Own Exile and Identity were tied to his exploration of his own Judaism. People familiar with the Christian Bible will recognize in A Man at Arms that the dangerous message (which is the MacGuffin in this novel) is none other than "Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians.”

This work of historical fiction is a strong and page-turning addition to Pressfield’s body of work. My favorite Pressfield novel is usually the one I just read. A Man at Arms does not break that streak.

The first five chapters are available for free download at AManAtArms.com.

The book is available for preorder on Amazon and launches 2 March 2021.

Finding perspective in awe

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 16:51:00 +0000

My browsing this morning brought me to an article in The Atlantic by science writer Marina Koren. In her story, "Galaxy Brain Is Real," she says:

Nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Credit NASA, ESA, STScI

"Imagine yourself at a scenic vista somewhere on Earth, such as the rim

of the Grand Canyon or the shore of an ocean stretching out past the horizon line. As your brain processes the view and its sheer vastness, feelings of awe kick in. Looking at a photo is not the same, but we might get a dose of that when we look at a particularly sparkly Hubble picture of a star cluster.

"The experience of awe . . . can lead to 'a diminished sense of self,' a phrase psychologists use to describe feelings of smallness or insignificance in the face of something larger than oneself. Alarming as that may sound, research has shown that the sensation can be a good thing: A shot of awe can boost feelings of connectedness with other people."

***

This "diminished sense of self," I thought... isn't that the goal of spiritual practice, entheogenic practice, or meditation practice? A diminishment of the self, a transcendence of ego, which then lets us sense a deeper and true connection to who and what are around us?

I thought how some of my favorite outdoor photos capture that feeling of awe, depicting our small selves in perspective, maybe on a mountain trail in northern Montana:

or on a frozen prairie in South Dakota:

Awe (noun): a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

I'll take it.

Grief: Insights and Tips for Teenagers

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 13:50:00 +0000

The mail came today. I got to open a box to see this book in print.

In addition to insights and quotes from writers and poets and philosophers like Pat Conroy and Terry Tempest Williams and Cormac McCarthy, Mary Oliver and Rita Dove and Robert Frost, Seneca and Khalil Gibran and Marcus Aurelius, this book also contains insights from six teenagers who were brave and generous enough to share their stories about what it was like to lose a parent or sibling or best friend.

Some were eager to share and some were reticent, but all of them were willing -- willing to share their experiences in the hope they might help other kids who find themselves on the same path. The publisher sent me a half dozen copies. I'm signing those and sending them to Grace and Dexter, to Bailey and JDB, to Kate and Logan.

Available 23 November 2020:

https://www.amazon.com/Grief-Insights-Tips-Teenagers-Empowering/dp/1538136929

Early Kentucky Art -- A review

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 20:40:00 +0000

Glad to have a book review in Kentucky Monthly Magazine (Vol 23, Issue 3, April 2020, pg 52):

Online at:
https://issuu.com/kentuckymonthlymagazine/docs/april_2020_kymonthly

Christmas on the Fifth Floor

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 19:15:00 +0000

In his heart and in his bones, Arch has always been an athlete. Baseball was his passion growing up.

Even though his parents named him "Timothy," all his friends call him "Arch" -- after his childhood sports hero, NFL quarterback Elisha Archibald "Archie" Manning.

While Arch is an athlete in his bones and in his spirit, his muscles have their own agenda. The dystrophy that most of his siblings also inherited started showing up in high school. On the baseball field, Arch began to notice it was becoming harder to swing a bat.

Over these years, muscular dystrophy eventually put Arch in a wheelchair, but one doesn't see a life diminished. He's been married to Becky for 17 years. He's a successful accountant and the president of a nonprofit that assists other families affected by MD. He has faith in his God. I've never seen Arch when he hasn't borne a grateful, optimistic, and beaming countenance.

Arch is spending this Christmas in a hospital bed -- but he's rebounding. James showed up on the fifth floor of IU Health North Hospital yesterday, as he did the day before that. Jim has plans to pause his own family Christmas to visit Arch on the fifth floor again today.

Before Arch and Becky were married, Jim had a routine: most mornings, he’d drive a 20-mile round trip to Arch's house. He'd help Arch dress and prep for his day crunching numbers as a CPA. I went with Jim once to carry his tools while he installed heavy-duty handrails in Arch's shower. Jim is a pilot. In '93, he loaded Arch and me into a Cessna and flew us south for a bird's-eye view of the Mississippi flooding around St. Louis.

Twenty-five years ago, I drove west on what was more a pilgrimage to the desert than it was a road

trip across America. I didn't know if I was a father or not... she'd stopped taking my calls eight months prior.

This was a trek to ask a question, and then to sit and listen for an answer. I'd go first to the Rockies. Though I hadn't initially planned to, I ended up in a mountain pass southwest of Ouray, visiting the meadow where Michelle's ashes are scattered amongst the larkspur and Indian paintbrush.

My plan was to continue west to the Pacific, and then loop south toward Mexico before jamming the helm hard to port, tacking east for the desert. I'd heard tell of sacred places among the red rocks of the Sonoran, where a pilgrim could ask a question -- and if he could get quiet enough, perhaps hear an answer. Do I get back into the arena and find out whether a child of mine exists on the earth? If so, what do I do then?

I told Jim I'd be gone for a couple weeks. He asked about itineraries. When I told him I'd be in San Francisco for a few days, he asked, "What days?" Then he hatched a plan. He gathered up Arch and his wheelchair, and shepherded him west for a rendezvous.

Jim rented a Mustang convertible and drove Arch around the Bay Area. We met up at Fisherman's Wharf, wandered the art galleries and ate shrimp, clams, and scallops. He drove Arch across the Marin Headlands and wheeled him among the old-growth redwoods at Muir Woods.

We smoked cigars on the hotel dock. At the end of a

day, Jim got Arch out of his wheelchair and into the hotel's steam room, which brought comfort to an aching body. Jim did all this.

Arch should be going home tomorrow. If a guy has to spend Christmas on the fifth floor, he could do worse than having a friend like this one.

Reunion

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 16:19:00 +0000

There’s a high-school reunion this weekend. It’s got

one of those milestone dates that make you say: “Who? Me? It can’t have been that long... Can it?”

They’ll give us a tour tonight of the school that was built the year most of us were born, and show us what’s changed there since we were 17 and 18. They’ll walk us out to an alumni tent where we’ll hope to find some hot dogs, and then into the stands for the last home football game of the season.

We’ll look out at the lights and the astroturf, and some of us will remember when this was a dirt practice field -- a sweat-soaked agoge that by summer’s end was hard-packed enough to bust a mule’s ankle. We’ll watch the young players and cheerleaders and students on the field and around us, and remember when we were young, on the field or in the stands under Friday night lights.

Tomorrow, we’ll go further into that place where we’ve got our feet in different decades. There’ll be...

People you’ve known since before high school, since you both were first-graders at St. Lawrence or St. Pius, each carrying a peanut butter sandwich in a Spiderman lunch box, some of those people now grandparents.

People you’ve known since before they went to the senior prom together, who later married and are here tonight, still as husband and wife.

People you’ve known since before they got PhDs in some kind of physics or started a business that lets 400 people make a living.

People you’ve known since before they made a horrible mistake and paid for it in what novelist Tom McGuane called “the crowbar hotel.”

People you’ve known since before they took a son to Tanzania and climbed Kilimanjaro together.

People who will be here tonight only in spirit because they’ve already left this place, their names to be spoken in a service led by your classmate who is now a priest, in the chapel of a school annex that was a convent for Benedictine nuns when it was built in 1960.

People you haven’t seen since you were 18, and people you had a beer with just last week.

People who have stories to tell.

King of the Koniackers

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 14:56:00 +0000

Putting some meat on the biography of an Indiana

gunsmith, I find Joseph Wood on the 1860 census for Clark County, Indiana. He's listed as "gunsmith" born around 1830 in Ohio.

"That's odd," I think. "Looks like he's living in one big house, with a bunch of other guys." I look at the top of the census page and see that it IS a big house: the Indiana State Penitentiary at Jeffersonville.

In the census column for "Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict," Joseph Wood was noted as being locked up for "Passing Counterfeit Money."

I dug a little deeper. "Gunsmith Joseph Wood" was one of the many aliases for counterfeiter John "Pete" McCartney (1829-1890), who also went by the names of Charles Lang, Mr. Ward, Mr. Carter, "Captain Judd," and "Professor Joseph Woods."

Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, wrote that Pete McCartney “at different times practiced medicine, extracted teeth, served as a peddler, as a drummer or commercial traveler, delivered public lectures [on “how to detect counterfeit bills," as “Professor Joseph Woods”], acted as an agent of the Secret Service and a Treasury expert, represented a gentleman of elegant leisure, an artist, a cattle or mule drover, a stableman, or, in fact, any character that might elude the watchfulness of detective authorities.”

Pete was something of an escape artist, and it seemed that whenever he fell into the hands of the authorities, they could never hold him for long. After being arrested for passing bogus bills at a Union Army camp during the Civil War, he was being transported to a federal prison in Washington. Shackled by hands and feet, he "seized a favorable moment" and threw himself off the back of the train (breaking two ribs).

He then made his way from there to Illinois, where he "became an operating dentist with a prominent gentleman at Springfield, and devoted himself to his congenial and accomplished wife" (Martha Ackerman, whom he married 1852 in Indianapolis, herself the "daughter of an old German counterfeiter, and who, when but a girl of eleven, being very bright and skillful, had been engaged in printing counterfeits in her father's house, under his paternal directions"). Pete was definitely among his people.

Detective Allan Pinkerton was enamored with McCartney. Pinkerton gave nearly three dozen pages of his *own* biography ("Thirty Years a Detective")

to the life of Pete McCartney, calling him "a prince among counterfeiters" and "King of the Koniackers" (an idiom for "coin hackers" or "counterfeiter). Even after 35 pages, Pinkerton wrote: “Limited space prevents me from minutely tracing the exciting and romantic career of this wonderful man,” and described McCartney as a “patient and artistic genius."

When McCartney was interviewed in December 1870 by a newspaper correspondent in Springfield, Illinois, the reporter noted: "It is not every day that our jail is graced with the presence of so distinguished a criminal."

When the reporter asked him how he escaped from a certain jail earlier in 1866, Pete replied, "I don't want to answer that question, but I will say this (with a peculiar smile)... I got out."

Boy fishing, two miles up

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 13:57:00 +0000

Lower Mohawk Lake is just at the tree line at elevation 11,861 in the White River National Forest. After our three-hour climb, I went to put my feet into water that was cold from snow melt.

I walked around some boulders and found a boy, maybe age 13, at the water's edge and organizing his fly rod.

"Are you getting started or finishing up?"

"Getting started."

"You casting from right here?"

"I was thinking about it."

Not wanting to get between a boy and his fish, I moved 30 yards down and found a slope that got me close to the water. I took off my boots and socks and waded in. It was alpine cold and it felt good.

I waded back to shore and sat on a rock to let my feet dry. I could see a pair of cutthroats lazing in the clear water below me.

The boy had waded into the water and was casting out toward the center of the lake. I called, "Hey buddy." He looked.

I held up two fingers. Two fish.

I pointed to the rocks in the water below me. Right here.

I held my hands about 10 inches apart. This big.

He nodded and waved and turned to cast his fly toward the rocks below me. I watched him work his line for a couple minutes and then left him to his business.

Morning Greetings

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 20:47:00 +0000

It can get boring to show up at work and greet your friend with the same old "Good morning, Aaron" or "Good morning, Joe" every day.

Somewhere along the way, somebody changed it up and threw in a "Howdy."

Which turned into "Howdy, pard."

Thus started the daily ritual of non-conventional morning greetings. Whomever spoke first, the other guy had to counter. The exchanges sounded like this:

08:00 AM greetings:

“’Morning, marshal…”

“Sheriff…”

Morning greeting:

"Your Holiness…"

"Your Grace…"

Morning greetings:

“Padre…”

“Rabbi…”

Morning greetings:

“Qui-gon…”

“Obi-wan…”

08:00 am greetings:

"G'morning, Inspector."

"'Morning, Detective."

Morning greetings:

"Viscount…"

"Viceroy…"

08:00 am greetings:

“Good morning, prefect.”

“Good day, centurion.”

Morning greeting:

“Shogun…”

“Sensei…”

Morning greeting:

“Dude…”

“Walter…”

Morning greeting:

“Walter…”

“You're out of your element, Donny…”

Morning greetings:

“My liege…”

“M’lord…”

08:00 AM greetings:

“Good morning, commodore.”

“Good morning, admiral.”

Morning greetings:

“Consigliere…”

“Godfather…”

Morning greetings:

“Howdy, you sorry hornschwagler.”

“’Morning, you horse-lipped honyocker.”

08:00 AM greetings:

“Mornin’, you ole cattle-rustler.”

“How-do, you shifty horse-swipe.”

08:00 greetings:

“Morning, you conniving scallywag…”

“How do, you scurrilous hayseed…”

Morning greetings:

“Field marshal…”

“Oberleutnant…”

Morning greetings:

“Good morning, you chicken-hearted chuckle head…”

“’Morning, you gasconading poltroon…”

Morning greetings:

“Ringo…

“Paul…”

Morning greetings:

“Howdy, you grumpy old slopjake.”

“G’mornin, you obstreperous outlaw.”

Morning greetings:

“Morning, ya yellow-bellied sapsucker.”

“Morning to ya, ya mollycoddling milksop.”

08:00 am greetings:

“Maester…”

“Samwell…”

08:00 am greetings:

“Morning to you, you slippery sidewinder.”

“Morning, you bunkhouse lout.”

Morning greetings:

“Deacon…”

“Pastor…”

Morning greetings:

“Sultan…”

“Caliph…”

08:00 a.m. greetings:

“Nice seersucker, Tom Wolfe.”

“Nice pickle-factory uniform, Charles Bukowski.”

Morning greetings:

“Sarge…”

“Gunny…”

Morning greetings:

“Morning, you gollumping ginger-snap…”

“G’mornin, you lackadaisical layabout…”

08:00 am greetings:

“Skipper…”

“Gilligan…”

Morning greetings:

“Godfather…”

“Luca Brasi…”

Morning greetings:

“Butch…”

“Sundance…”

08:00 a.m. greetings:

“Colonel Hogan…”

“Schultzie…”

Morning greetings:

“Don Julio…”

“Don Corleone…”

Morning greetings:

“Ginger…”

“Mary Ann…”

Morning greetings:

“Raylan…”

“Boyd…”

08:00 a.m. greetings:

“Crockett…”

“Tubbs…”

Morning greetings:

“Your Excellency…”

“Your Eminence…”

Morning greetings:

“Siegfried…”

“Roy…”

Morning greetings:

“Monsignor…”

“Cardinal…”

08:00 a.m. greetings:

“Sheriff Taylor…”

“Barney…”

Morning greetings:

“Tonto…”

“Kemosabe…”

Morning greetings:

“Riggs…”

“Murtaugh…”

Morning greetings:

“Theseus…”

“Plutarch…”

08:00 a.m. greetings:

“Bing…”

“Frank…”

Morning greetings:

“El capitán…”

“El jefe…”

Morning greetings:

“Gandalf…”

“Bilbo…”

08:00 a.m. greetings:

“Captain Lewis…”

“Captain Clark…”

Morning greetings:

“Cheech…”

“Chong…”

Morning greetings:

“Starsky…”

“Hutch…”

Morning greetings:

“Thelma…”

“Louise…”

-->

--> -->

Three Heat-Moons

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 13:18:00 +0000

Like three William Least Heat-Moons, Jill and Lauren and I were sticking to Colorado's blue highways.

We drove southwest on US 258 just north of Bailey, heading toward a rendezvous with Michelle's ashes in the San Juan Range. Now, though, it was time for some lunch.

“Scoob,” I said, “Punch up Yelp and find us some grub."

After a minute, she said, "Crow Hill Cafe. About 10 miles ahead."

We found the turn-off that took us past High Country Trucking, the Platte Canyon Fire Station, and into a row of storefronts leaned against a hillside. Our

options appeared to be a pizza joint, a liquor store, the Bailey Depot Feed and Supply Company, and an abandoned gas station. Nothing that looked like a cafe.

"Keebs, are you sure?"

She looked at her app. "4.5 out of 5.0 stars," she said, looking out the window. “It’s supposed to be right around here.”

Jill looked up from her app and offered a key piece of intel: "One of these reviews says, 'It's an old gas station. Don't be afraid.'"

Our three heads turned toward the "abandoned" gas station: muddy and battered trucks parked at dry pumps, with two satellite dishes on the roof, held in place with cinderblocks.

Lauren's eyes are younger than ours and she looked for signs. “There's a chalkboard by the front door,” she said. “It says ‘Crow Hill Cafe’ but in real small letters. Most of the sign has big letters that say: ‘Restrooms are for PAYING customers ONLY!’”

“Sounds welcoming,” Jill said.

We weighed our options. Pizza? We had that for breakfast. We could split a six-pack of tall boys and some beef jerky from the liquor store, but Keebs was only 19. We could strap on a couple barley feedbags from the Bailey Supply Depot.

I shrugged and pulled in next to a dry gas pump. We were driving a Chicken Hawk Rent-a-Car, so how much worse could things get?

As we walked toward the front door, a couple exited. Somewhere between middle-aged and elderly, the fellow was wearing Wranglers, a short-sleeve shirt, and a necktie. His keys hung from a carabiner on his belt loop. She was in an ankle-length cotton dress and cowboy boots, her graying hair tied back in a ponytail. The old gent held the door for his missus while giving his tummy a satisfied after-lunch pat.

Locals eat here, I thought. A promising sign.

As the door swung shut, another sign caught our eye: “Our family will be on vacation next week. Plan ahead so you don't starve."

"They're funny,” I said. Jill was still unconvinced.

We entered and found the inside was nothing like the outside (except for the bathroom warnings, which we’ll get to in a minute). The place was tidy. Clean floors, pressed tin sheathing around the counters, full bookshelves, and walls covered with the work of local artists – paintings and photographs – most of them for sale.

The place was nearly full, but we found a four-top.

As we surveyed the menu, a party of six men ambled in and took seats in the rear. They wore boots and jeans, some in denim jackets and some in leather.

Some carried Glocks in Kydex holsters, some had 1911s in Milt Sparks leather, and one wore a shoulder rig. You could find a badge on each of them, either on a belt or hanging from a neck lanyard. They looked like modern-day versions of every western movie lawman you’ve ever seen.

Tommy Lee Jones was in the shoulder rig. He shed his leather jacket to uncover a full sleeve of tats on one arm and a dagger with a snake coiling around it on the other.

Val Kilmer sat next to him. Not the teeth-snapping Iceman from Top Gun, but a less tubercular version of Tombstone's Doc Holliday, his eyes narrow and suspicious and scanning the room.

At the end of the table, we found the curly hair and mustache of a James Butler Hickok (known to history as “Wild Bill”), a badge hanging from his neck on a leather strap.

One deputy, seen only from behind, resembled a bear that had shape-shifted into a man and might have been a scruffy Rooster Cogburn.

Across the dining hall from the lawmen, two young fellers ate their lunches in peace, seated at a table by the window. One kid wore a tee-shirt that advertised “100% Weed Fed.” This being Colorado, everybody was buddies.

Viggo Mortensen (in his role as Captain Fantastic) entered next with his family. He was not yet middle-aged but was still lightly grizzled, with the look of a man who lived off the grid. The braids in his beard were tipped with turquoise and wooden beads. His wife, younger than he, looked fresh-faced and capable. A kid who might have been age nine wore Crocs and a doo-rag. The kid could have been a boy or a girl, but one who knew how to throw a knife if called upon.

We turned back to the menus. Sandwiches came with one side: slaw, fries, or a "Bag of Chips — Chips that a machine made somewhere and put in a bag just for you.”

We ordered. Pancakes for Scoob. A BLT for Jill. I had eggs with sausage on the side, baptized with a ladle of sausage gravy. You know what? It was good. But this isn’t about the food.

We finished, paid up, and got ready to hit the road. As far as using the restrooms, we were now PAYING customers. I locked the door behind me and saw a Crow Hill Cafe logo on a sign, advising:

“This restroom is cleaned on the 1st of the month whether it needs it or not. If it's the 1st of the month and this place needs attention, alert the dishwasher or the old man next door."

Fortune was smiling on us: it was 2 August and the restroom, cleaned recently and on-schedule, smelled of mountain pine.

On the way out, I found a final warning taped to the restroom door:

“If you're using this bathroom without making a purchase, you are in effect stealing from us, which makes you a thief. Don't be that guy. Buy a cookie."

We walked out, past the law, with our heads held high. No miscreants here. Paying customers. Have a nice day, deputies.

We got in the car and pulled away from the defunct gas pump. I was glad we stayed off the interstate. You don’t get this at an Applebee’s or a Subway.

In Blue Highways, Heat-Moon wrote of being on these two-lanes:

“I had nothing to lose but the chains, and I hoped to find down the county roads Ma in her beanery and Pap over his barbecue pit, both still serving slow food from the same place they did thirty years ago. Where-you-from-buddy restaurants.”

This was Heat-Moon’s kind of place, I thought.

Boundary Threshold

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 16:38:00 +0000

In The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell gives us a map. On this map, there is a boundary – a threshold. It’s pretty soon after the “denial of the call to adventure.” In stepping across the threshold, the

hero moves from the “ordinary world” into an extra-ordinary world.

Think of Skywalker: “I can’t go to Alderaan! I have moisture-farming to do here on Tatooine.” Then he meets Obi-Wan. Then they cross the threshold and off they go on a journey.

I was thinking about “thresholds” as we set out last month into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Jill and I would be five days in the BWCAW, along with the Cooks and the Conrads and the Johnsons. We had our senses open for those lines of demarcation that were sure to appear between the ordinary and extraordinary worlds.

The boundary threshold might be as straightforward as a signpost that tells you:

“On the other side of this line is Wilderness.” Or it might be as subtle as the sudden awareness that you’re as far away from a paved road as you’ve ever been in your life.

One of our first stops on the way to Sawbill Lake was the Trestle Inn, a saloon at the junction of an unpaved county road and an unpaved Forest Service road. We were in a loose caravan, driving north on Minnesota State Highway 61. As we peeled off onto County Highway 1, we went in an instant from (a) traffic, to (b) no cars at all. It was a shift we could feel. We’d crossed a boundary.

Another crossing came the following day. The outfitters dropped us at our put-in. We loaded our canoes, lashing our gear to the thwarts, and shoved off. After paddling Baker Lake, Peterson Lake, and Kelly Lake, with easy portages in between, we came to an obstruction.

At a narrows entering Jack Lake, a beaver had stacked a low dam. We were only two hours into a five-day paddle, and Jill was still getting her feet wet (literally). I dragged my paddle to slow us.

“We’re gonna have to get out,” I said.

“Say WHAT?!” Jill replied, her tone going up an octave on the second word.

“Yeah. Beaver dam. We can’t paddle around it or over it or through it. We both need to get out and pull the canoe across. Don’t worry,” I pointed in the water, “they made a little ramp for us.”

“Well. Okay then.”

Condensing this part: We got out. It was knee-deep. We pulled the canoe over a beaver dam. We climbed back in without dumping it. We resumed paddling.

Jill looked over her shoulder at me and I thought I could see a tear in her eye. At first I thought it was because she was scared. But then she spoke and I could hear a tremolo of pride:

“I have never done anything like that before in my LIFE.”

We were in the extraordinary world now.

Solitude

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:50:00 +0000

For some of us, it wasn’t our first time in a wilderness area. For others, it was all firsts. The plan

this time was for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness – a million acres of forest, rivers, and lakes left behind after the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet 17,000 years ago.

Last year, it was fathers and sons in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. This summer was husbands and wives in northeast Minnesota.

The BWCA and The Bob each cover a million acres, and they’re two of 765 designated wilderness areas in the United States, totaling almost 110 million acres. When the Wilderness Act of 1964 set it all up, it defined these areas as:

“...lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, that retains its primeval character, that provides opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of experience.”

Land primeval? Life untrammeled? Solitude? Unconfined? Where do I sign?

We each have our own reasons for wanting to see wild places. The fishing, maybe. Or the traversing of a rough landscape and knowing that you’re not just stepping out of a tour bus at a scenic overlook. These things you're seeing, you have to work for them.

Some of us, it’s the camp experience we look forward to. And why not? We’ve been human and on the plains and around fires for 200,000 years. Cities only showed up about 9,000 years ago. Chicago wasn’t even incorporated until 1837. Evolutionarily, we’re creatures of the woods and the waters, not of concrete. Why wouldn't we feel at home here?

Me, I look forward to the quiet. I want to say “the silence,” but I’ve never heard silence.

As I sit here at my desk in Indiana, I hear the sump pump kick on. Through my open window, a boisterous toddler yodels three doors down. Hammering from construction on the other side of the neighborhood. A truck, jake-braking on the interstate a mile distant.

There was none of that last week, our second morning in the BWCA, when I crawled out of our tent at 04:45. “Where are you going?” Jill asked, sleepy.

“Watch the light come up.”

At the edge of South Temperance Lake, I sat on bedrock scraped bare by a glacier 20 millennia ago. Night gave way and jack pines and birch materialized out of the mist. It was like piecing together a dream: images emerging slowly, in fragments that come together to form something whole.

I was here, too, for what solitude and silence I could find. In The Singing Wilderness, Sig Olson wrote:

“Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes.”

I listen with my inward ears, but I’ve never found complete silence.

Always, just in front of what must be the true silence, there are subtle sounds. My breath. I can hear my blood moving, a rhythmic whoosh. Then a background hum that must be the chorus of cells singing as they conduct their tiny bits of current. This was as quiet as it would get, so I listened and watched the light come up.

There’s a peace in solitude, and I sat at the water’s edge before dawn. I thought about where I was this time last year: on the road to Montana to meet the boys in the Bob Marshall. I was taking a break from driving, outside a coffee shop near Boulder with my head down in my notebook. I was aware of the light feeling that goes with having no responsibilities, other than to be in northwest Montana two days from now.

I started scribbling notes. Updating my time and distance calculations. Culling my gear list to get my pack as light as I could. How we’d be walking on the

spine of the continent. The gift of having land where you can walk and nobody can say you can’t be there. Thoughts about scales of time – our 90 years, a tree’s 500 years, a mountain’s 500 million.

The words were coming, and I was writing something about “solitude”: how we can hear things that we can’t hear when the air is full of busyness and distraction. I looked up as a four-year-old girl exited the coffee shop ahead of her father. She marched in a dress covered with pink Minnie and Mickey Mouses. In her hand, a single straw, which she held aloft like a ceremonial scepter.

Her pace slowed and she looked over at me. She stabbed her scepter in my direction. “Who is THAT MAN?“ she demanded.

I looked past the girl to her father, who was balancing a tray of Starbucks frappucinos.

“Who is what man?“ he responded. He looked at me and gave me the once-over. He looked back to his daughter and I heard him say, “Just a man. Doing his work.”

The answer seemed to satisfy her. I looked down at my notebook with its pages filling up and the top of the next page titled, “Solitude.“

Yes, I thought. I was doing my work. I am doing my work.

The girl climbed into the family minivan while her father distributed the vanilla fraps. Solitude is good, I thought. But little interruptions can be okay, too.

Lime and Rum

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 14:56:00 +0000

His guayabera hung cool and loose as he spun her to “Santiago de Cuba” on the jukebox. The cinderblock walls were painted aqua and cornflower yellow. The roof was thatched. They were sweeping each other off their feet, likely to finish the night at her place, or his.

A breeze came off the bay, making the oil lamps flutter. She tasted of rum, and he of limes. His hand cupped the small of her back as he dipped her to Benny Moré's piano guajeo and she laughed.

His hands were large and not soft. They first appeared soiled, but his fingers were stained not by earth, but with ink. As he turned her across the dance floor, the lamplight reflected what seemed to be fine filaments of silver braided through the ink stains.

At the anvil, these would be the hands of the blacksmith. Holding a chisel or a brush, the hands of an artist. At the small of her back, the hand of a lover.

By the time the moon rose, the salsa had quieted and there was only the sound of the surf.

Nets of Ink and Paper and Stone

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 03:13:00 +0000

I drove a hundred miles south and they drove a hundred miles north. Dave and Marvin and I covered a lot of ground, before and during a three-hour lunch

One topic was remembering those who came before us. Great-grandparents, or second or third greats. Their names and dates get cut deep into stone, but the elements are implacable. Mountains don’t survive, so what hope has a headstone?

It’s harder yet when the stone comes unmoored from ground, and ends up stacked on a pallet. Marvin talked about walking through Greenlawn, the oldest cemetery in Vincennes -- the oldest town in Indiana -- looking for the grave of the old soldier, John Small. In the oldest section of that cemetery, he saw dozens of stones stacked under a tree, maybe by one groundskeeper a hundred years ago, then another one fifty years ago, who didn’t know where a fallen headstone belonged, and couldn’t be bothered to keep mowing around it.

Dave saw me scribbling down a thought. “You take a lot of

notes,” he said. “What do you do with them all?”

I heard a writer say once that he felt like he was “throwing a net of ink and paper over an idea before it could get away.” It was odd to be thinking about this when I saw Ray post about the birthday of English poet Vita Sackville-West, who wrote: “It is necessary to write... to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment.”

It was doubly odd to do a quick search on her, and find that she, Sackville, was descended from the namesake of “Fort Sackville,” the Vincennes outpost wrested from the British by George Rogers Clark in 1779. Things were humming to the same chord.

But Dave was asking about the notes. “I dunno," I said. "Some of them get transcribed into a Word doc to maybe use for something later. Sometimes I pull them out and flip through them, like panning for gold in silty river water. Sometimes I find a nugget that plugs into something I’m working on right then.”

“But some of them sit in stacks that may or may never get looked at again. The ink will probably fade before I ever have a chance to look.”

Then I thought about the gravestones stacked on a pallet, the rain and wind slowly melting them. I blinked and thought how the stones and the notepads were the same thing.

Hawk: Skirmish on the Ouabache

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 00:11:00 +0000

A piece of short historical fiction, published in "The Tomahawk & Long Rifle" (Vol 44, No 1),

the official publication of the American Mountain Men.

***

My father was captain of the militia and men was saddling up. In the dark I could hear horses snorting and the jangle of bridles. Mother lit a oil lamp as my father pulled on his boots and had words with his corporal.

The Piankeshaw had attacked again, this time at Hardin’s cabin. The corporal lowered his voice so my mother might not hear the worst of it.

“They peeled his top knot, cap’n. Set the roof afire and took the missus captive.”

My father was not discomposed. He asked how many they were. Number of muskets. Their direction of travel. Whilst the corporal told what he knew, my father gathered up his kit. His long rifle, his powder horn and shot pouch, and his tomahawk.

“Do not expect us back any time soon, mother.” He said it quiet, like he was just going hunting.

“Dan’l,” he said my name. “I hear you awake there, boy. You mind things til I get back.”

I propped up on my elbow. My bed ropes creaked and I nodded from the shadows. “Yessir, pap.”

My father and his company rode off. Mother blew out the lamp. I waited some bit afore telling her I was off to the privy. In the dark, she did not see me take my rifle.

My father’s packhorse was a roan we called Crab. I put a bridle on her and put my heels to her and went bareback after my father’s men.

I found their mounts hobbled to one side of a ridge running along the river Ouabache. The sky was coming up gray with the day’s light. I crawled my way up the ridge, flanking my father’s men like they was flanking the Piankeshaw.

As I crested the hilltop and peered around a pin oak, the company's guns opened up. My father had parceled his company out to three squadrons. One was driving up the middle toward Miz Hardin, lashed by her neck to a sycamore as I could see. The second squadron swept the braves north and into the waiting third. It was a hammer on a anvil.

My father was not one to raise his voice at our mother. He was a deacon. The Presbyterians met for worship in our barn. He whipped me only when I had it coming.

Here though, he ran ahead of his men like a bull leading a herd of buffalo rumbling down the trace. What didn’t git from their path, they trampled and left bloody. When my father’s guns was emptied, he went to his tomahawk. He swung it like a scythe. A farmer of men, he felled them one and another.

I kept my head low whilst here and there a ball would whine past or hit close and take a divot out of my pin oak. The sounds from the riverbank was frightful. Bellows and wails. The thump-bang of rifles and muskets discharging. The iron clang of blades on barrels. Other sounds I had heard before only when my father was in the barn butchering a hog. Howls and cries in two languages. I thought I might lose hold of my bowels.

I ventured to peer from behind my cover. My father was now to the sycamore and he was chopping through the leather straps that bound Miz Hardin. My father did not see the Piankeshaw stalking up behind him. But I did.

My father’s law was that our rifles stay charged. I generally followed his law. Other than being here along this river, I should say. My rifle was thus charged with fresh powder and ball and I thanked Providence for this.

His back was to the Piankeshaw creeping upon him from tree to tree. The brave's face was painted red with black streaks slashing cross his cheeks. He carried a ball-headed war club in one hand and a blade in the other. My father’s men was engaged in their own fights and I dared not call out lest I show myself.

I worked by feel and did not take my eyes from my father. One tree now was between them. I set the butt in my shoulder and thumbed my rifle to full cock. I made my guess on wind and distance. I sighted in and squeezed and dropped that brave with a ball between the shoulders.

Even from my perch, I could hear the man grunt as he dropped to his knees. My father heard it as well. He turned and seen the Piankeshaw still slashing at him with his blade. My father swung his hawk in a great arc and split the brave’s brainpan like a melon.

The skirmish ended and I stayed hid. Of the Piankeshaw lying afield, I heard splashes as my father’s men pitched their bodies into the Ouabache. The company gathered themselves and collected up Miz Hardin and rode out.

I knowed I was in for trouble when I got back. But I had not been on the field of a fight before, and I would see this’un up close. I rose from behind my pin oak and lightfooted my way down from the ridge. On the ground, I seen a deerskin breechclout. Leaves and earth soaked dark in men's blood. A blanket. The leather straps that held Miz Hardin was cast at the base of the sycamore.

I stepped on something hard, kicked over by leaves. I reached and came up with my father’s tomahawk, the handle slick with blood and dropped in the fracas, I reckoned. On the

iron head, the image of a long knife was laid in with silver. Colonel John Small made this hawk for my father, like the ones he made for Colonel Knox and Mister Lewis.

I wiped the blood from the handle. My rifle ball had dropped that Piankeshaw and my father’s blow had finished him.

I slid the hawk into my belt. I was fourteen and in for a whipping.

The Moccasins Felt Familiar

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 02:58:00 +0000

"The Moccasins Felt Familiar: An Outsider Recounts His First AMM Camp Amongst a Brotherhood of Men"

Published in "The Tomahawk & Long Rifle" (Vol 44, No 1), the official publication of the American Mountain Men.

****

If Larry Mayes had his way, I’d have run into the AMM camp naked, hollering about a band of angry Shawnee in hot pursuit.

“It’ll help you get your mind into the period,” Larry said as we stood at the rear of his truck. “Here’s the scene. You’ve been held captive. You escape. You run through the woods until you find us.” He gestured up the dirt road toward a ridgeline. “You run into camp bare-assed and that’s where I hand over your clothes.” He seemed satisfied with his scenario.

I pointed into the bed of his pickup. “You mean the clothes in that box? The one that says, ‘Clothes for Joe’? I appreciate your sense of drama, Larry. But I see my pants right there.”

Larry shrugged and slid the box toward me. “Have it your way.” I shed my merino quarter zip, hiking trousers, and Salomon boots and threw them in my back seat.

I dressed in what Larry had for me: breeches and wool leggings, a walnut-dyed longhunter shirt and fringed wool coat, and a wide-brimmed felt hat. I pulled on a pair of his deerskin moccasins. They fit like they were made for me. They felt strangely familiar.

I followed Larry up the hill. We walked into the camp I’d come to know as the Keeling Trading Post, and left the 21st century behind.

***

How I got here

I’d become friends with a member of the American Mountain Men. He told me about a 1787 frontier cabin he and his brothers had saved from demolition and were restoring. I offered to lend a hand. Move some scaffolding, carry some sandstone, mix a little cement. It wasn’t much. After a second day of labor, David Wright said, “You’ve got sweat in this thing now. You ought to come to the dedication.” He paused and said, “It’s period dress. We’ll be interpreting the cabin as 1820s or thereabouts.”

“I’m Sons of the American Revolution,” I told David, “but I’ve never dressed. I don’t have anything 1820s to wear.”

David looked me over, sized me up. He turned to Larry. “He’s about your shape. You can outfit him, can’t you?”

“I’ve got everything he needs,” Larry said.

***

Changing time zones

Now dressed in Larry’s kit, we crested the hilltop and entered the clearing. It was late March 2018, with winter only a few days past. The air was chill and rain threatened. Wood smoke drifted from cook fires in front of canvas tents, oilcloth tarps, and lean-tos.

We made our way to a stand of cedar where David and Larry had set up. As shelter, they’d stretched two tarps drum-tight, with what I could tell was skill in bushcraft. An iron cook pot hung from a tripod over a stone fire ring. David pointed to a bearskin and a couple wool blankets — my spot to bed down later. They left me to my devices and hustled off on their business: they had an auction and a cabin dedication to prepare for.

I took up a walk from camp to camp, looking for familiar faces from my cement-mixing days, maybe Ron or Todd or Jim. I had a feeling of invisibility. I was clad as these men were dressed, which let me move unremarked, to lurk at the edges of conversations. I had no compulsion to wade in with an introduction, no need to be known. I was there to watch and listen. If I was noticed as an unfamiliar face, I found that a “howdy,” my name, and “I’m in David and Larry’s camp” seemed to be all the bona fides I needed.

As I wandered from fire to fire, men continued to arrive, coming over the hill with bedrolls and haversacks slung across shoulders, flintlock rifles in hand. My logic told me they’d just walked up that same hill from trucks in the parking area below. But my minded featured them arriving after a day’s travel afoot or on horse, journeying from Virginia in the east to the Rockies in the west.

I knew that by some measures, this was still the year 2018. But as I surveyed these men, I was unable to envisage any one of them in a checkout line at Menard’s or picking up groceries at Kroger. Their faces had the seasoning that comes with being more out of doors than in.

Theirs were hands accustomed to holding tools. In their

beaver skin vests and deerskin leggings, which I suspected they’d crafted themselves, 1820 seemed like the year to which these men belonged, not 2018. I heard Dwight say later, “When you come over that hill, you change time zones. By two hundred years.”

That sense of time shift grew stronger as I wandered from knot to cluster of men. I began to notice the absence of things. I saw no wristwatch. If a fellow was wearing eyeglasses, they were oval-rimmed spectacles, nothing you would find at LensCrafters. I saw not a scrap of plastic. Absent was any discussion of politics. Nobody spoke of football scores. No talk of work schedules or that new bass boat.

Instead, they held colloquy on the rifle Frank House had built for one man, or the knife Todd Daggett crafted for another. They conferred about the upcoming auction. One man had his eye on the frontier painting Kyle had donated. Another planned to bid on that clear glass jar, which may or may not be filled with apple pie. They held forth on how finely the cabin restoration had turned out, and their contentment to be among each other here for its dedication.

As I circulated, I joined in a few conversations, but mostly listened and jotted notes as I went. I was grateful that the notebook I’d brought was plain and unadorned leather, which

seemed period appropriate. I was, however, increasingly self-conscious of my writing implement: a Pilot Precise G5 ballpoint pen.

As a piece of plastic and aluminum modernity, it was an anachronism that seemed like a transgression. I found myself covering my hand as I wrote, at times even retreating to a distant stand of trees to scribble a thought. I did my best to keep my pen hidden as an act of respect to these men, and to avoid anything that might cause a ripple in time and bounce someone back into the 21st century against his will.

The rain that threatened in the morning came at midday, and turned the camp into a bog. As night fell and I made ready to bed down, I shed layers and slipped off the deerskin moccasins I’d been wearing all day. The outsides were wet and muddy. I took note of the insides, and of my stockings: all dry as a wadi. I looked at those moccasins with newfound admiration. I rolled myself up like a wool burrito and drifted off to sleep.

***

Dedication to brotherhood

The original Rocky Mountain rendezvous at Henry’s Fork or Pierre’s Hole or Green River had their purpose: trade and resupply and camaraderie. These AMM brothers had gathered here in western Kentucky with some of the same intent: camaraderie, yes, but also to dedicate this land and this frontier-era cabin.

In daylight, they gathered outside the cabin in a persistent drizzle, which felt like God baptizing this place ahead of their christening of it. David asked for a moment of silence in remembrance of departed brothers. Despite the rain, there was not a man who did not remove his hat.

In the days I’d spent among them, one observation stood out. I’d wandered the meadow when I first arrived, looking at the license tags on their trucks. They'd come from as far west as Utah, from Michigan in the north, Texas in the south, and from a dozen states in between.

As they met again in rendezvous, having been separated by distance and time, it was the quality of their greetings that I noticed. These were not the hey-man, one-shoulder, fist-bump greetings one sees today. Instead, they met in full embrace. They bear-hugged and pounded each other’s

backs in the pleasure of being reunited. I was seeing men who didn’t just call each other "brother," but who were brothers.

This confluence of brotherhood and time displacement had been intensified the previous night, inside this frontier cabin they had saved from demolition, around which they now gathered in the rain.

That night before, the cabin interior was illumined only by oil lamps and firelight from the hearth – the name of HW Keeling, dated April 1787, engraved on the lintel above it. For those few hours, the year 2018 had disappeared entire.

With Henry’s bearskin on the wall above the lintel, a rowdy and rambunctious and happy noise filled the cabin. They

were no longer machinists or truck drivers or artists or retired cops.

In the firelight, within the timber walls of this trading post in the middle of their 37 acres, they were brothers and fur trappers. They were making their way west to the Rockies or returning, and this was indeed the year of our Lord, 1820.

They'd hunted and trapped together, drank together, fought together and sometimes with each other, as brothers will do. But they were here now, together, and nowhere else.

They gathered outside the cabin now in daylight, in that baptizing rain. They said some words of remembrance and gratitude and blessing. The cabin, its life they'd preserved from the bulldozer’s blade, they gave it a name.

“We got lots of suggestions,” David said. “But the name that made the most sense is the man’s whose name is right there on that lintel stone. HW Keeling, April 1787. ‘Keeling Trading Post.’ How’s that sound to you?” The verdict was

met with murmurs of approval, some responding softly: “Keeling Trading Post,” as one might respond in church with an “amen.”

“We might believe that HW Keeling is here with us in spirit,” David said, “this weekend and for all time. We’re looking at his name and he’s looking back out at us.” Then the two AMM Segundos christened the cabin with water from the spring-fed creek that flowed through what they call "Our Kentucky Land."

***

Leaving 1820 behind

It came time to leave and I was surprised at the regret I felt. I walked down the hill to Larry’s truck. I shed my longhunter shirt, my breeches and wool leggings. I folded and stacked them. I set the moccasins to one side and the felt hat on top. I dressed in my 21st-century clothing, which now felt strangely foreign.

As I drove out Bull Joint Road, I felt the 1820s sliding away. Time was disappearing in the rear view, just as it always does. But now it was slipping away at the speed of a light truck on a gravel road.

I acquired a cell signal and my phone lit up. It beeped. It buzzed. Little red dots appeared and demanded attention. You’ve got mail.

I powered my phone off and tossed it to the seat beside me. I turned off the radio and rolled down the windows. I lit a cigar. I wondered how I might get my hands on a pair of those deerskin moccasins.

Inhaling and Exhaling

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 13:50:00 +0000

My eyes are always seeking the raffle of turkeys along a tree line, the doe and her fawns gleaning corn in a harvested field, or skeins of geese moving from nesting to feeding, or back. My eyes will find the solitary red-tailed hawk hunting from its perch on a tree branch or a power line or a fence pole. I’m rarely at the right place at the right time to see the hawk’s patience pay off.

Today I had lunch with an outdoor writer whose work I’ve been admiring for a while now. We talked about the grace of being on a mountain or in a field or on the water, where the taking of game isn’t as important as who you’re with. Not as

important as being on a landscape of a scale that reminds you of your proper relationship to it. You are not its master nor a tenant nor are you a passerby. If you give yourself enough time there, away from the small screens and the petty bickerings, you can begin to remember that you are of the earth, that we all are. Thanks for lunch, John Martino.

I went to visit the graves of our grandfather and grandmother. It’s odd to see your own name on a stone, with the understanding of soon enough. Sensing that the time we have here is only the length of a breath.

1907: inhale.
1980: exhale.

I took a step toward a story I’ve been avoiding. And I had a Valentine’s dinner with my wife.

Of today’s hawks, I saw two whose patience had paid off. One, diving to earth, banking and flaring at the last moment to drive talons-first into the tall grass. A second, minutes later, crossing my path and gliding to a treetop with its prey dangling beneath it. Each had grabbed the sustenance that would carry it to the next day.

As had I.

Fathers and Sons and Brothers in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 21:20:00 +0000

Here is a three-minute highlight of a six-day, 50-mile trek into NW Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness.

We're submitting this as one of two entries to the 2nd Annual Public Land Owners Film Fest, sponsored by Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

Haleakalā National Park in Three Acts

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 21:23:00 +0000

"Haleakalā National Park in Three Acts" is a three-minute exploration of three different landscapes in one national park. This is an entry to the 2nd Annual Public Land Owners Film Fest, sponsored by Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

The music accompanying this video is "Grandchild," by Hawaiian artist Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole. The music feels both ancient and personal.

In Hawaiian folklore, the volcanic crater of Haleakalā was home to the grandmother of the demigod Maui. The grandmother helped Maui capture the sun and slow its transit across the sky, thus lengthening and creating the day. Mythologist Joseph Campbell would point to this as an example of the "story of fire theft," which occurs across cultures and time, "Prometheus" being another version.

"Grandchild" seems like the right music to accompany images of land that is "home to the grandmother."

The music also feels personal. We first heard "Grandchild" played as we made our way around Maui in June. It grabbed me. I said to Jill, "Stop. Run it back! Who IS that?"

When putting this video together, I sought film-fest permissions. After reaching out to her record label and her booking agent, I was able to contact Kaumakaiwa directly. I told her why her music moved me, showed her the video, and asked if she would permit me include it in this film fest entry. She replied, and said:

"Aloha Joe! Yes!!! It would be my honor."

The New York Times described her voice as "vaulting through registers and timbres, from bass to witchy contralto rasp to sweet soprano." She said of herself, "My work draws directly from ancestral memory and hula practice, with roots in chant that transforms to melody. It is not simply Western song with Hawaiian lyrics."

It's those lyrics in "Grandchild" that seem to make this song uniquely right for a video that seeks to honor the land. Kaumakaiwa's words call out to the land, of which she is part, and to her ancestors, to whom she is grandchild.

Some of those words are here:

***

"He is from the source, a living spring continues
from this land, now which nurtures me
a creation of survival, of essential memory
a child of the storms, a chaotic symphony

I am their expression, ohana (family) we are
I was taught to call upon them
from those who came before..."

***

I think the images are honoring the story in her music, rather than the other way around.

Ancestor #1717

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 06:14:00 +0000

David Anson Root (1849-1936) was our

great-great-grandfather. One of his prized possessions was a nautical telescope crafted by Negretti & Zambra of London, sometime in the late 1800s. The telescope is single-draw, with a tapered brass tube and covered in a hard-grained Moroccan leather.

Much of what I know of this great-great-grandfather, I have my cousin Daniel Root to thank. A table of consanguinity shows that Daniel would be my “first cousin, once removed” -- my mother’s cousin. I'm happy to keep it simple, though.

A few years ago, Daniel gave me a gift when he shared his family research, which included a reference to a book of Root genealogy published in 1870. This book documented my mother’s line as far back as the 1500s in central England.

In the introduction to Root Genealogical Records. 1600-1870, Comprising the General History of the Root and Roots Families in America, James Pierce Root wrote that assigning an index number to each ancestor “furnishes a plain and simple notation, and renders it easy to refer ... to any individual of the extended family.”

Of the thousands of family ancestors indexed in this book, David Anson Root is Ancestor #1717.

With this book of genealogy as a roadmap, I was able to recognize our fifth great-grandfather Ephraim, who enlisted in the New Hampshire militia at age 26, and fought Burgoyne at Saratoga.

Using this book to navigate, Jill and I were able to find our way to Badby, England, and the medieval church that was already 250 years old when my eighth great-grandfather Thomas was baptized there in 1605.

In the time I've spent researching deep family history, I've found a curious thing that seems to happen. And it happens more often than one might think.

When I'm researching an ancestor – holding him in mind, imagining his life, speaking his name – I get a sense that something about him wakes up. I get this feeling that he starts nudging pieces around on the board, perhaps to help me find what I'm looking for, or at least to acknowledge his presence. Here are two examples:

*****

Jill and I explored Hebron, Connecticut, where Ephraim was born in 1751. We bypassed two perfectly fine restaurants at lunchtime, and did a U-turn in favor of the Something Simple Cafe... just because it sounded good.

As we talked with the cafe owner, we learned that this unassuming wood-framed building had its original construction in 1750 -- right around the time of Ephraim's birth. Its function was as a general store in colonial Hebron. Ephraim was in this village for 26 years before leaving for war, so it seemed certain that he too would have stood within these walls, maybe upon these very floorboards.

Of any place we might have visited in Hebron, we'd stumbled into this building. We stumbled? Or in bypassing lunch at the Irish pub and the Italian family restaurant in favor of a cafe that just sounded good, were we being nudged?

*****

While preparing our Sons of the American Revolution application in 2015, I sat at chapter registrar Kevin Waldroup's kitchen table in central Indiana as he reviewed our paperwork. He offered me a look at his own genealogical record while I waited on his advice. As I browsed Kevin's records, I made the improbable, if not astonishing, discovery that one of his ancestors, Thomas Spencer, and mine, Thomas Root, were both listed as "Founders of Hartford, Connecticut." They had fought together in the 1627 Pequot War. They had lived within two miles of each other. On the same road. On the same side of the same road.

As the two of us, their descendants, recognized this fact while sitting across a kitchen table nearly 400 years later and 800 miles away, it was difficult not to at least CONSIDER a possibility. In saying their names, in bringing them into our minds, were we awakening some aspect of their spirits?

The two Thomases, rubbing sleep from their eyes after hearing their names called from a distance. Bringing themselves to sit at some rough-hewn table with perhaps a jug of rum between them. Watching us from their vantage and saying to each other, "Laddie boys are working to know us. Let us give 'em a hand, should we?"

*****

I'm not the first to suspect we enliven the spirits of our ancestors by saying their names. In NatGeo's "The Story of God," historian Salima Ikram described the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, who carved the names of the dead deeply into stone, so they would not be forgotten. They believed that when you say the names, their “ka” or souls are given a burst of energy and their afterlives are renewed and extended.

So what does this have to do with a Negretti & Zambra nautical telescope, and David Anson Root, Ancestor #1717?

My cousin Daniel had inherited our forebear's telescope, which Daniel kept in his bedroom as a boy growing up in Crown Point in the late 1940s. For our shared interest in family history, Daniel now gave me a second gift: this telescope. I settled in with a cup of coffee and got online to see what I could learn about it.

Enrico Negretti and Joseph Zambra, Italians by birth, started their company in a shop on London's Regent Street in 1850. They made measuring gauges, thermometers and barometers, as well as optics like telescopes and microscopes and gun sights.

I made notes. I sipped my coffee and wondered how David Anson Root had come by this telescope. Had he traveled to London, and acquired this telescope at the shop on Regent Street or at their newer shop on Holborn Viaduct? David had lived most of his life near Chicago, so perhaps he purchased the telescope in the city?

With my mind full of questions and thoughts about my second great-grandfather (Ancestor #1717), my fitness watch buzzed. I’d apparently been sitting for the maximum allowable time, and my watch was now bossing me to “MOVE!”

On a Garmin watch, this e-bullying is accompanied by the number of steps one has taken toward a daily goal. My tally so far on this particular Friday?

1717 steps.

Yeahhhh. Okay. That’s odd. But I went back to reading.

Negretti & Zambra were appointed optical instrument makers to the British Royal Observatory and the British Admiralty. In 1863, Negretti had been the first to take an aerial photograph of London from a hot-air balloon. After World War I, they stopped making telescopes to focus their business on industrial and aeronautical instrumentation. They closed their doors in the late 1980s.

My great-great-grandfather (Ancestor #1717) was a successful lumberyard owner in Crown Point, I recalled. Perhaps he had a business trip to the east coast and came across this telescope in some shop in New York or Boston?

My coffee cup was empty. My stomach growled. It must be time to start rustling up some dinner. I looked at my watch.

You civilians would recognize the time as 5:17 pm. But by force of military habit and the 24-hour settings on my watch, the time read:

1717 hrs.

***

I’ll tell you this truthfully: I did not walk laps around the couch to finesse the step-count. I did not look at my watch at 1710 hrs and say, “I’ll stop and take a picture of the time in seven minutes because it will make for a good story.”

What I think, truthfully, is that my great-great-grandfather, David Anson Root, was poking me and saying:

“Hey boy. It's me. You like my telescope?”

27 Minutes Later

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 04:21:00 +0000

I traded notes with Martha Hoover on a Sunday morning. After the fourth email volley, I told her, “MasterClass should offer you Wolfgang Puck’s first-born in exchange for doing a ‘Martha Hoover Teaches...’ video.”

Photo: IBJ

Yes, I know... Wolfgang is near 70 and he’s probably out of the kid-making business. Plus, his first-born is already grown and is probably shaving by now. Plus, Martha Hoover wouldn’t have time to mess around with any little Pucklettes. She’s busy.

Jill and I have been eating in her restaurants for going on 20 years. If you’re one of my central Indiana friends, you probably know about Café Patachou or Napolese or CrispyBird or Petit Chou or Public Greens or Bar One Fourteen.

The service is consistently hip and professional at her restaurants. She runs 14 of them and the food is always fresh. The recipes are innovative: you’ll be hard-pressed to find pizza anywhere else with braised pork or sweet potatoes or a broken quail egg.

I could tell you more, or you could go read what Indianapolis Monthly or Indianapolis Business Journal or Restaurant Hospitality or Fortune or Vogue have written about Martha Hoover and how she runs a restaurant.

***

I don’t think I’m a complainer. I don’t care for rants or diatribes or "Airing of Grievances" (but I'm all-in for "Feats of Strength"). I wouldn’t waste your time telling you about getting cut off in traffic or that jackwagon who had 14 items in the “12 items or less” check-out lane.

And I wouldn’t bore you by recounting an annoyance in service at an eatery that’s usually top notch. But I will tell you about what happened next.

We’ve dined in Martha’s restaurants enough to know what to expect. After one experience that wasn’t up to her standards or ours, I went to the restaurant’s website to give some feedback.

When the web form didn’t cooperate, I shifted gears and went to the corporate site and clicked on “Contact.” I found a link for “Share Your Experience – Tell a Human.”

Humans! I love those guys!

I was getting ready to click when I noticed a link for “Patachou Inc. Owner Martha Hoover.” What the heck, I thought. Might as well go to the boss. I sent her an email.

“Just so you know,” I wrote, “we’re not finicky or demanding first-timers writing to complain that our ice cubes were too melty or our hot coffee was too hot.” I demonstrated our bona fides by recalling the names of some of our favorite servers: Lauren, Donna, and Angel (which you say like "ahn-HEHL").

“Hope our feedback helps. You’ve got an amazing thing going and we want to keep coming in.”

***

Restauranting can be a tough business, I gather. I’ve never run one. I’ve never even worked in one. But I look at the news and can see them opening and CLOSING all the time. But food is food and people are people. It’s gotta be in how you lead them, I thought.

I used to visit a popular eastside Cajun place. The po’boys were excellent. After more than 10 years, they went out of business last month. The owner blamed code enforcement. Their supplier stopped carrying their favorite and magical brand of dried beans. The bread truck was late. Their card swipers were buggy. Employees quit or violated their probation (the police were called). The city was hostile to small business. A GoFundMe campaign to help them pay their back taxes went sideways. There’s more, but you get the picture.
I remember thinking then, “While this place is closing the doors on its cinderblock building and blaming everyone in sight, these Patachou places keep growing and expanding.”

Look, the city hogged her best parking spots by lining up electric clown cars smack dab in front of Napolese at 49th and Penn. I didn't see Martha Hoover rending her garments and wailing about persecution and oppression.

You know what she did? She launched a new concept right next door to Napolese: Bar One Fourteen, "a luxe microbar, dining, and listening room."

Take THAT, clown cars.

***

I sent my email to the "Martha Hoover -- BOSS” address at 0925 on Sunday morning. I expected I might hear something on Monday, or maybe Tuesday. A form-letter response, probably from an assistant who gets the delegated tasks of smoothing over PR rough spots. A rote apology and a pledge to do better. Maybe some focaccia on the house next time you come in, just for your troubles.

I received a response, but it wasn’t on Monday. A response hit my inbox 27 minutes later. Did I mention it was Sunday morning?

The note said: “Your feedback is invaluable. Changes are occurring immediately as a result of your feedback.”

“Signed: Martha Hoover, President.”

In quick succession, I received three more emails as Martha asked questions to gather information and to clarify details. It was still before 1100 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

I admit to two feelings. One was the thrill of witnessing dynamism and ownership and engagement. Here was a leader in action. A Marine moving toward the sound of gunfire, or a firefighter tightening her bunker gear and kicking through the front door.

No blaming. No excuses. Just a problem-solver stepping right in, figuring it out and fixing it. I thought, the food is good. The kitchen staff is good. The wait staff is good. But HERE is why the business has been consistently great for 20 years. This woman right here.

I wanted to print her emails and run through the mall, waving paper and yelling: “See this? THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT!!”

The second feeling was a little bit of fear. Like, “Holy cats! I threw a stick, but I didn’t think there was actually a bear in that cave!”

***

My favorite omelette at Café Patachou includes bacon, white cheddar, and horseradish. It’s called “The Overachiever.”

When Martha has them make her an omelette, I wonder what she orders?

Steven Pressfield Dot Com: An Author's Site with Meat for Writers

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 21:54:00 +0000

-->

Barbara Shoup at the Indiana Writer's Center recently shared Tina Jordan’s New York Times article about the websites of bestselling authors. Publishers usually insist, Jordan says, that their novelists maintain a web presence. So she visited the sites of the current bestselling novelists and reported back on the most interesting thing about each one.

We writers might hope to find a few tools or useful tips from these successful novelists. Many of these sites, however, provide not much more than Q&A responses to overworked questions like “Where do your ideas come from?” or “How do you do research?” I couldn’t find any insights into the hard-hitting questions like “Is it better to write with a pen or a pencil?”

One novelist advises the aspiring writer to “read frequently” and “write daily.” Yep, good advice. Another author site shares an essay on lessons learned from a 20-year career in journalism. It was a good essay, when it was first presented at a talk in 2001. What have you done for me lately, mister?

Other sites offer the novelist’s movie reviews, what’s on their music playlists, or favorite pet photos. One author’s site gives descriptive statistics on the incidence of cuss words in his 16 novels. If you want detailed analytics, you can scroll down for line graphs on the frequency of “damns” or “shits” per 1000 words. Not sure how that’s going to help your writing, but it’s there if you need a baseline.

Sure, we can poke fun at frivolous content. But the point seems to be that the novelist is just trying to meet publishers’ demands without cutting too deeply into their writing time. I get it, I do. Time is precious. Novelist Tim O’Brien can’t even be bothered to put on pants when he’s working.

But as writers, do these sites give us tools or insights we can use?

Let me point you to an author site that contains zero fluff and more tools than Home Depot. Let me tell you about Steven Pressfield, and then I’ll tell you what his web site gives us as writers.

WHO IS THIS GUY?

Steven Pressfield

If you’re a moviegoer, you might recognize the film based on Steven Pressfield's first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance. IMDB will tell you it’s a sports drama. But Bagger is actually a war story from Hindu scripture, only masquerading as a golf story.

In The Bhagavad Gita, the warrior-archer Arjuna (Rannulph “R” Junah) loses his nerve in battle. The deity Bhagavan (Bagger Vance) appears disguised as Arjuna’s lowly charioteer (Junah’s caddy), to help him rediscover his path as warrior and hero – his authentic self.

Pressfield followed Bagger Vance with novels of historical fiction, many of them set in early Greece. Titles like Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae and The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great depict the timeless principles of military leadership so authentically that they’re included in the academic curricula at West Point and the US Naval Academy. His novels appear consistently on the "recommended reading lists” of US Marine Commandants, the Defense Intelligence Agency, US European Command, and of individual generals who post such lists. Passages like this one illustrate why:

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“You are the commanders, your men will look to you and act as you do. Let no officer keep to himself or his brother officers, but circulate daylong among his men. Let them see you and see you unafraid. Where there is work to do, turn your hand to it first; the men will follow. Some of you, I see, have erected tents. Strike them at once. We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action.”

-- Gates of Fire, the Spartan Leonidas to his officers in preparation for battle at Thermopylae, 480 BC

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His other novels feature the female warriors we call the Amazons in 1250 BC, commandos of the Long-Range Desert Group in World War II North Africa, and mercenaries in a near-future thriller where military contractors have replaced national armies.

Pressfield has authored as many nonfiction titles as he has fiction. The Lion’s Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War is a narrative of courage under fire as the State of Israel fought to survive in 1967.

His 2011 The Warrior Ethos draws on stories of leadership and courage from Herodotus and Plutarch and Thucydides and Homer. Pressfield printed 20,000 copies at his own expense and distributed them to any active duty military unit or veterans group that wanted them. His publicist and business partner Callie Oettinger even provided 100 copies to a guy like me, to share with fellow veterans at the company where I worked.

Pressfield is respected as much for his books on the creative process as he is the military fiction and nonfiction. Titles like Do the Work, Turning Pro, and The Authentic Swing, examine the struggles and pain of creativity and finding your authentic voice. His widely read The War of Art (a play on the title of Sun Tzu's classic) is a navigational aid for understanding Resistance and procrastination and self-doubt, and a map for busting through. Jay McInerney thinks enough of The War of Art to put his endorsement on the cover, and story-structure master Robert McKee wrote the book’s forward.

SO WHAT ABOUT HIS WEBSITE?

While other authors might share a FAQ or an essay, Pressfield has been posting his “Writing Wednesdays” column on his site every week for nearly 10 years. In essays with titles like “Lawrence of Arabia’s Motorcycle” or “Give Your Villain a Great Villain Speech” or “The Female Carries the Mystery,” he shares his insights on story structure and battling creative demons and understanding deep archetypes and the hero’s journey. He pulls examples from films we’ve seen and books we’ve read and helps us shine some light on the things that are right in front of us, waiting for us to see them for ourselves.

He’s honest about his own creative battles, and how having a raft of published work does NOT exempt a writer from struggles with the demons of Resistance. In his “Report From the Trenches” series, he’ll share what it was like to send a draft manuscript to his editor Shawn Coyne. He'll be up-front about the gut-twisting despair, the “Kubler-Ross experience,” of getting Shawn's response – 15 single-spaced pages that detailed everything that was NOT working with this manuscript.

Do you sometimes feel lost as a writer? Overwhelmed, fearful, or plagued with the dread of inadequacy? Pressfield doesn’t hold your hand, but he lets you know you’re not alone. In his columns, he addresses “us writers.” He brings you and me into his foxhole and speaks to us as equals. He offers encouragement and insight to any of us willing to “put our asses where our hearts want to be” and “do the work.”

In “Writing Wednesdays,” he'll go so far as to serialize a forthcoming work of non-fiction in its entirety – just because he wants you to have it. I refer to the 2018 title, The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning.

His readers are likely to purchase a hard copy for their shelves, never mind they’ve been gifted a chapter a week. Me? I’ve bought and given away as many of his books as I’ve got on my shelves.

Then you have his business partners Callie Oettinger and Shawn Coyne, publicist and editor, respectively. Callie and Shawn divvy up Friday’s “What It Takes” column. In posts like “Hemingway Did Not Non-Summit,” Callie encourages us not to just "hold meetings at base camp" and TALK about summiting (stopping with the workshops and writing seminars). She says: “Climb the mountain. Don’t stop at the base. Your words are your oxygen.”

When Shawn takes his turn at “What It Takes,” his columns draw on his 25 years of publishing experience, editing or

Seth Godin, Steven Pressfield, and Shawn Coyne
From The Story Grid Workshop
Used by permission

representing authors like James Lee Burke, Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, David Mamet, Robert McKee – and Steven Pressfield.

Shawn’s own site is a treasure chest of resources for writers. You’ll find sheets that break down The Silence of the Lambs and Pride and Prejudice scene-by-scene according to his “Story Grid” methodology. He deconstructs each scene’s word count, the main action, the value shift, and other structural detail. It’s like X-ray vision for the writer who wants to see clearly into what makes a story work.

His site’s Resources tab offers his Editor’s Roundtable podcast: discussions among professional editors on the genre conventions and story structure for films like “Get Out,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Adaptation.” The site offers other podcasts, articles, and a free five-part Story Grid course. You’ll find premium resources and online classes, as well as contract professional editing services.

NO FLUFF

There’s certainly demand for web sites that help readers get to know their favorite authors: trivia, recipes, or what music the author can’t live without.

Writers can also find author’s sites that give them what they need: tools and insights into archetypes, narrative structure, and what makes a story work.

Steve will tell you that stories exist out there in some near dimension, waiting to be born into this world, with the Muse as a midwife. We can be part of it, those of us willing to put our asses where our hearts want to be, those of us willing to do the work.

Find it all at stevenpressfield.com.