September, October and November Storytellers: Three Months of Books

If it were not for the escape of a good book, you would surely find your blogger on a You Tube video, "Commuter Meltdown at Port Authority." If you're familiar with the R.E.M. video for Everybody Hurts where everyone's stuck in a traffic jam, sad looking faces, watching life pass by them, that will paint the picture what the commute has been like ever since our East Coast storm. A man muttered, "Welcome to the new America, folks" after another day of long lines. Holiday music pipes in mockingly with songs like "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," when it doesn't feel like that way at all.  When I get home from my cubicle job which involves being on a computer for eight hours a day, I look at my home computer with a sense of dread.

I've been doing something I hadn't been doing a lot of: turning on the television. The other night "You've Got Mail" with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks came on, a film I'll never tire of. It's such a love letter to New York City (which the film reminds me is so enchanting except in places like Port Authority), to the art of letter writing, to books and storytellers. I love how letters document books read (Meg Ryan's character speaks of her love of Pride and Prejudice) and just everyday life, like a butterfly getting on a subway stop and getting off on another.


A book of letters started my storytellers (some mentioned in a prior post but worth revisiting).

West from Home, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, $3.98, Better World Books. A collection of Laura's letters to husband Almanzo while visiting daughter Rose in San Francisco where the Pan-Pacific International Exhibition was held in 1915. This is like reading someone's diary. Imagine if you penned letters to your loved ones and they were published decades letter. I've read that Martha Washington burned 41 years of correspondence with George Washington after his death to keep their private life safe. Laura's letters don't reveal any deep dark secrets, but do have some interesting tidbits - who knew they once spoke of moving to New Zealand before moving to Florida? There's quite an awkward letter from daughter Rose to her father that her mother, "Mamma Bess" is "growing fat" from all the food at the fair. I started this on the plane ride to San Francisco and wouldn't have visited the enchanting Palace of the Fine Arts (built for the exhibition) if I hadn't.

What would Mitt Romney's journal say? I read that he kept one during the campaign. A journal is my next storyteller, Seeds of Hope: The California Gold Rush Diary of Susanna Fairchild, by Kristiana Gregory, part of the Dear America series, $3.98, Better World Books. I can't believe I never came across any of the Dear America books until I searched for gold rush diaries in preparation of my trip.

I've heard my favorite historian David McCullough talk about drawing people into history through good storytelling, and these fictional books are a wonderful way to do that with historical notes at the end. In the notes of this storyteller is the song Clementine. I never knew this was a folk song about the Gold Rush since I only vaguely knew the chorus and not the rest of the song:

"In a cavern, in a canyon
Excavating for a mine,
Dwelt a miner, Forty-niner,
And his darling Clementine"

I now understand the significance of 1849 and the mass migration to California in search of riches. Books read are mentioned in entries here, like Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Last Days of Pompeii, Jane Eyre, and A Christmas Carol, about "a rich man with no friends" which would foreshadow events to come in this travel diary of a young girl in Sutter's Fort.

A Columbia Diary, the real life diary of Clementine Brainard, $4.95, from a historical themed bookstore in Columbia, California. She talks of everything from making squash pies and doing the washing to fire and duels, which according to the footnotes, California saw more duels with guns than any other state in the union, including the South.  She mentions going to the "lyceum." The footnotes tell us, "The Lyceum Movement in the United States was an early form of organized adult education based on Aristotle's Lyceum in Ancient Greece. Lyceums flourished in the mid-19th century particularly in the northeastern and midwestern United States. Columbia's Lyceum met once every week for lively discussions on various topics."

I love this idea of adult education. In a society whose politicians always talk of "education" I don't think we value it enough really. Reading is yes an escape from soul sucking lines at bus terminals but also part of continuing education for me.

Some storytellers just magically find you. After reading an announcement in the local paper about the library in Hawthorne, New Jersey's fill a bag of books for $3 sale, I stopped by after work. I walked like there was a magnetic force to these two books: 

Time Stops for No Mouse by Michael Hoeye  and...

The Sands of Time, by Michael Hoeye.

I soon picked up No Time Like Show Time for about $4 from Better World Books.

In short, these books are about a watchmaker mouse, Hermux Tantamoq and his adventures with aviatrix Linka Perflinger in the jungle, the desert, then theater. Add to the equation his eccentric neighbor, the cosmetics tycoon Tucka Mertslin and his pet lady bug Terfle. But the long answer is these books are about so much more. My mind was racing with topics like revisionist history (where did I read the winners write the history?), what defines art, and the societal obsession with anti-aging and the big business behind the beauty industry. I thought of this book when I saw a Today Show segment about some institute declaring green would be the color of the year next year and that we should all be wearing green clothes, wearing green Swatch watches, buying green furniture and so on. I ponder a lot the mob mentality in our society and the factors of why people follow "trends" or celebrities. I wish people would be more questioning of where the items the "celebrity" or "designer" brands are made (often China and anywhere but the United States).

These are some of my favorite storytellers of the year. I actually want to write the author a fan letter. Hermux writes gratitude letters to the universe. He often gives thanks for the good and the bad, the beautiful and the mysterious. He writes in one,

"Thank you for maps and compasses. Thank you for winding rivers and crashing waterfalls. For empty canyons and rising moons. For campfires and carrots. And for some time to get to know Linka better.

By the way, thank you for time in general. I wonder what time is exactly and where it comes from. I've never considered it before. And where does it go? I wonder how much time I have. Have I spent it wisely? Or have I wasted it?"

I think about that too. I waste a lot of time on the computer (mostly surfing) and not turning it on is part of resisting that temptation, but I still enjoy gathering and sharing my thoughts here, even if it's on a less regular basis.

I think my gratitude letter for this weekend would be,

"Thank you for books. Always for books. Thank you for lunches of potato leek soup at the farm and for butternut squash casseroles at Tea and Sympathy. Thank you for farms in general for there would be no potato leek soup or casseroles without them. Thank you for friendship - in two legged form or four. Thank you for letters, and for cold, rainy nights indoors. Thank you for a fictional mouse for reminding me to give thanks, and for long lines at Port Authority, which means more time lost in the pleasure of a good book."

What would your gratitude letter say? What storytellers are you grateful for? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments sections, or write a private letter to the universe today.

These Were My California Storytellers

"Western time now," Laura Ingalls Wilder noted in her letter to husband Almanzo when changing time zones on her train route from her home in Missouri as she documented the journey to visit daughter Rose in San Francisco where the Pan-Pacific International Exhibition was held in 1915. Laura's collection of letters was published in West from Home. Western time it did feel like as well on out honeymoon trip to California. Not just a change in hours but a change in pace, attitude, historical backgrounds shaping our identities and social differences.

Laura, whose Little House series was yet to come, struggled with how often she used the word beautiful in her letters to describe what she saw. Beautiful was a word that I would think of often. During her visit, the city was transformed from the 1906 earthquake and resulting fires that would destroy much of a city that seemed built overnight by the gold rush. Still, there were haunts of the past. Margot Patterson Doss writes in the introduction, "There were occasional vacant lots enclosed by wrought iron fences. In some were marble steps, leading up into thin air. Inez Irwin described them as "a little like meeting a ghost in a crowded street." I felt like I met a lot of ghosts here too.

Natalie Merchant, the upstate New York singer songwriter. Gold Rush Brides, her song with 10,000 Maniacs was with me, but I thought of her observations in "San Andreas Fault," from her first solo album Tigerlily in the context of the dreams the West offered but Mother Nature's harsh realities. I thought of San Francisco, a city built by the riches of gold, destroyed by fire, elemental forces at play.

"San Andreas Fault moved its fingers through the ground.
Earth divided, plates collided, such an awful sound.
San Andreas fault moved its fingers through the ground.
Terra cotta shattered, and the walls came tumbling down.
Oh promise land, what a wicked ground.
Build a dream, tear it down."

With our poorly battered East Coast still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, the duality of nature - its awe-inspiring, nurturing, giving side and its vengeful side - is on my mind. Steve and I lost an old oak tree, but consider ourselves lucky. Still, I think of how the Earth gives, but the Earth takes away.



Naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, author, an American treasure, the great John Muir, who I knew far too little about until watching Ken Burns' extraordinary series on the National Parks: America's Best Idea, said,

"I only went out for a walk,
and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,
for going out, I found, was really going in."

Much about this trip was indeed about going out, and going in. Going out in Muir Woods not far from the city limits of San Francisco.

The first caretakers, a sign here in Yosemite National Park reminds me .While on this trip, the first presidential and vice presidential debate were held. The environment hasn't gotten a lot of attention, although I'll never understand why clean air, water and soil would ever take a back burner. Where our resources are concerned, I just hear a lot about taking. I liked a quote I read from Robert Redford in a book, "Yosemite Meditations,"

"I think the environment should be put in the category of national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise, what is there to defend?"

Seeds of Hope: The California Gold Rush Diary of Susanna Fairchild, by Kristiana Gregory, part of the Dear America series. While this diary was fictional, it gave a fascinating context of true events. Susanna talks of a bear and bull fight at the camps, fights which did take place. An interesting story in the historical notes section,

"The bull and bear fights that took place in early California provided jargon for Wall Street that is still used today. When the animals were brought into the ring, the bear was tethered to a chain. It would dig a hole several inches deep and lie down. From this hole, it would fight, either in prone or sitting position. The bull would stand. Thus, in America's financial centers, a bull market means stocks are going up, and a bear market means stocks are going down." 

At the local bookshop in the gold rush town of Columbia, I picked up A Columbia Diary, the real life diary of Clementine Brainard. I've read a few fictional diaries but this is the first actual diary I read. Clementine wrote in the first entry on October 19, 1853 of her intentions to keep journey during her sea journey but didn't. I brought a diary with me and had romantic notions of keeping it during my trip, and alas was too exhausted to write in it. I consider my blog a bit of a diary, one I haven't felt like writing in as much lately.

Clementine writes, "Do I ever have any thoughts that are worth being transferred to paper? I must be a singular individual.if I do not."

I'm so glad Clementine documented her thoughts, even though yes it feel voyeuristic to read them. Spoiler here if you want to read it yourself.  She writes of her husband's frequent ill health, speaks often about mail deliveries but doesn't elaborate much about what's in the letters, talks often about her faith, and speaks matter-of-factly when talking about death (maybe unsurprisingly seeing how common early death was). She bears her first child with barely any mention before and after of this event. Clementine's husband dies at 30 years of age and she remarries and has six more children, four of whom die in infancy. Walking around an old cemetery in Columbia, one cannot help but think of the hard lives people led and the progresses we made in medical care.

Alice Waters, who founded a national movement for local foods. Julia Child's story has been in my life a lot the last year or two, but what about Alice? Steve and I are still talking about the meal we savored in Berkeley, California at the cafe of Chez Panisse. On many meals on our trip here, we felt like someone just went to their back garden and whipped us up a feast.

Some weren't allowed to tell their stories. Banned books are displayed here at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. Freedom of speech?

Always on road trips, unexpected storytellers find me, like favorite childhood storyteller Charles Schultz, who has a museum dedicated to him in Santa Rosa. At nearly 37 years of age, I still look forward each year to A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the soundtrack is one of my favorite holiday albums. The visit to the museum was my most charming stop, and how often can one go into a cafe and say with excitement, "One Peppermint Patty hot chocolate, please!" I'm sure somewhere Linus, this Halloween night, is waiting in a patch for the Great Pumpkin, and Mr. Schultz is smiling down on him.