Category Archives: letters

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, home improvements, letters, Preserve The Revelation, reading, self-publishing, Writing

Staying Busy

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I’m a day late with this post. The last two months, since I established my Monday and Friday posting schedule, I normally try to write my Monday post on the weekend, or at worst on Monday morning before the start of my workday. I’ve missed a couple of times, but I’ve been doing better about regular posting.

This weekend, however, I did nothing concerning a post. By the end of Sunday I realized that, but it was too late in the day to write it. I decided I’d do it Monday. Monday came and went, and alas, I did nothing on it. Shame on me. I’ll do better going forward.

So what’s keeping me so busy that I didn’t do my blog post? On Saturday it was first work around the house, followed by writing on Preserve The Revelation. The house work included a major cleaning job on the refrigerator, thinning the blackberry vines, cutting a lot of low hanging branches, and weeding in our back yard. I also had chair set-up at church, and trips to Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Sunday was Life Group and church, followed by lunch at a community event. That put me home around 1:45 p.m. I should have written.

Instead, I began work on the print cover of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, using G.I.M.P. to assemble the graphics. As always, G.I.M.P. defeated me. I was able to create a palette the size of the cover, and add and size the front and back covers. But on the back cover I needed to hide three corporate logos. I had planned how to do this, and got two done quite easily. However, when it came to the third one, I stalled. I was using the same procedure as for the first two: cover it with an opaque layer. Only on this one I had to add text. Somehow the layer that is the back cover was deselected, and I couldn’t add the opaque circle. Without the circle, the text was meaningless. I worked more than three hours on it, and finally quit in frustration. I went back to Wal-Mart to pick up one thing I hadn’t the day before, then spent the evening reading.

Yesterday was the normal busyness of work and house. In the evening I went to The Dungeon, intending on writing. But there, on my work table, was the box of photos from our time in Kuwait, with several batches of photos out on the table. I had dug into the box last Wednesday to select some photos to scan and post on Thursday. In the box I found batches of photos not in envelopes, hence not matched with their negatives. I decided getting those photos matched was a better use of my time than writing. I don’t say that facetiously, either. Some day we’ll pass those photos on to our children, and having them properly organized is critical. It was a good use of my time—not that I finished, but I made significant progress. But by the time 9:00 p.m. came I wanted to be about my evening reading. No time to write the blog.

So here I am on Tuesday, writing Monday’s post, and it’s about nothing but why I didn’t write on Monday. But it lets my few readers know what’s going on in my world.

Since the weekend, one of my cover designers contacted me, saying he’d done work on it. We discussed it. Hopefully he’ll complete it very soon. In case not, I’ve contacted a third cover designer and am in discussions with her. Today I sent off a letter to an influencer, a seminary professor, concerning Doctor Luke’s Assistant and things he’s written that dovetail nicely with it. This is by snail mail, as the seminary doesn’t post faculty e-mails. We’ll see what comes of it.

Tonight, when the work day is through, I plan on staying about an hour after to do some research and typing on our fact internet and computer. When I get home, I have one small task to do in the yard, then I’ll heat some soup for supper, and descend to The Dungeon. No photos tonight. I need to add at least 1,000 words tonight, and 3,000 in total, before I will allow myself to return to those photos and finish that big task. I’m looking forward to it.

letters, reading, Writing

A Conan Doyle about to break-through

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This past Sunday, the weather being pleasant and our getting home from church with fair promptness, I fixed a cottage cheese and lunchmeat lunch and took it to the sun porch to read. Or maybe this is more of a Florida room, except it’s elevated—an appendage to the house fitted with some expensive heating units (that we never use) and without air conditioning. I decided I would get back to reading in the letters of A. Conan Doyle (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/359482.Arthur_Conan_Doyle).

It probably helped that the last time I went to Barnes & Noble I bought, from the discount table, a two-volume set of the Sherlock Holmes stories, arranged chronologically. The first, A Study in Scarlett, was published in 1887. When last I read in this book I was somewhere around 1885 or 1886, so I knew I was getting close to that momentous occasion.

Unfortunately, the editor wrote that not many of Doyle’s letters between 1885 and 1890 survived. For some reason his correspondents didn’t keep them, I guess. So in the book I moved into this period with mainly editorial comments and brief, and sometimes unattributed, references to the various autobiographical works of Doyle.

At this time he had three novels circulating among publishers, with one of them A Study in Scarlett. He stated he had high hopes for the novel, but he also thought another was better. But all of his novels received rejections, and went off to another place. Doyle bemoaned that sometimes they weren’t even read. If only the editors would read them they would like them.

Finally a publisher offered him £25 for the copyright, with no royalties. Doyle held out; he wanted royalties. The publisher didn’t budge. Nothing else was selling. His medical practice was paying most of the bills, but literature was where he really wanted to be. Finally he took the offer, and Scarlett was published in December 1887, not as a stand-alone book first but in an annual.

Reviews initially weren’t great. The normal number of copies of that annual were printed. That’s as far as I got with my reading on Sunday. Sherlock Holmes had seen the light of day, but was still mostly unknown. This coming Sunday, hopefully, I’ll move into the period of 1888 and beyond when Holmes became the most famous fictional detective, and Doyle practically a household name.

Is this encouraging me to at all while I’m in a very dry period of my publishing career, dry in terms of sales, not of ideas and production. Not really. If publishers and initial readers can’t see genius in the work of A Conan Doyle, what hope is there for me? Twenty years later a copy of that annual sold at auction for more than £150,000. That offers some encouragement.

Though in twenty years I’ll be 81. Alas.

book reviews, letters

Book Review: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

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I want to be careful with my statement about Tolkien’s “Oxford snobbery”. I’m sure some people would take offense at that. I don’t want to denigrate a great institution that has produced many scholars and statesmen. My concern is that Tolkien seemed to put himself above the masses as far as literature goes. Maybe C.S. Lewis did as well, for when they were meeting one time and decrying the lack of good literature in English, Lewis said to Tolkien, “We shall just have to write the types of stories we like.” [loose quote]

Tolkien was constantly correcting readers and reviewers about their misinterpretation of his works. This shows up in the letters. A reviewer would write something about The Lord of the Rings being excellent Christian allegory. Tolkien would write the reviewer and say it isn’t an allegory, Christian or otherwise, and that he hates allegory. Then he would write his publisher about it, and then one of his children, then maybe even a friend. A reader would ask a question about the mythology that came before his published works. Tolkien would sometimes write pages about Luthien and Beren and the Valor and Numenor (apologies to the Elvin language for not adding the accents where JRRT did), or at times he would advise the reader to just enjoy what was written and not worry about what wasn’t. His tone often seemed snobbish to me.

But, perhaps it is more a case of author pride than it is snobbishness. Tolkien worked years on his books, developing first the languages then adding appropriate myths that the languages must tell. He fought to have it published, even trying to strong arm his publishers into accepting a package deal of The Lord of the Rings and the unfinished The Silmarillion. He fought proofreaders who kept trying to change the spelling of words he wanted spelled a certain way. He fought his own personal schedule that never seemed to give him quite enough time to do all he wanted. Finally a book was produced. How dare a reader misinterpret something and then have the audacity to write him about it!

I don’t quite know why I am so fascinated by letters. It began with the letters of Charles Lamb, and has spread in every direction therefrom. I think I like them because they tend to be unfiltered history. Read someones letter, something not expected to be published, and you might just find out about the real person, not something a biographer wants you to know. Since these Tolkien letters are selected rather than complete, and since many of the letters are excerpted, some filtration has taken place. Yet, the history comes through.

I always try to include in my book reviews a recommendation of whether my readers should read what I read. What about this one? It cost me $7.98 plus Overland Park and Kansas sales tax, a steep price compared to what I usually pay. Should you go off and do the same? Probably not, not unless you are an incredible Tolkien fan, or unless you love letters as I do. Don’t worry about his references to Bilbo and Frodo and Gandalf. Don’t worry about the twenty pages of explanation of Numenor mythology. These might be difficult–they were for me. I’m glad I read them, and the book is a keeper for me, so that my letters collection is that much more complete.

book reviews, letters

Book Review: The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien

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JRR Tolkien wrote three great works:

The Hobbit, 1937
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, 1954-55
The Silmarillion, posthumously 1977,

and a few lesser tales related to his invented mythology, a hots of professional essays, papers, and speeches, and his collected letters. Let me say right off that I enjoyed The Hobbit, but disliked The Lord of the Ring, bogging down in the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring, and not picking it up again. Someday I will finish it, when many things more to my liking I have read.

I was predisposed to dislike Tolkien from my college experience. IN Butterfield Hall, all the guys I disliked because of their politics, alcohol consumption, or drug use raves about him. I concluded that Tolkien wasn’t for me, and gave him no more thought until reading a biography of C.S. Lewis. Still, I read nothing of Tolkien’s until the movies came out and decided I should read the books.

Fast forward to March 2009, when I was in Kansas City to present a paper at an engineering conference and, as is my out-of-town-habit, sought out a bookstore. In a seconds bookstore on Metcalf Ave., I found volumes of both Tolkien’s and Lewis’ letters. I left the bookstore poorer in cash but rich in literary acquisitions.

I found Tolien’s letters [The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Selected and Edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien, 1981, Houghton Mifflin Company] fascinating. many dealt with publishing and writing. Beginning with Letter 9 (in the book, which excludes many of Tolien’s extant letters) written on Jan 4, 1937, we learn about The Hobbit, already in production with mainly the maps and illustrations to finish. He was greatly concerned about the American edition, especially the illustrations: “…let the Americans do what seems good to them–as long as it was possible…to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).”

This is an example of what I tend to call “Oxford snobbery” in Tolkien. It was just against Americans, but against anyone who tried to analyze his works. Tolkien commented to friends and publishers about negative reviews. He corrected those who misunderstood his invented languages. He corrected misconceptions about the mythology of Middle Earth, main after The Lord of the Rings appearance, and sometimes advised his correspondents not to worry about it.

Certain themes continually show in the letters.

  • The importance of literature: We all need literature that is above our measure–though we may not have sufficient energy for it all the time. April 1959, to Walter Allen
  • His health issues: I was assailed by very considerable pain, and depression, which no ordinary remedy would relieve. …We (or at least I) know far too little about the complicated machine we inhabit…. 31 July 1969, to Christopher Tolkien
  • Friendship with and criticism of C.S. Lewis: But for the encouragement of C.S.L. I do not think that I should ever have completed or offered for publication The Lord of the Rings. 18 Dec 1965 to Clyde S. Kilby; It is sad that ‘Narnia’ and all that part of C.S.L.’s work should remain outside the range of my sympathy, as much of my work was outside his. 11 Nov 1964 to David Kolb

I have much more to write about this, but my post is too long as it is, and I need time to collect some more thoughts. Look for a second post.

letters, Wesley
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Once again, in my morning read of John Wesley’s letters, I came across something that struck me. This is the closing paragraph to a letter.

And now, the advice I would give upon the whole is this: First, pray earnestly to God for clear light; for a full, piercing, and steady conviction that this is the more excellent way. Pray for a spirit of universal self-denial, of cheerful temperance, of wise frugality; for bowels of mercies; for a kind, compassionate spirit, tenderly sensible of the various wants of your brethren; and for firmness of mind, for a mild, even courage, without fear, anger, or shame. Then you will once more, with all readiness of heart, make this little (or great) sacrifice to God; and withal present your soul and body a living sacrifice, acceptable unto God through Jesus Christ.

Well, very inspiring words! What, you ask, was the little (or great) sacrifice being asked of someone that inspired Wesley to write as he did? What great spiritual adventure was one of his correspondents about to embark on? In fact, it was nothing more than weather or not to drink strong green tea.

Yes, that’s it. Wesley, through twenty or more years of practice, had learned that tea disagreed with his body. When he drank tea, he was a nervous wreck; his hands shook. When he quit drinking tea, his nervous system was fine. His correspondent (who is not named) in this December 10, 1748 letter, had apparently questioned Wesley’s motive for not only quitting tea but encouraging others to do so as well. Wesley laid out in 4,500-word detail his reasons for himself and anyone else to do this: health and frugality. He anticipated and answered objections that could be raised.

Such a discussion today would involve different substances, but might be just as relevant. Wesley said cutting out tea and drinking cheaper liquids–water and milk–allowed for greater administration of Christian charity. Even when dining at another’s house, requesting water instead of tea allowed the host to have more money to support the poor. Whether that host did or not was not the concern of the person who had to make the choice to drink the tea as offered. Much of the discussion concerned giving offense. Would the Christian, laying off tea for reasons of health and frugality possibly offend his host? Wesley described how to follow conscious and not give offense.

So what today is affecting my health and my ability to give more to charity? I could name a number of items. But I prefer to just dwell on Wesley’s words, and realize that this sacred message was really about the most secular of activities. Wesley sure tied the two together, reminding me that those who say we can compartmentalize our lives (the sacred now, the secular later, etc.) are probably wrong. The secular things we do affect our spiritual life, and the the sacred things carry through to the secular.

That’s not an earth-shattering revelation. Such is part of the baby’s milk for the Christian. Yet, being reminded of it is a good thing, and Wesley said it so well. “Pray for a spirit of universal self-denial, of cheerful temperance, of wise frugality; for bowels of mercies; for a kind, compassionate spirit, tenderly sensible of the various wants of your brethren; and for firmness of mind, for a mild, even courage, without fear, anger, or shame.”

Going to do so.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Health, letters, Writing

Well, not quite normal yet

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In my last post I reported that I was back to normal after the food poisoning the week of March 16th. I was wrong, though: I’m not really back to normal. Oh, physically I am, I guess. But mentally I’m not. All the good I was doing on weight loss is in danger of being reversed, as since the sickness I have no desire to eat right. The three days out of town, on conference fare, didn’t help. But at home I just haven’t felt like doing what I need to do to have the right kinds of foods for lunch or supper. Consequently, when I weighed in today, I was way, way up. I’m still a good amount ahead from where I started, but if I don’t get back at it today…. It probably hasn’t helped that Lynda is still away. No accountability partner.

This weekend I could not focus very well. I started Saturday with a couple of household things. We added a console TV to the living room, which hides the lower shelves of a corner cabinet. This cabinet (not a built-in) needed to be raised anyway, since it is 18 inches shorter than the built-ins on the other end of the wall. So Saturday morning, using some salvaged 2×6 boards, I “built” an 18 inch riser for it and installed it. Then I reloaded all the shelves with the nicknacks that had unceremoniously cluttered the hearth for a month. The console TV hides the riser very nicely. Oh, I also raised the console TV the thickness of two 2x6s, as it was a bit close to the floor for comfortable viewing. This all consumed the morning, much of the time working with the salvaged wood to back out nails and separate pieces prior to sawing.

After that, though, I had a very hard time tackling my next project: income taxes. I made a good start, but my concentration faded. As it was snowing outside, I didn’t particularly want to walk as a means of clearing my head. So I puttered on the taxes, got a little done, surfed the web, played mindless computer games, and watch a little NCAA basketball.

I also read in my recent book purchases (the Tolkien letters, the C.S. Lewis letters, and misc. C.S.L. writings), in the Mark Twain Hawaii letters, and in a writers mag. Even with those, I found my mind wandering, and I went from item to item with little comprehension. I gave that up and, as the snow had stopped, drove to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things urgently needed (peanut butter among them), then did laundry and dishes. That got me through 6:00 PM, and a PB&J sandwich through 6:30 PM. I tried the taxes again, and made a little more progress.

Saturday evening was better as far as concentration was concerned. I worked on my outline for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and outlined the next seven chapters. That will get me about half way through the book. I was able to read with greater comprehension after that.

Sunday, at a church dinner, I thought my sickness was coming back. Fortunately, it was only one episode and I seem to be fine physically. Still, that gave me a too-easy excuse not to walk or exercise. The taxes again resisted the five hour concentrated effort needed to complete them. I outlined the rest of a political essay I started, then went back to my reading. I found some of C.S. Lewis’ letters on his spiritual life quite interesting, Tolkien’s letters to his son during WW2 less so.

So what will this week hold? I need to get back on the stick as far as exercise and diet are concerned, and get back in the form I was in two weeks ago. I need to have that concentrated time to complete our taxes. It looks as if we will get a nice refund, and I need to get that in the works. And I need to get back to writing, so that if I do get to go to a conference in May (hopefully the Blue Ridge one again), at least I’ll have something to present to editors/agents.

Tonight I get my wife back. Yeah!

Engineering, letters, Writing

Back, and Back to Normal

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Yes, following my sickness of last week (food poisoning), I’m back to normal. All body functions functioning as they should, the pounds rapidly lost are back on again–and then some, and my energy level is as it should be. This weekend I should be able to tackle some projects.

And I’m back home after a three day conference in Kansas City. This was Urban Water Management 09. I presented a technical paper on stormwater pumping, and chaired a technical session. The conference was somewhat poorly attended, especially on the first day (when I presented my paper). This is my third stormwater conference to attend, and I found few of the exhibitors had anything new to show me. I’ll need to sit out a year or two of going to these things.

And I’m back home to an empty house. Lynda is still in Oklahoma City, watching the grandson while our daughter has gone to Kansas City herself for a conference. I hope the old lady is up to the work for these four days. Ephraim’s dad is there, and his sister, so it’s not as if Lynda is alone and without help. It will be good to have her back, probably on Monday. I suppose that means I’ll have to do my own laundry this weekend, as the draws and closet are getting a bit empty.

I got back yesterday afternoon in time to do a little work at the office. After work I made my pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble where I drank a large house blend, researched in World War 2 magazines, and purchased, off the remainders table, a C.S. Lewis book I hadn’t seen before. I add this to two volumes I picked up in Kansas City at a discount bookstore. One was selected letters of J.R.R. Tolkein; many of them concern his literary life. The other was selected letters of C.S. Lewis; these are his letters to various correspondents wherein he gave spiritual advice. These three books will not go on the top of the reading pile, though I reads some in each of them over the last two days, reducing what had been good progress in Letters From Hawaii.

Last night I e-mailed a query to the target magazine for the story of my dad’s time with The Stars and Stripes. It’s a perfect story for that mag, so I’m hopeful. This is my first submittal of 2009.

Carlyle, letters, miscellaneous

$2.109

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This has been a very busy Saturday, raking leaves, cutting deadfall, trying to get a riding mower started, buying groceries. I’m much too tired to do much right now.

Last night I spent a lot of time on the Thomas Carlyle letters to Leigh Hunt, specifically one where Carlyle discussed poetry. Ideas for an essay came to me, and I began some notes and even some writing of the essay. Tonight I’m just going to read in the next book on my list.

A high note for the day was buying gasoline for $2.109 per gallon, the lowest it’s been here in over 3 years, if I remember correctly. Then, when we were at another part of town, I saw a gas station manager change their price to $2.099 per gallon. They are not the lowest station in town, so I suspect at the Murphy Oil on the Wal-Mart outlot it was probably about $2.069. Way to go, Congress, for ending the prohibition on offshore drilling, which is depressing the futures market, which is coming back to the current price.

letters, Wesley

When friends fall out

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In my continuing (and slow) reading of John Wesley’s letters, I came today to his April 27, 1741 letter to George Whitefield. Whitefield was in Georgia, America, and has written Wesley on December 24, 1740, a letter that appears to have been critical of a number of things Wesley was doing: handling money, deeds for properties, ‘adornment’ of sanctuaries. Most important, however, seems to have been the growing rift between the two over doctrinal issues. Wesley was an Arminian and Whitefield a Calvinist concerning the issue of the permanency of salvation.

This difference must have been under the surface, or seemed unimportant, as the two began the great work of the revival. Certainly, it is hard to imagine Whitefield begging Wesley to come to Bristol to substitute for him in a revival that was breaking out there (Whitefield having to be elsewhere) if he thought Wesley to be in error in his doctrine. I just now found Whitefield’s letter on line, but have not yet read it. It contains five main points spread out over twelve pages of twelve point font, so it looks like I have lots of interesting reading in the days ahead. I will likely add this to the Wesley letters book, so that I have the full impact for when I read these again, perhaps in a decade or two. Apparently, Whitefield had the letter published in London, with a wide distribution.

Whatever their differences, and whoever was at fault, I’m saddened to see these two giants of the faith have a falling out. Somehow we have to make room in our hearts for those who interpret the gospel differently than we do. For Whitefield to have said Wesley preached a different gospel, and so they could have no fellowship together, seems extreme.

When Paul and Barnabas had their famous falling out, the result was the work was multiplied: two missionary teams went out, with more workers, than would have happened had they stayed together. Later in life, these two giants of the apostolic church were reconciled in friendship. Their dispute was over administrative issues, not doctrine, but still, could not Whitefield and Wesley have looked to their example? Well, maybe they did, sort of, for they divided their efforts.

I have much more to read on this, and possibly will come back and modify this post or make another.