Book Review: Americans and the California Dream by Kevin Starr

I read Kevin Starr’s Americans and the California Dream very slowly, in small passages and with no sense of pressure over a period of 8 months. 

It’s not a chronology of large happenings, but rather a record and Starr’s literary cultural analysis of what others thought and wrote in and about the California of 1850-1915. Starr had, as his vantage point, substantial historical knowledge and a native son’s heart for ferreting out the antecedents of subsequent events and dynamic on-going consequences intended and otherwise. 

In Starr’s words from the last page, he selected "acts of definition, moments when vision and event betrayed their interchange, and the aesthetic pattern and moral meaning of social experience became clear. History grants few such occasions.” (P. 444) 

I construct a timeline for myself as I read any history. As much information as I am able to retain, dates often escape me. Starr presents his narrative as an ”act of memory” rather than a classic or linear analysis. It might help some readers to read the final page reflections in conjunction with the introduction to avoid what some reviews express as frustration with and disappointment in this approach to history. 

Any study of people, time and place is best done through the politics, history and literature of the period. Starr’s book is best read as an adjunct to both linear historical documentations and first hand accounts, journals and essays of the time.  I have read many of the accounts to which Starr refers with some notable exceptions. I have never been able to read Gertrude Atherton and Starr’s assessment of her outlook helped me understand more clearly why I have resisted both her “history” and her novels. “For the sake of the establishment myth, and for the sake of her own role as a writer in that establishment, Gertrude Atherton did her best to sustain an illusion…” 

And then there is a book to which Starr has alerted me that I plan to seek out. California Coastal Trails, a Horseback Ride from Mexico to Oregon, by J. Smeaton Chase, was published in 1913. Mr. Starr says that past, present and future converge in this elegant narrative and he likens it to an elegy and yet Chase shares his hope. In Starr’s words, “In 1913 California-as-nature yet seemed capable of coping with California-as-history.”( P. 438)

Kevin Starr researched and wrote with hope himself and his work is testament to his belief that commitment to California does not preclude scrutiny, nor does admiration always blind one to her faults. Americans and the California Dream is work to read, but it is a worthwhile work.

You are alive...be happy! To Paraphrase G.K. Chesterton

 I came across a quote this morning that has piqued my interest in reading The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton  (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006.)

 In his Autobiography, Chesterton writes that

“At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence.  The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy” (99).

"...submerged sunrise of wonder..."  yes...

In my edge toward dawn...English Creek - A Book's Reflection

Does your neighborhood have any little houses, oh, bigger than a bird house, but smaller than a dog house, that hold free books to borrow and pass around? There are several, depending on my "umph" and the rise of the mercury in the thermometer, that are within walking distance from my house.



Upside down and flat back against the wall, behind the books presenting their spines of titles, a bit of the painting on the cover of this aging Penguin paperback caught my eye. I rearranged the books and pulled out English Creek  by Ivan Doig.  Wallace Stegner's front cover recommendation is fairly emphatic. He uses the word real  three times:  real Montana, real West and Doig is a real writer.
Stegner I know, so  I figured Doig was worth a try; and he is.
Doig's story is set in the summer of 1939 in a fictive Montana region but he describes the terrain with such visual clarity that I could navigate myself up and down the buttes and valleys without a map.

I was still deciding if I would plunge in and commit to read when I met, on page three, a word new to me,"brockled."

"Jick, Set your mouth for it."                                                                                                             Supper and my mother. It is indelible in me that all this began there right at the very outset of June, because I was working over my saddle and lengthening the stirrups again, to account for how much I was growing that year, for the ride up with my father on the counting trip the next morning. I can even safely say what the weather was, one of those brockled late afternoons under the Rockies when the tag ends of storm cling in the mountains and sun is reaching through wherever it can between the cloud piles. Tell me why it is that details like that, saddle stirrups a notch longer or sunshine dabbed around on the foothills some certain way, seem to be the allowance of memory while the bigger points of life hang back.

 Doig had me. Now I was ready for Jick to share the summer when he was not yet fifteen. I was ready to follow him from the light of the brockled afternoon into the family supper.  The rift that manifests at the family table that night is continually set in more far reaching contexts as Doig spins a story both specific and universal through a young observer who is curious enough about human nature, heritage, history and the connections and dislocations in his wider community to open a very broad tale indeed.

You know that feeling when you are nearing the end of a story that you've entered into and you aren't ready for it to end; you know when you read that last page you are going to feel a little bereft?  Well,  that is where I was at when I mentioned to another neighbor, unconnected with the neighborhood book swap houses, how much I was enjoying what I thought was just an obscure little Montana story.   " I love Ivan Doig," she said as she ran off to her den to retrieve three other of his books to lend to me.   I haven't begun any of them yet, but it is a fine feeling knowing more of this author is now readily available to explore.

I'll leave you with the beginning of another passage that resonated with a desire in me.

Where morning is concerned, I am my father all over again. "The day goes downhill after daybreak" was his creed.  I don't suppose there are too many people now who have seen a majority of the dawns of their life, but my father did, and I have. And of my lifetime of early rising I have never known better dawns than those when I rode from English Creek to my haying job on Noon Creek...(page 233)

That is the lead-in to some inspired descriptions wrapped in and around Jick's  deep as usual, thoughts and feelings and then Jick asks. "Is it any wonder each of these haying-time dawns  made me feel remade?"

All right, I 'll admit, while I  have sometimes been getting up in time to watch the sun climb over  Mount St. Helena and her foothills, I as often find my way back to bed to sleep a bit more. Sleep is good for remaking and healing too, but new energy and the dawn are calling.

with best wishes,

Jeannette

Two Years Before the Mast by R.H. Dana Jr. Classic California Lit & History

(Monday, March 16th)

To read a classic such as

 Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and not share a little about it seems selfish.  If one finds a treasure, why not share it?

I have been trying to be a bit more generous about reflecting on books I have truly enjoyed.



It's tempting to dive right into another book,  but I know my good intentions to write up at least an encouraging note for others to consider the merit of this book would then more easily be derailed.  I know that it's more likely to happen the sooner I try to distill my thoughts and before I'm too far immersed in another tome.

I have only moments this morning,  but I will leave this opener here for myself  as a magnet to draw me back to write a bit more on Dana's tale of shipping out of Boston  'round the Horn to California in the year 1835.


(Wednesday, March 18th)

A student at Harvard, Dana's eyesight suffered from a case of Measles,  so he took leave of intense studies and rather than voyage as a passenger, he signed on a merchant ship as a common seaman.

The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trousers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well as a jack tar.  But it is impossible to deceive the practiced eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by everyone on board, as soon as I hove in sight. ( page 2- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

He  kept a daily brief diary of his experience and when able also wrote out his experiences at more length in a different journal.  His sea chest, where he kept his more extensive writings,  was lost upon his return to Boston. Happily for posterity, while back at law school, he rewrote his narrative from the framework of the daily log which he had  kept with him.

His determination inspires me.


 (Sunday, March 22nd)
Before I go on,  I admit that not only did I not discipline my free time to write on Dana this last week, I read a Pushkin story,  "The Captain's Daughter."  Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 to an old noble family.  Pushkin was sixteen years old when Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a family who had distinguished themselves in young America, so my excursion into Alexander Pushkin's tale of a young man coming of age in a remote military outpost was not totally removed in time from Dana's true tale.  Each story is told in a young man's narrative voice as struggles with self, nature, and the shifting hierarchies of mankind are faced and both  men esteemed honor and purpose.

This was my first reading of  Two Years before the Mast from cover to cover.  I was familiar with excerpts of it from my studies at University of California at Berkeley when obtaining  an undergraduate degree in American Studies.  I was reminded of it again several years ago as my eye doctor, as has been true of many an oculist over the years, used  passages from Dana's journal to test acuity of vision. In other readings of histories of the peopling of the West, quotes and commendations of Dana's work finally spurred me to read him in full.

Thus far, I realize I have primarily documented that I am often slow to pursue challenges, but this is, after all, my web log so I might as well tell the truth.

( Tuesday March 24th)
Dana was acutely touched by the day to day dangers and difficulties faced by seamen and profoundly touched by an unjust flogging he witnessed.   He vowed that if he were ever in a position to be a help to them, he would be.  His desire for equity and justice inspired his writing.  He noted that while there were already masterful of tales of sea voyages, "a voice from the forecastle has not yet been heard."

Dana has such fine powers of description in his clean prose that I was glad to travel over the seas with him, but I was even more pleased when the brig Pilgrim docked in ports I know and love.  Have you ever been to San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Monterey, or Yerba Buena,  San Francisco?
Dana spends long periods of time on shore. It isn't an all "...aloft to furl the sail..." story.  One of the striking aspects of Dana's recollections of California in 1835-36 is how brief the lifestyle he encountered on the coast of California was to be.  He saw California and met many of her inhabitants and visitors before the 1849 Gold Rush and huge influx of overland migrants.

There are three basic editions of  Two Years Before the Mast.

1.The original 1840 edition.
2. The 1869 edition - this is a revision by Dana when the copyright reverts back to him. He removed  the "sharply unromantic opening paragraphs" and the final chapter and he added a new chapter "Twenty Fours Years After."
3. The 1911 edition - prepared by his son Richard Henry Dana based upon the 1869 edition. His son adds research about the Crew, and a Dictionary of Nautical Terms based on Dana's "The Seaman's Friend" as well as an Introduction and a new chapter "Seventy Five Years After."

 The book is available online from Project Gutenberg.

(Wednesday, March 25th)

The edition I read included  "Twenty-four Years After" where Dana revisits California.
How often do we see our own place and time in the world and not realize how fast it is changing?
When I look back through my own private journals I see notes I have made of national and international events which I have almost forgotten about in the rush of new developments, yet the impact of those events and changes is deeply shaping today and the future.

One of the sentiments Dana expressed that I found very powerful is that while social troubles need attention, the changes needed are not always the ones brought about by  the exertion of more control or the enactment of more laws.

I know that there are many men who, when a few cases of great hardship occur, and it is evident that there is an evil somewhere, think that some arrangement must be made, some law passed, or some society got up, to set all right at once.  On this subject there can be no call for any such movement; on the contrary, I fully believe that any public and strong action would do harm, and that we must be satisfied to labor in the less easy and less exciting task of gradual improvement, and abide the issues of things working slowly together for good. ( page 361- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

There was one regret I experienced in reading this book, for there was a passage where I wished Dana had not been so focused. In his final chapter he begins to describe his  excursions to various parts of the state, traveling in coaches, in boats, and  on horseback as he radiates out from San Francisco into the interior, to Santa Clara and San  Jose,  up the San Joaquin river,  crossing the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and the Merced, to Mariposa, the big trees, and as he called it, Yo Semite Valley. He is briefly in full descriptive force and then he writes:

 These visits were so full of interest, with grandeurs and humors of all sorts, that I am strongly tempted to describe them.  But I remember that I am not to write a journal of a visit over the new California, but to sketch briefly the contrasts with  the old spots of 1835-6, and I forbear. ( page 392- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

I hope I have conveyed enough enthusiasm about this classic to tempt you to add it to your reading list.
with best wishes,
Jeannette

Don't Abandon Your Blogs or your Pen

Forgive me...that title is a word to myself...

Just to be sure that I haven't entirely abandoned  the other page of my  web logging, "Write Purpose,"
 I posted a bit of a book review, no I would really call it more a book exposure, that I could have just as easily published here on "Bread on the Water," but you will find it here: Robert Raynold's Narrator.  It is actually a very fitting post for Valentine's Day because it is circles around  the question of what is at the heart of any story one tells.

My neighbor's daffodils...
which she planted and then moved off to Montana

When I first began blogging, I thought I would share more of my writing than I have thus far, but I find I have often been beguiled by the lovely views that have been mine and the thrill of digital photography often sweeps my pen right out of my hand.  The other day I  took this photo with my new phone. I have not yet learned the camera features, but the moss and daffodils still speak a bit here, I  hope.

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue

and while I am here,

a happy Valentine's Day to you.  This little girl is saying hello to anyone sitting alone today,




the rest of you, as you are not on your own, should do fine on your own.

Now I better get on  my donkey and ride...

Three Memoirs of Improbable Life Paths

None of the three autobiographical books I've read of late are hot off the press, but they were all new to me. And oddly, these three very different lives have a lot in common.

Late summer a friend gave me a copy of the 2011 New York Times Bestseller, Kisses from Katie.  I confess that I took it home and set it on a shelf.  It didn't look like "my kind of book."  I found the title to be cloying.  However, I trust my friend and wanted to be able to respond when asked if I had read the book, so I carried it on a road trip to Idaho and brought it home again, no more familiar with the story of the young woman on the cover than I was before my journey.

Once I finally began reading, I found a rather amazing tale of a girl who, based on a three week mission trip to Uganda during her senior year in high school, asked her parents for permission to postpone college for a year so she could return to Uganda and teach little children there.  Katie Davis was born in 1989 making her now twenty-five years old  in 2014.   That is especially important for her because Ugandan laws require residents to be twenty-five years old to adopt children and she has been the foster parent to thirteen little girls!  ***Yes, I know that exclamation points are best used sparingly.  I think I have have restrained myself greatly using only one; considering the  information contained in my last sentence, perhaps there should have been  thirteen of them.***

Next the 1990 Ben Carson story  Gifted Hands  fell into mine.  While Katie Davis is a daughter of privilege, her school's homecoming queen and class valedictorian,
Dr. Carson, born in 1951, was one of two sons of a working mother in inner-city Detroit.  The book opens with a letter to the reader from Sonya Carson who writes:

Dear Reader, As the mother of Ben and his brother, Curtis, I had a lot of challenges.  Being one of twenty-four children, married at age thirteen, and later having to get a divorce after finding out my husband was a bigamist were just a few of them....

Ben Carson begins his story sharing his childhood  struggles with a convincing vulnerability.  I had read on the back jacket that he became  director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Medical Institutions at age thirty-three, but I found little hint of that possibility as I read the chapters about his young life. I also had no idea how much brain surgery explanation I was getting myself into, but once I began this book there was no way I going to skip over any of it. In addition to his passion as a surgeon, Dr. Carson offers himself as a motivational speaker for young people.  He believes that "With the right help and the right incentive, many disadvantaged kids could achieve outstanding results."   He certainly has.

Son of Hamas...This incredible chronicle was published in 2010.  Mosab Hassan Yousef was born in the West Bank city of Ramallah "to one of the most religious Islamic families of the Middle East."  It was the same year I was giving birth to my first child in California so I have a very real sense of how long he has been on the planet; he is now thirty-seven years old, but he has lived in an utterly different world than the one I know. He is currently living under political asylum somewhere in America.   He didn't set out to write a New York Times bestseller, but he has.  He didn't set out to do many of the things he has done.

I am recommending these books to you.  I am  reticent to tell you much about their journeys as they are so personal and I want to neither add nor take away from the narrative of these brave souls.  Each one of them hopes to make the world a safer and better realm for others and to tell their respective stories they have to trust the reader to look beyond cultural or emotive differences.  These three lives with not a word written of them already represent tremendous  giving and impact in the world. Sharing one's story is an additional gift, a tremendous vulnerability and I am glad to have been a recipient.


I 'll be interested if you have read any of these books.

If you haven't read Mr. Yousef's book, start there, it's truly a challenging and powerful story and ever so pertinent to trouble stalking our globe.  I am already thinking of rereading it.


By the way, each of these books had an acknowledged co-writer:
Katie Davis with Beth Clark
Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy
Mosab Hassan Yousef with Ron Bracken

Book Review: What I Saw in California by Edwin Bryant 1848

I am near the end of  reading  What I Saw in California   by Edwin Bryant, pub.1848.  

His journey begins  when he leaves his home in Louisville Kentucky on the 18th of April, 1846  and his journal begins when he reaches the town of Independence, Missouri where he will buy a yoke of oxen and  yoke himself up with other travelers set to leave for the west on May 1st, 1846. 

It is a real log, as he says, "My design is to give a truthful  and not an exaggerated and fanciful account of the occurrences of the journey, and of the scenery, capabilities and general features of the  countries through which we shall pass, with incidental sketches of the leading characteristics of their populations."(p. 18) 

 I have enjoyed his documentation greatly.  Without my having to more than imagine the incredible toil,  he took me, with his words, across plains and over mountains, through wet nights on cold ground. He shared the taste of limpid waters, cold springs joyfully found, the comfort of bird song in lonely corridors, the relief of finding grasses rich with nourishment for their animals, and the heft and potential of soils he described as argillaceous ( Yes, I had to look this word up!).   

    It is June 22nd, 2014 as I write my post.  By the third week of  June in 1846, Bryant's party had already changed out oxen for mules and horses and reached the Platte River in Nebraska where they camp, the night of  summer solstice,  on the river banks  about three miles from a 300 to 500 foot high and mile wide rock formation known as "Chimney Rock"  that has been in their sight all day.  Mr. Bryant thought it looked much like architectural ruins and although he describes it rather well, as he does all the environs, he writes this the following day.

"June 22- The rain poured down in torrents about one o'clock this morning. and the storm continued to rage with much violence for several hours...

If I could I would endeavor to describe to the reader by the use of language, a picture presented this morning at sunrise, just as we were leaving our encampment, among these colossal ruins of nature.  But the essay would be in vain.  No language, except that which is addressed directly to the eye, by the pencil and brush of the artist, can portray even a faint outline of its almost terrific sublimity.  A line of pale and wintry light behind the stupendous ruins, ( as they appeared to the eye,) served to define their innumerable shapes, their colossal grandeur, and their gloomy and mouldering magnificence. Over us and resting upon the summits of these, were the black masses of vapor, whose impending weight appeared ready to fall and crush every thing beneath them...." ( p.103)

I was encouraged by this book as to the value of simple daily writing.  I was reminded of the great efforts many made to come to a land that is so often taken for granted and despoiled rather than appreciated and stewarded as it should be.  And when Edwin Bryant ends his daily scribbling with an estimate of the miles traveled " Distance 10 miles." I  hardly know what to feel.  I am one who can traverse so many miles so quickly and not even feel the wind or weather in my air conditioned car...amazing...and yet...

Black Butte a 6334 ft lava dome in the Cascade Range of California  

I intend to next post photographs of a trip we recently made in that car to visit Grandma Beth  then some friends, on to my brother and his wife on their  ranch  near the Oregon border and then, by way of  Mount Lassen Park, east to Reno, Nevada to some aunties. Imagine how many words Edwin Bryant might have dispensed with if he had downloadable pixels at his disposable.  Maybe I will let the wordy Mr. Bryant influence me, and I'll web-log away as the slide show unfolds.  But this review, meant to entice you to a good read, is all for this morn. (Distance...oh, so many miles) 

with best wishes,

Jeannette

Page references to paper back ( ISBN 0-8032-6070-9) Complete work  also available for free on line at archive.org.

Memory...a Swamp of Nostalgia or a Call to Action?

Memory is at best,  says John Steinbeck, "a faulty, warpy reservoir."  And so at 58 years old he, with his poodle, Charlie, took a  transAmerica road trip to  reacquaint himself with his country so that he could do more than write about the United States and her people from memory.  I recently finished reading  Travels with Charley. This won't be a book review,  I'm just sorting out some feelings it brought up in me.

  I enjoyed much of his perspective of places I have driven

through and a few I haven't, but my interest intensified when he returned to the place of his birth, not only because of Steinbeck's unique history on the Monterey Peninsula, or even my recent sojourn of seven years there, but because he captures the commonality of the feelings of returning to places dear to the heart only to find them so changed as to be near unrecognizable.

  That was a woody hill with live oaks dark green against the parched grass where the coyotes sang on moonlit nights.  The top is shaved off and a television relay station lunges at the sky and feeds a nervous picture to thousands of tiny houses clustered like aphids beside the roads. (p.194-5)

His descriptions of Monterey, which I admit I am missing some these days,  were tripping off deeper switches of the myths I swaddle of my childhood spent at the foot of a mountain.  

There was a little town...      

  Can't we all, in some way,  fill in the blanks that those ellipses create?  

I find it difficult to write about my native place, northern California.  It should be the easiest, because I know that strip angled against the Pacific better than any place in the world.  But I find it not one thing but many-one printed over another until the whole thing blurs.  What it is is warped with memory of what it was and that with what happened there to me, the whole bundle wracked until objectiveness is nigh impossible. (p. 194 Penguin Ed) 

Steinbeck knows his complaint  is typical, sees how common is his resentment of what is new and those who have brought it, but no sooner than he has acknowledged that we are all the newcomers to someone, no sooner than he has labeled his observations as a "flurry of nostalgic spite" ( p.205)  and a disservice to the Monterey Peninsula, he laments other changes he encountered.  

Nostalgia can be overwhelming, and nostalgia is one  element that can blur and warp memory.  I see it in myself.  I coddle memories of things as they once were as the world changes  around me.  And it isn't that I couldn't make a case for it;  much beauty I have known has been destroyed.   There are other aspects of social change that I don't experience as  improvements or  necessary as well.  

So somehow, taking this little road trip with Steinbeck highlighted for me the need to step carefully around the mushy ground of nostalgia which in its self-focus tends, to keep us looking back.  But there is firm turf in history and informative power even in our own memories worth  keeping and sharing to  encourage and inspire in self and others,  forward focus to protect and strengthen that which remains.  

Destination East of Eden

She made it to the railway station...

had a ticket for her destination...  

( shades of  Simon and Garfunkel )

This picture is actually on the other end of the railroad line where we were awaiting her arrival.  She boarded a train early in the morning in San Diego which took her to Santa Barbara where the northbound passengers were transferred to a bus for the rest of the ride; and the bus was late.  Now we were  sitting in the railway station until we started  poking around the old Southern Pacific yard .

If you have ever eaten salad in the USA from greens you didn't grow yourself,  chances are you have  eaten lettuce from Salinas, California reputed to grow about  80% of the lettuce in the United States.

Salinas, named for its many salty marshes, is  a valley famous not only for lettuce and other produce grown year round, but for one of it sons, author  John Steinbeck, who was born in Salinas in 1902.  Steinbeck wrote many novels, including the famous The Grapes of Wrath and my personal favorite of his,  a saga of the forces of good and evil, East of Eden,   set in the Salinas valley.  Steinbeck's  character, Adam Trask, is depicted as being one of the first  to ship lettuce wrapped in paper and iced, across the country.

Being at the railroad station made me think of scenes in that book.  It is definitely a book I've been willing to read more than once and maybe it is time to give it another spin...or maybe at least rent the James Dean movie again.  If you haven't read the book, read the book first...as good as the movie is the book is a whole other experience.

The sun was out, as you can see and I took a picture

                                                                      of this tree

                                          and of this tree too, the  California Pepper Tree that we had parked under.

                                        It was after five pm on Sunday afternoon and the place was pretty quiet but 

 apparently I too was being photographed as I wandered around snapping shots of 

historic luggage

and flowers in the garden of the two preserved historic houses neighboring the station,

                                                    and a "ride control."

and finally in my view finder...

there was who we were waiting for!     Way worth the wait and  just in time for Father's Day.

Always Expose for the Shadows of the Subject

"Always expose for the shadows of the subject..."   so says my 1948 focal guide retrieved from storage a few weeks ago.  Somehow the advice suggests other connotations....the realms of metaphor... " always expose for the shadow of the subject."

The other day  it was the Walter T. Foster painting book, Seapower that got me thinking this way.
I had looked at the  10" x 14" teaching book  with absolutely no intentions of trying to paint the ocean or the cliffs I live above and yet I

enjoyed perusing the step by step paintings and the tips and clues to doing the same.

"If you continually think in large masses of light and shadow ..."    "Always think and paint the large masses first..."   "...pick out the lighting...then you will know exactly where you are going."

  So if you know where the light emanates from, you will know where you are going; that makes more than sense to me.

Later in the day, out and about on the land,  I found  the painting advice impacting how I saw the ocean waves, the light on the rocks, the blue of the sky.  Lessons for painters are first and foremost, lessons for the eye.

Writers must see carefully too and one's eye must be attuned to many realms.  It's good to be able to see one's own framework of understanding, to filter the light from the dark.  Every heart frames reality in its own terms, its own limits.  To have an impact it needn't be large, but there must be an intersection with other frames of reality other than one's own.

I look at the sea.  Clouds are stretched like peach tinged taffy along the horizon. Light is scattered across the waters so white and shimmering  in areas that the eye can barely absorb the beauty without reflexively looking away.   I can change my visual perspective and for a moment the waters in front of me appear like a bowl, but I know the horizon is distance beyond my scope.

There's a boat out there carrying its own reality across the waters, but to me it is little more than a dark speck.  We are often in each other's view, but seeing eye to eye, well the eyes and the heart can take a lot training. 

Such are the topics that have been on my mind lately.  You might enjoy the essay I  wrote this week and posted on Write Purpose  "Why We do the Things We Do "

Now that I have read  my old focal guide, I want to see if I can translate it to my digital camera.   My  notes to my self need to say.."Always be aware of your tendency to just point and shoot on automatic..."   and of course that too has metaphorical implications; I'm not just talking about taking pictures.

 ~~~~~~~~~

A Meta Blog Moment ~ Blog Types and Why People Write Them

I never do this...just open up the new post box and start typing without a clue as to what I will be entering.

Have you have ever mentioned that you have a BLOG to someone who  has not ventured into the "Blog-o-sphere" and you see the eyes glaze over and the lips form the word as if it might dirty up their mouth a bit..."a blog?"

Why do we share what we share? BLOGS... Some are very specific and generous and it seems obvious...there is much to share.  It got me thinking about all the different kinds of blog categories that I have encountered.  It also made me think about how my own two blogs can't be tightly categorized themselves.

I  began making a list...hmm...maybe I should sort these approximately alphabetically so I don't hurt any one's feelings.  Obviously I am not going to even think of all the types, let alone write them down.  And of course there are some "types" of blogs that I just rush right over, like stepping over the leavings of a stray dog, trying not to even break stride while employing full caution.


To the list then and my annotated comments and a few referrals  to blogs that might illustrate my point.  Incomplete, partial and biased though it may be, please remember, I do take comments and you can tell me what I have left out.  And I ask you now, as Daniel Webster did when he finished  his first dictionary, please notice how much I have managed thus far to  include.


*Arts and Crafts  There is an amazing amount of sewing,  painting and creating going on. Sometimes I am inspired and sometimes am so impressed I just marvel.  I have seen tutorials that are flat out designed to teach from A to Z.  I have shared a few things I have made, mostly just to join in the fun.
*Book reviews Books take time, steer me to the best ones.  I have written up a few reviews.  I actually find it helpful in terms of thinking through the reading.  I am grateful for good reviews I have read from others.
*Cooking There are a lot folks prowling the web looking for recipes for meals that make themselves while the cook is surfing.  However, there are a  lot of real cooks  blogging and sharing their skill and the joy of feeding people good food.  I have shared a recipe or two and I must say in my behalf that I try not to be a bad influence.  Kale and chard, not chocolate, have been my public focus.  ( You do know by now that  I am not a tell-all kind of person.)
*Creative Writing The art and craft of writing...well...a wise author knows one has to be careful posting work in progress because if it is good, it just might get clipped and shared, copyright be d**ned...but writing about writing lives large. 

*Farming  I love your horses and chickens and goats  and donkeys and all the other animals that don't live at my house right now.  I still have a dog, two cats and do live amidst the wild wanderers, so a few animals make occasional appearances in my blog land.
*Families   Bloggers have uncommonly cute children...( please don't spoil them.) And consider not printing  out their full name and birth dates and all too... did you notice one of the recent apprehended possible spies was using the name and birth records of a child who had died at 6 months of age? Also think about how you will feel when your little ones are larger and ask you in very convincing terms to please just take all posts involving their potty training down now or else.  But the interactions and support and wisdom sharing that does go on via the family blogs is something to behold. 
*Gardening I  enjoy seeing what others are growing and what they are learning about the primal struggle known as gardening.  Recently a woman asked me what we have in our greenhouse and after naming a few of our lovely plants, I added "and lots of mealy bugs."  She had a solution, another "bug" commonly called  "mealy bug destroyers."   We got some expensive little Cryptolaemus montrouzieri, and if they work, well, I am sure that either I or my husband will blog a bit about  them. 
*Health & Well Being I am thinking of starting a new blog...about the need to add ourselves to our list of doctors....self-doctoring.   My first piece of advice will be based on how we too need to observe the  Hippocratic Oath: "First do no harm." It is really the best way to take care of ourselves and often the hardest with which to comply.
*Journey Logs... classic journals that document climbing mountains, sailing the seas, touring foreign lands. I have seen lovely photos of places I am unlikely to ever visit, painstakingly documented by people I will never know...amazing...thank you.
*Personal Journey Spiritual Blogs There are a lot of encouragers on the web.
*Movies  Movies old and new pop up in blogs. I find myself reading a blog in India and laughing about old American movies.  This link could very easily also been in the stream of consciousness section, if you read any of him you will understand why.
*Music  I haven't added any music to my blogs...and I often leave my speakers off so if you have music on yours I may not have heard it, unless that is obviously what your blog is all about.  But as I sit at the computer, live music is all about me...so...I am listening!

*Nature blogs I live on the Pacific Coast 

  and I try to share it photographically with you frequently, but I am not as good about it as some of the bloggers I've been reading.  One man in Yosemite posts almost every day.

*(Get) Organized Blogs You know, like how to get your kit together. People sit down at their computers and start realizing they don't want to end up on the next televised production of "Hoarders" and so they blog about purposing to get organized and get rid of things they don't need or use. Oh, and then there is talk about UFOs  that means, I think, unfinished objects...projects that are haunting one's psyche.  Confessing UFOs on a blog moves the project  up to a higher level  of priority and completion then not only gives one something to photograph and blog about it sets one free for new creations.  The thing is, this actually seems to work.  Folks that blog seem to be getting more things done.

*Photography...the pictures I have seen...thank you all. And there are even those who would teach us how to use cameras and photo editing programs more effectively. 
*Political Blogs  It was Will  Rogers who said   "On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."  but  I better let you find your own political blogs...people tend to get hot over this stuff.  Wasn't it G. K. Chesterton who said something like: It's good to get into hot water, it keeps you clean. Okay so over on Write Purpose I  speak up a little about politics.  I try to be diplomatic...or is it that I try to get all the curved lines in focus knowing that I won't be able to straighten them out?
*Special Interest Blogs Thanks to this blogger, I have seen lighthouses all over the world...straightforward and a truly special "special interest."
*Stream of Consciousness Blogs Hey, I am trying today (well, thank last night for this really, that's when I typed up most of it, but I felt enough concern for you all that I didn't post until ( wait, I still haven't posted it, so we will have to wait and see if and when that happens.  I am obviously a firm believer in giving myself permission...never mind that is another story, back to my blog about blogs. (And if you had an English teacher who told you that if you have to use parenthesises there may be a better, more elegant and comprehensible way to say whatever you are trying to say, he or she was right...but that too is another story.)  

*Stream of Unconsciousness Blogs   Enough said.
*Technology  A type of blog where I might go for help, but you are unlikely to find me writing one that would be of any help.
*What I did today blogs Clearly for obvious reasons, some people can pull this off better than others.  I mean, by all means, it might help all of us to write down what we did on any specific day, but some of  it clearly is not, shall we say,  fit for human consumption.
* What I wish I did today blogs  no cheese down that tube
*What I should do tomorrow blogs this could have some promise
*What you should do tomorrow blogs Ah, thanks...I think.

*All the kind of blogs I have left out unintentionally or otherwise blogs
*And then...blogs about blogging ...is this a Meta blog?
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I warned you it would be incomplete....the day is calling. Look what Mark just brought in from the garden:

Now should I just press post?  Or should I struggle back here soon and find all the photos that would so delightfully augment this?...Later! We need to go for a little drive and pick up the mail.  And when should I find all the "typos" and "thinkos"?  I better not post this yet.....

Why It's Okay If I Don't

win the fabric giveaway that I am going to tell you about, even though it would be fun. Maybe you will win, I'll post a link in here somewhere, don't worry. Anyway, I have a theory that folks who live where it gets cold sooner and longer do more sewing than those of us who live in more temperate climes. My other justifications for not getting into this room as often as I would like

to make potholders with a personal touch or other little presents...

well those reasons are are complicated and many...they run the gamut too.

For example, every once in a while I feel the urge to actually cook...

and then if I eat of this...well you know that I have to go for a walk and if I am out walking I am likely to want to take photographs and then if I take photos I am likely to want to share them with you on my blog...

And then I know it sounds old-fashioned but I still like to read books...

and the most important book I read isn't even in that picture...

And besides that I like to write

and have I another blog that is a little more serious than this one...

and of course I am silly enough to watch a little of the old tube...

This isn't our television...ours is no where near this big or old...I saw this in one of my favorite second hand shops and had to take its picture.

And there are rooms to keep clean and pretty and

gardens to tend
and we mustn't forget

the cat... she takes a lot of petting.

And while this hasn't been an exhaustive list, I realize you dear reader, may be exhausted so I will just say that I really would enjoy having Jackie send that pretty fabric she is giving away



out my way~Here's where I learned to drive~ Scary, huh?
But then again, maybe you are the one meant to win, so you pop on over to

Jackie's Quilt Blog aka Canton Village Quilt Works

and follow the instructions! One of things that I enjoy there is her frequent links to other interesting blogs and notice how she calls her giveaway...Sharing Good Fortune. She does share a lot. Go on over and see just how much piecing and quilting and sewing a dedicated woman gets done and please come back and visit me again soon!

Do Children Still Read Raggedy Ann?

Raggedy Ann Dolls are very popular in America and I suspect they have traveled to other countries spreading their good cheer. When I was a child I didn’t have a Raggedy Ann doll but I had Raggedy Ann and Andy books written by Johnny Gruelle (1880–1938). Yesterday at the local SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) benefit shop, I found two Raggedy Ann books. Worth Gruelle, Johnny Gruelle's son, did the illustrations for this Raggedy Ann and the Golden Ring book. Here’s how the story starts:

“Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy were walking through the deep, deep woods in search of more adventures. The sunshine streamed down through the branches of the evergreen trees in ribbons of golden light and the birds sang and twittered happily in the leafy branches.”

Hey, that’s just how I felt the other morning when the sunlight broke though the clouds in between drenching deluges. I would that more children had woods to walk in and that play in nature in general was safely possible. Do children still read Raggedy Ann and Andy?
The stories are very fanciful, reliant on magic and imagination, dolls coming to life at night and wandering around with elves out in the woods where they find soda fountains and silver cups for their thirst and tinfoil wrapped chocolates for treats. Many of the illustrations capture changing moments of light, dark trees silhouetted against night skies that touched me with a longing to see glory and mystery. Standing in the benefit shop, thumbing through from one illustration to another, I re-experienced the outdoor nooks where I did so much of my childhood reading. I loved to hide under the shade of the willow trees on a plank that crossed the creek, my feet dangling in the water if the day was hot. Then in the empty lot next door I had a wooden perch in one of the apple trees.
I’d sit reading in the trees surrounded with the smell of the delicate pink and white spring blossoms or later in the summer, taste the apples hanging all around me.
Reading the Gruelle Statement of Ideals
I realized how the bright and wonderful pictures, the smiling doll faces, the magic and fun of dolls playing when folks aren’t looking, had brought those good hearted intentions of the Gruelles through to me as a child and that today I was getting another dose






of the sunny cheer that's still bound in the pages of Raggedy Ann’s stories. Thank you Mr. Gruelle and family.

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