Katherine Anne Porter: I Want To Live In A World Capital Or A Howling Wilderness

 

Katherine Anne Porter, an American writer, journalist and activist, was born on this day in 1890 in the west-central Texas town of Indian Creek. She led an often troubled yet exciting and eccentric life. By the age of forty she was an acclaimed and widely read author but it took another thirty years and the publication of her novel, Ship of Fools (1962), before she found financial security in her craft.

She moved to Washington, D.C., in 1959 to finish the novel and while there developed an association with the University of Maryland in nearby College Park. In 1966 her great success with the novel as well as her receipt of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her Collected Stories published in 1965 moved the university to award Porter an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. At the same time she announced her desire to donate a lifetime of treasured personal possessions and papers to the school to be housed in the Katherine Anne Porter Room, at that time located in McKeldin Library. Porter eventually moved the few miles from her Washington home to College Park where she could be even closer to her collection and the university's resources.

Readers interested in Porter as a writer will enjoy this 1963 Paris Review interview conducted as part of their Art of Fiction series. 

On a personal note: Back in 1968 I spent about two weeks doing research in special collections on the top floor of McKeldin Library at Maryland. At the elevator and in the hallways I kept meeting this small, friendly, elderly, white-haired woman with a jovial smile that invited conversation. She seemed far too helpful to be a typical university librarian. Years later I read how much Porter loved the academic setting and interacting with students, learning about them, their studies, and their plans for the future. She was, in fact, a near constant visitor to her room on the library's fifth floor. It wasn't long before the realization hit that my "little old librarian" was none other than Katherine Anne Porter. With the knowledge gained over the last fifty years I'd love to have those two weeks back to explore the few degrees of separation she brought me among Mexican Leftists of the 1920's, film making, fractal theory, systems of creative design, and the study of pandemics. This time I'd ask the questions.

Alas, that will never happen but perhaps I could explore this wide-ranging story in a future blog post. Better yet, it is a story best told over pitchers of craft beer enjoyed with some quiet and distant jazz, overstuffed club chairs, and the golden hour blazing from the horizon. Could pure chance give rise to the opportunity for such an exploration among old friends? Porter would be pleased.






Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
grannyweatherall.wordpress.com

Text:
Title, "Katherine Anne Porter, The Art of Fiction," No. 29, Paris Review
Katherine Anne Porter, wikipedia.org

Remember Babe Ruth

George Ruth wasn't much of a scholar at Baltimore's St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys but he excelled at baseball, the primary sport used by the Xavarian Brothers to bring structure and discipline to their 800 boys. He was born in Pigtown, one of Baltimore's many rough and tough neighborhoods near it's famous harbor. After seven years struggling to maintain their working-class family his parents assigned custody of their son to St. Mary's. He entered when he was seven years old and stayed there for twelve years. A few months after his nineteenth birthday in 1914 he signed a professional baseball contract to play with the Baltimore Orioles. He was the newest "babe" to join the team and would go on to become a legend during his major league career (1914-1935) with the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Braves.

Babe Ruth (top row, center) at St. Mary's School in 1913

Today marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Babe Ruth, the "Bambino," the "Sultan of Swat," arguably the greatest baseball player ever.

Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum

See Ruth's Wikipedia and National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum pages for more information, including videos, photos, and a wealth of amazing statistics.

Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, 1920

This quote from the famous American sports writer, Tommy Holmes, says it all about the Babe:

Some 20 years ago, I stopped talking about the Babe for the simple reason that I realized that those who had never seen him didn't believe me.

Sources:


Babe Ruth, Wikipedia entry
Babe Ruth biography, Baseball Hall of Fame, baseballhall.org
Babe Ruth Museum

Celebrating The American Composer, Philip Glass, On His Birthday

 

Philip Glass                           Luis Alvarez Roure, U.S., 2016

Philip Glass is the most well-known minimalist composer and master of what he calls music of repetitive structure in our time. He was born into a musical family in  Baltimore and lived in an apartment above his father's record store. In that environment he developed a love of music, particularly modern classical music, by listening to promotional recordings and records that had been returned to the store. At eight he was studying music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. At fifteen he continued his musical training and studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago. 

Listeners cannot help but "count" in one way or another throughout all of his compositions. And his work is surely a Calculus in our own time, retaining its minimalist core wrapped in a stylistic evolution. He has composed operas, symphonies, concertos, string quartets, chamber pieces, and film scores. Three of his scores received Academy Award nominations.

He wrote his first score for the film, Koyaaniqatsi (1982), a mesmerizing audiovisual feast by Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke examining the interface of people, technology, and nature. Glass's score for this film has become a signature piece, one that he and his ensemble have performed around the world for almost four decades. Glass has also composed for many popular films including Candyman (1992), The Hours (2002), and the memorable satire, The Truman Show (1998).

Listening to Glass is often more an experience where one can get be the music as a participant rather than merely listen. Even at its simplest, his work has complexities in tone, harmony, tempo and orchestration. For one thing, Glass counts. He plays by the numbers, practicing his musical arithmetic adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and even solving some algebraic formulas here and there. In the end music to Glass seems like the mathematics he studied. Fortunately for our culture, popular as well as haute, he became an extraordinary, prolific, and popular composer whose significant international influences in the music world continue to this very day which happens to be his 87th birthday.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Text:
philipglass.com
wikipendia.org

A Mother's Birthday

Last year on the anniversary of my mother's birth, I opened the post with a paragraph saying that her family's deep lineage in the western Virginia mountains had been lost to history. Thanks to a cousin's genealogical research I can report this year on her 110th birthday that much of her family history is no longer lost. Her paternal ancestory in the New World began 1628 in the Plymouth Colony. From there the family line moved to Harford County, Maryland, by 1700, followed by Tidewater Virginia during mid-century, and the Virginia frontier (now West Virginia) around 1800. 

Her parents married a century later and raised seven children on their family farm on the eastern edge of the Allegheny Front a few miles from the Potomac River. One weekend in 1931 she and her four sisters went to skate and dance at the local lodge armory. It was a common practice among families, but especially attractive among young people as a way to have fun with old friends and make new ones as well. She struck up a conversation with the young lodge member who was selling tickets. That conversation grew into a two-year courtship that ended in marriage in 1933. Their conversation continued for more than forty years.  

On the farm in 1932

 

With my birth she became a full time mother and homemaker, but still found time to enjoy her church family, reading, gardening, nature, frequent visits with her large family, and vacations on Pattersons Creek in Burlington, West Virginia. She was taken from this world far too early after a long illness. There's no question that I miss her and I'm sorry she did not live to enjoy her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Still, I feel her goodness has been with us helping to shape our family over the years. Wouldn't have it any other way. She was a great mom, full of faith, love, compassion, a wonderful sense of humor, and dedication to family and friends.


Happy birthday, Mom! See you later.

Thanksgiving 2024 Countdown, Day 3: Why Does The House Smell Like Low Tide?

All of us have heard the story about the courage it took for the first troglodyte to slurp into a raw oyster. In all seriousness, I must give the guy credit, if reason was a part of his consciousness. The presentation hasn't changed much over time, so the aversion persists; however, some of us have courageously overcome it. I suppose growing up near the food source has made a difference.

For those who remember the Chesapeake Bay as a great seafood factory, oysters were a plentiful, essential food. My family enjoyed them in a variety of ways but my favorites were always fried oysters and oyster dressing. In Maryland, the oyster dressing was a must for dinner at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In 1976, I left the Chesapeake in a driving January snowstorm and, some years later, married into a family with holiday traditions from southwest Virginia's Appalachians and Oklahoma's Prairie Plains. For thirty Thanksgivings it was a losing battle having a lonely sage dressing gracing the holiday table. In the last twenty years or so calls for a dressing option increased as did the number of dinner guests. It was the perfect time to finesse oysters onto the menu and begin dealing with questions including, "Is it stuffing or dressing?" or "Is it essential to stuff in order to call it stuffing?" or "Why does your house smell like low tide?"

If you're still looking for something in addition to or beyond sage or cornbread dressing to accompany the bird, may I suggest an iconic Maryland holiday dish. It's Skipjack Oyster Dressing. We've used this recipe over the last twenty years and watched it evolve into a hit even among most doubters. Be assured you'll always have some holdouts. They'll never know what they're missing - and that means there's more for the oyster lovers.

Skipjack Oyster Dressing in the making

Along with the usual oyster questions, a new guest will almost always ask about the term, "skipjack." Skipjacks, the state boat of Maryland, are shallow-draft sailing vessels developed on the Chesapeake Bay for harvesting oysters. They are the last working boats under sail in the United States, according to the Maryland State Archives. There's also a brief entry about them on Wikipedia, including a list of active boats. I first saw them in the early '50s. At that time, there were about 100 working the Chesapeake.

Hope you enjoy a taste from the Bay. If your menu is set or you need some time to think about it there's always Christmas dinner.

H. L. Mencken: Keen Observer Of The American Experience

After all these years, the Sage of Baltimore - Henry Louis Mencken - still has so much to tell us about the American experience. In his day he invented the term "booboisie" to refer to the masses who didn't read much, know much or even care much about their lives as citizens of a democratic republic. Today we could easily apply his term to the masses who are well-schooled but not well-educated, who apply emotion rather than reason and logic to their decision making, and who align themselves with coalitions of self-interests wrapped in collectivist totalitarianism. Another term for the modern-day "booboisie" is "moonbat". I think Mencken would have a even more colorful term for them if he were still with us. And oh would he have a time with our political and social landscape today.

Mencken portrait photo taken around 1923

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost office thereby.

Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore," was born on this day in 1880. He was a leading journalist and author on the American scene, humorist, and a student of the American language. Mencken's stature seems to be on the rise over the last few decades. I'd guess it's because we experienced a concurrent rise in many nation-wide opportunities to watch logic, practicality, and skepticism destroy a multitude of political pretenders and their policies regardless of political persuasion.

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

Mencken (right) celebrating the end of Prohibition in 1933

As much as I enjoy reading all of Mencken's work, the autobiographical books remain my favorites. His three-part "Days" series, Happy Days (1940), Newspaper Days (19441), and Heathen Days (1943) should be essential reading. They cover life and times from birth through 1936, the most productive and positive time in his life. After the mid-1930's, Mencken fell a bit out of fashion as his curmudgeonly persistence began to grind on the American psyche. His perceived sympathy with German nationalism helped undermine his reputation into the 40's. In one of the great ironies in American literature, a stroke in 1948 rendered him unable to read, speak or write beyond simple phrases or sentences. Although he regained some communications skills over time, he spent the next seven years enjoying music, listening to readings, and conversing with friends until his death in 1956.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

Those who want the full Mencken story should read Terry Teachout's, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2003). Teachout was a superb writer who treated his subject with objectivity and warmth. I also enjoyed a biography, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (2005), by the eminent Mencken scholar, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers.

If reading isn't to your liking but you still want some immersion into the man and his times, C-SPAN's American Writers Project produced a fine two-hour program on Mencken that should not be missed. It is a thorough multimedia exploration.

Mencken at home a few months before his death

I'm the third generation in my family to consider Mencken a favorite writer. Though the author as skeptic likely played a role in his popularity over the years, I think the humor sold him to the family - certainly has in my case. But there is a sad note to this story. In 1959 - I was 13 that year - two family members who were among the first generation to appreciate Mencken passed away just one day part. My dad was the executor of this challenging estate. The late relatives had shared a large home with other brothers and accumulated seventy years of cultural history within its walls. It seemed the only thing that left the house was weekly trash. Included in that history collection they retained were thousands of magazines. No institution or person wanted them as they had not yet achieved a patina of age, worth or "significance." I was given the responsibility of burning them and in doing so I watched a near complete, mint collection of The Smart Set and The American Mercury magazines rise up in smoke on a cold winter day. Both magazines were under the editorship of H.L. Mencken early in his career and featured many new writers who were to become famous in the decades to follow. Today, the collection could bring as much as five figures at a major literary auction. So much wisdom up in smoke. If the Sage of Baltimore were alive today, he would not be happy at this outcome, nor would he be surprised...

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
1923 portrait, public domain
Mencken celebrating, Baltimore Sun
Mencken at home, Baltimore Sun

Quotations:
Democracy is.... "Notes on Journalism," Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926;
Puritanism is.... " Sententae," The Citizen and the State, p.624;
If, after I.... "Epitaph," from Smart Set (December 1921);
No one ever.... paraphrase of the "Democracy" quote as noted in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)

Baseball's Babe

George Ruth wasn't much of a scholar at Baltimore's St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys but he excelled at baseball, the primary sport used by the Xavarian Brothers to bring structure and discipline to their 800 boys. He was born in Pigtown, one of Baltimore's many rough and tough neighborhoods near it's famous harbor. After seven years struggling to maintain their working-class family his parents assigned custody of their son to St. Mary's. He entered when he was seven years old and stayed there for twelve years. A few months after his nineteenth birthday in 1914 he signed a professional baseball contract to play with the Baltimore Orioles. He was the newest "babe" to join the team and would go on to become a legend during his major league career (1914-1935) with the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Braves.

Babe Ruth (top row, center) at St. Mary's School in 1913

Today marks the 129th anniversary of the birth of Babe Ruth, the "Bambino," the "Sultan of Swat," arguably the greatest baseball player ever.

Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum

See Ruth's Wikipedia and National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum pages for more information, including videos, photos, and a wealth of amazing statistics.

Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, 1920

This quote from the famous American sports writer, Tommy Holmes, says it all about the Babe:

Some 20 years ago, I stopped talking about the Babe for the simple reason that I realized that those who had never seen him didn't believe me.

Sources:


Babe Ruth, Wikipedia entry
Babe Ruth biography, Baseball Hall of Fame, baseballhall.org
Babe Ruth Museum

Baltimore's Renowned Modern Music Master, Philip Glass, At 87

 

Philip Glass                           Luis Alvarez Roure, U.S., 2016

Philip Glass is the most well-known minimalist composer and master of what he calls music of repetitive structure in our time. He was born into a musical family in  Baltimore and lived in an apartment above his father's record store. In that environment he developed a love of music, particularly modern classical music, by listening to promotional recordings and records that had been returned to the store. At eight he was studying music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. At fifteen he continued his musical training and studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago. 

Listeners cannot help but "count" in one way or another throughout all of his compositions. And his work is surely a Calculus in our own time, retaining its minimalist core wrapped in a stylistic evolution. He has composed operas, symphonies, concertos, string quartets, chamber pieces, and film scores. Three of his scores received Academy Award nominations.

He wrote his first score for the film, Koyaaniqatsi (1982), a mesmerizing audiovisual feast by Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke examining the interface of people, technology, and nature. Glass's score for this film has become a signature piece, one that he and his ensemble have performed around the world for almost four decades. Glass has also composed for many popular films including Candyman (1992), The Hours (2002), and the memorable satire, The Truman Show (1998).

Listening to Glass is often more an experience where one can get be the music as a participant rather than merely listen. Even at its simplest, his work has complexities in tone, harmony, tempo and orchestration. For one thing, Glass counts. He plays by the numbers, practicing his musical arithmetic adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and even solving some algebraic formulas here and there. In the end music to Glass seems like the mathematics he studied. Fortunately for our culture, popular as well as haute, he became an extraordinary, prolific, and popular composer whose significant international influences in the music world continue to this very day which happens to be his 87th birthday.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Text:
philipglass.com
wikipendia.org

Edgar Allan Poe: He Dreamed Into The Darkness Of Possibility

This week marks the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most influential writers in western literature. In our home we have a shelf reserved for such writers and treasured books. Among the first editions, autographed copies, rare titles, and nostalgic family favorites is a small and well-worn paperback from my high school years. Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe has been a part of my life for over 60 years. I'm happy to report that virtually every high school graduate in the U.S. still encounters the suspense, mystery, and magic of Poe even if it is nothing more than a reading and discussion of The Raven. The poem brought Edgar Allan Poe instant fame in 1845 and ensured him a secure place in American literature. His appeal to readers, especially young ones, rests in his dark and stormy subjects, his fantastic plots, and rich, descriptive writing. There is a timelessness about his work as well that in part accounts for his appeal to contemporary readers.

From The Raven:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.'

I don't recall when Poe's work first entered my life but it was long before high school. Little did I know that we would eventually share a bit of history at Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. He was stationed there for about a year beginning in 1827. The fort and island are the setting for his short story, The Gold Bug. During my career, I spent several weeks walking the damp tunnels, the grassy terreplein, and studying the character of this historic fort and those who garrisoned it over the centuries. I watched the sun rise and set over its walls, and stood at the gun emplacements at midnight listening to the invisible surf breaking on the beach or watching ship traffic moving in and out of Charleston harbor. For all I know, Poe's shadow watched my every move. For certain his work and legacy will continue to provide all of us with fantastic entertainment.

Poe was born in Boston on January 19 in 1809. He spent his lifetime living and working between the coastal cities of Boston and Charleston. Death found him in Baltimore in 1849 wrapped in the mystery and tragedy that surrounded him during much of his life. Here is his last complete poem written a few months before his death.

Annabell Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Few American writers have had such a broad impact on the arts. In his 2009 commentary on the bicentennial of the author's birth, Jeffrey A. Savoye, Secretary/Treasurer of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore said this:

We can see that his writings still work their magic on succeeding generations of readers, and yet Poe’s secrets remain distinctively his own. We can ape and parody the form, but legions of would-be disciples have too often created mostly pale imitations, and scholars have laid waste to forests of trees in printing articles and books that attempt to explain the essence of his genius. Yet, traces of Poe’s influence can be seen in the writings of such diverse authors as Jules Verne and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ray Bradbury, Charles Baudelaire and Allen Ginsberg. (His writings have also been translated into every major language. One Japanese author and critic so greatly admired Poe that he changed his own name from Tarö Hirai to Edogawa Rampo.) And this influence has not been limited to the written word. Such artists as Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, and Édouard Manet have illustrated his works. Sergei Rachmaninov, Leonard Slatkin, Philip Glass, and many others have composed musical tributes. In an interview published in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock, the great movie director, commented that “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.”

This year marks the twelfth anniversary of another mystery surrounding Poe. Beginning in 1949 an anonymous toaster appeared at Poe's grave in Baltimore's Westminster Burial Ground in the early hours of his birthday. The toaster left three roses and a half full bottle of cognac. Over time he became somewhat of a celebrity himself appearing suddenly in the cemetery only to do his duty then disappear as mysteriously as he had appeared. In 2012 the tribute stopped. Did the toaster lose interest? Was he tired of the media circus and copycats? Was he infirm? Had he passed away? The world has no answer for these questions and thus the Toaster adds a fitting mystery to Poe's legacy, a window into fantasy that lives on in classrooms, in private libraries, on glowing screens or anywhere readers enjoy imagination at its best.

This week let us lift our own toast to Poe, refiner of the short story, inventor of detective fiction, shaper of science fiction, and master of written language whose mystery and imagination treads the boundaries of fantasy and reality in our own lives.

My well-worn treasure of Poe's mystery and imagination

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
commons.wikimedia.org, public domain photograph by Edwin H. Manchester taken November 9, 1848 in Providence, Rhode Island

Text:
eapoe.org
poetryfoundation.org

Mom's Birthday

 

My mother was born on this day 109 years ago. She was the fourth of seven children born to a farm couple whose deep lineage in the western Virginia mountains has been lost to history. She and my dad met at a community dance in 1931 and married in the fall of 1933. By that time she had worked in a silk mill and as an etcher in a glass factory, and would later work through World War II as a quality control specialist in a synthetic fabric plant.

1932

1946

1954

1966

1972

With my birth she became a full time mother and homemaker, but still found time to enjoy her church family, reading, gardening, nature, frequent visits with her large family, and vacations on Pattersons Creek in Burlington, West Virginia. She was taken from this world far too early in 1976 after a long illness. There's no question that I miss her and I'm sorry she did not live to enjoy her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Still, I feel her goodness has been with us helping to shape our family over these near forty years. Wouldn't have it any other way. She was a great mom, full of love, compassion, a wonderful sense of humor, and dedication to family and friends.


Happy birthday, Mom! See you later.

H. L. Mencken: Skepticism At Its Finest

After all these years, the Sage of Baltimore - Henry Louis Mencken - still has so much to tell us about the American experience. In his day he invented the term "booboisie" to refer to the masses who didn't read much, know much or even care much about their lives as citizens of a democratic republic. Today we could easily apply his term to the masses who are well-schooled but not well-educated, who apply emotion rather than reason and logic to their decision making, and who align themselves with coalitions of self-interests wrapped in collectivist totalitarianism. Another term for the modern-day "booboisie" is "moonbat". I think Mencken would have a even more colorful term for them if were still with us. And oh would he have a time with our political and social landscape today.

Mencken portrait photo taken around 1923

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost office thereby.

Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore," was born on this day in 1880. He was a leading journalist and author on the American scene, humorist, and a student of the American language. Mencken's stature seems to be on the rise over the last few decades. I'd guess it's because we experienced a concurrent rise in many nation-wide opportunities to watch logic, practicality, and skepticism destroy a multitude of political pretenders and their policies regardless of political persuasion.

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

Mencken (right) celebrating the end of Prohibition in 1933

As much as I enjoy reading all of Mencken's work, the autobiographical books remain my favorites. His three-part "Days" series,  Happy Days (1940), Newspaper Days (19441), and Heathen Days (1943) should be essential reading. They cover life and times from birth through 1936, the most productive and positive time in his life. After the mid-1930's, Mencken fell a bit out of fashion as his curmudgeonly persistence began to grind on the American psyche. His perceived sympathy with German nationalism helped undermine his reputation into the 40's. In one of the great ironies in American literature, a stroke in 1948 rendered him unable to read, speak or write beyond simple phrases or sentences. Although he regained some communications skills over time, he spent the next seven years enjoying music, listening to readings, and conversing with friends until his death in 1956.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

Those who want the full Mencken story should read Terry Teachout's, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2003). Teachout is a superb writer who treats his subject with objectivity and warmth. I also enjoyed a biography, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (2005), by the eminent Mencken scholar, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers.

If reading isn't to your liking but you still want some immersion into the man and his times, C-SPAN's American Writers Project produced a fine two-hour program on Mencken that should not be missed. It is a thorough multimedia exploration.

Mencken at home a few months before his death

I'm the third generation in my family to consider Mencken a favorite writer. Though the author as skeptic likely played a role in his popularity over the years, I think the humor sold him to the family - certainly has in my case. But there is a sad note to this story. In 1959 - I was 13 that year - two family members who were among the first generation to appreciate Mencken passed away just one day part. My dad was the executor of this challenging estate. The late relatives had shared a large home with other brothers and accumulated seventy years of cultural history within its walls. It seemed the only thing that left the house was weekly trash. Included in that history collection they retained were thousands of magazines. No institution or person wanted them as they had not yet achieved a patina of age, worth or "significance." I was given the responsibility of burning them and in doing so I watched a near complete, mint collection of The Smart Set and The American Mercury magazines rise up in smoke on a cold winter day. Both magazines were under the editorship of H.L. Mencken early in his career and featured many new writers who were to become famous in the decades to follow. Today, the collection could bring as much as five figures at a major literary auction. So much wisdom up in smoke. If the Sage of Baltimore were alive today, he would not be happy at this outcome, nor would he be surprised...

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
1923 portrait, public domain
Mencken celebrating, Baltimore Sun
Mencken at home, Baltimore Sun

Quotations:
Democracy is.... "Notes on Journalism," Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926;
Puritanism is.... " Sententae," The Citizen and the State, p.624;
If, after I.... "Epitaph," from Smart Set (December 1921);
No one ever.... paraphrase of the "Democracy" quote as noted in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)

Pigtown's Bambino

George Ruth wasn't much of a scholar at Baltimore's St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys but he excelled at baseball, the primary sport used by the Xavarian Brothers to bring structure and discipline to their 800 boys. He was born in Pigtown, one of Baltimore's many rough and tough neighborhoods near it's famous harbor. After seven years struggling to maintain their working-class family his parents assigned custody of their son to St. Mary's. He entered when he was seven years old and stayed there for twelve years. A few months after his nineteenth birthday in 1914 he signed a professional baseball contract to play with the Baltimore Orioles. He was the newest "babe" to join the team and would go on to become a legend during his major league career (1914-1935) with the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Braves.

Babe Ruth (top row, center) at St. Mary's School in 1913

Today marks the 128th anniversary of the birth of Babe Ruth, the "Bambino," the "Sultan of Swat," arguably the greatest baseball player ever.

Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum

See Ruth's Wikipedia and National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum pages for more information, including videos, photos, and a wealth of amazing statistics.

Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, 1920

This quote from the famous American sports writer, Tommy Holmes, says it all about the Babe:

Some 20 years ago, I stopped talking about the Babe for the simple reason that I realized that those who had never seen him didn't believe me.

Sources:


Babe Ruth, Wikipedia entry
Babe Ruth biography, Baseball Hall of Fame, baseballhall.org
Babe Ruth Museum

Philip Glass At 86

Philip Glass                           Luis Alvarez Roure, U.S., 2016

Philip Glass is the most well-known minimalist composer and master of what he calls music of repetitive structure in our time. He was born in Baltimore and studied music at a very early age at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. At fifteen, he continued his musical training and studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago. Listeners cannot help but "count" in one way or another throughout all of his compositions. And his work is surely a Calculus in our own time, retaining its minimalist core wrapped in a stylistic evolution. He has composed operas, symphonies, concertos, string quartets, chamber pieces, and film scores. Three of his scores received Academy Award nominations.

He wrote his first score for the film, Koyaaniqatsi (1982), a mesmerizing audiovisual feast by Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke examining the interface of people, technology, and nature. Glass's score for this film has become a signature piece, one that he and his ensemble have performed around the world for almost four decades. Glass has also composed for many popular films including Candyman (1992), The Hours (2002), and the memorable satire, The Truman Show (1998).

Listening to Glass is often more an experience where one can get "into" the music as a participant rather than merely observe. Even at its simplest, his work has complexities in tone, harmony, tempo and orchestration. For one thing, Glass counts. He plays by the numbers, practicing his musical arithmetic adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and even solving some algebraic formulas here and there. In the end, music to Glass seems like the mathematics he studied. Fortunately for our culture, popular as well as haute, he became an extraordinary, prolific, and popular composer whose significant international influences in the music world continue to this very day which happens to be his 86th birthday.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Text:
philipglass.com
wikipendia.org

Edgar Allan Poe's Inventive Mystery And Imagination Lives On

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.'*

In our home we have a shelf reserved for treasured books. Among the first editions, autographed copies, rare titles, and nostalgic family favorites is a small and well-worn paperback from my early high school years. Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe has been a part of my life for over 60 years. I'm happy to report that virtually every high school graduate in the U.S. still encounters the suspense, mystery, and magic of Poe even if it is nothing more than a reading and discussion of The Raven.* The poem brought Edgar Allan Poe instant fame in 1845 and ensured him a secure place in American literature. His appeal to readers, especially young ones, rests in his dark and stormy subjects, his fantastic plots, and rich, descriptive writing. There is a timelessness about his work as well that in part accounts for his appeal to contemporary readers.

I don't recall when Poe's work first entered my life, but it was long before high school. Little did I know that we would eventually share a bit of history at Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. He was stationed there for about a year beginning in 1827. The fort and island are the setting for his short story, The Gold Bug. During my career, I spent several weeks walking the damp tunnels, the grassy terreplein, and studying the character of this historic fort and those who garrisoned it over the centuries. I watched the sun rise and set over its walls, and stood at the gun emplacements at midnight listening to the invisible surf breaking on the beach or watching ship traffic moving in and out of Charleston harbor. For all I know, Poe's shadow watched my every move. For certain his work and legacy will continue to provide all of us with fantastic entertainment.

Poe was born in Boston on January 19 in 1809. He spent his lifetime living and working between the coastal cities of Boston and Charleston. Death found him in Baltimore in 1849 wrapped in the mystery and tragedy that surrounded him during much of his life. Here is his last complete poem written a few months before his death.

Annabell Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Few American writers have had such a broad impact on the arts. In his 2009 commentary on the bicentennial of the author's birth, Jeffrey A. Savoye, Secretary/Treasurer of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore said this:

We can see that his writings still work their magic on succeeding generations of readers, and yet Poe’s secrets remain distinctively his own. We can ape and parody the form, but legions of would-be disciples have too often created mostly pale imitations, and scholars have laid waste to forests of trees in printing articles and books that attempt to explain the essence of his genius. Yet, traces of Poe’s influence can be seen in the writings of such diverse authors as Jules Verne and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ray Bradbury, Charles Baudelaire and Allen Ginsberg. (His writings have also been translated into every major language. One Japanese author and critic so greatly admired Poe that he changed his own name from Tarö Hirai to Edogawa Rampo.) And this influence has not been limited to the written word. Such artists as Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, and Édouard Manet have illustrated his works. Sergei Rachmaninov, Leonard Slatkin, Philip Glass, and many others have composed musical tributes. In an interview published in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock, the great movie director, commented that “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.”

This year marks the eleventh anniversary of another mystery surrounding Poe. Beginning in 1949 an anonymous toaster appeared at Poe's grave in Baltimore's Westminster Burial Ground in the early hours of his birthday. The toaster left three roses and a half full bottle of cognac. Over time he became somewhat of a celebrity himself appearing suddenly in the cemetery only to do his duty then disappear as mysteriously as he had appeared. In 2012 the tribute stopped. Did the toaster lose interest? Was he tired of the media circus and copycats? Was he infirm? Had he passed away? The world has no answer for these questions. The Toaster adds a fitting mystery to Poe's legacy, a window into fantasy that lives on in classrooms, in private libraries, on glowing screens or anywhere readers enjoy imagination at its best. 

This week let us lift our own toast to Poe, refiner of the short story, inventor of detective fiction, shaper of science fiction, and master of written language whose  mystery and imagination treads the boundaries of fantasy and reality in our own lives.

My well-worn treasure of Poe's mystery and imagination

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
commons.wikimedia.org, public domain photograph by Edwin H. Manchester taken November 9, 1848 in Providence, Rhode Island

Text:
eapoe.org
poetryfoundation.org