Earthy Pick with a Texas Twang

Last year marked the centennial of Woody Guthrie's birth. Yet his novel, House of Earth, completed in 1947, wasn't published until this year. Thanks to Harper Collins and its Infinitum Nihil imprint with Johnny Depp and Douglas Brinkley, who are credited as editors and who also wrote the book's introduction, Woody Guthrie fans can discover for themselves another facet of Guthrie's creative genius.

The title reflects Guthrie's interest in and passion for adobe houses, which he believed were much better suited for poor and struggling dirt farmers in the West and Southwest. Guthrie wrote the tale of Tike and Ella May Hamlin and their struggle with nature, banks, big, and corporate farms that squeezed out sharecroppers and poor farmers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, which he experience first-hand in the Texas Panhandle town of Pampa.



Guthrie's writing is dazzling in an earthy, lyrical, and haunting way. He captures the injustice of big interests toward folks who had little means to fight back. His characters live and talk much like he did. You can even hear their Texas twang. Steinbeck gave us the tale of those who fled the Dust Bowl, but Guthrie wrote about those who either couldn't flee or chose to tough it out against awful odds.

House of Earth belongs among the classics of 20th century American literature. If you haven't read this book yet, add it to your "must read" list. You won't regret it.

Mom Memories

I don't always think about my mother on Mother's Day. I tend to think about her more often on the anniversary of her death--more than 50 years ago, a few days before my 11th birthday.

The passing years have dimmed my memory of her. Yet there are still enough snippets from those few years we shared. My earliest memories of her include those when I was 3 or 4. I remember the places we lived until she lost her struggle with both MS and Hodgkins Lymphoma when she was just 29.

I still remember how she looked--especially her smile--as well as the sound of her voice and laughter. In quiet moments, when I let my mind go blank, I remember more. Images and dialogue flow like film clips. She loved watching the Red Sox, despite the team's propensity for blowing a lead score to lose the game. I remember the bittersweet vacation--our last together--on Lake Carmi in Vermont near the Canadian border when her illness forced us to leave earlier than planned and return home.

When I think of her today, I'm still 10 and she's 29. So it goes....

Books Outside of the Box

What do two internationally best-selling, award-winning crime authors from two different countries have in common? Both are also gifted writers who can write "outside of the box" of their genre and produce books that deserve the accolade of "literature."



Swedish author Henning Mankell, perhaps most noted for his Kurt Wallander detective mysteries, is equally well known for his novels that have garnered several literary awards, as well as for his plays, TV screenplays and other works. Mankell divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where directs plays at Teatro Avenida.

Mankell's most recent novel to appear in English is The Shadow Girls, which was first published in 2001, but was not published in the U.K. and U.S. until 2012. The book revolves around Jesper Humlin,  a poet whose talent and success is questionable, but who nevertheless enjoys some popularity. His relationship with his girlfriend, his mother, his doctor, stock broker, and others is dysfunctional, often adding laugh-out-loud moments to the story.

For example, when his publisher announces that the publishing house has been taken over by a foreign oil company, which expects to see more profit for its investment, Humlin learns that he must not only write a best-selling crime novel, but he also has a deadline to write it. After all, Humlin's poetry, like most poetry, doesn't generate much income, let alone profit. Despite Humlin's refusal to write anything but poetry, the publisher ignores him.

Humlin then leaves Stockholm for Gothenburg for a poetry reading at a public library, but later agrees to conduct a writing workshop for three young women who are illegal immigrants. Humlin soon becomes intrigued in their lyrical,  gripping yet strangely enchanting, and often conflicting stories that they narrate to him rather than write.

Meanwhile, Humlin's girlfriend reveals that his 87-year old mother, Märta, runs a phone sex business for elderly men and has closed a deal with Humlin's publisher to write her own best-selling crime novel. The girlfriend's biological clock is ticking, so she increasingly pressures Humlin to commit to a more meaningful relationship, which he resists. At the same time, Humlin's publisher sends out a press release announcing Humlin's forthcoming best-selling crime novel and his stockbroker continues to embezzle his money while also trying to entice him into still another business venture.

What becomes of the illegal-immigrant storytellers and their plights? Does Humlin surrender to his publisher after all and meet the ever-pressing deadline? If you like a well-spun story with a few dashes of irony and humor, then add The Shadow Girls to your "must read" list.

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U.S. author William Kent Krueger is most famous for his Cork O'Connor mysteries, but his most recent novel, Ordinary Grace, is a literary tour de force. On one level, the novels is a "whodunit?" On another, it is a classic Bildungsroman. Krueger takes the reader to the small town of New Bremen, Minnesota and the nearby banks of the Minnesota River during the summer of 1961. A young boy is found dead on the railroad track above the river. Was it an accident or a murder? The narrator, Frank Drum, describes, with some surprising twists and turns, the events that followed that incident.

Thirteen-year old Frank shares a bedroom with his younger brother Jake, and their relationship and actions sometime reminded me a bit of the Hardy Boys books, which were among my favorite summer reading as a boy. Their father is a Methodist minister, who served as an army infantry officer in combat during WWII, now serves three churches in New Bremen and environs. Their mother is a talented but frustrated singer who gave up a potentially promising career in music for marriage and motherhood. Frank and Jake's older sister, also gifted musically as their mother, is bound for Juilliard as more tragedy hits New Bremen.

Ordinary Grace is about Grace--both ordinary and redemptive. Through Frank and the other characters, Krueger explores the journey of childhood into adulthood, the tension between morally good vs. bad decisions and their consequences, dealing with tragedy and mourning, and especially forgiveness. In short, the novel explores philosophy and theology without beating you over the head or putting you to sleep. The writing is lean but rich, the characters are well developed and credible--in short, it's a wonderful story and a great read. It is a book that I plan to read not only again, but also a few more times in the future.

Radio Days & Nights

During the 1950s and 1960s, many families were still listening to the radio, even though TV had already begun to take over entertainment in living rooms across the country. Shows like "The Shadow," "Hopalong Cassidy," and those with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummies, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, remained very popular. I loved it when Bergen did a three-way conversation with Charlie and Mortimer. Just hearing the name Mortimer Snerd was enough to make me laugh, but I really howled when I heard "Snerds words for the birds"--at least it was hilarious for a young lad between the ages of seven and nine.

The radio in the kitchen was perhaps the first thing I heard upon waking up as a child. Until I was seven years old, my parents, my maternal grandparents, and my mother's two younger sisters shared a household before my parents moved to a then small town between Boston and Providence. My grandfather, whose earliest years revolved around farm life and a one-room school, was usually the earliest riser and among the the first things he did was turn on the radio while he brewed his notoriously strong pot of coffee.

We listened to local radio for news, weather, and entertainment such Ed Pearson’s Open House show on WEAN in Providence, which we also listened to when we lived in Massachusetts. When Ed's show was about to end, another announcer of Swedish descent, Ray Sjoberg, who hosted the "Sundial Show," often came on the air as "Boomstrom." Ed and Ray did a "shtick" imitating two Swedish immigrants while speaking with heavy Swedish accents. Since there were still many people of Swedish descent living in the Eden Park (aka Sweden Park) section of Cranston and Lakewood and Warwick Downs sections of Warwick, their shows were popular.

After my mother died, my father later married Ray's sister and Ray became an uncle. He often announced family new and milestones on his radio show, for example, the birth of my siblings. To this day, I think he had the best radio voice of any announcer on Rhode Island radio--not bad for a guy who didn't begin to speak English until he entered the first grade.

In the summer, the sound of radios emanated from garages, driveways, and front porches. Men listened to baseball games while working on their cars, tinkering in the garage, or just relaxing on the porch with a cigarette or cigar and a cold drink. You also often heard big band music that was popular before, during, and after WWII. But that changed when teenagers began to listen to rock 'n roll. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, The Platters, Jerry Lee Lewis, to name just a few is what you began to hear from passing cars or bedroom windows. By the time I reached high school, the music began to change and soon we were inundated with American-influenced groups from England, particularly the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Radio is what I often listened to before I slept. I'd turn out the lights so that the only light in the room came from the radio. This was before transistor radios when radios had tubes that lit up like light bulbs and illuminated the radio face dial. The beauty of listening to the radio was that it allowed you to use your imagination to visualize the characters, the settings, and action--like when you read a book. When you watch TV or a film, what you see is the result of another person's imagination.

At one point, when I lived overseas, I liked to listen to short-wave radio and used to chuckle at the propaganda during the Cold War because it seemed almost if the broadcasts were parodies of themselves. Who listens to short wave today?

Radio has changed since then. People still listen to the radio when they wake up, eat breakfast, or drive to work as they did in years past, but overall it has become more serious and cynical. Syndicated talk shows dominate much of AM radio these days, but I don't listen to it. Most of the talk show hosts seem to have too much ego, too many questionable agendas, and spout too much mis-/disinformation (propaganda) for my taste. Compared to today's talk radio, the Cold War propaganda was more "entertaining" because you could still laugh at it. Unfortunately, it's not as easy to laugh at something more insidious and pernicious.

Last Hurrah in Paris

Between 1969 and 1970, I visited Paris three times and spent a total of about eight weeks there.

The first time I visited Paris was in April 1969. I was still in the USAF and had planned an ambitious trip to hitchhike through several countries, but which I cut short after sleeping on a frozen hillside between Lyon and Valence, another story for another time perhaps. Hitchhiking was easier and safer then. It was also a great way to travel and I often learned much about the countries I visited when the drivers pointed out sights and talked about the history and culture.

I recall that on my first trip to Paris, I managed to arrive in Paris the same day with four different rides. The best was a ride from outside of Mainz all the way to Fontainbleu, where the driver dropped me off at a Metro station. From there, I took the Metro into Paris and then to the Latin Quarter. A woman, one of several American expats I met on my trips to Paris, was heading to the same stop and helped me find the hotel that a friend had recommended. Le Grand Hotel du Midi on Rue du Sommerard was my “home” each time I was in Paris. Another regular hangout was Le Petit Bar on Rue St. Jacques, a haven for expats and Bohemians of all nationalities. That first trip was uneventful. I spent most of my time walking around the Latin Quarter and along the Seine, doing what tourists do, seeing the sights, visiting museums, and the like. One thing I noticed was the omnipresence of French police at certain intersections in the Latin Quarter. Paris was still reeling from the strikes and riots the previous year in May 1968, and the police did not tolerate students or others congregating as a group and would quickly break up any group they saw, telling them to move on.

My next trip to Paris was after Christmas 1969 with a German girlfriend, with whom I drove in her tiny Fiat from Wiesbaden to Paris. Once we checked into the hotel and got settled, we walked down Rue St. Jacques to Le Petit Bar and soon became part of an international group of friends, with whom we went out to dinner each night at a different restaurant or bistro and hung out with most afternoons at Le Petit Bar. Among the merry group, was a couple from Montreal, a Bolivian, A Finnish expat, a Japanese computer programmer who was in Paris attempting to transform himself into an artist, and a couple of American expats who had been living in Paris for a while.

As the name indicates, Le Petit Bar was small. During the day, it was a good place for a late breakfast or lunch, but in the evening it was standing room only. An old waiter by the name of Ramano worked there during the day. According to the local legend, he had once been the owner and then sold the bar to retire, but later returned to work there. He must have been at least 70. I will never forget his voice and the incredibly nasal twang when he shouted food and drink orders to the bar. Another waiter I remember was a guy from Holland who worked there part-time. I forget his name but someone had told me that he was a med student. He often visited the bar on his night off, hollering “Hoog verdoemen!” in Dutch (roughly translated, “Goddamnit!”) as he entered with his entourage. The thing I remember most was that he was usually dressed in a suit and tie, and looked very much like a young physician. He was also often already “three sheets to the wind.” I wonder if he ever finished med school and became a doctor?

Another hangout was Le Piano Vache on Rue La Place near the Pantheon. We saw Jean Paul Satre there one night. I would have never noticed him at the bar if someone hadn't pointed him out. It was also near Rue Mouffetard, which is noted for its many restaurants. In 1969-1970, you could still find a few good restaurants there that were affordable.

The police presence was still evident, but oddly the police never bothered us when our group of six or eight walked from Le Petit Bar to wherever we planned to dine that evening. Perhaps it was because we weren't French and weren't speaking French? Although we spent most of our time in the Latin Quarter, we sometimes ventured to the St. Germain des Prés and other neighborhoods. One place was a drugstore at street level with a jazz club in the basement. It may have been the original Le Drugstore, but the photo I saw online doesn't match what I remember, which I recall was on a narrow back street or alley. Anyway, from what I hear, it's no longer there.

One eatery I'll never forget was a bistro we called “Madam Georgette's.” I'm not sure if that was the actual the actual name of the place, but the waitress was called Madame Georgette. She was a brassy blonde who was probably in her late 40s and was most noted for her colorful nicknames for every dish on the menu. If you ordered a well-done steak, she'd holler to the kitchen something along the lines of “One burned shoe!” in French. There was also a banana dish, which she called “a young girl's dream.”

My last trip—the last hurrah—was just three months later in April-May 1970. This time, I splurged and flew with Air France from Frankfurt to Orly. As usual, I checked into the Hotel du Midi and then headed straight for Le Petit Bar. By now, I was more or less “a regular” and knew the waiters and other staff, as well as some of the regulars.

During this trip, I also became a regular at Shakespeare and Company, which was on Rue la Bucherie and across the street from Le Petit Bar. George Whitman was the omnipresent owner for some 60 years,. He not only ran the shop, he also offered lodging and humble meals to struggling writers and travelers who needed a place to stay in exchange for a couple of hours of work in the shop. George usually wore a corduroy suit and, with his goatee, he reminded me of Ezra Pound. He was a man with many stories about books, famous guests, and himself. Among his tales, I remembering him saying that he was the “illegitimate grandson of Walt Whitman.” He died in 2011, just two days after his 98^th birthday. His daughter Sylvia now runs the shop.

The bookstore was and remains a popular destination for expats and tourists—especially Americans. It is a singular used bookshop in Paris where most of the books are in English and where you can browse, read, and even find a treasure or two among the floor-to-ceiling stacks—not to mention bump into and talk to famous visitors you might not even recognize. I once met one of Hemingway's granddaughter's there. It neither Mariel nor Margaux, so I think it may have been Joan, aka “Muffet,” but were any of them famous in 1970?

A more famous person I met at Shakespeare and Company was the Tamil poet Tambimuttu (aka Tambi) who lived in London and was better known there as a critic, editor, and publisher. George had agreed to let Tambi stay at the bookshop during a visit to Paris. Tambi spent much of his time at the shop talking to visitors and old friends at the back of the shop, just a few yards from where George sat. I sometimes dropped in and chatted with him as well. At the time, I had submitted some poems to Paris Magazine, which George published sporadically. George showed the poems to Tambi and they accepted two for publication. Tambi claimed that one poem was the first and only true psychedelic poem he had seen at the time. Of course, I was ecstatic, but a couple of days later I ran into an expat writer who advised, “If you have a chance to publish the poems elsewhere, do so, because it could be a very long time before you'll see them in print—if ever.” Yes, I retracted them. They were published later in a college literary magazine.

While Tambi stayed at Shakespeare and Company, a tall, blond British woman and a gentleman friend arrived in Paris and visited Tambi at the bookshop. Although stately and still striking, age was not kind to the woman. Her blossom had faded. I soon discovered that Tambi had a reputation as a ladies' man. During a mid-afternoon breakfast at a café on Blvd. St. Germain, he confided to me that he had not only slept with the woman when she was much younger, but he had also slept with her adult daughter years later.

One evening when I was at the bookshop, Tambi sat in his corner in the back talking to an attractive young woman in her early 20s. Meanwhile, George had gone to another part of the shop. Suddenly, the lights went out and initially I didn't hear or see anything. Apparently, there was a fuse box and switches for the shops lights close to where Tambi sat. But then I heard what sounded like a struggle and the woman began shouting. By then, my eyes had adjusted to the gloom enough to see movement in the back and heard voices, but didn't understand what was said. Suddenly, the lights were on again. The incident probably took less than a minute or so. The woman looked both angry and embarrassed, George looked as if he was trying to control whatever he felt, and Tambi looked nonchalant, as if nothing had happened at all. As I recall, Tambi returned to London very soon after the incident.

My last hurrah in Paris lasted about a month and the time just flew by. One thing I never did during my trips to France and Paris was date a French woman. Aside from women who worked in shops and cafés, I didn't meet many French women to begin with. In addition to a few American expats and tourists, most of the women I met were from Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia. So it went.

Four months later, I was a civilian again and back in the states and about to resume college, thanks to the GI Bill. How time flies.

Love, Death, and Alienation--So it goes.

My freshman comp prof was a stickler about grammar and style, but she also tried to encourage us to write, even if her advice wasn't new. "Write about what you know," she said. "Each of you has a hobby or interest, for example. You probably have knowledge about those things that rest of us might not have."

It wasn't bad advice, but I don't think many of us believed her. As freshmen, many of us weren't too confident about what we knew or thought we knew, although a few of us thought we knew damn near everything we needed to know. Some of us tried our hand at fiction, and many of us dabbled with poetry. After all, it was a time to learn, experiment, and grow. All you had to do was put words on a page in an interesting pattern--like e. e. cummings. Who cares if it made sense or not? Did any of us understand cummings?  It was poetry! To be honest, nearly 50 years later, much of the poetry I read still doesn't make sense. Yet a few poets do, perhaps I'm finally making progress.

For those of us who thought we were actually poets with some talent for the genre, another prof succinctly described our work as predominantly "sophomoric." Why? He claimed that our work represented typical shallow efforts that focused too much love, death, and alienation. A few of us then wondered, what's wrong with that--what else do we know? Today we know the answer: not much.

For example--despite our raging hormones and often hasty declarations of love-- did we know what true love entailed? Hardly. I suspect that many of us are still struggling to grasp it and have only learned in the interim what love isn't. For some of us, Sturm und Drang didn't end during our twenties. No, it just kept chugging stormily along from decade to decade, albeit sometimes less stormy but life's stress didn't subside much. There was always a challenge or crisis lurking ahead.

What about death? What does a college freshman know about death other than it usually happens to other people--especially older other people. When you're 18 or 19, death is an abstract concept linked to an unknown future. The irony is we failed to grasp how quickly that future becomes the present. Most of us are already retired or about to retire soon. Our kids have kids. Jerry Rubin or was it really Jack Weinberg who said, "Don't trust anyone over 30." That taunt much later became, "Don't trust anyone under 30!" Will we Baby Boomers soon chant "Don't trust anyone under 60"?

Meanwhile, some classmates already have died. At first it was traffic accidents, the war in Vietnam, and cancer that took the youngest of us. That changed quickly. We're dying now because we're aging and the rest of us are increasingly aware that our years among the living are dwindling quicker than ever. Do we understand death any better? Not really, it's still abstract, but we understand the reality of it better.Was it Woody Allen's character Boris Grushenko states at one point in Love and Death (I think it was in that film), "It's not that I'm afraid of death, I just don't want to be around when he shows up." But Kurt Vonnegut said it best in Slaughterhouse Five: "So it goes."

If there was one thing we college freshman understood better than love and death, it was alienation. What teen doesn't feel alienation? After all, no one understands them--certainly not their oh-so-square parents, or most teachers and other adults in general. Now, if that isn't alienation, what is? On the other hand, has it changed much? Now, it's our kids and other younger people in general who don't understand us. Worse, too many of our politicians don't understand us! How dare they even think about reducing our Social Security or Medicare benefits? Are they nuts?!

Freshman comp at college was a long time ago--a distant memory like a half-forgotten dream. Sturm und Drang live on. Love, death, and alienation live on. So it goes. Perhaps it's not a bad time to write poetry again.

Thinking About Buying a Gun? Think Again.

Firearm advocates believe and want you to believe that buying and carrying a firearm will also provide protection and self-defense against a variety of possible scenarios. This belief is problematic for several reasons, even if you have a permit to carry a weapon--concealed or open--in public.  I might add that carrying a knife or other weapon also might not offer as much protection as you think. Consequently, contemplate the following:

1.) Your workplace or certain public places such as government buildings may not permit weapons of any kind unless you are police, military, or authorized security. So what do you do with your weapon--leave it at home or lock it inside your car's trunk?

2.) Owning a weapon may provide protection, for example, during an attempted home invasion. If your weapon is locked away and unloaded in the gun cabinet, it won't help much. If you are armed at the time, are you willing and will not hesitate to use it? Studies have shown that even LEOs who are well trained in using firearms don't shoot as well (i.e., accurately) in high stress situations, especially if the perp is shooting back. Suppose the attacker(s) is/are armed you freeze and are unable or unwilling to shoot? What if you shoot and you miss--what then?

3.) What if you are carrying and suddenly you're being mugged? If the mugger knows what he/she is doing, he/she will know how to use the element of surprise to his/her advantage. Chances are you won't know who or what hit you because the attack will be very fast and probably very violent--think "shock and awe." Moreover, the mugger might also be armed with a handgun, knife, or just with quick and powerful fists. You can be a 10th-degree black belt, but if you don't see that sucker punch--even if you can take a punch--you're likely going down.

What if the mugger sticks a handgun to your gut or jams it up under your chin and pulls your head back? Do you think you'll have time to draw your and use your weapon? Even if you've practiced self-defense against such gun attacks in the dojo many, many times, you only have a split-second to protect yourself and disarm the attacker. If you hesitate even for a second or two, it'll be too late because the only way you'll be able to reverse the mugger's element of surprise is to counter his/her attack immediately to your advantage. Good luck with that. Depending on how desperate the mugger is (some 75% of crimes are drug related), he/she might just shoot you anyway. You never know.

Most responsible self-defense instructors will tell you to let the mugger take your wallet, cell phone, or whatever. That's probably the best advice. I've trained in martial arts and self-defense for 25 years, but would I be quick enough--especially at my age--to protect myself against a determined, younger, and faster mugger? At best, it would be a crap shoot and 50-50 odds would be generous. For what it's worth, I know a well-known, self-defense expert who is also well-trained in using and defending against a knife. In four separate incidents when he was attacked by someone also carrying a knife, he was only able to draw his knife quickly enough to defend himself just once. Fortunately, his training enabled him to still defend himself empty handed.

But why listen to me? If it makes you feel safer, go ahead and spend your hard-earned money for that Glock or Sig Sauer, ammo, gun club/range membership, and self-defense training. Just remember that there's no guarantee that it will actually protect you in the end. And if you succeed to defend and protect yourself with a firearm, have you considered the aftermath? It's not easy for a "normal" human being to kill another one, which is why the military and police spends so much time and money on training its forces. Even then, there are often lingering psychological issues to face afterward. Moreover, have you considered the possible legal morass you might face?

If and when you go out and buy that firearm, please invest the additional money in taking a firearm self-defense course with an expert who will not only teach you how to use your weapon, but also provide graphic information about what a firearm does and how using one might affect you both psychologically and legally. Good luck and peace be with you.