THE FATHER OF THE FAIRY TALE - CHARLES PERRAULT

That’s Charles Perrault, not CBS’ “On the Road” Charles Kuralt, though both were story-tellers. On first reading the names, you might rhyme them. Not even close!  Perrault’ is pronounced in the French way, and you know what that means: ‘pehr-OH’

So why should you know the name Charles Perrault? This man, born 390 years ago this month, wrote some of the fairy tales we love to this day. He is considered the Father of the Fairy Tale.

Grandfatherly-looking gentleman -
and that has to be a wig he's wearing.

During his fairly long life, Perrault was, by training, a lawyer, working in the government as one of the officials charged with royal buildings, among them, le Château de Versailles. Indeed, he wrote the guide to the labyrinth and its fountains. Promoting literature and the arts, he also wrote poems, treatises, and commemorative pieces. He was part of the ongoing and often violent debate called “Ancients and Moderns,” that argued the relative merits of ancient Greek and Roman literature versus those of the contemporary writers. During this Age of Reason, at the height of French literature, the times of Louis XIV, the late years of the Renaissance, Perrault wrote for the modernists.

Be that as it may, after an interesting life and having just lost his government post, at the age of 67 he published his collection of fairy tales named “Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals.” Of course you know “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty.” What child of the Disney era doesn’t? “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Blue Beard” are his creations too.

The infamous Bluebeard -
a cautionary tale, if there ever was one

Perrault’s collection was subtitled “Contes de ma mère l’Oye” in French, or in English, “Tales of Mother Goose.” This is cited as being the beginning of “Mother Goose” collections. When the tales were first translated into English, the editors added more stories and nursery rhymes. In the long printing history of “Mother Goose” recipe for the mix of these two has varied from publication to publication.

Fairy tales and fables, stories and poems, had certainly been around before Perraul’s time. They were usually meant as life lessons for children, and every parent had cautionary tales to pass on to the next generation. Perrault recognized the need to flesh out simple folk-tales, creating what then were fairly grim stories. For example, “Little Red Riding Hood” was meant to warn young ladies not to listen to strangers lest, like the heroine, they wind up as the wolf’s dinner. In the original version, that’s exactly what happened. “All the better to eat you with, my dear.” And no woodsman came to her rescue, as he does in more modern versions of the story. 

You know who these two are.

And speaking of grim, the brothers Grimm are often credited with writing tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but Perrault wrote them down over a century before. Getting the tales into print solidified them, so to speak, and preserved them for a population that was increasingly literate and less in the habit of telling folk tales as an evening’s entertainment.

Cinderella - and not your Disney version.
There are many more illustrated versions of the story.
This is by Gustav Doré.

 Today, in this age of almost universal literacy, we’ve books and electronic devices to provide the lessons. We usually read to our little ones, rather than pass down or make up stories, and consider as quaint the stories from Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, even Aesop. Quaint or not, lessons are universal – we just dress them in modern clothes.

ARE YOU ANXIOUS?

He makes a lot of folks anxious, doesn't he?

Anxious

Excited

Eager

Over a year ago, my Canadian friend wrote this is her New Year’s email:

Well, it’s 2017, and now we’ll see how your fearless leader makes out as the new President of the United States.  He makes me very, very anxious, that man does, and I’m not even a U.S. citizen!  I hope and pray for the best.  These times are like that so-called Chinese curse:  May you live in “interesting” times.

Interesting times indeed. The year has been very interesting indeed, and that man still makes a good majority of us anxious. That’s “anxious” use in the true sense of the word: there’s a definite sense of anxiety.

I’d really like to smack the first person who used the word “anxious” in place of the word “eager,” and got that definition accepted into common usage. In my handy, dandy Random House College Dictionary dated 1984, there is no such usage.

THE FATHER OF PINYIN

Every once in a while, Google celebrates a person I’ve never heard of. Today is one of those days – they celebrate the 112^th birthday of Zhou Youguang, the Chinese “economist, banker, linguist, sinologist, publisher and supercentenarian, known as the “father of Pinyin.” (I had to look up that supercentenarian – it means he lived over 100 years – he lived exactly 111 years, to be exact.) This man was a polymath, as one can guess from the range of his expertise, and he lived through some very turbulent times.

Google gives this brief definition of Pinyin, taken from Wikipedia. (And what would the curious mind do without those two?) The definition also gives the various ways to pronounce pinyin, which means “spell sound.” There’s the reason for my interest: pronunciation, actually, pronunciation versus spelling.

Pinyin

Language writing system

Hanyu Pinyin, often abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is normally written using Chinese characters. Wikipedia

Yale Romanization: Pingyām [developed in the 1940's to help G.I.s communicate with their Chinese counterparts]

Canton Romanization: Ping yem

Bopomofo: ㄆㄧㄣ ㄧㄣ   [a phonetic script]

Wade–Giles: P‘in-yin [the old pronunciation system used in the west]

Jyutping: Ping jam   [Cantonese pronunciation]

Hokkien POJ: peng-im/pheng-im [pronunciation in most of China's southeast]

I’ve always wondered why the Latinized spelling of Chinese words, at least the spellings we use today, too often doesn’t match the sound of the word. The western world used the Wade-Giles pronunciations up until the late 1970s. In 1955, the Chinese government set about revising their language to increase literacy. They charged Youguang with the task of revising the way the language is represented using the Latin alphabet. They changed Peking, the Wade-Giles spelling and pronunciation, to Beijing. O.K. they could do that.

Beijing is pronounced bei (bay) jing – spot on

Guangzhou is pronounced guang zhow – close

Feng Shui is pronounced fung schway – not close at all

So, that I what I learned in the hour or so since I turned on my PC this morning. I’m still wondering why some spellings aren’t closer to their pronunciation, but now I know that pronunciations vary within China, as they do here in America, and I know who gets the blame: Zhou Youguang. I can still learn a lot in my old age.

OUR COLORS ARE RUNNING

This post is about flags, not the expression on his face.

They broke in to yesterday afternoon's TV programs on the "broadcast" channels to televise the press conference of our President and Norway's Prime Minister, Erna Solberg. I was involved in something else, so I wasn't paying too much attention.

I looked up and first recognized the Norwegian flag. I never fail to spot that flag, even if it is only one in a U.N. type flag array. (In this household we are very partial to anything Norwegian.) So I listened for a while. I had no idea of the question that had just been asked of him, but the man was going on about Hillary Clinton. What in the world could she have to do with our relations with Norway? Nothing. He just threw her into the mix, three times in fact, as I later learned. He'll take any opportunity to bolster himself. Don't get me started on what I think of that man.

But I digress... One thing that struck me, flag-spotter that I am, was the relative states of those red, white, and blue flags. The colors of the Norwegian flag are crisp and clean. The colors of the American flag are running. That white is getting a bit pink. It's time to replace a few things at the White House.

MCMLXVIII - 1968 – FIFTY YEARS GONE BY

Historians mark 1968 as one of the most important years in the last century of our country’s history. Good things were happening, but the year was rife with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, plane crashes and sea craft sinking, racial demonstrations, student unrest, bombings, shoot-outs, and world-wide protests against many ills. Some of my readers might be too young to remember the major events of the year, but many were in their adult years, and they well remember, if not the specific date and year, then the incident itself.

1968 started off, history wise, in January, with the Pueblo Incident. The North Koreans captured the U.S. Navy’s lightly armed intelligence ship, the USS Pueblo, in what they said were their waters, and what the U.S. maintained were international waters. The crew was detained and tortured. It took almost a year to resolve the problem and bring the men home by that Christmas. The North Koreans, still a problem, still have the ship.

In that same month, in a customary time of truce during the Lunar New Year, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive. After the incident, public support of the war began to wane, and historians see this bloody battle as the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. The My Lai incident took place in March, and the war raged on.

While those two incidents touched many of us, they happened overseas. In the next few months, history hit right at home. We all remember where we were in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and we likely remember where we were in April and June of 1968, when the Reverend Martin Luther King and then-Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy were also gunned down. Their assassins were found and convicted, but as with JFK’s shooting, the conspiracy theories are still with us.

In October of 1968, perhaps reacting to and empowered by the assassinations and by protests and demonstrations across our country, the gold and bronze medalists at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, in a silent protest against racial bias in the U.S., raised black-gloved fists during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner.” We scarcely remember their sport or their names but, sadly, we can’t be unaware that such racial bias continues today.

 

In 1968, the world in continued on, as it usually does, with its basic schedule of events. There were games and awards, elections, inventions, and debuts and introductions, weddings and funerals. Among them were some of the good things:

·         The Winter Olympics were held in Grenoble, France, where Norway won the most medals

·          “60 Minutes” debuted, and is still airing, minus Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney, on CBS

·         “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In debuted on NBC” (Sock it to who?)

·         “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” debuted on network TV

·         Boeing introduce the first 747, the jumbo jet that could carry 374 passengers

·         Oscars for the best movie of 1968 went to Oliver! And Katharine Hepburn, in The Lion in Winter, and Barbra Streisand (“Hello, gorgeous.”) in Funny Girl, tied for Best Actress

·         The Beatles produced the two-record “White Album” 

·         It was the year of Super Bowl II – the Green Bay Packers beat the Oakland Raiders,

·         And the year the Detroit Tigers, down 3-1, came back to beat the St. Louis Cardinals 4-3 in the World Series

·         Richard Nixon was nominated as the Republican candidate, and Hubert Humphrey as Democratic candidate for President

·         Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis

·         “The Mother of All Demos” demonstrated the first computer mouse, and almost all of the other basic elements, both hardware and software, of the modern, personal computing we use today

·         The Gold Standard was repealed

·         The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index closed over 100 for the first time (It’s now way over 2500 and rising.)

And in December, the crew of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders became the first humans to travel around the moon. This very successful mission was a wonderful close to a year that had seen too many tragic events. In his book, A Man on the Moon, about the Apollo Program, Andrew Chaikin relates that after they returned home, the astronauts got hundreds of telegrams and letters, one of which was particularly meaningful. The telegram said “You saved 1968.”

                                                       “Ob-la-di  Ob-la-dah, life goes on”

NEVER A CROSS WORD – ALWAYS A PUZZLE

Sharpen your pencils - it's puzzle time.

Ah, another one that didn't make the cut at the magazine. I do love being able to use the leftovers. 

Puzzles, brain teasers, have been intriguing mankind for centuries. From the Labyrinth that held the Minotaur to the word square puzzles found in Pompeii, to the modern Rubik’s Cube, puzzles take many forms. Pencil and paper puzzles are probably the most popular.

The Maze at Hampton Court.
They say if you keep on hand on the wall as you go through,
you'll eventually make your way out, but I didn't want to
venture in when we were there years ago.

Crossword puzzles have been around now for over one hundred years. Many people do them every day, many tackle only the Sunday puzzles like those in The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Los Angeles Times.

Some people would call it cheating, but when you don’t know the answer to the clue, look it up. You’d be cheating yourself if you passed up an opportunity to learn something. If you are electronically inclined, you can do the puzzles right on your PC or tablet, or do a printout from there and consult Google or Wikipedia for the answers. You can even research the history of crossword puzzles on Wikipedia. If you like to keep such things print based and hand-done, keep an atlas and dictionary handy. Let your motto be “When in doubt, check it out.”

Even if you are pretty well read and well-rounded information-wise, you may not be familiar with the answers to such clues as “Gyllenhall of Brokeback Mountain” or a “New Mexico State athlete.” So if you can’t get them by filling in the answers you do know, consult your handy-dandy references. Finishing a crossword puzzle with no errors and no spaces left blank is like giving yourself a present.

Variety is the spice of life, they say, and it also keeps senior brains in tip-top shape. Research suggests that our brains become accustomed to the ways of the various types of puzzles we do. It is a good idea to switch from crosswords to acrostics to word searches, and on more mathematical to things like Sudoku. And, of course, switch back again. There are dozens of puzzle magazines in print: magazines that feature just one type of puzzle, and magazines that include many types of puzzles between their covers.

If you are connected to the internet, the puzzle world really opens out. Free puzzles can be found at sites like pennydellpuzzles.com, games.washingtonpost.com, and thejigsawpuzzles.com. For about $40 a year, about 11 cents a day, you can get a subscription to the on-line puzzles from The New York Times. Their selection includes crosswords that get more and more difficult as the week goes on, acrostics, variety puzzles, Sudoku, Set!, and KenKen, and their puzzle archive goes back for years.

Don’t just sit there contemplating your navel, contemplate a new puzzle.

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY

My parents on their wedding day - 1939

I always remember my mother's birthday: the day after Christmas. I once blogged about it in a little post called The Feast of Stephen. Mom would have been 100 today.
I do know that we, her children, liked to make her birthday as special as we could, especially when we came to know that when she was younger, her birthday was often brushed aside. "Oh Dorothy, you just had Christmas yesterday, you don't need anything else." Maybe not, but a cake would have been nice.
One year when I was in college, my gifting funds were low. I had money in my budget to buy her two nice things, but I knew she wanted another in Will and Ariel Durant's series, The Story of Civilization. One book, over budget, what to do? I got the book for her. I wrapped half in pink paper, the other half in red. White ribbon. She was please, and I so was I.

Again - Happy Birthday Mom, if ever you are wherever you are.

SAINT NICHOLAS AROUND THE WORLD

Ah, yes - another double-duty piece written for the magazine and eminently bloggable. And what would I do without Google Images? I do love this one below - Santa and all the Arctic animals - even my favorite, the sea otter.

With the worldwide spread of languages and customs through exploration, trade, and missionary work, enhanced by today’s fast communications, a good part of the world acknowledges Christmas. Those in and from the European countries and the Americas observe it as a religious holiday. Elsewhere, it is often celebrated as a day of good will and gift giving. One of the modern, ubiquitous symbols of Christmas is Santa Claus, the evolved St. Nicholas.

Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and the rest of the squad pull Santa Claus’ sleigh as he makes his rounds on Christmas Eve here in America. Contrary to NORAD and their popular Santa Tracker, noradsanta.org, available in many languages, or Google’s santatracker.google.com, in circling the world with presents for good boys and girls, Santa doesn’t always travel by sleigh. We have it on good authority that in Australia, because he couldn’t fit in a kangaroo’s pouch, Santa rides a camel. In Russia, he handles the reins of a troika, in Holland he rides a white horse, in Norway he might get around on snow shoes, and here in Sun City Carolina Lakes he’s been seen on a Segway.

Santa doesn’t always wear a plush, red suit and tasseled hat with white fur trim. In Mexico he might wear a big, red sombrero, in England he is often seen in green. Over his indoor clothes, in some countries he wears a long, hooded, usually-red robe. The gift-bringer in some countries isn’t always a jolly, saintly man. In Italy, the goodies are brought by La Bafana, the holiday witch dressed in black, brown, or grey peasant garb. Wee, gnome-like and likewise-dressed Julenissen or Jultomten do the honors in many Scandinavian homes. Santa is little known in Spain on Christmas – the Three Wise Men deliver gifts there on the day of the Epiphany.

In some European countries, especially the Low Countries of Holland and Belgium, and in Austria and Germany, he is dressed as the Fourth Century Greek Bishop he was. St. Nicholas, St Nicholas of Myra, patron saint of pawnbrokers, prostitutes, and sailors, among others (they all knew a good man when they saw one) was born during the Byzantine era in what is now Turkey. From his habit of giving secret gifts, it became the custom during the Middle Ages to give gifts to children on his feast day, December 6. In some northern European countries, St. Nicholas still comes, often in a big, festive parade, on his feast day. Gradually, though the centuries, the gift-giving moved its way on up to Christmas and the Epiphany.

Santa Claus in his various guises leaves gifts and goodies in wooden shoes, boots, in fancy stockings, or just plain, old socks. Any footwear will do. It may have started when children began to leave treats for Santa and the reindeer – things like a glass of eggnog and a few carrots. Today’s range of stocking-stuffers runs the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the inexpensive to Neiman-Marcus excess.

What will be in your stocking this year – candy or coal?

As the song says: "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."
a nice, shiny, red  AMG in my stocking!

St. Nicholas has become Saint Nick, Sinter Claus, Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, or just Santa. England calls him Father Christmas, France has Père Noël, and in Russia he’s Ded Moros or Grandfather Frost. His names are legion, and they all signify the spirit of love and giving. To answer most of your questions about Christmas worldwide, spend some time at whychristmas.com

THE NUTCRACKER

Which one of us hasn’t had the pleasure of going to a December performance of The Nutcracker? Were you dancing in it, or were you there to see your child or grandchild, or a neighbor’s child? Or were you just there to see one of the most beloved presentations in the western world?

My oldest granddaughter, Kate, as Clara 

December, Christmas time to be exact, is the month in which the ballet’s story takes place. December, 125 years ago in December 1892, to be exact, saw the first performance of the ballet at the Mariinski Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. Evidently, Czar Alexander III loved it, but the critics hated it. What did they know?

A lot of creativity went into that first production. It was choreographed by the noted Marius Petipa, the “Father of Russian Ballet,” many of whose works are still staged today. It was adapted for the ballet by Alexandre Dumas Père, he of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and was based on the story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by the prolific Prussian author, composer, and artist, E.T.A. Hoffman. The music, later made into the popular suite we often hear now, was composed by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

In a nutshell, the story takes place on Christmas Eve, and the heroine, Clara, dreams that the nutcracker she was given that evening has come to life and is battling the mice who are about to eat the gingerbread soldiers.

After the Nutcracker defeats the Mouse King, he comes to life as the Prince he is, and he and Clara travel through the falling snowflakes to his kingdom. There, in the Land of Sweets, the chocolate, the coffee, the tea, and the flowers, among several others, dance for them. The Sugar Plum Fairy and her consort end the night with their dance.  

From the opening night to this one, choreographers, including Georg Balanchine and Michael Baryshnikov, have brought their own versions to the ballet stage. There have been two movie of The Nutcracker ballet, and several other movie productions have included some of the music. There are dozens of recordings of the musical suite, and many of the eight individual pieces in it are included in various other collections, especially those of Christmas music. In 1940, all eight pieces were famously animated in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

There will be a commemorative performance of The Nutcracker this December 18, at the Mariinski Theater. You can scout for tickets and read more about the ballet and the theater at mariinsky.ru/en. (The ‘en’ means the site is in English.) Don't you wish you could be there? I do.

 

THE ULTIMATE TRAVEL EXPERIENCE

Many of us have traveled extensively, some of us throughout our own vast country, others to more distant, foreign places. Every once in a while, we’ll see a piece on TV about somewhere we’ve been, and the enjoyment is ours to experience again. “Hey, we were there – right there!”  We’ll recall our rapt gazing up at Mt. Rushmore, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Taj Mahal. We’ll recall our transpacific tour by ship, a riverboat cruise down the Rhine, rafting on the Colorado, or a gondola ride in Venice. We recall wandering around a maze of streets trying to find the garage where we’d parked our car. When they say travel is broadening, they really mean it: it expands our horizons in so many ways.

It must be a wonderful experience for astronauts who’ve been there, to see the moon in videos, TV, maybe in the movies. The Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were riding around on the moon, the last human travelers there, forty-five years ago, in December 1972. Don’t you wish you’d been there? On the moon, it’s easy to remember where you parked.

THE EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK AT SEVENTY

Here's another piece I wrote for our community magazine. The December issue was packed, so we chose to save this article for January. Along with it will be printed another article called "Invaders." That article is about the foreign animals and plants that have been mistakenly introduced or deliberately dumped into the Everglades ecosystem, threatening the native species. I'll run that article next month. Meanwhile...

The grackle sings of his Everglades home.

Seventy years ago this month, in a ceremony led by Harry Truman, Florida’s Everglades National Park was dedicated. One of our largest national parks, it is one of the few parks established for its great bio-diversity, rather than its scenic wonders. That same year, 1947, journalist and environmentalist Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, recognizing that great and important bio-diversity, published her definitive work, The Everglades: River of Grass, from which the area got its nickname.

Having been interested and involved in the Everglades and its future since the 1920’s, and wanting to see it become a national park, Douglas wrote: “There are no other Everglades in the world… They are unique…in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida.”

The Everglades system is one of storage and supply. It begins in the slightly higher, northern part of the state as streams, rivers, and lakes interact and drain. The water flows south, through the limestone formations that make up much of the state, to Lake Okeechobee. Generally, from there on further south, the water flows on the surface.

In the post-WWII housing boom, Florida was recognized as having one of the best climates in the country. The vast, almost untouched Everglades, though largely inhospitable, were enticing to real estate and agricultural developers. Even before the postwar era, few questioned the draining of the swamps for reclamation of land for agriculture. Drainage canals were dug in south Florida as early as 1882. Eventually, in the later quarter of the last century, it became increasingly evident that the unchecked development was having a damaging effect on the ecological balance of the region: an alarming decline in the water quality, an alarming increase in flooding as well as drought, and declines in several commercial areas, especially commercial fishing. Remedial measures are now being taken to bring the area back as close as possible to its pristine state.

Everglades National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site and an International Biosphere Reserve, lies in the southernmost section of the state, at the end of the Everglades system. It is home to hundreds of types of animals, birds, and plants, and is the refuge of endangered species including four species of sea turtle, the beautiful Florida panther, the unlovely West Indian manatee, and the ominous American crocodile.

Spatterdock, another native 

There are several Visitor Centers within the park, and several access points by road and water. In various places throughout park visits can paddle, pedal, or hoof it – on guided tours or on their own. Camping facilities are available both in the “Frontcountry,” near Homestead, with RVs and tents, and in the “Backcountry.” Though some are available on foot, most of these backcountry sites can be reached only by water. (These are the sites where you might want to stay if you are on a days-long canoe or kayak trip.) There are boat concessions available for coastal and bay tours, and airboat tours, exciting and not to be missed, within the River of Grass.

Begin your research at nps.gov/ever/index. And if you go in the wetter, summer months, do not forget to pack the bug spray

GIVING THANKS

We set aside this day each year to give special thanks for all we have: our health, our homes, our friends, our family. I give thanks for my readers too. You make blogging a delight.

The other day, I read that the author Don DeLillo wrote: "Writing is a concentrated form of thinking, I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them." Yes!
A subject will be suggested to me or will pop into mind, and I'm off to learn about it and write an essay. I love to learn and I love to sit down and write about the interesting things I discover. I give thanks for that, and I hope my interest and enthusiasm never wane.

SWEET HOME SWEET

One recent morning, as it happens every once I a while, I was standing and thinking just how much I loved my home and being here in it. Not to pat myself on the back or toot my own horn, but I like what we have as furnishings - the furniture Frank has made, the artwork and treasures we’ve collected or been given over the years, and the way it’s decorated.

I pride myself on being a minimalist. There’s room to spread out in our closets, dresser drawers, pantry, and fridge shelves. I’ve not family pictures all over the place nor too many tchotchkes to dust. But on a lark one morning, I went around and counted all the things we have hanging on the walls. There the minimalism ends. Total count, and a lot of nail holes, 232! (26 of them are needleworks made for us by someone we dearly love.) Sounds like it might be a mishmash, but it all pleases us no end.

Our house is just a suburban box on a relatively small lot, like hundreds of others in this community of “active adults.” We’ve been here ten years, and wouldn’t want to move. We’ll just age in place and enjoy all the lovely things that make our home ours.

NOVEMBER BIRTHDAYS

This morning on The Writer’s Almanac I read a quote from an author, Andrea Barrett, whose birthday is also today: “I want to tell stories about the thing I observe.” Simple as that, simple is that. It struck a note. Born on the same date, I believe she and I share an affinity for passing on what we find. I want to write my essays about the things I learn and, sometimes, the things I learn about myself. Even at the ripe old age of seventy-five, I’m still learning.

The blogger Corey Amaro posts to her Tongue in Cheek every day. Every day.  Some days, like today, she’ll post just an interesting picture. I think I might do that now from time to time. 

NEITHER HARD BOILED NOR COZY

Here's another article I wrote for our community magazine's current issue. I've read many complete mystery series, and none have pleased me more than those of Donna Leon and Louise Penny. I recommend them highly.

Ah, oui! Poirot en Paris

Many mystery and suspense writers invest quite a bit of time and pages in fleshing out their characters. Once established in the minds of their regular readers, they can dispense with a lot of background details. From the beginnings of these types of fiction, many of the main characters have become household names: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Brother Cadfael, Jason Bourne, George Smiley, Kinsey Millhone, and, of course, James Bond – the list goes on. Readers become great fans of these characters, and most of them have found their way into the big-screen and TV movies.

Two newer characters that can be added to this list, movies included, are Guido Brunetti and Armand Gamache. There are now twenty-six Brunetti novels since the series began in 1992, and thirteen Gamache novels since 2005.

I had Brunetti in my head long before the series started,
and he doesn't look like this - and never as scruffy.

Donn Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti plies his trade in Venice, “La Serenissima.” From the first novel, Death at La Fenice, the opera house, to the most recent, Earthly Remains, published in April 2017, readers know that Brunetti will investigate a murder or two and, usually, some connected nefarious doings in and around the city. He’ll have the help of some on-going, memorable colleagues and characters at the Questura, the police headquarters, and he’ll invariably head home for lunch. Your mouth will water as you read what wonderful things the family is having for lunch. The dishes are so memorable that Leon gathered the recipes into A Taste of Venice: At Table with Brunetti, otherwise known as “Brunetti’s Cookbook.”

The solving of the crimes and the discovery of the several interconnected mysterious situations make for intriguing reading. While reading the books, and they can be read in almost any order, you might want to send for the handy, plastic-coated “Streetwise Venice” map from Amazon, to help you follow Brunetti around the city on foot and by water. Next time you visit there, you can book a tour of “Brunetti’s Venice.”

This is close to the Gamache in my head.

Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is headquartered at la Sûreté du Québec. While Brunetti’s only problem at headquarters is an inept, social-climbing superior, Gamache, while looking into his many cases, is also combating a few back-stabbing, scheming colleagues. His personal and professional problems are a backdrop to the case at hand. Though he travels a bit through Quebec and Montreal, most of his cases take place in and around Three Pines, a very small, mythical hamlet in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. After reading just the first novel in the series, and it is best to read them in order, most readers want to pack up and move to Three Pines. In 2015, St. Martin’s Press, Louise Penny’s publisher, printed a map of Three Pines, and several lucky readers were able to acquire one. Though, like me, they found it to be almost like the map in their heads, it was a case of “almost but not quite.” Like the personalities and quirks of the dozen or so recurring characters, the personality and quirks of Three Pines etch themselves into memory. The first book in the series is Still Life, the most recent, out this past August, is Glass Houses.

Louise Penny's publisher, St. Martin's Press, published a map of Three Pines.
I was lucky enough to receive one. 

You can always tell how widely anticipated are the novels of these two award-winning writers, by the great discounts that mount up at Amazon in preorders in advance of their next publications. The discount usually gets up to at least a third off the publisher’s cover price. Be warned though, you might be up all night: they are not “hard boiled”, neither are they your “cozy” mysteries, but the books are really “page-turners.” 

You may want to read my blog on "The Maps in Our Heads" here, 

or "Mapping an Authoris Landscape" here.

THE GAMES WE PLAYED

This article was published in this month's issue of our community magazine as part of the series "Do you remember...?" It tickles me that the latest group to form here at Sun City Carolina Lakes is the Stickball Club. 

“All grown-ups were once children – although few of them remember it.”

So wrote Antoine Saint-Exupéry, author of the classic The Little Prince, in the dedication of the book, published after his death in 1943.

Many of us seniors are at the point in our lives where we are remembering that we were once children, and we’re enjoying and relishing the memories. Not only are they wonderful topics for conversations among folks of our own age, they’re wonderful stories to pass along to our grandchildren. We can also pass on to them the stories of when their parents were children. (When their parents were young, such stories my not have been thought a wise to pass on at that particular time, or they didn’t want to hear about “when I was young,” or we simply forgot them for the moment.)

The time has come (the walrus said) for us to remember some the things of our childhood - the things you don’t often see these days. In this age of electronic babysitters, from TVs to tablets, it is often a delight to us to remember what kept us amused, passed the time, helped us learn, and made us a part of our neighborhood. We met with our friends after school, or played games like Red Light-Green Light, Red Rover or Hide and Seek in the street after supper on a summer evening when the boys and girls could get together. We were never bored, were we?

Boys’ games were usually played with some kind of ball, and varied, according by names and rules, from place to place. Guys, did you ever play stickball? A broom stick, a pinky, and a car-free street with a handy manhole cover for home base were all that you needed. You can still get a spaldeen, a pink Spalding High Bounce ball. Amazon has them for a “mere” $5.95.

It’s very rare these days, but you might still see girls at jump rope, or double-dutch (and why was it called “Dutch?”), or playing Jacks or the many versions of Hopscotch or Potsy. Are the memories flooding in? Stickball was mainly for the boys, but girls used the pinkies to play games like A My Name is Alice. Did you ever get through the alphabet on that one?

Remember when “heavy metal” meant those great steel roller skates? Do you still have your skate key?

Add to the list: Ringolevio, tag, buck-buck, hide and seek – the names for these games may vary, depending on where you lived as a child. Do you still have your marbles (no, not those marbles) even one or two?

Do you ever take your grandchildren out to a field to fly a kite? You might want to teach them how to make their own kite. There are, of course, how-to guides in the web for making kites and lots of other great things. One excellent resource, for many things both senior- and grandparent-related, is the American Grandparents Association at aga.grandparents.com. Another fun website is gameskidsplay.net. There you’ll find lists of both old and new games, and you might have an “aha moment” when you see the name of one long forgotten from childhood.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN LESS THAN 700 WORDS

Well, they said it couldn’t be done: The Russian Revolution of 1917 in under 900 words, 900 words being the limit of what would constitute a good anniversary article for our community magazine. Well, of course it can’t. It can’t be that short and go into any detail at all, at all. But, answering the challenge from the wags at the magazine, I came up with the following piece in under 700 words. Adding more words would have just been gilding the lily. It may bore you, but it is, I think, a good “nutshell article,” designed to give you just the basics. Will you remember it? Probably not, but what the heck!

                                                             

Russia - This map was a good one to pick because it appealed to me on several levels: right size for the blog, nice colors, shows the time zones, shows some of the territory gained over the years, and shows Persia.  

Russia is the largest country on earth, over six million six hundred square miles, and covers eleven time zones of the twenty-four time zones. The population is approximately 150 million, roughly half that of the United States. Its history and statistics are remarkable and impressive.

For over 900 years, since the establishment of the first cohesive territorial state, the people we now call the Russians, an amalgam or groups that included the Huns, Vikings and Varangians, Slavs, Khazars from Turkey, and traders and raiders from places like Greece, have been warring and acquiring more territory. Many have tried to conquer the Russians, but none succeeded. Many of those who tried were just absorbed into the populace and their lands added to the expanse of the conquerors’.

For all of those over 900 years, the general populace, those not of the ruling or merchant classes, were serfs. It was the social norm for the times up until serfdom began to decline in the late Middle Ages. The revolutions that began with the French Revolution were uprisings against the excesses of the upper classes and the privation of the masses: millions spent on palaces and playthings, little spent to improve the lives of the lesser mortals. The Russian Revolution was much the same.

The trigger for revolution was Russia’s engagement in the Russo-Japanese War that began in 1904. Having to do with rivalry and claims on both sides, the old adversaries had been belligerents for many years past. Over much of the same period, the late 1800’s, the Socialist movement had begun in Russia. There was unrest and uprisings, and in 1881, Tsar Alexander II was killed by revolutionaries. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, various reform measures had been introduced in answer to the uprisings, but none were very effective because few promises were kept. The astounding monetary losses in the Russo-Japanese War, as Tsar Nicholas II kept on pouring funds into the losing effort, resulted in further general privation. Again, there were reforms promised made, and some were kept, but they were too little, too late, and often revoked. The revolution that had been simmering began to build up steam.

In those later decades of the eighteenth century, Russia, its royalty closely related to the European monarchs, entered into mutual aid alliances with several countries. Though, given the impoverished state of the country, it should have remained neutral, those alliances obliged Russia to enter into the First World War. It plunged in with depleted and misappropriated funds, poor equipment, high casualties, and misguided strategy. It won a battle or two, and the allies won the war that ended in November 1918, but it was a loss as far as Russia’s people were concerned.

In late 1917, the losses provided the final momentum for the Marxists to push toward the major uprising: the October Revolution. The Tsar had abdicated earlier in the year, and an unsuccessful provisional government was formed. The Russian Revolution immediately led to the five-year Russian Civil War begun in November 1917. That war was between the anti-communist White Army, the monarchists and capitalists who were destined to be completely ousted, and the Red Army. You’d need a PhD, a score card, and a great deal of time to unravel and understand the intertwining strands of the Marxist groups, subgroups, and factions of the era.

For a blink of time in early 2018, Russia was declared a democratic federal republic. It couldn’t last. In January 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was formed. The majority were Bolsheviks, followed by the Social Revolutionaries. In essence, it was the beginning of the stand of Marxist-Leninist communism. Were the “serfs” better off then? Are they now?

Skipping over a lot of the dates and details, the Russian Revolution can be reduced to under 700 words, but this nutshell merely skims the surface. Those who do really have the time and the interest in this interesting milestone in our world’s history, can begin on line, looking up The Russian Revolution. That simple search will lead to all the little tributaries that met in the river that became the Russian Revolution and flowed on from there for decades after.

(Article word count: 698)