Love and Adventure Meet In Newlyweds Afloat. A Fun, Insightful Read from the Editor of Business North

For the past four years I've been writing a marketing column for Business North, a regional business publication here in the Northland. I've also tackled some journalism, which had me working more closely with the publication's editor Felicia Schneiderhan. When I learned that she'd written a book called Newlyweds Afloat, I immediately checked out a copy from our library, and guess what? It's a really good read. 

The full title of the book is Newlyweds Afloat: Married Bliss and Mechanical Breakdowns While Living Aboard a Trawler. The word Newlyweds in the title should tell you it's a story with romance in it. Afloat can imply a couple of things. First, "barely keeping your head above the water," as in the way I did the dog paddle across the pool when I was eight in order to earn the right to jump off the diving boards. Second, as in living on the water in a boat as opposed to the solid foundations of dry land.

The next statement is one I've made so often that it's almost cliche. If most readers are like me, they enjoy reading well-written stories about people whose lives or experiences are totally foreign to one's own. It's that Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous effect. It's why we enjoy reading memoirs by people whose life experiences are foreign to our own.*

One feature that makes Schneiderhan's book work is her extreme candor, which begins on page one. Another aspect of the book that makes it an enjoyable read is the vivid imagery and splashes of original (i.e. non-cliche) ways in which she presents ideas or describes things. For example, here's a description of heading out onto Lake Michigan away from the city: "Watching the downtown skyscrapers shrink to chess pieces..."

There are little gems like this throughout the book that I would have highlighted if it weren't something borrowed from our library. (Book ownership is nice because you can write in the margins and highlight passages ad infinitum. I read that John Adams filled the margins of his books with notes and scribbles. One book he owned had five thousand words of notes!)

The promo copy on Amazon describes it like this: A young woman meets an amazing guy, falls in love, and they move in together. Straightforward enough, right? Except he lives on a boat—a thirty-eight-foot trawler, docked in Chicago. Their relationship is intensified by living in a tiny space, and by the never-ending quirks of the boat, who becomes a third party in the marriage. There are electrical failures, pump failures, big waves, and freezing winters . . . not to mention the attack goose. Felicia Schneiderhan has a fine literary sensibility and manages to be both funny and deeply serious in writing about boats and love and relationships.

I admire her bold candor about many facets of the story. It brings this book into a serious level and not just a melodramatic romance account. Her honesty about alcoholism, her Catholic background and the challenges of living in small spaces gives it a realism readers can relate to.

If you live in Duluth, you can borrow the book from the Duluth Public Library, which likes to support our local writers by carrying their books on their shelves. (A couple of mine can be found there, fwiw.)

If you don't live in our neighborhood, Schneiderhan's book can be found here on Amazon.

I'll close here with a couple of good quotes. The first is from Annie Dillard. The second is from Guy de Maupassant, which Schneiderhan uses to open her story.

"The writer of any first person work must decide two obvious questions: what to put in and what to leave out." -- Annie Dillard.

"My curiosity had been aroused, that curiosity peculiar to all who travell over the water, which makes you want to see everything, watch everything closely, which makes you passionately interested in the slightest things." -- Guy de Maupassant

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* For example, Nevada Bob Gordon's 50 Years with the Wrong Woman

Getting Ready for the Eclipse: An Essay, a Poem and a few Facts

An app you can download gives precise countdown.

We've all heard the expression "Too little, too late." I suppose that there are a lot of people who have now experienced the expression as well, rushing off at the last minute to try and find a pair of special glasses that would enable us to watch first-hand Monday's upcoming solar eclipse, the first total eclipse in the U.S. in 38 years.

Two nights ago I scooted off to Wal-Mart because the newspapers said they had the glasses, but when I got there they only had an empty display. Best Buy had nothing and that was that.

Then last night I needed a fluorescent bulb and used that as an excuse to see if I might find those special glasses at the hardware store. C'est la vie. Nada. nothing. They'd had them, but were now sold out and didn't expect to get any more.

Even without the glasses you can sort of have an experience by making a pinhole projector. I remember the eclipse of 1979 and ended up writing a poem about it in my journal. (see below)

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People who are into astronomy in a big way have been counting the days since last year, I think. Here is a link to a page of 25 facts about this year's eclipse. It's probably been used by journalists as a background source for the past month in preparation for the story. It's a pretty big event, though it's not having the same "end of the world" effect as the last day of the Mayan calendar. For the record, everyone in the U.S. will be able to see at least a partial eclipse. At least, in theory.

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After failing to find glasses to watch it with, I decided to look for an app that might help make this event an even more special experience. It turned out to be a pretty easy business. Go to the app store on your smartphone and you will find quite a few to choose from. This C-Net link is also a useful guide.

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Another way to prepare for the Eclipse would be to read Annie Dillard's essay Total Eclipse, reprinted temporarily at The Atlantic online. I'm not entirely sure why the essay has such a short online lifespan, but their plan is to only leave this posted until the day after the eclipse and then to remove it, a somewhat strange notion to me. Then again, there are a lot of strange things in life, and one of them is the behavior of nocturnal creatures when the sun hides its for a brief spell. Here's a doodle that Annie sent me once. How appropriate it feels for this special event.

Total Eclipse

In the days of the Solar Eclipse

when the sun for a time hid its face

the creatures of night all emerged to explore

the strange world of non-light at mid-day.

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Here's a strange thought. Is there a reason that the sun and the moon both appear the same size when we look up and see them in the sky? The sun is 93 billion miles away and massive. The moon is quite near, relatively speaking, and one-sixth the size of the earth, a relatively small heavenly body. The sun is 400 times further from the earth than the moon. What are the odds that these two bodies would match up so perfectly when one passes before the other. And considering the vastness of the sky, what are the odds of these two bodies occupying the identical spot in the sky simultaneously?

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The Countdown is underway. At this moment, it's now 2 day, 4 hours and 39 minutes.... Enjoy!

Throwback Thursday: The Hard Part

"The writer of any first person work must decide two obvious questions: what to put in and what to leave out." ~Annie Dillard

Someone asked how I come up with something new to write about every day. Frankly, that is not the challenge. The real challenge is how to eliminate topics because there are so many competing for this space at any given time. It's like a rural man who arrives in the big city without a plan. He's not sure which direction to go because so many avenues beckon. If the city is New York, any direction will yield an adventure.

[This paragraph is deleted.]

[This paragraph was delicious, but it is deleted, too.]

[This paragraph felt like it was not going where I wanted it to, so it is deleted as well.]

Evidently my thesis is not accurate across the board. Some avenues really are dead ends.

Ernest Hemingway, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, once remarked that "if I had more time it would have been shorter." In other words, he likewise left a lot of material on the cutting room floor. That's what artists do. They explore, try things, and when it works it is often magical. When it doesn't you realize it's got to go.

It might be that some people so love whatever they create it can't be touched lest it be marred. Editors hate working with these kinds of writers who treat every word as if it had been delivered by divine inspiration.

This morning when I sought out the context for the Hemingway quote cited above, I discovered an interesting blog devoted to this writer who made such an impact on the literary scene. One page features the top 5 quotes misattributed to Hemingway. This quote of his has also been attributed to T.S. Elliot, Voltaire, Mark Twain and even Blaise Pascal. Hmmm.

As regards brevity, Lincoln's Gettysburg address was delivered in three minutes, yet it has been remembered for more than a century and a half. Think about it. And... have a great day.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS BLOG POST ORIGINALLY APPEARED HERE CIRCA 2009.

Of Time and the River

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” ~ Norman Maclean

A comment in a book I was reading yesterday made me think about rivers, about their origins, their flow and destinations. A river’s origin or source may be a spring, or a set of creeks which serve as tributaries into a channel which flows along toward a broader body of water such as great lake, gulf or ocean.

Here in Minnesota we have the headwaters of the Mississippi, the starting point of the world’s third longest river. Twenty-five years ago I used to run along this same river bank three mornings a week when I lived for a time in Bloomington. Over a century ago young Sam Clemens swam in this same river further south, traveling much of its length from Missouri to the Mississippi Delta.

And near two centuries ago the elderly Daniel Boone, who had moved most of his family to Missouri from Kentucky in order to escape the encroachments on his freedom by our U.S. legal system, decided to explore the Mississippi northward with a Negro via canoe. A brutal snowstorm from the north bore down upon them as they neared the headwaters here in Minnesota and for three days it appeared that he was about to die as they lay beneath the canoe striving to survive. He recited to his dark skinned companion his last will and testament, but the storm broke and he found himself recovering. They got back into the canoe returned to Missouri where he lived out the rest of his years.

Rivers have been part of human history for ages, serving as transportation routes, power generators, geographic barriers, political boundaries, and more. Rivers have also served as a source of inspiration for poets, writers, artists and philosophers.

An interesting feature of the Mississippi is that not far from its source there is an unusual triple watershed. Watersheds are high points where rain drainage diverges in different directions or to separate destinies. In the Colorado Rockies, for example, there is a divide where water falling to the West flows to the Pacific Ocean, and to the East it flows to the mighty Mississippi and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. But here, not far from where I am sitting, there is a triple point which Native Americans recognized long before the white man came, and held council meetings there.

Rain that falls in this small area can have one of three outcomes once it joins other creeks, streams and tributaries. It can flow into Lake Superior and into the St. Lawrence Seaway system, or it can flow into the headwaters of the Mississippi, or it can drain northward to the Arctic Ocean… a truly diverse set of destinies.

Our minds are like rivers sometimes. Ideas fall like rain into our mental landscape. Some drops evaporate quickly and are gone. Others merge with existing streams and make them more powerful as they cut deeper channels through the interior of our souls. Occasionally, due to weather patterns chiefly, there are floods which overflow their banks and spill across the landscape, sometimes tearing down trees and buildings and causing great upheavals.

The river’s origins are simple and small, bearing no resemblance to the mile wide expanse downstream.

When the river is flowing hard and fast, it energizes us. When the river becomes wide, flowing lazily through time and space, it relaxes us. So too, our minds and mental states.

The flowing river is a theme upon which many minds have meditated. Twain, Hesse, Annie Dillard, Norman Maclean have all included reflections on rivers. Here is the culmination of Hesse’s Siddhartha as the great wise man contemplates the meaning of his life while watching, and listening to, the river.

Siddhartha tried to listen better. The picture of his father, his own picture, and the picture of his son all flowed into each other. Kamala's picture also appeared and flowed on, and the picture of Govinda and others emerged and passed on. They all became part of the river. It was the goal of all of them, yearning, desiring, suffering; and the river's voice was full of longing, full of smarting woe, full of insatiable desire. The river flowed on towards its goal. Siddhartha saw the river hasten, made up of himself and his relatives and all the people he had ever seen. All the waves and water hastened, suffering, towards goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean and all goals were reaced and each one was succeeded by another. The water changed to vapor and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, brook and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice had altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searcingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, hundreds of voices, thousands of voices.

Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything... He could no longer distinguish the different voices – the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.

On Blogging

"The writer of any first person work must decide two obvious questions: what to put in and what to leave out."
Annie Dillard

I believe this Annie Dillard quote comes from her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She was referring to her memoir writing if I remember correctly, and to all memoir writing in general. This was before the era of blogs and blogging.

Blogging has become an interesting phenomenon, a natural outgrowth of the world wide web. It is popular because it is easy.

Some people have criticized email because it was “destroying language” and wrecking good grammar, good English etc. Well, is it really? Everything has a pro and con, including email and blogging. I think it is great that people are communicating. How many letters would people send in a day if they had to type, print, fold, and insert into an envelope that they must address and stamp? What a hassle. By email, I can maintain contacts with fifty or more people a day. At the office it might be a hundred or more. I certainly receive hundreds there.

Email is easy, therefore more people can do it.

Blogging, likewise, is a heckuva lot easier than building a website. There are hordes or blog sites that will host your creative output. Some are getting a lot of bad press, but maybe it’s because the Press is jealous. More people probably read blogs than read newspapers.

I just heard that if all the people with a MySpace blog were to be named a “country” it would be the 11th largest country in the world, just behind Mexico. (If this stat is incorrect, please feel free to send correction and it will be so done.)

In the mid-nineties I built a website, in part for the experience and in part for the forum where I could display some of my work. I used a software program that was limited in capabilities but easy to use. Ease of use was key.

But even so, most people did not have sufficient motivation to get past the learning curve and although businesses everywhere built websites – almost as necessary as buisiness cards and storefront signage – the individuals with a website were far fewer in number.

Blogs changed all that. Blogs opened possibilities for self expression that seemed infinite in scope. The problem is, how much disclosure is prudent?

For example, when an employee has a problem with the boss, what is gained by filling a blog entry with a 500 word rant? I just heard such an account two weeks ago. What the employee gained was a two week suspension without pay. That, I thought, was pretty generous.

Many people have no sense of boundaries with other facets of their life. Blogs are not intended to be a replacement for journals. In your journal you can do self-analysis and personal psychological assessments. But do you really need to announce to the world your every neurotic tendency, self-destructive fantasies, anguished self-accusations, prideful declarations or hypersensitive assessments of others? Guess what? There are some things we do not need to know. Work it out in private.

As for my blog entries here, if you have been following along, a lot of what I write is excerpted from my journals. You can be sure I am being selective, trying to be helpful or using some ideas and thoughts as a springboard to additional conversation with you, my readers.

In the meantime, blog on.

NOTE: The doodle from Annie Dillard at the top of this page was sent to me as part of my Dandy Yankee Doodles Project. More about that during another space in time.

Get to know more about Annie Dillard at www.anniedillard.com
A collection of quotes for writers from my own website: www.enewman.biz/writing.html