Dear Folks,
The heat and humidity of summertime in Arkansas trained me to slow down between June and September. There was still work to be done, for sure—meetings and deadlines still called, practices and performances continued apace, and camps began—but the weather forced us to change our patterns, grabbing everyone by the ankles around Memorial Day and not letting go for 12 weeks. If I was going to run, I had to do it before 6:30 in the morning or after 9:00 p.m. If my grandmother’s house needed to be straightened, she cleaned before breakfast. The Farmer’s Market on Main Street in Little Rock thinned out considerably after 10:00 a.m., and the men on my father’s street work crews had to knock off by noon. Except for downtown, midday streets were empty enough to hear crickets, or in some neighborhoods, the cycling of air conditioners. With no electrical cooling, we sat on the back porch until late telling stories, and went to bed with ice cubes in our mouths. This subdued rhythm got into my bones, long before I ever took a real summer vacation, and led me to appreciate the fruit that only quiet can bear.
I hope you have laid on your back at least once and watched the clouds form and dissolve. I hope you have gotten up before the sun and listened to the city waking up, and stayed up late listening to the crickets or the radio or your people telling stories. I hope you have let your mind wander and wonder, and that a way has opened through some old problem or hurt. I hope you’ve taken a nap, and stared into space, and called an old friend. I hope you’ve found time to read. (If not, don’t worry… Labor Day is still weeks away!)
We have a screened in porch in the Adirondacks, and several rocking chairs, and between hikes and the lake, I read. Here’s where my mind has wandered:
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, 2018 Pulitzer prize in biography by Caroline Fraser. I didn’t read the “Little House” books as a kid or like the 80’s TV show of the same name, but I grew to love the young adult series when we read it aloud to Helena. Wilder’s life was harder and grittier than the novels reveal, a “relentless struggle” of rootlessness and poverty. In the biography, I was especially interested in the conflict between the mother and her daughter, Rose, and the evolution from the hardships the family experienced to the truth Wilder sought to convey in her fiction.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, by Erik Larson. Larson’s detective work discovering a serial killer who lured his victims to the 1893 Columbian Exposition is riveting and awful, but I was more interested in how the World’s Fair came to be. The monumental task of transforming swampy lakefront property into a stage set designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted was as riveting as the murder mystery. The Exposition brought us Cracker Jack, Shredded Wheat, the Ferris Wheel, and a dazzling evening display that used more electricity than the entire city of Chicago.
I Make Cups by Ehren Tool. Tool is a veteran of the first Gulf War, a Marine, and a peace activist who has made and given away over 18,000 cups since 2001. He says the cup is the appropriate scale to talk about war, because they go into the world hand-to-hand, one story at a time. Using his own memories and mementos sent to him by other veterans, Tool creates graphically challenging, sometimes disturbing vessels that are also quite delicate. Tool writes, “I hope that some of the cups can be starting points for conversations about unspeakable things… between veterans and the people close to them… about war and its causes.”
Prodigal Father, Wayward Son: A Roadmap to Reconciliation by Gifford and Sam Keen. Trading chapters, written as a conversation between a leader of the late 20th century “Men’s Movement” (see Fire in the Belly) and his middle-aged son, Sam and Gif finally address the pain and dis-connections in their relationship. Healing comes when they each from his own perspective tell the “often told stories” that shaped them, which helps them remember the even more important stories they had forgotten.
Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character by Kay Redfield Jamison. Jamison’s book is not a biography, but rather a study of how a person with an “extraordinary will, an unwavering sense of vocation, and a huge talent,” dealt with the fact that his artistic gift was also the source of his considerable suffering. Lowell’s naturalistic and yet transcendent poetry is even more meaningful for Jamison’s research on the author’s bipolar disorder.
What are you reading? What are the gifts that this summer is bearing? I look forward to catching up.
Love, David