Category Archives: History

History, Writing

The Stupidest Peace Treaty Ever?

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Today is Veterans Day in the United States, formerly known as Armistice Day. That was the day World War 1 ended, November 11, 1918. Germany asked for an armistice from the allied powers; the terms were acceptable; and they signed it in a railroad car in Sedan, France. Eventually World War 2 eclipsed WW1 in terms of destruction, carnage, loss of life, length of fighting, and historical emphasis. WW1 slipped to minor emphasis in our history textbooks.

I’ve thought a lot about that war over the last ten years or so. Every now and then I pick up a book that has something in it about that war; or I brainstorm something I could write myself. At the moment I’m reading Mr. Baruch, and as coincidence would have it just last night I finished reading about his industrial board duties during WW1 and began reading about the Paris peace conference and his role in that.

The Paris peace conference. This is something I need to read more about, much more about. But I have in my ideas file a book to write about it. I might title the book The Stupidest Peace Treaty Ever. My reading on it so far is limited. I base my statements on the aftermath of the treaty. It is now close to 90 years old, and yet we still are picking up the pieces of the mistakes made.

Just look at how the map of the world changed, and how later wars were fought–and may yet be fought–over the idiotic borders. Yugoslavia was shear idiocy; the Iraq and Iran borders were madness; and the failure to provide an independent Kurdistan a major mistake. The draconian terms forced on Germany may well have led to the rise of Hitler. Historians disagree on this, of course, but I don’t think it can be eliminated as a contributing cause, whether or not it was the main cause. The war in Yugoslavia and eventual breakup of that nation was one aftermath, about 70 years after. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 may have been a result of this. The Nato action in Kosovo in the 1990s might have been related.

As I say, I have much research to do. This book may be pie-in-the-sky stuff, something an historian should do, not an amateur writer. But it’s fun to think about. Something to research in bits and pieces through the years, and to plan for retirement, which is only 7 years, 1 month, and 19 days away. No, wait, what was that news story over the last couple of days? The retirement age may go to 68? Better re-calculate.

Bible study, History, reading, Writing

Trying to Concentrate

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This weekend has not been good as far as writing is concerned. Yesterday morning I did my usual Saturday work outside the house routine. I cut down a 30 foot dead tree on the adjacent lot, where we are trying to create a small, park-like area (we don’t own this lot; it’s vacant and forested; I suppose we can use it until the owners retire and build a house on it). I only had a few other things do to outside, so came back into the house.

Before I could write, I decided I’d better read a chapter in Team of Rivals. I’m making good progress in that and am ahead of even my most optimistic schedule. Still, as of this afternoon, have 160 pages to go, but the reading is easy and I should finish by next weekend, if not before.

Then I came downstairs to the Dungeon, intent on writing something, either work on a chapter in my novel in progress, or a Bible study in progress, or begin to flesh out some freelance ideas I had, but as I sat at the computer I found my mind had no powers of concentration. I couldn’t even read e-mails. I played some mindless computer games, tried to read e-mails again and got through them, played some more games, then left the computer to file various household papers. That worked fairly well, because I got through some papers that did not have a place prepared. That meant I had to concentrate enough to determine what the place should be and prepare it and file the paper. That included a number of items related to my completed, in-the-drawer novel.

That done, I came back to the computer, but still couldn’t write. A writing related task I had on my mental to-do list was to set up a spreadsheet for freelance writing accounting. This isn’t on a critical path, since I have no income as yet (at least none paid; I have some accrued), but still just having the system set up will make it much easier to keep track of things. Still, that wasn’t writing.

I never could get much done. I did some hand-writing on an idea for a magazine article, and I read some writing blogs, but nothing that could be described as progress. Lynda returned home from OKC about 8:30 PM. I had supper prepared (though she ate on the road). I just turned to reading for the evening. Having read a chapter in ToR, I decided to pull out Tolkien’s letters and read them. I’m at the point where he was finishing the proofs and then seeing published The Lord of the Ring. That was interesting and satisfying, until one long letter to a bookstore owner/operator who had questioned some theological items on the book. Tolkien painstakingly explained how he had no theological agenda, that the book wasn’t allegorical, and how this and that item had been misunderstood, etc. I got through that letter, but was left with no mind for anything else. So I went to bed, earlier than normal for a Saturday night.

So here I am in the Dungeon, at the computer, about to begin writing. It seemed a blog post would be a good place to start. Even with that, I have interrupted my writing several times to play a game. Cursed games! I have four or five writing projects I could work on, and will turn to them now. Perhaps I can get in two or three good hours from this point on, and face the new week really feeling like a writer.

family, History

We Remember

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Everyone is gone now. Richard, Sara and Ephraim packed up and headed west a couple of hours ago. My mother-in-law is about to head back to her place in Bentonville. Lynda is in bed with a stomach flue. The kids brought it from Oklahoma City and we have all had it in succession (except me; my time may yet be coming). That put the damper on weekend activities, as did the rain. But we weren’t planning on cooking outside, so all it did was keep us from taking walks.

Yesterday I was called on to teach life group since my co-teacher was called in to work. I also had to start of the class with announcements, prayer requests and praises, etc. One of the things we normally try to do is have something humorous prepared to read. When Marion did this I called it “Marion’s words of wisdom.” Now that I generally do it I call it “Totally useless information.”

Yesterday, however, I gave them some statistics that were not useless, and in fact were quite important. Here they are.

American Revolution…25,324

War of 1812………………..2,260

Mexican War…………….13,283

Civil War…………………498,332

Spanish American War..3,289

World War 1…………….116,708

World War 2……………407,316

Korean War………………54,246

Vietnam War…………….58,159

Persian Gulf War……………200

Afghanistan War…………..610 and counting

Iraq War…………………..3,915 and counting

All statistics are approximate, based on the best sources I could find.

We remember the sacrifice.

And to those families who are represented by these statistics, we thank you for your gift to the nation.

Christianity, Dune, History, reading

Current Reading

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Having finished The Powers That Be by David Halberstam, I moved down to the next book in my reading pile–actually to the next two books:

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Letters From Hawaii by Mark Twain

When I put my reading pile together last August, making sense of books I had recently acquired, I tried to get a good alternation of fiction and non-fiction. Not that the alternation had to be every-other book, but that I wasn’t reading a whole bunch of one and not the other. Since I just finished a long non-fiction book, a novel popped up next. Good planning on my part last August. I’d show you a picture of that pile (now divided into two to prevent toppling), but my digital camera drove to Oklahoma City on Sunday, and hopefully is taking many pictures of my grandson as he passed his 10 month birthday. Perhaps I’ll edit a picture in next week.

Actually, I began reading Twain’s book first. On the trip to Phoenix last week I took both books with me. Fighting a growing cold from the night before the trip, I was pretty sure my mind would not be able to concentrate on Dune Messiah, not if it was anything like Dune, the first of the trilogy. So on the plane from DFW to Phoenix, having messed with the crossword puzzle in the airplane magazine on the previous flight, I pulled out the Hawaii letters and began reading them. Even though they are 140 years old, I found them light and easy to read. On the trip I read about forty pages of them.

Once home, and somewhat recovered from my cold (though it lingers still), I moved back to the first on the pile and began Dune Messiah. As I expected, it is a tougher read than the letters. Still, I know I will enjoy it.

For other reading, I keep A Treasury of Early Christianity beside the bed and read a few pages of it some evenings. These are the non-canonical writings from the first few centuries of Christianity. Well, not all the writings, nor even complete of the ones included. Ann Fremantle has edited those, and we get only part of them in the book. I finished “The Shepherd of Hermes” recently, and am currently working on “Epistle to the Corinthians” by Clement. This book is almost a reference type book, and not to be taken in large doses.

Other than these, I have a stack of newsletters to work my way through, and a few printed articles, such as one from a Jewish literature magazine about Daniel’s seventy weeks of years.

So much to read, much to write, much to do at work, and much to do around the house while batching it. What a life.

book reviews, History

Book Review: The Powers That Be – writing style

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I began my review of David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be here, and now continue, this time discussing Halberstam’s writing style.

After the seventeen page Prelude, Halberstam gave us a twenty-two page chapter on CBS, then a forty-nine page chapter on Time Incorporated (Time and Life magazines), then a twenty-seven page chapter on the Los Angeles Times. A hundred pages and three chapters. Looking through this I almost gave up reading before I began. Such long chapters, all of dense writing, presents the reader used to half-hour or hour long reading stints with a daunting task. A chapter break indicates a break in subject; lack of a chapter break indicates no break in subject and that the reader should keep reading. But that was often impossible, and a mid-chapter break became essential. Getting back into the midst of a chapter the next day was difficult.

When I say the writing was dense, I don’t mean intellectually, but rather in terms of names, facts, and opinions. Each chapter was full of names: publication or institution founder, heirs, spouses, spouses ancestors, politicians, politicians’ media assistants, publishers, editors, reporters. Keeping them all straight was pretty much impossible, and a third of the way through the book I gave up. If on page 250 I encountered a name I was pretty sure I read somewhere in the first fifty pages, and Halberstam was now telling of how his career had moved, I knew I should flip back, find the name, re-read what I read the week (or two) before to have the full context, then continue at page 250. I didn’t, however. I just kept reading, hoping new context would give me enough to not worry about exactly what this assistant editor did earlier in his career. Perhaps my understanding of the history was thus lacking, but that was the only way for me to get through the book this decade.

In my review of David Morrell’s The Totem, I talked about the B-A-C writing style; that is, where a writer begins at a certain point of time, the present moment (B), then goes back in time for context (A), then forward from the present moment into the future (C). I used that technique quite a bit in Doctor Luke’s Assistant. Since Halberstam is writing history, not fiction, he had no future to move on to, but he used this B-A-C technique, though in a much more complicated way. He began at a point in time in his history, then went backwards, then forward somewhat but not yet to the starting point, then backward in a tangent thread, then forward but still not to the starting point, then somewhere else. This looked something like a G-B-F-A-C-E-D-I-J-K style. This was way too much, especially in the longer chapters. I became hopelessly confused in know where I was–or wasn’t–in time.

Halberstan liked to mention moments of irony, normally with paired statements of opposites. He tried to show how one generation of owners either passed on or failed to pass on to the next generation the importance of certain values, but I don’t know that he fully accomplished this goal.

In the next (and last) post, I’ll review Halberstam’s apparent conclusions and give some of my own.