All posts by David Todd

books, family, home improvements, memories, Mom, reading

Goodbye, Books

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So many books to read, so little time left in this world to read them.

The house I grew up in had a lot of books in it. The secretary in the dining room, the bookcase with the glass doors in the hallway, and on shelves of books in the basement—some tied with twine, some in boxes, some in a row, and some under drop-cloths. I didn’t know what these books were. Once I took the drop-cloth off some and saw they were encyclopedias, published in 1900.

After Mom died and we three children grew up and moved out, Dad became an acquirer of books. He was retired by then, and he and his friend boyhood friend, Bob Tetrault, would get together once a month, have lunch, then go to flea markets. I don’t know what Bob bought (if anything), but Dad bought books. He bought paperbacks, hardbacks, on a variety of subjects. Seemingly mindless that he already had more than a thousand of Mom’s books, he bought more—and read them.

When Dad died 32 years after Mom did, and we cleaned out the house, I took the books. I sorted them into three categories: those it seemed Dad acquired, which were published mainly 1970 and later; those older than that that Mom had acquired, mainly hardbacks from the 1930s and 1940s; and then much older books, all hardbacks. These, I learned, had belonged to David Sexton, Mom’s grand-uncle, the man who took my grandmother in as a single mother and gave her a home. These are mainly from the late 1800s, though I found some that went back as early as 1829. I think my brother sold off a few older ones before I took the bulk of them away, but that’s another story.

Now we come down to 2020 and our new effort to reduce our possessions, looking toward that day sometime in the future when we’ll downsize and likely move away. As I reported in a prior post, I’m identifying things to part with and selling them on Facebook Marketplace—with some success. Dad’s tools, taking up space in boxes on shelves in the garage, are gone, at least many of them are. I still have a few. Toys that the grandchildren have outgrown are slowly going. We’ll give a number of them away to a needy family, sell others. Clothes that are surplus or that no longer fit (mostly due to weight loss) are being identified, sorted, and priced in anticipation of a yard sale a week from now. I’ve reported earlier about reduction in papers (cards, notes, letters), something that is on-going and not related to selling.

That brings us down to the books. What to do about them? Uncle Dave’s books are obviously keepers. Not many people have a set of Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s writings published in 1856, and another set from 1905. Not many have Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, and Kipling from the 1800s. My interest in Thomas Carlyle began because of his books Uncle Dave left behind. The many books that Dad collected we can obviously get rid of. A few would be worth keeping and reading. We’ll sort through them, see what’s good, and keep them. That would be maybe 1 or 2 of 100.

The books that came from Lynda’s dad and mom are more contemporary. The subjects vary from World War 2 to Christian living. I suspect most of those will go. They are not as numerous as the books my parents had, and are not keepsakes. The books we accumulated on our own are a little tougher. If we read them they can go. If we haven’t read them, are we likely to read them? If yes, we keep; if no, out they go. I suspect this will be 50-50. That will get rid of another thousand or more.

This one I will NOT be selling. My heirs can figure out what to do with it. I’ve not yet read “Little Women”, but when I do it may be from this copy.

What about Mom’s books? This is the hardest part of the decision. Over the years, at yard sales and when we briefly sold books on line from 2000-2003, I’ve sold a few of them. Now, however, I’m looking at selling maybe 700 of them if I can find buyers. At the end of that, I might find a good place to donate them, or sell them to a used book store or dealer for 25¢ on the dollar. This is hard, harder than selling Dad’s tools. Harder than selling anything I acquired over the years. Mom bought these books and, I believe, read all of them. It’s a piece of her I have clung to, hoping to read them myself and experience them as she did. Alas, if I could read two a month it would take me 42 years to go through them all. Will I live to be 110 and read these books to the exclusion of all others? Give up all my other interests just to read these books? I don’t think so.

Signed when she was 9 years old, Mom continued that practice all her life.

As buyers come by and take a few of Mom’s books, I look at the half-title page, where she always signed it and put the date she bought it. I look at that and come close to crying. Another piece of Mom gone.

But what else is there to do? My children don’t want these books. My grandchildren, I’m sure, won’t want them either. As Emerson said, each generation must write their own books. Very few people in our family are still alive who knew Mom, with a few more who knew about her. Someday these will all be gone. Should I leave that task to someone who comes after me, letting them make a hard decision?

No, I’ll make that hard decision. It won’t happen in a day, but over months, perhaps years. Slowly these books will go. I’ve pulled a few out to read, and will get through them.

book reviews, fiction

Book Review: Assumed Identity

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Morrell is a master of the plot and an amazing character developer. This book doesn’t disappoint in those areas.

Some books you read you remember very well, some books you forget almost entirely. Some books you sort of remember, but can’t figure out specifics. Assumed Identity by David Morrell is in the later category.

David Morrell taught a half-day class on fiction writing at a writer’s conference I went to in 2006 in New Mexico. As chance would have it, he and I wound up at the same table at lunch and we had a good conversation. Many people don’t know his name but you know his most famous character: Rambo.

I read Assumed Identity in 29 sittings in August and September this year. My paperback is exactly 500 pages, so my reading averaged 17 pages per sitting. Not bad, but I’ve done better.

The book is about a man who worked in Army special forces, in a task group that tried to infiltrate and then root out drug lords in various places. Some of his assignments may have been with other situations as well. It was kind of hard to understand all his backstory. In this book he had six or eight different identities as situations unfolded. One mission went awry when, through bad luck, someone he’d know a few identities prior ran into him in Mexico when he was trying to infiltrate a drug organization. Four drug lords/their body guards turned on him. He killed or wounded all of them, was wounded in the gun fight then again in his escape.

But escape he did—not once, but multiple times in the book. His work was perfect. He approached each situation kind of like a Jedi knight in Star Wars, you know how they seemed always confident, always ready in every situation, always undaunted when taking on multiple enemies, alway having the right equipment, the right stamina, and oodles of mental tenacity. That was the protagonist in this story.

Through most of the book he was worried about a certain woman he had worked with a few identities ago, as he received a note from her to meet at a certain place at a certain time in New Orleans, which was an indication she was in trouble and needed his help. With considerable difficulty he got to that place, but something bad happened and he didn’t see her, being injured in a knife attack. Later, he becomes involved with another woman, a newspaper reporter, who was trying to make a name for herself by exposing this secret army operation.

As I’ve been writing this some of the details of the book have come back to me, such as the next-to-last plot twist that was very major. Such as the destruction of an archaeological site in the Yucatan Peninsula by one of the world’s wealthiest men looking for oil, an operation that kept being mentioned in seemingly meaningless chapters that finally came together in the end.

This was a good book. It blended together Army operations, secret missions, civilian news, petroleum, drugs, and archaeology, with much action. I recommend it to anyone who likes a good action book.

As to the question of whether I’ll keep it or not: no, I won’t. I have around five or six Morrell books. This was the last one to read. I’m going to put them together in a lot and sell them on Facebook Marketplace. Perhaps a David Morrell fan will see it and want them. If not, after a couple of months, I’ll just mix them in with the 500 other books I’m currently trying to sell. I think, among my David Morrell reads, this was my least favorite. Still I’m going to give it 4 stars. It lost a star for a few confusing parts.

America, Documenting America, History

Peaceful Transfer of Power: A Defining American Characteristic

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Both the people of the new nation and those who ran the government wanted power to transfer peacefully. With all in the same mindset, peaceful transfer happened.

This is now the third (and I think the last) post in my series on defining characteristics of the USA—those things that make us stand out from all other nations: peaceful transfer of power.

When we made our second attempt at being a new and independent nation, under a new Constitution, George Washington became our first president. So revered was he that he could have been president for life. Actually, Americans might have accepted him as king. But Washington knew that someday power would have to transfer from him to someone else. Two terms was enough, he thought. Let the transfer happen peacefully.

My book on the Constitution doesn’t spend a lot of time on transfer of power, but it’s a good primer on how we got this amazing document.

You see, historically, transfer of power had been a violent affair. If it was peaceful, it was because a monarch’s heir was clearly popular with the people and with those in leadership who had surrounded the now dead sovereign. Going back a long way, it was common for the new king to kill the other potential heirs, assuring that he wouldn’t be challenged in his position and that, sometime in the future, power would transfer to his own heir, without challenges. Yet, even at that, the new king (or queen) would often be challenged. Looking through the kings of Israel in the Bible books of Kings and Chronicles shows frequent struggles in the first few months of the new king’s reign.

This also happened in Europe. At least three times in British history a king was overthrown. Sometimes it occurred without bloodshed. The nation had become more sophisticated, so potential rivals weren’t killed off. Heirs in other nations weren’t always so lucky. A study of the transfer of power in Europe would be fascinating. The same for other countries outside Europe.

I just updated my first Documenting America book for conditions in 2020.

What about in America? Washington declined to run for a third term. The nation elected John Adams as president in 1796. Power transferred peacefully and the baby nation chugged on. But Washington and Adams were of the same political mindset. What would happen when someone with different beliefs came to power?

That happened in 1800, along with the first of what would later come to be called a “constitutional crisis”. Thomas Jefferson was elected president. Actually, he tied with his vice presidential running mate, Aaron Burr. It took a vote by the House of Representatives to break the tie, and a constitutional amendment to correct a minor flaw in the relatively new document so that such wouldn’t happen again. The point is, however, Jefferson, of a different political party than Adams, came to power and all was peaceful. The nation chugged on. Adams wasn’t exiled; his children weren’t killed; Jefferson didn’t kill off or exile other potential rivals. The people didn’t riot in the streets over who became president. All was peaceful.

The new nation was showing that we could govern ourselves. Peaceful transfer of power from one party to another occurred. No coercive force was necessary. The American experiment was succeeding.

Looking at future elections, the peaceful transfer of power occurred all the way up to 1860. The South couldn’t accept Lincoln as president and his new political party as the one that would be setting policy and making laws. Rather than accept that, they declared themselves no longer part of the United States of America. The government said no, you can’t do that. We have property in your state and we will defend that property. The southern states said oh yeah? Just try it. And civil war broke out. The North won (as we know), and the nation stayed as one nation.

After fourteen peaceful transfers of power, including once at the death of a president, we had our first experience with violent transfer. It wasn’t pretty.

We had a questionable transfer of power in 1876, as the winner of the election was in dispute. I have more study to do of that transfer. Suffice to say that a compromise was reached, a president was selected through a combination of constitutional provisions and cooler heads who didn’t want to go through another bloody transfer prevailing.

From that time on, we had peaceful transfers all the way up to 2000. Even in 2000 the transfer was peaceful, though the closeness of that election required the judicial branch to get involved. Some say the judicial branch stole the election from Gore and awarded it to Bush. Some say Bush won it outright (by a tiny margin) and the courts simply prevented Gore from demanding endless recounts. Either way, while the transfer of power was in question, and while we wish it hadn’t come down to the Supreme Court,  it happened peacefully.

Then came 2016. Trump won. Many people didn’t like it. The people who favored the other candidate took to protesting in the streets, though that died out. Transfer was contentious but, as the election wasn’t in doubt, was peaceful.

That brings us to 2020. While Biden appears to be leading and heading toward victory, that’s the way it was in 2016 and the outcome is not certain. But what is certain is that if Trump wins again there will again be protests in the street. Will these turn violent? Will the transfer of power—actually the need to not transfer power—be peaceful? Or, if Biden wins, will Trump peacefully allow the transfer of power to take place? Will we have a clear winner, or will the courts have to intervene again?

Peaceful transfer of power, a defining American characteristic. We are not far from seeing it end. It has happened because the people and leaders wanted it to happen, and because we had a supreme law that everyone accepted and revered. Right now we don’t know if either of them do. And that could have disastrous consequences of our country.

C.S. Lewis, family, home improvements, memories, miscellaneous

Footprints

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I hope there will be some relics of us left when we have settled that question of souteraines.

This book will take me several years to get through at the slow rate I’m reading it. I wonder if I’ll ever get to Vol. 2.

As my wife and are in the process of de-cluttering, we find a lot of things I can only describe as footprints: printed matter, souvenirs, old things we used to use but don’t any more. We are weeding through these. So far I’ve listed a number of things on Facebook Marketplace and some have sold. Not many, but some. And the amounts earned thereby are starting to add up.

I’m determined not to leave the mess for our children that our parents did for us. Two houses to clean out, plus all my mother-in-law’s stuff stuffed into our basement storeroom when she left her house for an apartment and more coming with each of her next moves. And this is after having multiple estate sales and yard sales in the past.

This drill set hung in the basement above Dad’s workbench. I could have sold it for more if it was all there, but the drill itself is missing as well as other parts.

My brother and I divided the tools and hardware from Dad’s basement. I took my share and stuffed them in our garage at our last house and faithfully moved them to our current, larger house and found space for them in the garage. A few—very few—I used. Most sat in cardboard boxes and tool boxes for the last 23 years, as they had at Dad’s for three or four decades before that. Some of those are gone. Some others will be picked up in 42 minutes [I write this on Sunday afternoon.]

When this process is over, a process that will take several years, I don’t know what we’ll have left. At some point we will have to consider our own stuff and decide what to do with it. But for now it’s enough to be dealing with our parent’s stuff. Our son is visiting us now. Before he came I told him to not expect much progress. I said what we had done so far was like cutting a millimeter off a 2-lbs. chunk of cheddar cheese. But progress is progress, even if it’s by millimeters instead of yards.

All of which is making me think of footprints, the footprints we leave in this world. Of course, as a genealogist, I’m thrilled when I find a footprint of an ancestor. It helps me to know a little about their life. The fact that so-and-so took someone to court in 1675 and won matters. Yet, I’m kind of glad I’m not looking at five pages of ancient court documents and trying to decide: “Do I keep this or not?” Footprints are good; a trampled wheat field is not. Hopefully the footprints that now adorn our house will, at such time as we leave this world, be just enough to be pleasing to our heirs, not overwhelming as we are now.

This box of odd clamps, files, and other tools came from Dad’s house in the box you see. I never used any of them.

The quote that starts this post I found in a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to his good friend Arthur Greaves on 10 November 1941. I’m slowly reading through Lewis’ letters. Volume 1 is 1024 pages of 10 point font. I assume Volumes 2 (which I also have) and 3 (which I do not have) are about the same. By “relics” I believe Lewis means the same as “footprints”. He hoped that he would make an impact on the world and that those who came after him would know who he was.

The word “souterrains” was a new one on me. Wikipedia defines it thusly:

Souterrain is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated mainly with the European Atlantic Iron Age. These structures appear to have been brought northwards from Gaul during the late Iron Age. Regional names include earth houses, fogous and Pictish houses.

So it’s an archeological relic—a footprint of people long gone, something that tells us a little about how they lived. Lewis is saying that, just as these souterrains survived for a couple of millennia, so would his influence survive. He wrote that as a 16-year-old school boy.

At the moment, I think the biggest legacy I could leave my kids is to not leave a mess behind for them to have to deal with. Oh, there will be a few things. We don’t leave earth with absolutely nothing in our possession just prior. But I know it will be better than the three messes we received.

home improvements, miscellaneous

Goodbye, Old Friends

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The old kept better time, but it died. I’m sad to see this old friend go.

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I grew especially close to the Philipino men who worked for me. For some reason they liked me and I liked them. I learned a little Tagalog—not a lot, just enough for greetings and partings, maybe a bit more. But that seemed enough. When the time came for our family to leave Saudi, the company held a going-away party for us. The company sponsored a gift that the employees chipped in on—everyone except the Philipinos. They got together and bought me a nice wall clock.

Our shipment was already packed. We were flying to Vienna to start four weeks in Europe on our way home. We were to leave December 2, 1983. While four weeks was our plan, we were prepared to cut it short if, after three years of mild Arabian winters, we found the Austrian winter a bit too much. With a lot of luggage already, we stuff that clock in, carried it to Europe, thence to Rhode Island, thence to Kansas City, thence on the bus to Meade Kansas (where we picked up our cars), thence drove it on to Asheboro North Carolina, our next stop on the path of life.

Hopefully this is now gracing the wall of someone’s shop, now that it’s no longer gathering dust in my garage.

I’ll shorten the rest of this. That clock hung in our home in North Carolina, went into storage when we lived in Kuwait, then hung in our apartment in NC on our return then in two houses in NW Arkansas. It survived being dropped, being knocked off the wall when I errantly threw one of the dog’s toys. It always kept good time. Every two years or so it would die, and I’d have to change the batteries. Then it would start chiming again, every hour and half hour from 6 am to 10:30 pm.

I have no idea what these clamps were for. Hopefully their new owner can figure them out.

In our present house it’s been my companion in The Dungeon. It helped me to keep on schedule with my work. If I said I would work an hour on something, I’d wait for a chime and know when I should end. The chimes were just loud enough that you could hear it upstairs in the living room (if the TV was off or not too loud).

Then, we came back from our brief trip to Mexico last Christmastime and it wasn’t going. I got new batteries for it and…nothing. Didn’t start. I tried other new batteries to make sure I hadn’t picked up used batteries by mistake and…nothing. The clock had died. For 37 years it’s been a good and loyal friend, but it died. It’s been sitting on the table since January. A newer clock that doesn’t keep time very well is in its place. But I’ve had a hard time getting rid of my old friend. I was told I could replace the works inside the shell, but, that somehow doesn’t seem right. No, by the end of the day today this clock will be in the recycling pile in our garage.

Other things are going too as the wife and I contemplate down-sizing sometime in the coming years. Our children want us to do that sooner rather than later, but the amount of stuff we have suggests this will not be a quick or easy process. In July Lynda identified a rocking horse that our grandkids have outgrown. We could keep it around until great-grandkids come along, but that could be a long time and a new residence from now. So I listed it on Facebook Marketplace and it sold a month later.

I climbed this ladder a lot. Got a bee sting on it in NC, and it sunk into the ground, fell forward, and put my face on the sidewalk, also in NC. Not sorry to see it go.

Encouraged by that, I scoured the storeroom shelves and found a small aquarium we haven’t used since we moved to this house. That fetched $20 on the Marketplace. Three large plants brought $15, and I lost a few friends that had kept me company in the sunroom the last few years.

I’m not sure what type of plants these were. They were big, and my wife said they took a lot of care. I balked at first when she wanted to sell them, as they’ve been companions in the sunroom. But then I thought, I don’t want to dampen her notion of getting rid of stuff. So off they went, hopefully to a good home.

I decided to tackle the garage. In it I found lots of stuff that I had taken from Dad’s house after his death, when my brother and I divided up the tools and hardware. Boxes and boxes of the stuff have cluttered two different garages now for 23 years. Why didn’t I get rid of it long before now? I guess I thought I might use it some day. I listed for sale a wall “panel” for an old drill set that is now just a nice shop decoration. That sold in just a couple of days. Then there was a box of old clamps (probably used in woodworking). They sold in a day.

Then there’s that old wooden ladder that’s been just hanging on the wall since I got an aluminum one. That’s now waiting, hoping for a buyer. I next looked at a bottom shelf that had some boxes. I pulled them off and found them all to be empties. They are now flattened and waiting for the next trip to recycling, probably on Wednesday.

So, these old friends are slowly starting to make their way out of the house. Some, like the clock and the plants, were good friends. Others, like the tools and boxes, were just taking up space. I told my son that, when he comes to visit us soon, he’ll look at the house and say, “I thought you were getting rid of stuff!” I told him it’s a first step, like cutting one millimeter off a two pound block of cheddar cheese. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s less than was there before.

Hopefully we’ll continue this process and have motivation and strength enough to do a few more millimeters. Maybe in a year it will be noticeable. Meanwhile, it’s hard to say goodbye to some of these friends.

book reviews

Book Review: Murder In Retrospect

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I suspect this book belonged to my sister, and that I took it with other books from Dad’s house when he died.

I continue to work my way through books in the house with an eye toward reducing our inventory, selecting some for reading and discarding. With around 4000 to 5000 books in the house, we are making slow progress—but we are making some.

A while back I transferred some books slated for donation from shoe boxes to plastic bags (because the wife doesn’t like to discard shoe boxes). Then the pandemic hit and we haven’t been to a thrift store since. Hence the two bags of books still sit in our garage. On top of one was an Agatha Christie mystery. I thought maybe we could read that aloud together and we did so. When I returned it to the pending donation bag, I dug a little deeper and found three other Agatha Christie books. Having enjoyed the first, I rescued these (along with three other books) and formed a new reading pile for our evening reading.

The browning of the inside pages speaks to the book’s age. I suspect mid-1960s.

This one was Murder In Retrospect. Originally copyrighted in 1941, my copy, a mass-market paperback, doesn’t have a printing date. It appears to be from the 1960s, just like the other one we read. MIR is a Hercule Poirot mystery. Poirot is hired by a woman who has just come of age and is planning on marrying. But, when she was five, her mother was convicted of killing her father by poisoning, was sentenced to prison, but died there within a year. She left a note for her daughter, proclaiming her innocence. Except by all reports, during the trial she made a very poor witness for herself, which was a significant factor in her being convicted. Now, before the daughter marries, she wants to know the truth and hires Poirot to investigate.

What ensues is Poirot interviewing the surviving parties, sixteen years after it happened, to discover the truth if it can be found. The woman’s father was a painter—and a philanderer. He was painting his latest fling, in their own house so to speak, or at least in the garden. Other parties are: the woman’s 15-year-old aunt, half-sister to her mother; the governess; two brothers who lived at an adjacent country property; and the woman who was being painted. Also to be interviewed are various police officers who worked the case.

Even the back cover gave information about the plot, although I didn’t notice it until I was writing this blog post.

The book was a fascinating, easy read of 239 pages that we read in eleven sittings. It was a real opportunity for the reader to try to figure out who did the murder. I decided right away that the accused/convicted didn’t do it, but couldn’t decide on who it was among the other six. I don’t want to give it away by saying too much, just in case one of my readers wants to read it. I was leaning toward one person, but then a late clue led me to conclude it was another. I felt pretty good about myself recognizing that clue (which I figured out about an hour after reading, just after I’d gone to bed). It was an important clue, not because it told you who the murderer was, but because it let you know who the accused thought the murderer was and thus governed her subsequent actions.

This was a good Christie mystery and I’m glad I read it. If I didn’t already have so many books in the house, I might have kept this. Alas, it goes back into the donation bag. Someday we will get to a thrift store once again and it will go on a shelf for someone else to read.

ancient letters, Carlyle, Documenting America, letters, self-publishing, The Teachings, Writing

Still Not Making a Lot of Progress

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Dateline 1 Oct 2020

“Adam Of Jerusalem” is a prequel to “Doctor Luke’s Assistant”, and is the first in my church history novel series. “The Teachings” fits in as book 3 of the series.

In January of this year I began writing The Teachings, the third (chronologically) novel in my Church History series. I had been reading for research some time before that. I worked on it consistently through January and February, then bogged down in March. My problem was I wanted to be historically accurate to events in 66-70 A.D., but didn’t want to overdo the historical stuff and not have the novel interesting for the characters and the plot. I started re-reading my main source, Josephus, but that just made me more uncertain of how to proceed.

So, as I have a habit of doing, I went to another project, my family history/genealogy research into the children of John Cheney of Newbury (1600?-1666). Genealogy research is always a pleasure and I figured it would be a brief, rejuvenating diversion. Some years ago I began this work on his youngest child, Elizabeth, who married the mariner Stephen Cross of Ipswich. I found much about them (mainly about Stephen, but that helped define Elizabeth’s life as well), and realized it would be a stand-alone book about them. I brought that book to about 60 pages in 2018, then set it aside. In March I picked it up again as the diversion, and by April 3 I had it up to around 80 pages and, I thought, close to finished.

The colonies did well governing themselves, until the King of England tried to impose new government on them. Resistance to that became the seeds of the American Revolution.

On April 3, Lynda went into the hospital with her burst appendix and was in 19 days, requiring two surgeries. It didn’t look good for a while. Since due to the pandemic I couldn’t be with her at the hospital, to keep myself occupied I worked feverishly on the Cross-Cheney book. Before long I had it up over 100 pages. Lynda finally came home though was still weak and recuperating. I got the book up to 116 pages, polished it, and published it. So far, with 1 sale, it’s doing about as expected. A few of the figures were of poor quality, so I haven’t advertised it to the Cross or Cheney genealogy boards and won’t till I get those figures replaced.

After getting my diversion done, it should have been back to The Teachings, right? Well, a little bit. But soon I was working on another diversion. It started as decluttering, going through the many papers my mother-in-law left behind at her death. But that soon evolved into transcribing our Kuwait years letters. That took the better part of August and early September. That’s now done. I will someday turn that into a book for my children and grandchildren. That will take editing, adding commentary, and illustrating it with photos. I don’t see doing more on that for the rest of this year—although, I don’t rule out occasionally opening the file and adding some commentary.

Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors. So, I began the editing work in early September 2020, and hope to re-publish by the end of September.

That brought me up to mid-September. Time now to work on The Teachings. Except I still didn’t feel like it. I decided I would take another Amazon Ad Challenge in October, and that I would focus on the first Documenting America book as the next to advertise. But this book needed significant work. It was the first I published, long before I understood formatting.  I also figured I should add new material to bring the book up to date for 2020. I worked on this the second half of September, and began the re-publishing process on Sept. 28th. The last couple of days have been sufficiently busy with life that I haven’t had much time to work on it. But that’s now a today task for the e-book. I’ll have the proof copy of the print book on Saturday, so by Sunday Oct 4 the re-publishing process should be complete.

Then what? Work on The Teachings, finally? Maybe, maybe not. I want to get the Cross-Cheney book figures corrected and that book re-published and advertised. There’s always file maintenance. Plus, evenings in front of the television, I do e-mail “maintenance” and saving my correspondence to Word documents. That’s a tedious but fun process, something I can do multi-tasking, a non-urgent item to make progress on. But next on the list of items I posted on Monday is The Teachings. Will I finally get back to this?

Today, instead of working on finishing the Documenting America changes, I dusted off my Thomas Carlyle Bibliography.  Last night, as part of my TV-watching-multitasking, I opened the Carlyle Letters On-line and read a couple of letters. I discovered a short translation he did of a Goethe autobiographical passage that wasn’t in my list of his writings or publications. How could this possibly be? I have three other full Carlyle bibliographies, plus a partial bibliography that covers the period in question. Why would they leave this out? I documented it on paper and, since it was late, went to bed.

This morning, as my first item of business after devotions, was to add this entry in my bibliography. First, however, I found the document on-line, at a previously unknown (to me) site called the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Sure enough, in the January 1832 issue was the Carlyle translation. I checked the two thick bibliographies on my shelf and confirmed that this composition wasn’t in it. Maybe they didn’t add it because it’s a translation with just a paragraph of Carlyle commentary rather than an original piece? Maybe so, but those bibliographies include his other translations. I added all this to my bibliography. While I was at this, I found an essay on Carlyle I hadn’t seen before and downloaded it for future reading.

The fact that I keep pulling off my novel in favor of other, less important publishing tasks, is perhaps testimony that I’m not thrilled with how the novel is going. Or that it’s consuming a lot more brain power and I’m unwilling to expend that brain power at present. I’m not sure what it is, but, if I ever hope to get this novel completed and published, I need to get on it. Even if it takes a lot of brain power.

Stay tuned to find out if I manage to get to it.

American Colonial History, Church History Novels, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, Short Stories, The Teachings, Writing

So Many Choices, So Little Time

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I’m a little late with my post this Monday morning. The weekend was busy and I didn’t get it written ahead of time. Then, this morning Lynda had to go for a Covid19 test ahead of a procedure on Wednesday. Her appointment was at 7:50 and we were to be there fifteen minutes early. It was a drive-by testing site, and the long line of cars moved quickly through.  A stop for gas and pastries on the way home, and here I am, finally writing this.

Over the weekend and late last week my thoughts began to gel about my next writing tasks. It was Friday (I think; maybe Saturday) that I documented a couple of book ideas and wrote them in a Word document and saved them to my “Ideas” folder. They’ve been bugging me and, while I’m now purposely suppressing writing ideas as come, these two pre-date my decision to suppress, so I wanted to be done with them to free up brain space for other things.

What to do next? I have a novel-in-progress that’s stalled. I have a book I’m updating. I have a short story that’s bugging me. I have the next book in the Documenting America series to begin. And that’s not everything. I needed to prioritize.

So I took a little time to brainstorm that and decide what to do next, and why. Here’s what I decided.

  1. Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors. So, I began the editing work in early September 2020, and hope to re-publish by the end of September.

    Republish Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents. I had already done most of the editing. An hour and it would be ready for publishing tasks. My reason for putting this first is I want to run some Amazon ads on it, beginning in about two weeks when I participate in the next Amazon ads challenge. I want an updated book to advertise.

  2. Edited to add: I forgot, when I posted this earlier, that I have to make a few corrections to my second genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. A few of the figures were of poor quality. I need to load them into G.I.M.P and improve the quality, put them in the book file, then upload the revised file. As much as I hate doing graphic arts with G.I.M.P. I’ve been putting this off. I think, however, that I’ll slip this in after I finish re-publishing Documenting America.
  3. Return to work on The Teachings, the volume 3 in my church history novel series, which will plug the gap between volume 2 and 4. I’m about 1/3 done with it, and need to get back.
  4. Write, or at least start, the next story in the Danny Tompkins series of short stories. I had once thought the series finished, but an idea for one more story just won’t leave me, so I need to write it to get it out of my head. My problem is I know the main idea I want to convey, but not the full story. So when I start on it I’ll perhaps stall almost right away. I won’t know till I start the writing.
  5. The transcription is now complete (28 Sep 2020). Time to add some commentary.

    Add commentary to the Kuwait letters book. I’ve written about this before. After finishing the transcription, and before I put the letters back to storage and relegated the file to its folder and out of my mind, I added a little commentary. I’m ready to open the file and add some more commentary. I don’t know that I want to take the time to finish it, but I want to add something to it. This may be something for the odd hours between other things.

  6. Begin reading for the next book in the Documenting America series. This is tentatively Run-up to Revolution, covering the period from 1761 to 1775 or 1776. It will be the realization that the Colonies were no longer aligned with Great Britain and a separation was inevitable. I’m not sure how I will research this. Everything I need, just about, is on-line, but how to access it and when to read it is unknown at this time.

I had a couple of other things I wanted to put on this list, but will wait. As I sit and write this nothing else is coming to mind. If it does before the end of the day, I’ll edit this.

Now, if I can accomplish half of this by, say, the end of 2020, I’ll feel like I’ve made progress.

America, American Colonial History, Documenting America, History

Land Ownership: A Defining American Characteristic

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My research into US history and genealogy has convinced me that widespread ownership of land was a uniquely American phenomenon. I have more research to do, especially into European land ownership, but what I’ve been able to glean from American documents has been instructive.

In Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents, I cover a curious 1792 writing of James Madison. Then in the US House of Representatives, Madison wrote about an unfortunate situation in Great Britain, then, concerning his fellow Americans, wrote:

“What a contrast is here to the independent situation and manly sentiments of American citizens, who live on their own soil, or whose labor is necessary to its cultivation….”

Madison realized that Americans tended to own their own land. Since that contrasts with the situation in Britain, I conclude most Britains didn’t own their own land. It seems to me, from history readings years ago still clinging to a few gray cells, that the feudal system was long gone in England by the time Madison wrote this, but clearly elements of that system remained. Land was owned by English nobility—princes, dukes, earls, and whatever other titles there were—had huge holdings of land and leased it to the poor peons who worked it for the lord, dividing the proceeds with him.

Land ownership in America wasn’t universal, but it was widespread. As I study my wife’s genealogy on her father’s side, which stretches back to the earliest days of Massachusetts Bay Colony, I read a lot of wills and inventory of estates. Most of them include land. Upland lots, marsh lots, lots on “The Way”, town lots, farms. Defined by maple trees, stone walls, and nascent rights-of-way, almost every estate, be it modest or great, had land in it.

That’s not to say that everyone had an equal amount of land. In Ipswich, Massachusetts, many people received a 2-acre lot in town, but some lots were better than others. One man would sell “the eastern 15 feet of my said lot to….” Another man carved a small house lot out of his 2 acres for his wife’s sister and husband. Land was subdivided and sold at a brisk pace. But it was people’s to sell. In England, none of these people would have had land.

I realize, of course, that much of this land was stolen from the native peoples. Or they were enticed with alcohol and sold their land for a fraction of its worth. This is a shameful chapter in our history. Wealth was stolen or coerced away from the rightful owners.

My research into three Ipswich families in the mid to late 1600s led me to the issue of Mason’s claim. It seems that John Mason had been granted title to a large tract of land in what is now Northern Massachusetts. The towns of Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, and others were settled on these lands beginning in 1633. Land was apportioned to the settlers, who built houses, established farms and trades, and lived a rugged existence. Civil war in England, the Cromwell years and then the restoration, made enforcing Mason’s claims difficult. He died without ever seeing “his land”.

But come the 1670s and Mason’s grandson said, “Hey, that’s my land!” Court battles took place, one court ruling in favor of Mason’s claim, another overruling that. It must have been quite the legal doneybrook.

But, in the town records, in extant pamphlets and broadsides, you see the fear of the people. Their land might not be theirs after all. Some feudal lord who was the king’s friend had a title to it. People were scared. In England, Scotland, and Wales they could never dream of owning land. Here in the New World they had 20 upland acres and a town lot, plus some marshland that was really arable. And some grandson of some wealthy person is going to take it from them? Fortunately for the colonists, the grandson eventually gave up.

As New England and other Atlantic seaboard places filled up, the march west began. At times seeking gold, most settlers were after land. Somewhere beyond the mountains was land for the taking, and they would go get it. Once again, England, France, Germany, Spain, and other European nations had no equivalent.

Even today, the quest for land goes on. It’s not quite the same as it once was. A hefty bank account is also a sign of wealth, and you can have that while renting. But home-ownership remains a strong American goal. Americans want land, at least a lot of us do.

But times have changed, and with the size of our population we no longer have as high a percentage land ownership as we did in the colonial years and soon after. Not being a landowner changes one’s perspective.

So far I’ve covered two unique aspects of the USA that I consider worth studying: self-determination and land ownership. Stay tuned for the third, which will be coming in about a week.