MO

So, I've been immersed in another in a long line of get-rich-slow schemes. Got it in my head to write a history. I've had many a book published over the years, made my living at it. Feels kind of foolish, maybe I'm indulging in a bit of a luxury item to be researching, writing, working on a project that might not make much money, but shoot! I'm having an awfully terrific time coming up with a list of 1,000 Cool Things & People to Know So YOU Will Be a TOTAL MISSOURI BRAINIAC.

  I'll be taking my Shih Tsu, Mimi out for a walk - and not a very long one, seeing that it's so rotten hot outdoors, and it will occur to me that, chronology-wise, I need to link this heat wave back to similar stretches of misery hereabouts in the mid 1930s, in the early 1950s and don't forget to put a mini-bio of Missouri-born Betty Grable in the WWII section.
    More about MO later. Right now, I think I'm going to go up to the Square, where there's a coffee house. Where there's an open mic deal tonight. Where I told myself I was going to go and do a bit of a reading & try to be amusing for a few minutes. Now I'm nervous about it. Public speaking is such a rush.
Once you get past the oogly-booglies.
I'll let you know how it goes.
    

Ida B

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” 
― Ida B. Wells-Barnett

So, here's just a brief note to commemorate the valiant, stubborn life of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, which began in Mississippi, 150 years ago today. Do you know about her? She grew up in a devilish time, parents died of illness, left her with younger siblings to care for. Which she did, as well as getting herself sufficient education to become a teenaged teacher.

   "I came back home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday & Sunday washing & ironing & cooking for the children & went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon."

       She went on to become a powerful journalist and lecturer, who agitated against the thousands of lynchings that went on throughout America well into the 20th century.  Gives me the wimwams & heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. How is it that we humans can be so wonderful and so horrible?

"Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture & murder a single individual, so gagged & bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense."

Whacking

On a lighter note than in my previous post, since I hadn't gotten around to replacing my busted my ice cube trays, I've discovered how much FUN it to freeze an inch or so of water in a 9" by 12" baking pan then WHACK it into pieces for my Diet Coke, water, and tea. And my morning elixur: instant coffee + 1% milk. I love whacking.

Sunday Morning

"This land is your land..."

       So. I should have said more, yesterday, about the great poet, troubadour, Woody Guthrie, whose centenary was yesterday. And by the way, there's a splendid documentary about him, well worth checking out. But I was preoccupied with finishing the revision of my novel, for which I have hopes. I always have hopes. Then late into the night I was working on my history of Missouri, my home state. Trying to explain the ghastly First World War, I came across the fact that Nat'l Guard troops from Missouri & Kansas were formed into the 35th Infantry Division. Ironic, considering how fiercely Missourians & Kansans fought one another in the bad old Civil War Days.
       And I wanted to note that on the morning of 11 August, there's going to be a dedication ceremony in my neighborhood, for a trio of historical panels that the Nat'l Park Service is going to install in McCoy Park, here in Independence. Why am I telling you? Because three of my paintings will be printed on them. They illustrate Hiram Young's yoke & wagon manufactory. Hiram Y., a freed African American, was a big deal around here, back in this trail town's wagon train glory days. Another
shows the mule drawn train that used to haul would-be emigrants the three miles or so from the Missouri River landing up to the Independence Square, where they'd wagon up for their big adventures on the long trail to Oregon or California. Not a trip I'd want to take. The other painting is a mini-mural panorama of old Independence, the Queen City of the Trails. Lots of sky above for text. It's looking like the city's going to buy the three paintings so does this make me happy? You bet. The Q.C. of the Ts is my hometown. It's good to know that my work will be cared for, will be sort of a legacy.

       And, just for you to know, the long-gone painter Rembrandt van Rijn was born on this day in history, in 1606.  He shares this birthday w/'a few other summer babies, of course, most notably Clement Clarke Moore & explorer Edward Shackleton.  And, she wrote gloomily, today's the anniversary of Tad Lincoln's deathday, in 1871. Poor tragic kid. Just 18 years old when he got his ticket punched. Having lost his big brother, his dad, and suffered through his last years w/ his tragic, nutty mom.  Sheesh.
       .

So. Happy Bastille Day. And Vive la France, still French after all these years. And happy birthday to you Woody Guthrie, off in the Blue Beyond, come into this old vale of tears 100 years ago today. And happy me, just finished a revision of a novel I've been working on. Now back to the Missouri history I've begun. I've got the 20th century to explain.

sigh..

Oh well, the 12th of July. There was a time when I was much younger than I am now, when I wished that this was my birthday rather than six days earlier. I mean, Andrew Wyeth, an artist whose work I adored when I was in high school, came into the world through the door marked 12 July, three months after the U.S. jumped into the  loathsome, needless 'Great War,' made to look so quaint and picturesque on many a Masterpiece Theater. And every 12th of July marks another anniversary of the day that Henry David Thoreau was born. And didn't I love Walden when I was a romantic, deeply dorky high school student. So how did I celebrate the day? By continuing work on a revision of a novel for which I have hopes then going to a movie I'd looked forward to, to see what it'd look like. I'd loved the book on which it was based. Really wished I'd written Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. I'm no scholar, not a genuine historian, but I'd done enough research on my own books about our 16th president to know that S. G-S. had done his homework and had created a wonderful entertainment - unlike the jokers who made the dreadful film out of which I walked well before its conclusion.

July 13th will be better.  Tomorrow is another day - a quote from another movie that wasn't as good as the book.  Except for JAWS [masterpiece film/mediocre book] and To Kill a Mockingbird [brilliant movie/brilliant novel], the book is always better. The book is always better.

We Bumble On

So. There's so much to say, but really, I'm too impatient to write it all. I've a drawing to do & I'll be doing it while I keep one eye & some of my mind on HBO's rebroadcast of its brilliant miniseries based upon the life & times of John & Abigail Adams, based upon David McCullough's biography. And I've a novel still in need of revision. Now that I've written a bit of a note here, now that I've revisited my sadness by reading Andy Griffith's obituary and been reminded that we all can keep getting older w/o his presence in the world. Now that another great chunk has broken off of the continent of my culture and fallen into the big river...It must have been like this - not exactly like this but I'd be willing to bet that some of these feelings might be mirrored in the hearts of Americans 186 years ago, when they heard that Thomas Jefferson had died. Got his ticket punched. Moreover, the loquacious lion of the Revolution, John Adams, left the building, exited the world's stage on that very same day, 50 years to the day since the 2nd Continental Congress voted to adopt the D. of I.  Of course Thos. J. drafted it, but his older Revolutionary brothers, J. Adams & Benj. F., gave it a good editing & going over - a painful process it must have been. and all done w/o our modern luxury-turned-necessity: AC.

 No. It couldn't be - wouldn't be the same for those long-gone Americans, reading about the great & dead Duo, the Pen and the Voice of the Revolution. That Greatest Generation hadn't grown up watching them, hearing them, seeing their images on omnipresent screens as did my big, but not all that great generation of Boomers [lots of potential though], growing with Andy Griffith (d. 3 July 2012), Jimmy Stewart (died 2 July, 1997), & Charles Kuralt (d. 4 July 1997). Have I no sense of proportion? Yup, I got plenty. Well aware I am that a pair of accomplished actors & a TV journalist do not equal Mr. A. & Mr. J.  And what a wrench it must have been, in the summer of 1826, finding out that they were gone, but they bumbled on w/ the Republic. I reckon we still do. And we still worry about it & recognize that it is in peril, think that old John & Tom would gag & croak all over again if they could but see some of the things that have happened [Citizens United anybody?]. But not w/o some pride & incredulity that we've bumbled on.