Joe L. Wheeler's Blog, page 18

BLOG #31, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

I HAVE SEEN TOMORROW!

Part One

August 1, 2012

Yes, it’s true! Six days ago, Terry Bolinger and I were privileged to experience tomorrow’s publishing world before it actually arrived. The venue was one of the oldest and largest publishing conglomerates in the world, and we were graciously given a two-hour VIP tour.

As we threaded our way through room after room of machinery, we experienced first a world I felt supremely comfortable in: the world of traditional print, that began during the decade of 1440 – 1450, with the German goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg leading the way with his 42-line Bible in 1456, 556 years ago. That Golden Age of Print reached its zenith during the century beginning in 1880 and ending in 1980 (roughly speaking). I am personally a product of its last half.

Occasionally, during my blogs and published writing, I have referred to the tides of life: periodically, both collectively and individually, we experience ebb-tides and incoming-tides. They are God-given because nothing in all creation is static, for change is constant. But both ebb-tides and incoming-tides dramatically alter our lives, for better or for worse.

Perhaps some of the most poignant and pertinent lines in all literature were penned by the American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson in “The Mill,” which contains in its muffled understated lines two work-related suicides:

“The miller’s wife had waited long,

The tea was cold, the fire was dead;

And there might yet be nothing wrong

In how he went and what he said:

‘There are no millers any more,’

Was all that she had heard him say;

And he had lingered at the door

So long that it seemed yesterday.”

The second stanza contains his suicide by hanging, and the third concludes with her drowning.

Back then, every self-respecting hamlet and town boasted a mill, where farmers brought the product of their land to be ground into food for themselves and their livestock. But suddenly, due to the pace of technological change, the miller realized with a shudder that since “There are no millers anymore,” his place in the world had been eradicated; the only career he knew was, without preamble or advance warning, no more. The mill itself, in which he and his ancestors from time immemorial had invested their life savings, was now all but worthless. Facing absolute financial ruin, he concluded that suicide offered the only viable alternative to starvation and bankruptcy; and she, facing a world which demeaned women and offered them terribly few career options, was so overwhelmed by the hopelessness of her situation, that she quietly slipped into the mill-pond, feeling it offered the least messy departure from life.

There is an equally powerful short story written by the English author John Galsworthy. Simply titled “Quality,” it tells the story of a London shoemaker who prides himself on making the best and longest lasting shoes and boots it was possible to make. His customers knew their footware would be custom-made to their own foot contours. Of course they took time to make for each was a one-of-a-kind work of art. But technological change made possible mass market footware at lower prices and instant availability. And Galsworthy’s protagonist ends up starving himself to death rather than compromise on the issue of quality. Whenever I have read this story out loud to my students, there has been absolute silence in the classroom, the ultimate tribute to a life-changing story.

So what Terry and I saw and experienced six days ago represents both an ebb-tide to a vanishing way of life and an incoming-tide whose long-range impact can only be guessed at. One reality is, however, inescapable: life as we know it, and have known it, will never be again.

* * *

We will pick up where I left off (beginning the publishing house tour) next Wednesday.

    BLOG #30, SERIES #3
    WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE
    FAIR PLAY
    AND THE TOUR DE FRANCE PELOTON
    PART TWO
    July 25, 2012

It is over for another year: the 99th to be exact (with so many crashes, only 153 of 198 made it to Paris).  And Connie and I are vicariously drained by the intensity of it.  Thanks to the continuing miracle of television we’re able to have ringside seats for the entire three weeks, and, in this year’s case, 2,500 some miles (the distance varies each year, depending on the route chosen; no two routes being the same).  Equivalent to racing bikes across the entire continental United States at full speed.  No wonder it is today ranked as the #1 yearly race in the world!

Fair play – that is the real subject of these two blogs.  Without this essential aspect of sport – or competition in general –, the event is a travesty, victories meaningless, and are not worth the time it takes to watch them.  Indeed, the subject of fair play represents the very core of my upcoming book with e-Christian Books: Showdown and Other Memorable Sport Stories for Boys.

Sadly, fair play is not as central to American sports as it used to be in generations past.  Instead, winning at any cost – even if it means maiming or incapacitating for life a member of an opposing team [think New Orleans Saints bounty scandal] more often than not appears to be in the ascendancy.

Needless to say, millions from all around the world watch each year’s Tour de France to see if race officials are still doing their best to maintain a level playing field.  Perhaps the most telling moment was when Peter Sagan, the electric new addition to the race from Slovakia, was sprinting for a stage win and the biker just ahead of him – I believe it was Goss – swerved just enough to block Sagan’s forward progress, race leaders penalized Goss by 30 points.

But the most telling moment (in terms of character) occurred during that horrendous day when some despicable person seeded a mountain road with tacks, causing some 43 riders to pull off with flat tires.  The defending champion (Cadel Evans of Australia) was sidelined by tacks three times!  At that time, Bradley Wiggins of the UK held a slight lead over Evans, so all he had to do was proceed at the same speed as before and then his main rival for glory in Paris would be conveniently eliminated.  But Wiggins would have nothing to do with profiting by his rival’s misfortune: in consultation with other team leaders he slowed down the pace of the entire peloton long enough for Evans and other bikers with flat tires to change bikes and catch up with the peloton.  It was a seminal moment.  The only comparable one being when Lance Armstrong’s arch rival, Jan Uhlrich of Germany, descending too fast on a mountain stage, careened off the road, Armstrong almost skidded to a stop in order to help Uhlrich get back up to the road and on his bike.  Never shall I forget the sight of Uhlrich (during the final laps of the Tour on the Champs Elysee in Paris) reaching out his hand to grasp that of the victor, Armstrong, in tribute to that incredibly generous act of graciousness.

But back to this year’s Tour: I couldn’t help but notice that, after the Evans incident, everyone (players and media alike) began treating Wiggins with deeper respect and admiration.  By that one act, Wiggins had achieved towering moral stature in the eyes of his fellow cyclists.  Other defining moments followed: ordinarily, when a given cyclist establishes dominance time-wise over his rivals in a race [and Wiggins dramatically proved twice that he was the race’s best time trialist by far] – especially if he leads a strong team –, he becomes boss of the Tour from there on, brooking no threats to his rule.  All breakaway riders are to be unceremoniously pulled back to the peloton by the end of each stage.  Armstrong was just such a clearly-in-control leader.  Wiggins, on the other hand, didn’t appear to feel his need to constantly remind his fellow riders who was boss.  If the breakaway riders were no threat to the final standings in Paris, he’d sometimes just let them have their moment of glory.  Even more significant, however, was a decision Wiggins made before the peloton entered Paris on the last day.  Ordinarily, the first of seven laps in Paris represents a supreme moment when the new king of the Tour flaunts his Yellow Jersey and team by grandly riding at the very front for the entire lap.  But not this year: George Hincapie (not a member of Wiggins’ Sky team), a veteran of 17 Tours, savoring the last one of his career on the Champs Elysee, was chosen by Wiggins to lead out.  Not only that, but on the very last lap, instead of merely basking in his own glory at the front of the peloton as is the norm with Yellow Jersey winners in Paris, Wiggins speeeded up so as to give his teammate, Mark Cavendish (“the fastest man on wheels”) a leg up in winning the sprint to the finish, thus becoming the stage winner.

For I have noticed in this all-too-short journey we call life, it is the “little” things we do or do not do that end up defining us for our contemporaries and for posterity.  In this particular instance, who knows what the impact for good, for instilling in the young a deeper sense of fair play and selflessness, of this one man’s choices, may turn out to be.

                                                                              BLOG #29, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

FAIR PLAY

AND THE TOUR DE FRANCE PELOTON

PART ONE

July 18, 2012

Every year at this time the Tour de France dominates our lives.  Not that we are unique in this respect, for in France over 15,000,000 people line 2,100 miles of roads, mainly in France but also in Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain; and then there are the millions who watch it on television around the world.  Without question it is the greatest bicycle race on earth.

But keeping it so is anything but an easy task given that riders from every bicycle-loving-nation on earth try to make it into the ranks of one of the competing teams.  Together, all these fiercely competing teams make up what they call the peloton.  Each year my wife and I become more fascinated by this strange animal with its core engine of riders and its constant breakaway of riders determined to find fame outside the riders who are content with whatever glory comes to their individual teams.

Because so much is riding on winning something—be it being first to crest a hill, first to race across a finish line during a day’s stage (if not first, at least second or third), and most desirable of all: first to cross the line in Paris as the winner of the Yellow Jersey (or second or third)—there is almost unbelievable pressure on race officials to keep a lid on things, on the testosterone-driven 180-some riders who each harbors an agenda.

And then there are the inevitable crashes.  In this year’s Tour, far more than normal.  When the peloton is in motion with all those cyclists weaving in and out, moving forward and dropping back, all in the confines of narrow roads, crashes occur without a moment’s notice.  When they do, given their speed (20 to almost 60 mph), and paved road surface, the injuries are often bloody and serious, resulting in continual reductions of riders in the peloton.

With the peloton is a host of race officials, team leaders, media personnel (complete with helicopters overhead), and general support personnel, all further clogging up roads bordered by spectators.  It is a veritable zoo.

Each year’s peloton is a world unto itself, a miniature republic.  The ruler of that peloton is forced to prove his right to wear the coveted Yellow Jersey.  The winners early on are a different breed from the kings of the sport who lie low until the mountains.  Thus the winners of the relatively flat stages know that their reigns are likely to be brief.  The entire peloton knows this thus the early day-to-day winners have little power over their unruly cyclists.  But cyclists feverishly compete for momentary glory anyway, even knowing how ephemeral it is likely to be.

Always in the back of their minds are the dreaded time trials.  Dreaded because in them there is no longer any possibility that they can hide their true abilities from the peloton or the world, for each rider’s race time is individual.  At every stage of the time trials, speed so far will be measured against all the other finishers.  Almost inevitably, the leading time trialists will also excel in the mountains and fight it out for the podium in Paris.

And then there loom the mountains, with their serpentine roads and grades up to 20% on which the true separation between the titans and the lesser-mortals is graphically made evident.  But no matter how powerful a cyclist may be, unless he has an equally powerful team supporting him, his winning chances are nil.  Here it is that the smoothly operating phalanxes of superb and tireless mountain men come into their own, each man giving his physical all at leading out at the head of the peleton, with the others getting to coast behind in his slipstream.  Inevitably, however, the time will come when the future king of the race is forced to leave the slipstream and race for the top with the other would-be-kings.  These moments literally define each year’s Tour, and can be tremendously exciting to watch.

Now it is that the entire focus of the Tour is on these gladiators: who is it that has the greatness and staying power to dominate the mountains and rule over the rest of the race?  Sometimes the outcome remains in doubt until the very last day.  But then, be the margin between the leader and the closest competitor ten minutes or ten seconds, during the triumphal ride to Paris it is an unspoken rule that it would be unsportsmanlike to challenge the Yellow Jersey for supremacy in Paris.  Yet, even then a crash or accident of some sort could dethrone the ruler as could his failure to keep up with the peloton.

* * *

Next week, after the last week of this year’s tour, we’ll discuss more in depth the issue of what it takes to maintain a level playing field for all, as well as what real power may reside in those who wear the yellow jersey during the last half of each year’s Tour.

                                                            WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE
                                                                 FIVE CLOSE FRIENDS
                                                                       July 11, 2012

Friendship has been much on my mind in recent days, mainly because after our 30th Zane Grey’s West Society convention, in Spearfish, South Dakota, as Connie and I, and Bob and Lucy Earp drove northwest into Wyoming and Montana, one of Bob’s closest friends was dying.  At any given moment Bob expected that fatal call.  When it came at last, Bob had to leave us and fly to California for the memorial service.  Because of this final parting, we each spoke feelingly about the role of friends in life.

After Bob returned, he told us about the moving memorial service and the tribute he gave to his cherished friend.  At the end, he concluded with something like these words: “It is said that if we are really lucky, we’ll be blessed by five close friends who’ll remain constant during this journey we call life.  I’ve been one of those lucky ones, but tragically I’ve been losing them: then there were four, and then there were three — and now: there are only two.  Oh how I shall miss him!”

This reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s book The Four Loves, in which he postulates that each of our closest friends unlocks a door into our psyche that no one else will ever be able to open.  When one of them dies, our world becomes proportionally smaller.  For we may make new friends—and ought to—but they can never fully replace those who have known us at each stage down through the years.

I am reminded of Dr. Oz who yesterday, during the 5:30 news with Diane Sawyer, pointed out that whenever he has surgery on a patient he first insists that someone who loves or cares deeply for the patient be there for the operation.  Reason being that the survival odds go way down when a patient faces surgery alone.  The will to survive is almost always tied to having people in your life who love you and care deeply about the outcome.

So it is that I suggest that you take stock of your own relationships.  How many really close friends do you have?  Have you told them lately just how much they mean to youj?  How much darker the world would be without them?

If you haven’t, don’t wait until it’s too late.  Call them, write them, or knock on their door – TODAY!

BLOG #26, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #11

DAYTON DUNCAN AND KEN BURNS’

THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA

June 27, 2012

Without fear of hyperbole, I submit that this collaborative effort by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) is one of the greatest books of—not only this year, but this generation.  It is a prodigious piece of scholarship!  Just imagining their challenges gives me the chills: Becoming the authority on America’s history of conservation, and lack of it; the history of all of our national parks and monuments; the biographies of all the key figures in the development of each one; securing copyright permissions for this warehouse-worth of documentation; securing illustrations of all kinds and permissions to use each one; writing (in association with the filming of the award-winning PBS series of the same name); and then fact-checking every last piece to the mosaic.

Obviously though the text itself was written by Dayton Duncan, it had to be synthesized with   Burns’ PBS film series; there could be no noticeable discrepancies between the two.

I’m in awe at what they and their staffs accomplished.

TWO YEARS WITH DUNCAN AND BURNS

For almost two years now, this book has been my bible for writing two blog series: The Northwest National Parks and The Southwest National Parks.  Every time I’ve moved from one park to the next, before I turned to any other sourcebook, I first milked this book dry.  They never let me down.  They and the writer of the two companion books on the wonderful old lodges that grace these parks: Christine Barnes.

So it has been, as you have kindly vicariously traveled along with Connie and me and Bob and Lucy Earp, that thanks to The National Parks, we were able to briefly give you snapshots of how the following parks came to be: Crater Lake National Park, Oregon Caves National Monument, Mount Rainier National Park, North Cascade National Park, Olympic National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons National Park, Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Death Valley National Park, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park; we are now studying Yosemite National Park; and we shall conclude the Great Circle with Great Basin National Park.

But, my blogs have only provided you with enough information to whet your appetite for learning more about each park; for that it is a must that you buy a copy of the book for yourself and make it your own.  Within those two covers you will have an almost inexhaustible treasure mountain to mine from in future years.

But more than all that, you will discover that the book is also the riveting story of the American people, and how thousands of people from many professions and many levels of society came together in making possible a cause greater than themselves.

Once you read this book, I will almost guarantee that you will, like our intrepid foursome, wish to personally explore these parks yourselves, using the book as a guide.  In our trips, as we were driving from one park to another, one of us would read aloud from this book to the others in the car so that when we arrived there we’d not only know what to look for but also know the significance of what we saw and experienced..

Nor should I fail to bring out a great truth: Our children and grandchildren will value very little temporal things we give them, but they will cherish until the day they die the memories you made with them, the places you took them to, the time you spent with them, the things of value they learned with you.  With this in mind, consider the purchase of this book, reading it, marking it, internalizing it, and making it your family treasure map to the greatest national park mother lode in the world!

And—a favor I ask of you: please share with me your own personal book-related reactions and memories resulting from it.  You may reach me at:

Joe L. Wheeler, Ph.D.

P.O. Box 1246

Conifer, CO 80433

SOURCES USED

Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

BLOG #24, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

SOUTHWEST NATIONAL PARKS #13

KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK

June 20, 2012

We left the Southwest National Park series on April 25, with Sequoia National Park.  You may remember that Sequoia and Kings Canyon are administered as one entity, albeit with two separate management teams.  Without question, Kings Canyon is the lesser known of the two, perhaps because of its relatively late entry into the park system.  When you look at the map, things get confusing, what with the Sequoia National Forest (southern and northern branches), Giant Sequoia National Monument (southern and northern branches), and Sequoia National Park.

In 1891, the massive (sixteen feet in diameter) Mark Twain tree was cut down, then cut up into a dozen pieces (since it weighed nine tons), then shipped to the New York Museum of Natural History.  Two years later, the equally massive General Noble tree was cut down at the government’s orders, and shipped to Chicago for its Columbian World Fair exhibition; there it was turned into a two-story structure, then moved to the Smithsonian where it stood until the 1930s.

Stephen Mather, John Muir, the Sierra Club, and others all stepped in to save sections of this Sierra Nevada corridor before it was too late, but commercial interests kept the Kings Canyon section from national park status until 1940.  It was a close call since Los Angeles coveted the Kings River watershed and came within the proverbial inch of damming it up.  Had they done so, the Kings Canyon’s wilderness would have been lost forever.  In 1978 Congress added the Mineral King area to the park.  Altogether, today, over 450,000 acres of Kings Canyon wilderness (mostly roadless) is preserved for those who wish to escape roads and backpack in—some 80,000 a year do just that.  Altogether 1,500,000 people a year love Kings Canyon/Sequoia to death with their traffic—all on only 120 miles of roads.

Providentially a great rampart of high mountains (the backbone of the Sierra Nevadas) barred east/west roadways from being constructed long enough to preserve this area in perpetuity for the American people.

OUR VISIT TO THE PARK

Bob and Lucy Earp, Connie and I, after a delicious breakfast at Wuksachi Lodge, headed out into the cold grey skies that gradually dissipated as we moved out of Sequoia National Park into Kings Canyon.  We stopped at both the Sequoia and Kings Canyon visitor centers, making a point to see both films.  We have found that travelers who don’t do so severely shortchange their visits.  We can all be grateful to the park rangers who serve us so well in facilities across the nation.

By the time we reached the rim of Kings Canyon—I hadn’t seen it in over forty years—the sun had come out.  It turned out to be one of those all too rare absolutely perfect blue sky days.  Way down below was the still undammed Kings River (Spanish explorers named it El Rio de los Santos Reyes), which translates to River of the Holy Kings (the Magi).  The river grew ever larger and louder as we zigzagged our way down the canyon wall.  Just as had been true with the snowmelt-swollen Kern River, the Kings River was torrential!  With a half-century high snowpack to stoke it, what a time to have picked in which to re-experience the canyon!  Since tourist season hadn’t yet begun, the day proved to be a serene one.  Everywhere we looked tributary streams and waterfalls fed into the gorge.  At the east end, where the road ends in the Zumwalt Meadows, we took advantage of the opportunity to explore the area.  We discovered that the park not only includes one of the greatest stands of Sequoias in the world, it also includes magnificent stands of sugar pine, ponderosa pine, white fir, red fir, and incense cedar.

Afterwards, regretting we couldn’t remain longer in the park, we drove back down the canyon, up over the canyon wall, back into Sequoia, down into the San Joaquin Valley, and then up through California’s legendary gold-mining towns such as Angels Camp (made famous by Mark Twain’s “The Jumping Frog of Calavaras County”), back into the cooler temperatures of the Sierras, a quick stop at one of our oldest national park lodges, Wawona, then on to that  famous tunnel that opens onto one of the grandest vistas our world has to offer: “Yosemite National Park, with its iconic peaks, waterfalls, and river.  Tourists seeing the vista for the first time are awe-struck.

 Even those native Californians like Connie and me are moved almost to tears by being privileged to set eyes on it once again in this all too brief journey we call “life.”

SOURCES USED

Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred A. Knopfk, 2009).

Palmer, John J., Sequoia and Kings Canyon (Wickenburg, Arizona: K. C. Publications, 2009).

BLOG #25, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

SOUTHWEST NATIONAL PARKS #14

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK – PART ONE

June 20, 2012

Yosemite is the penultimate stop in our Great Circle of National Parks grand tour that we began on August 4, 2010.  It is fitting that our closing fireworks takes place where the National Park story begins.  And for that story we can thank Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, for their book has been our sourcebook.

Yosemite’s story really begins with Dr. Lafayette Bunnell in one of the earliest expeditions (1851) into this then all but unknown valley.  He was so overwhelmed by what he saw that he named the valley.  Wrongly, it turns out.  In his ignorance of the Native American Indians who lived here, he mistakenly named it Yosemite Valley.  Turns out that Yosemite translates as “Killers” . . . “People who should be feared.”  It should have been called “Ahwahnee Valley,” so named by the  Ahwahnee Indians who referred to themselves as the “Ahwahneechies.”  Translated, “Ahwahnee” means “The Place of the Gaping Mouth” (Duncan and Burns, p. 2).

Word spread, and photographers (the profession then in its infancy) and artists such as that great romantic landscapist, Albert Bierstadt (who came here and painted such magnificent canvasses in 1862 that he was paid a then unheard of $25,000 for one of his Yosemite paintings) packed into the valley to see if it was all legend attributed to it.

In 1864, John Conners (junior senator from the very young state of California) did an almost unbelievable thing: In the midst of the bloodiest war in American history (with more casualties than in all the rest of America’s wars combined) Conners stood up on May 17, 1864 in the Senate Chamber and introduced a bill to preserve this little-known valley.  A proposal that was unprecedented in human history: to “set aside a large tract (some 60 square miles) of natural scenery for the future enjoyment of everyone.”  The bill included both Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees (Sequoia).  The concept for the bill had originated with Captain Israel Ward Raymond.  Such a proposal seemingly made little sense in light of Americans’ well-known propensity to trash all itsnatural wonders.  They’d already all but ruined Niagara Falls with cheap commercialism.  Almost unbelievably—no small thanks to Conners’ assurance that the land was completely worthless and wouldn’t cost the country a dime—, the bill sailed through; and on June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln “signed a law to preserve forever a beautiful valley and a grove of trees that he had never seen thousands of miles away.” (This section, Duncan and Burns, 8-13).

Unwisely, it turns out, the bill mandated turning the park over to the State of California to administer, which resulted in half a century of fierce and unrelenting warfare between the forces of those who sought to preserve the park in its pristine state and those who sought to commercialize it, log it, mine it, and do all they could to destroy it.  It proved to be one of the bitterest wars the West has ever known (matched only by the battle to preserve the Grand Canyon of the Colorado).

The unenviable job of actually protecting the park fell on the shoulders of 52-year-old Galen Clark, who’d proved himself to be a failure at most everything else he’d ever tried to do.  California appointed him the first guardian of Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove for the munificent figure of $500 a year.   Out of that, he was to pay all his living expenses, maintain all roads and bridges, supervise all those who set up businesses, hotels, etc., and, not incidentally, prevent the tourists from destroying the park!  An almost impossible challenge.  Even at that, the State of California withheld his wages for four years!  Just as bad, there was the self-appointed ruler of the park, James Mason Hutchins (a man who’d done much to publicize the park).  Hutchins had no intention of surrendering authority over the park to Clark or the State.  In fact, Hutchins decided to construct a sawmill in the park and wasn’t about to be stopped by anyone!  But he needed a reliable man to construct the sawmill and run it.

Enter a wandering sheepherder from Scotland.  Born in Dunbar, Scotland, and growing up in Wisconsin, he was raised by a harsh tyrannical father, an itinerant Presbyterian minister, who forced his son to memorize the Bible—and beat him repeatedly to keep him at it.  After escaping from his father, uncertain as to his future, he walked a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico, then came west. Seeking the wildest place he could find, he was steered into sheepherding in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  And so it came to pass that, in the fall of 1869, this 31-year-old walked into the Yosemite Valley to apply for the job of sawmill builder and manager.

His name was John Muir (Duncan and Burns, 15-17).

SOURCES USED

Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

ROUNDUP IN THE BLACK HILLS

June 18-21, 2012

June 6, 2012

Consider this to be a personal invitation to join us in the 30th annual Circling of the Wagons of the Zane Grey’s West Society.  Site: Holiday Inn Hotel and Convention Center, Spearfish, South Dakota.  (Phone: 800-999-3541).

* * * * *

            They say that when each of us comes to the end of our life journey, one thing we won’t regret will be the money we spent to make memories with.  I’ve met lots of people whose major regret late in life was that they never really lived.  Never really enjoyed life, explored life, traveled, ventured outside the box.  Always they were going to do these things someday, someday when they had lots of spare time and spare money—but they never did.  Then when one life-partner or the other was crippled physically or mentally, that was the end of their travel dreams.

If you love the West—especially the Old West; appreciate, love, or would like to learn more about the works of frontier writer Zane Grey (the #1 writer in the world during the first half of the 20th century), we urge you to drop everything and join our extended family get-together in Spearfish, SD, beginning this June 18.

We are not a formal organization, but rather just a group of people who love the West, the books Zane Grey wrote, and who genuinely revel in getting together with cherished friends in places worth traveling to: places like Glacier National Park; Catalina Island; Zanesville, Ohio; Payson, Arizona; North Rim of the Grand Canyon; Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, Virginia; Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania; Flagstaff, Arizona, Grants Pass and Gold Beach, Oregon, and so on. This will be our first convention set in South Dakota.

We are a frugal organization; so much so that we’ve only raised dues once in 30 years!  We have no paid-anybody; we all serve pro-bono.  The only thing that enables us to keep our beautiful and professional magazines coming is our auctions of Zane Grey books and memorabilia during our annual convention.

Let me walk you through a typical convention.  Knowing that many of our members are on fixed-incomes, we tend to stay in lodging that is attractive yet not priced out of range for our members.

We usually meet during the third week of June (sometimes the second), Monday eve through Thursday eve.  Having said that, so anxious is everyone to see their friends again that about a third get there early.  The Monday evening barbeque is our first event.  Tuesday is our heaviest day: annual keynote address, other special events or presentations, annual breakfast or lunch when we remember those we no longer have with us, the annual auction (a great place and time to build your library), etc.  This year, my keynote address will be telling the story of what is almost universally considered to be the greatest western novel ever written, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. 2012 is its 100th anniversary!  Later, several of the top executives of the Crazy Horse Memorial Park will tell us about what is happening at what will one day be the largest carved statuary in the world (many times larger than Mount Rushmore).  On Wednesday, we will visit Mount Rushmore in the morning and Crazy Horse in the afternoon—they’ll let us get up close!  Thursday is part business (electing officers, special speakers or presentations, and voting on future convention sites).  Afternoon provides welcome free time, and evening the annual banquet (no specified dress code).  At the end, we all cry, knowing that never in this life will we all be together again.

Once you experience it, you’ll want to meet with us every year. Our normal attendance averages a hundred or more.

We’d love to have you with us on June 18.

For specifics, make reservations at special society convention rate at the Spearfish Holiday Inn.  And be sure and contact our genial Secretary/Treasurer for further details:

ZANE GREY’S WEST SOCIETY

c/o Sheryle Hodapp, Secretary/Treasurer

15 Deer Oaks Drive

Pleasanton, CA 94588

(925-485-1325)

E-mail:

[email protected]

See you there!

BLOG #22, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

May 30, 2012

Roger Ebert’s review of this new British film doesn’t begin to do it justice:

                                    Travel Comedy.  4 ½ stars.  PG-13.

                                    The hotel of the title is a retirement

                                    destination in India for “the elderly

                                    and beautiful.”  It has seen better days,

                                    and if you want to see what the better

                                    days looked like, just examine the

                                    brochure, which depicts a luxurious

                                    existence near Udaipur, a popular tourist

                                    destination in Rajasthan.  To this city

                                    travel a group of seven Brits with

                                    seven reasons for making the move.  As

                                    we meet them jammed on the bus from

                                    the airport, we suspect that the film will

                                    be about their various problems and that

                                    the hotel will not be as advertised.  What

                                    we may not expect is what a charming,

                                    funny and heartwarming movie this is,

                                    a smoothly crafted entertainment that

                                    makes good use of seven superb veteran

                                    actors. (Roger Ebert, Universal Uclick)

                                    124 minutes.

It is far more than a travel comedy.  As funny as many of the lines are situations are, undergirding it all is a serious premise.  It reminds me of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ostensibly, merely a collection of stories told to each other by medieval pilgrims; but in reality, all Europe is being terrorized by a plague that is no respecter of persons or age groups.  It is a plague that strikes indiscriminately and suddenly: today you are healthy, tomorrow you are dying, often horribly).  Marigold Hotel is just as serious, beneath the humor and vibrantly alive scenery and people of India.  In truth, each of the seven Brits is in India for a reason.  In most cases it is for reasons each of us knows all too well: we are all dying, tied as we are to a terminal existence.  But what tortures us most is not the mere ceasing to breathe, but being marginalized, being pushed aside, having to dither in the grandstands of life watching the only players that matter fight it out.  Discovering how little our grown children need us any more—and by extension, the grandchildren as well.  Reallizing that all too often our children or others usurp control of our financial assets.  Ruefully becoming aware that we have inadequate resources to maintain the quality of life we are used to.

In times past, before the State assumed responsibility for the needs of its elderly, families took care of their own and lived together or in close proximity, intergenerationally.  In such a world, there were many contributions the elderly could make.  That is much less true in our age of separation of senior citizens from the day-to-day flow of those still active and creating products and services.

Another key dimension of the film highlights the aging protagonists’ continued yearning to be loved and cherished, for physical intimacy even though with lower wattage.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” older people miraculously have their youth restored to them; at least that’s what they think, and act accordingly.  Since their restored youth is all illusionary the results are grotesque.  In Marigold Hotel, each character is all too aware of their aging, yet each still longs to have their aliveness, their youthful vigor, return—even if it be briefly or for but one last time.

                                                                                                                                                            Marigold Hotel, itself as aged and dilapidated as they, is an inspired setting.  The young Indian hotel owner/manager and his vivacious and lovely sweetheart provide intensity contrast to the lack of it in the guests.  Another layer of meaning is that the old hotel dates back to the days when the British ruled India, and the wisdom articulated then by such writers as Rudyard Kipling still resonating today in such immortal works as “If.”  Almost ironically the descendants of India’s erstwhile conquerors return in order to rediscover meaning in their lives.

Miraculously, the aged hotel proves to be a catalyst—not necessarily to a rebirth of youth for the characters, but to a prolongation of their sense of belonging, of camaraderie, of esprit de corps, of friendship, of being needed, of being given the opportunity to contribute again, of being respected again, and last but anything but least: a sense of renewed excitement with the dawn of each new day (in that sense, a rebirth of joie-du-vivre).

The one character who is unable or unwilling to accept the call of India, returns to England without her husband who—oh, you’ll just have to see and experience the film for yourself!

It is not a film young people would understand very well.  However, it is a must for every senior among us, and almost an equal must for all those older children and care-givers who interact with society’s seniors.  As to why, that is something each film-watcher will know for a certainty before the screen credits roll.

* * * * *

The film also segues beautifully with my May 9 blog on Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”

BLOG #21, SERIES #3

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB

GRACE RICHMOND’S THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JUNE

MIDSUMMER’S DAY

May 23, 2012

Of all the thousands of books I devoured during my growing-up years, none did I love more than our June selection: Grace Richmond’s The Twenty-Fourth of June, a paean to Midsummer’s Day (the Feast of St. John the Baptist), at the time of the Summer Solstice.  It is a love story like no other.  The story of a rather arrogant grandson of a millionaire who flits through life with little sense of purpose. Then young Richard Kendrick sees lovely Roberta Gray—and is transfixed.  But she is anything but, where he is concerned.  For dilettantes she has nothing but scorn.

Richmond’s unforgettable novel chronicles the clash that takes place when a man falls in love with a woman as beautiful inside as out—a woman not in the least interested in him.  When he persists, she throws down a gage at his feet: if he cares for her at all, he must agree to have nothing to do with her, have no contact with her, send her no gifts—no flowers even—for almost half a year.

Until Midsummer’s Day.

All the suspense of the novel is woven into the fabric of those months of noncommunication.

How it all plays out—well, you’ll have to somewhere, somehow, find a copy of this old book, and read it for yourself.

GRACE LOUISE SMITH RICHMOND

(1866 – 1959)

Grace was born on March 3, 1866, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to a minister father, the Rev. Dr. Charles E. Smith and mother, Catherine “Kitty” Kimball Smith.  Grace was a direct descendant of the state’s founder, Roger Williams.  An only child, Grace grew up the focal center of her parents’ manse.  In 1885, after having pastored Baptist churches in Mt. Auburn, Ohio; New Haven, Connecticut; and Syracuse, New York, Dr. Smith was called to Fredonia, New York; and there he would remain for the rest of his life.  On Oct. 29, 1887, Grace married the personable young family doctor, Dr. Nelson G. Richmond, who purchased a home next door to the manse.  So after marriage, Grace merely moved next door.  And it was here in Fredonia that the bride would write her many stories, essays, and novels.

The home.  It all starts there, the action happens there, and it all ends there.  Because of this, Grace Richmond is known as The Novelist of the Home.”  Of the thousands of writers who have written about the home, only Richmond earned that title.  Only in her fictional world is the home the all-in-all, the core, the bedrock.

Among her other beloved books are novels such as The Indifference of Juliet, The Second Violin,

A Court of Inquiry, Red Pepper Burns, Strawberry Acres, The Brown Study, Red Pepper’s Patients, Red and Black, Foursquare, Cherry Square, Lights Up, At the South Gate, the Listening Post, High Fences, and several Christmas novelettes.  She was among the most prolific short story writers in America. Most of her novels were serialized as well.  For 40 years, she was never out of print.  Of the dominant family authors of the first half of the twentieth century, only Zane Grey, Gene Stratton Porter, and Harold Bell Wright were better known than she; and her name ranked up there with Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Pearl S. Buck, Bess Streeter Aldrich, and Temple Bailey.  It was illustrious company indeed.  At the height of her popularity she was paid upward of $30,000 for magazine serializations (a princely sum back then!).  Doubleday would sell more than 2,500,000 copies of her books.

THE FOCUS ON THE FAMILY/TYNDALE HOUSE EDITION

Of the twelve classic books I edited for our Focus on the Family Great Stories Series, one was The Twenty-Fourth of June.  It was also the first to sell out; consequently, copies have always been scarce for apparently readers appear unwilling to part with the book.  At the front of it is my 55-page biography (which I researched and wrote over a year’s period) and at the back, discussion questions for families, teachers, and home-schoolers.  I also include a complete bibliography of all her books and stories.

Candidly, I actually feared returning to a book I’d loved so much when I was young.  I needn’t have worried: I was gripped with the same fascination as before, even though I knew how it all came out.  The title was an inspired choice; there is a symbiotic relationship between the plot and the title—each enhances the other.  How many book titles can you think of which are limited to a month and a day?  Richmond’s genius is that if you can remember the title, you can remember the plot.

But it is more than that, because the date represents far more than the cutting of the proverbial Gordian Knot, the denouement; it is the source of all the suspense.  All through the second half of the book, the reader reels back and forth between two questions: Will he make it?  And, if he does make it, will it be enough? I know of no other book that incorporates quite the same structure, the same crescendo, of suspense.

Copies are available on the web, both the Doubleday edition and the A. L. Burt reprint edition.  Since it is the rarest Focus/Tyndale classic book, I can’t help much as I have only four copies left (all new, unread) at $95 (I’ll include postage and insurance in that price; and inscribe them personally if requested to do so).