The Genius Of American Graffiti

In 1973 the following movie industry names were virtually unknown: George Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Mackenzie Phillips, Bo Hopkins, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford, Candy Clark, Kathleen Quinlan, and Susan Somers. Lucas was a 28 year-old aspiring director with one mediocre film - THX-1138 - on his resume. He had been thinking for some time about a coming-of-age film based on his personal experience growing up in Modesto, California in the early '60's. That film, American Graffiti, featuring the actors in the list above reached American theaters in July 1973. Aside from its themes the only recognizable aspects of the film were its soundtrack filled with 41 hit songs and Wolfman Jack, a legendary deejay who had previously been known to his vast audience almost exclusively through his unforgettable radio persona.

Production struggled from the start and the studio that thought so little of the final product recommended it as a television movie. Only the enthusiastic conversations of studio employees overheard by the execs saved the film from the mediocrity of television. Perhaps the product was a poor fit for management but it was a blockbuster hit with audiences. To date the film and its associated products have earned over half a billion 2015 dollars for its owners.

Earning were only a part of the story. All of the unknowns on our earlier list became household names in the entertainment industry. The film also launched a huge wave of interest in nostalgia for the "good old days" of the 1950's. Ron Howard in particular rode that wave through its full cycle to directorial success and beyond.

Matt Singer writing at the dissolve.com helps us understand the films appeal:

[What] is the secret to American Graffiti’s success, the reason it resonated so strongly with viewers in 1973 and every generation since: It isn’t simply a nostalgic movie, it’s a nostalgic movie about nostalgia. Lucas could have set the film in 1959, when Steve, Curt, and John were still in high school and still cruising night after endless night. Instead, Graffiti begins right as the fun is about to end, and gives its characters just enough self-awareness to recognize that this is last call at the party. George Lucas isn’t the only one mourning for this magical lost era; the characters onscreen mourn right along with him.

1962 was a fortuitous year for a young American like Lucas to lose his innocence. Soon, the entire country faced similar disillusionment. A year after Lucas’ (and American Graffiti’s) accident, President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. The Vietnam War quickly escalated, claiming tens of thousands of American lives. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated in 1968. By the time American Graffiti was released in August 1973, the Watergate scandal was in full, ignominious swing. Like Lucas’ Star Wars, a futuristic movie anachronistically set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,”American Graffiti is a chronicle of a simpler time that has since vanished from the universe as if it never existed. And like Star Wars, it follows a teen as he contemplates leaving behind his provincial hometown for an exciting destiny elsewhere.

American Graffiti ranks #62 on the American Film Institute's list of greatest films. In a decade I would not be surprised to see it move into the top 50. It's not quite a masterpiece but it is an innovative and beautifully executed piece of art that foreshadowed the genius of its creator and impacted much of the nation's popular culture for a generation and beyond.

Krakatoa Then, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal Now

 

The Scream                     Edvard Munch 1893

Imagine waking up on this fine Tuesday morning to hear that a gigantic magnetic storm will disrupt much of the planet's electronics and communication networks in two days. This event simply isn't going to break up your digital reception of Saturday's big game  - Go Dawgs. It's going to require months of reconstruction - software and hardware - on power grids, communication systems and circuit boards on land, sea, air, and in space. I raise this issue not to alarm but to use coronal mass ejection (CME) and similar electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events as modern-day examples of climate issues that need to compete with the longer term phenomenon of global climate change. Furthermore, I am not about to deny or denigrate the existence and significance of global warming and cooling. It happens and I have no issue with mitigation and preparation for the consequences. On the other hand, sometimes our priorities don't seem to match the serious short-term and potentially catastrophic threats we face. Scientists and engineers already know of an event in 1859 that, had it occurred this morning in our high tech electronic world, would have caused widespread threats to social, political, and economic systems worldwide.

Why raise the issue today? This day marks the 141st anniversary of the massive volcanic explosion of the Indonesian island known as Krokatoa. The event killed over 36,000 people, sent a measurable shock wave around the world seven times and produced the loudest noise heard in recorded history, a noise heard in Perth, Australia, more than 2800 miles from the island. Geophysical impacts included a decline of over 2 degrees in the planet's average global temperatures and more than a decade of memorable atmospheric events including, vivid sunsets, lavender suns, and noctilucent clouds.

This was an astounding event in earth history and a modern-day lesson in the fragile nature of the planet and its inhabitants. As I've said before, nature in all her beauty can be a cruel mother. In light of the recent events like Mount St. Helens, record setting earthquakes, earth-grazing fireballs, and meteors, it's also a lesson that radical global climate change could occur tomorrow as well as a century from now. Granted, the sciences in question are little more than 150 years old but we have come a long way in understanding, yet we know there are some events beyond knowledge and control.


This is a timely anniversary given that an underwater volcano (Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal) in Tonga, a Pacific island nation, erupted in January 2022 and thrust as much as 160 million tons of water vapor into the stratosphere. Climatologists soon determined this instantaneous 5% increase in water vapor could likely increase global temperatures for some years to come. For climate scientists this is a unique event as it is the first eruption of its kind that can be effectively measured and analyzed. In other words there is no forecast model for the Tonga volcano. All science can do is observe, provide some analysis, and issue essentially speculative forecasts on the impacts of the event. If this year's high temperatures - it's called weather - tell us anything it's that climate scientists seem to be on to something.

Do keep the faith, my friends. There's a really good probability for sunrise tomorrow. The chances for more tomorrows are equally high because some of our finest earth and space scientists study and stand watch for these threats, short-term and long-term. I can't imagine a more exciting career than one exploring the far reaches of the planet and its journey in the universe.

In case you're wondering: Edvard Muunch painted four versions of The Scream of Nature over a seventeen year period beginning in 1893. Some experts believe his depiction of the vivid orange-red sky came from his observations of similar sunsets caused by the explosion of Krakatoa a decade earlier. I wonder how many artists will be incorporating the effects of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apal on our environment over the next few decades.





Sources


Text:
The Tonga Volcano Shook the World: It May Also Affect the Climate, The New York Times, September 22, 2022

The National Park Service Celebrates A Birthday

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

                                                                    Wallace Stegner

Guidon of the United States National Park Service

The National Park Service celebrates its 108th birthday today. It's always an important day in my household. My wife and I devoted over sixty memorable years of work as independent contractors and employees dedicated to achieving its noble mission so vividly stated in the enabling legislation of 1916:

...to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

Seeking a working balance between preservation and use was often a serious challenge but overall the work was extraordinarily satisfying. Even after several years of retirement my blood still runs green with the memories of us working in eight sites and one regional office in eight states and the District of Columbia. Our work took us from coast to coast in the lower 48 states and to Alaska as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The journey from a single idea to a complex resource management agency charged with overseeing more than 425 sites has been challenging. Here is part of the chapter, "Early Growth and Administration," taken from a Department of the Interior publication, A Brief History of the National Park Service (1940). It describes the national park movement leading up to the formation of the NPS.

The United States had a system of national parks for many years before it had a National Park Service. Even before establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 as "a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people," the Government had shown some interest in public ownership of lands valuable from a social use standpoint. An act of Congress in 1852 established the Hot Springs Reservation in Arkansas (which became a national park in 1921), although this area was set aside not for park purposes, but because of the medicinal qualities believed to be possessed by its waters. It was not until 1890 that action was taken to create more national parks. That year saw establishment of Yosemite, General Grant, and Sequoia National Parks in California, and nine years later Mount Rainier National Park was set aside in Washington.

Soon after the turn of the century the chain of national parks grew larger. Most important since the Yellowstone legislation was an act of Congress approved June 8, 1906, known as the Antiquities Act, which gave the President authority "to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments.

In these early days the growing system of national parks and monuments was administered under no particular organization. National parks were administered by the Secretary of the Interior, but patrolled by soldiers detailed by the Secretary of War much in the manner of forts and garrisons. This, of course, was quite necessary, in the early days, for the protection of areas situated in the "wild and woolly" West. it is a fact that in this era highwaymen held up coaches and robbed visitors to Yellowstone National Park, and poachers operated within the park boundaries. The national monuments were administered in various ways. Under the Act of 1906 monuments of military significance were turned over to the Secretary of War, those within or adjacent to national forests were placed under the Department of Agriculture, and the rest—and greater number—were under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, established in 1890 as the first Federal area of its type, was administered by the War Department.

Under this disjointed method of operation, national parks and monuments continued to be added to the list until 1915 when its very deficiencies exposed the plan as unsatisfactory and inefficient. The various authorities in charge of the areas began to see the need for systematic administration which would provide for the adoption of definite policies and make possible proper and adequate planning, development, protection, and conservation in the public interest.

Within two years, Secretary of the Interior, Franklin Lane, had secured the help of the philanthropist, Stephen Tyng Mather, to develop a management system to propose to Congress. Mather did so promptly and by 1917 it had been established and officially organized.

For more information, NPS Historians, Barry Mackintosh and Janet McDonnell, have written an excellent brief history documenting the agency to 2005. Their work, The National Parks: Shaping the System, is available online here.

The former directors of the National Park Service have left us some candid, and in some cases historic, commentary on managing the preservation-use dichotomy referred to above. I highly recommend their books, along with a biography of Stephen Tyng Mather, if readers are so inclined:

Albright, Horace M. (as told to Robert Cahn). The Birth of the National Park Service. Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1985.

Albright, Horace M, and Marian Albright Schenck. Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.

Hartzog, George B. Jr; Battling for the National Parks; Moyer Bell Limited; Mt. Kisco, New York; 1988

Ridenour, James M. The National Parks Compromised: Pork Barrel Politics and America's Treasures. Merrillville, IN: ICS Books, 1994.

Wirth, Conrad L. Parks, Politics, and the People. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.

Shankland, Robert; Steve Mather of the National Parks; Alfred A. Knopf, New York; 1970


As of August 2024 the National Park Service administers 431 units from the Caribbean to Alaska to the South Pacific. Its varied sites recorded 327,000,000 recreation visits in 2019. In all likelihood the future holds both more units and visits all in the face of declining funds, shrinking staffs, and a maintenance backlog of around $12 billion. The situation presents a bold challenge particularly for those staffing field operations who often see their work as a calling rather than a career. We can only hope their enthusiasm and dedication outlasts the obstacles that threaten their mission.

National Park Service arrowhead insignia

Sources

Illustration and text:
National Park Service entry, Wikipedia.org
www.nps.gov

Leni Riefenstahl: Defining Propagandist

 

Leni Riefenstall in 1933

Today marks the birthday in 1902 of the German Expressionist film maker, Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003). If you were in school during the third quarter of the 20th century there's a likely chance you are familiar with her landmark 1935 film, Triumph of the Will. The film was frequently shown in civics classes during the Cold War as a legendary example of propaganda. It was the product of Riefenstahl's fascination with Adolph Hitler, the National Socialist movement and his desire to document the party rally in Nuremberg in 1934. It was the second film she produced for Hitler. Its success, as well as their ongoing friendship, resulted in other notable projects but nothing approached the success of Triumph of the Will. At the same time, her association with the party, its principals, and her use of the enforced labor of talented Jews brought her a brief prison term at the end of World War II. She was also shunned for three decades by the world-wide film industry.

Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler greets Leni Riefenstahl, 1934

In the last quarter of her life of 102 years she focused on still photography of nature and culture in Africa. At age 72, she developed an interested in underwater photography, became a certified diver, and went on to produce two books and one film featuring marine life.

Riefenstahl reached the heights of creativity and controversy in her lifetime. I don't expect interpretations of her legacy will change. To admire her amazing technical innovation in documentary film making one has to ignore her association with evil. It is an association she denied but the evidence was deeply embedded in her life and work. We are also left with hard evidence that she was a genius behind the camera.

Here are some highlights from her films:


The 1932 film, Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light) is based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Riefenstahl directed, produced, and starred in the film. It is notable as an example of Alpine cinema, one of the first sound films to be shot on location, and the film that attracted Hitler to Riefenstahl.

Triumph of the Will (1934) is a propaganda masterpiece documenting the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg directed, co-written, produced, and edited by Riefenstahl. Its imagery has defined National Socialist leaders and the movement to this day.

The film also produced some viciously effective humor including this propaganda short by Charles A. Ridley in 1941. The Lambeth Walk dance craze swept across Europe - including Germany - after it was featured in a 1939 film. Resistance movements in German occupied territories had a dangerous but effective habit of splicing the parody into feature films and shown to local audiences that often included German soldiers. The practice infuriated The Furhrer and members of his leadership circle, especially propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Both the song and dance were eventually banned in Germany but the ridicule had already achieved its objective.

And from the prologue of Olympia (1938) her documentary - written, directed, and produced - of the famous Berlin games of 1936. Image and sound quality are marginal in this clip but the intent shines through. Viewer warning: be prepared for skimpy 1930-style thongs and bare breasts.

For an interesting assessment of Riefenstall's impact on film making, here is D.L. Booth writing in the Bright Lights Journal about the "body beautiful," particularly in the James Bond film series beginning in 1962.






Sources


Photos:
portrait, Невідомо [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
with Hitler, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R99035 / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons


Text:
wikipedia.org, Leni Riefenstall
leni-riefenstall.de
theguardian.com/film/2003/sep/09/world.news1, Leni Riefenstahl

Woodstock: Fifty-Five Years Of Memories

Woodstock was billed as an Aquarian exposition featuring three days of peace and music in the late summer of 1969. Indeed it's remarkable that the event proved relatively peaceful in spite of a continuing deluge that turned the venue into a sea of mud and logistical chaos. And there was the music, now legendary. Although a vast mythology enveloped the event over the years, there was the music, and it will always stand alone.

And, no, I wasn't there but the music of a generation and more was there, and in many cases is still with us. So who graced the stage at the festival we have come to know as Woodstock? Here is the list according to the Woodstock Wikipedia page:

Richie Havens

Swami Satchidananda

Sweetwater

Bert Sommer

Tim Hardin

Ravi Shankar

Melanie

Arlo Guthrie

Joan Baez

Quill Country

Joe McDonald

Santana

John Sebastian

Keef Hartley Band

The Incredible String Band

Canned Heat

Mountain

Grateful Dead

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band

Sly and the Family Stone

The Who

Jefferson Airplane and Nicky Hopkins

Joe Cocker and The Grease Band

Country Joe and the Fish

Ten Years After

The Band

Johnny Winter and his brother, Edgar Winter

Blood, Sweat & Tears

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Sha Na Na

Jimi Hendrix

The festival opened on August 15 and attracted an audience estimated at 400,000 or twice what the promoters expected. In 1969, the rock critic Ellen Sander said this about the festival's significance:

No longer can the magical multicolored phenomenon of pop culture be overlooked or underrated. It’s happening everywhere, but now it has happened in one place at one time so hugely that it was indeed historic .... The audience was a much bigger story than the groups. It was major entertainment news that the line-up of talent was of such magnificence and magnitude (thirty-one acts, nineteen of which were colossal) .... These were, however, the least significant events of what happened over the Woodstock weekend. What happened was that the largest number of people ever assembled for any event other than a war lived together, intimately and meaningfully and with such natural good cheer that they turned on not only everyone surrounding them but the mass media, and, by extension, millions of others, young and old, particularly many elements hostile to the manifestations and ignorant of the substance of pop culture.

The Woodstock Preservation Alliance has this to say about the event's long-term significance in the American experience:

Woodstock was the culmination of a transformation in American popular music that had begun with [the] Monterey [Pop Festival]....Woodstock introduced the same wide diversity of talent, albeit on an expanded scale, to a truly mass audience....A subsequent documentary film...and several sound recordings helped establish what only two years before had been underground or avant-garde musical styles and ushered them into the mainstream. Participating musicians, industry insiders, and rock critics and historians concur that Woodstock changed the way that popular music was programmed and marketed. Festival promoters noted the large numbers of fans who were willing to put up with often inadequate facilities....Promoters saw opportunities to improve their profit margin by more efficiently organizing festivals....They also understood that increased ticket prices would need to be offset...by moving the festivals from pastoral settings into sports arenas and convention centers and limiting the shows to a single-day or evening.... [Such changes] altered the festival-going experience... and thereby diminished the sense of community that many commentators considered the sine qua non of the Woodstock experience. The development of "arena rock" marked the end of the rock "vaudeville circuit," and led to the demise of the smaller concert hall venues....The arenas also gave the upper hand to the style of music called heavy metal, represented by loudly amplified guitar based and blues-inflected bands composed almost entirely of white male musicians, whose aggressive style of playing was ideally suited for filling the audible space in arena settings. After Woodstock, musicians apprehended the seemingly insatiable demand for their music and began commanding higher fees. It thus soon proved to be no longer economically feasible to book several major bands on the same bill....This in turn led to the segmentation of the fan base....In the years fol1owing Woodstock, however, fans were channeled into attending concerts that featured fewer acts, typically representing one or two musical styles. Part of the Woodstock Festival's enduring legacy is the continuing efforts to counteract this trend by replicating the multi-performer/genre concert experience. Over the past three decades various parties have staged or attempted to stage successors to Woodstock, either by that name at different sites or else on or near the original site under a different name. [These efforts have had mixed success over the decades.]

Some impact I'd say.

If you watched the opening video you learned Joni Mitchell didn't appear as scheduled but she penned an extraordinary description of the event. She released the version you heard above on her album, Ladies of the Canyon eight months after the festival. A month earlier, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young featured the song on their album, Deja Vu. Their version proved to be a #1 cover hit revered to this day by audiences young and old.

Woodstock

Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road
And I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
Said, I'm going down to Yasgur's farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year, yes, and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,
And everywhere was song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers jet planes riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil's bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.


If you want to remember this historic Aquarian exposition or imagine it for the first time you can choose among several original recordings. Better yet watch the director's cut of the documentary, Woodstock. The film, an outstanding example of documentary film making, is a perfect capture of the concert as well as the pivotal national experience that created it.

If you want the most historic moment itself, this will always be it:

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
wikipedia.com

Text:
quotations: woodstockpreservation.org/SignificanceStatement.htm
azlyrics.com

Look Up For The Perseid Meteor Shower - Maybe Auroras Too!

Perseid shower time lapse, August 2009 NASA/JPL

They're back! Yes, it's time for the Perseids, the most reliable meteor shower of the year. The shower peaks August 11-13 with best viewing after midnight and setting of the first quarter moon. The shower emanates from the constellation, Perseus,  named as one of the greatest hero warriors in Greek mythology. He is best remembered for slaying the Gorgon Medusa whose gaze could turn men to stone, and saving his future wife Andromeda from the dreaded sea monster, Cetus. He went on to use the head as a weapon on his journey to kingship in Mycenae (Macedonia). The goddess Athena would eventually place images of Perseus and Andromeda side by side as constellations in the Northern sky.

Perseus With the Head of Medusa

New research has concluded that the Perseid event produces more fireballs - meteors brighter than the planets, Jupiter and Venus - than any other shower so you can still see them even in full moonlight. One of the most spectacular fireballs I ever saw cut across at least 120 degrees of steel blue sky about half an hour after sunset. It's usually best to skywatch between midnight and sunrise, but predicting shower peaks remains a difficult task.

Here's how to enjoy the Perseids. If the night is clear, find a dark location, take a lounge chair or blanket and bug spray outside especially between midnight and dawn and look into the northeast sky. In that sky, you'll see a lopsided "W" known as the constellation Cassiopeia, an easy marker for its neighbor, Perseus. The shower radiates from this point as it rotates across the sky but it's important to note that meteors may occur anywhere in the sky dome. Furthermore, you will likely see some random meteors that will not fit the pattern. Don't bother with a telescope, but you may enjoy binoculars for exploring deeper into space when the meteor watch gets a tad slow.

This year the shower peaks at the same time a series of strong energy ejections from the sun will reach our planet. That means skywatchers in the mid lattitudes - those living north of a line from Washington, DC, to San Francisco - may see some vivid auroras.  

Also, if your weather doesn't cooperate at the shower's maximum, keep in mind that it will be gradually declining through the evening of August 18 so you still have a good chance of seeing a piece of the show. Also remember that the shower will be available on several You Tube live streams.

For the latest news about the shower and potential for auroras visit spaceweather.com.





Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Perseus With the Head of Medusa, ca. 1800, Antonio Canova. Vatican City, Museo Pio-Clementino, Octagon Hall, Canova Cabinet

Text:
earthsky.org

Conrad Aiken: Cosmic Mariner - Destination Unknown

This year marks the 135th anniversary of the birth of the poet, Conrad Aiken. He was born on August 5, 1889, in Savannah and lived in a townhouse on Oglethorpe Avenue across the street from Colonial Cemetery. He often played in that ancient burial ground midst tabby crypts and tombstones where the mortal remains of many of Georgia's aristocracy found rest. From the time he was eight or nine he wanted to be a writer. Soon he found himself captured by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and happily sharing the terror with his brother and sisters.

With his parents immersed in Savannah society and surrounded by wealth, privilege, and pedigree, he seemed destined for happiness. His father was a successful physician, his mother, a leader in Savannah society circles. Unfortunately, there was little peace in the family. One day, when young Aiken was eleven, his father took a revolver and killed his wife, then killed himself. Aiken never fully recovered from the horror of hearing the gun shots and discovering his parents' bodies only seconds after the event. He would spend the rest of his life exploring the interplay and uncertainty of a good and evil world.

Aiken spent the remainder of his childhood with relatives in New England. Later, he would attend Harvard where he was deeply influenced by the writer-philosopher, George Santayana. He also began a life-long friendship with fellow student, T.S. Eliot. Aiken would go on to write lyrical poetry weighted with symbolism and psychological exploration so deep that, in his own words, "Freud was in everything after 1912." Later in his career he moved predominantly to prose expressing "faith in consciousness" and an endless search for knowledge as the means to bring order and structure to the larger consciousness of the world. In all, he wrote or edited fifty books, including poetry, short stories, five novels, and one autobiography.

Unfortunately, for all of his output Conrad Aiken never achieved the level of fame of his good friend, T. S. Eliot, or other contemporaries. Shyness kept him away from readings that, for a poet, were lifelines to his audience. Also, he was a most candid critic, a posture that did not endear him to his fellow writers. Lastly, as a resident of both the United States and Europe he could never quite be associated with writers, benefactors, and salons on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1960, he had been resident in the U.S for some years and "rediscovered" by Americn readers. Aiken eventually returned part-time to the elegance of Savannah. He spent the winters living next to his boyhood home becoming the focus of social and academic circles and sought out by admirers until his death in 1973.

If you wander toward the eastern bluff in Savannah's magnificent Bonaventure Cemetery you arrive at Aiken Way. At it's end you find a memorial bench Aiken installed before his death. Next to it is a headstone bearing the identical death dates of his parents, an eerie reminder of the chaos he and all of us face in our lives.

For those of us who have found our peace, there is a profound release there under the live oaks and Spanish moss. Others may not be so fortunate. Aiken is one them. In life, he was restless, a constant searcher forever sailing through an uncertain sea. He felt the same about death and wanted us to know. How fitting it was that he should find his epitaph quite by accident while perusing the Savannah newspapers. It appeared in the daily list of port activity and read simply: "Cosmos Mariner - Destination Unknown." Aiken indeed saw himself a cosmic mariner who on his death in 1973 cast off without a port of call, destination unknown. He left behind, engraved on the bench the wish, "Give my love to the world." It is a rather confident wish coming from a restless sailor. We can pray that every man should find safe harbor, all the while knowing that we are not the final judge of his navigation. We are left merely to explore the products of a shy and troubled man who could appreciate a bawdy pun and have his say in singing words and lilting prose.

Ruinous blisses, joyous pains,

Life the destroyer, life the breaker,

And death, the everlasting maker....

If readers want to learn more about Aiken and his world, I strongly recommend they read this recently edited essay on the educational website, enotes.


Sources:

Conrad Aiken, The New Georgia Encyclopedia, entry by Ted R. Spivey
Conrad Aiken, Wikipedia
Conrad Aiken: Progidy Unitarian Poet, Richard A. Kelloway
The Paris Review, Issue 42, Winter-Spring, 1968, The Art of Poetry: Conrad Aiken, interviewed by Robert Hunter Wilbur
poem fragment, conclusion from Aiken's, "The Dance of Life" published in 1916.