What Should I Write About Today?

I must have started down a half dozen different paths today without being able to settle on a theme to explore on our blog today. Eventually I decided to ask for help by phoning my friend, ChatGPT. Here's the question I asked and her/his reply.

Q. What should I write about today?

A. There are many things you could write about today. Some ideas might include:

• A personal essay about a significant experience or event in your life
• A review of a book, movie, or album you've recently enjoyed
• An opinion piece about a current event or social issue that you feel passionate about
• A descriptive piece about a place you've visited or a person you admire
• A tutorial or how-to article about something you're knowledgeable about or enjoy doing

Ultimately, the best topic for you to write about is one that interests you and that you feel passionate about. Choose a subject that you have a strong connection to, and the writing will come more naturally to you.

The first topic that came to mind was Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. One reason is because of my Kentucky roots. My kin are from Eastern Kentucky and have been so since my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Daniel Boone led a community of settlers through the Cumberland Gap to settle in what was then "the west."

I have an interesting anecdote about one of my visits there in the mid-seventies. I will share it after you read about the place. (I asked ChatGPT to write this next part.)

Mammoth Cave is a vast underground labyrinth of caverns, tunnels, and passageways located in central Kentucky. It is the longest known cave system in the world, with more than 400 miles of explored and mapped passageways.

The cave is named for its large size, as many of its passages are tall enough to accommodate a mammoth. It has a rich history, with evidence of human use dating back to the early 19th century. In the early 1800s, a man named Stephen Bishop began exploring the cave and mapping its passageways. Bishop became known as the "patron saint of American cave exploration" and is credited with discovering many of the cave's most famous features, including the Frozen Niagara section, which features a series of stunning waterfalls.

Mammoth Cave is a natural wonder, with a variety of unique geological formations and ecosystems. It is home to many rare and endangered species, including the Kentucky cave shrimp, which is found nowhere else on earth. The cave is also home to a number of bat species, including the endangered Indiana bat.

In 1941, Mammoth Cave was designated a national park, making it one of the oldest national parks in the United States. Today, it is a popular tourist destination, with guided tours available to visitors. It is also an important scientific research site, with studies being conducted on everything from geology and hydrology to biology and paleontology.

Mammoth Cave is a truly incredible place, offering a glimpse into the underground world and a chance to explore one of the most fascinating natural wonders on earth.

* * * 

So here's the anecdote I wanted to share. Mammoth Cave offers visitors a range of tour opportunities, from one to six hours. The various tours take you to various parts of the cave network. On this particular occasion we took the tour that led to the very deepest part of the caves. As we descended down this winding path, through the Fat Man's Squeeze and past networks of stalactites and stalagmites, I kept thinking that the woman in front of me was familiar somehow. 

Keep in mind, we're in Kentucky and I was from New Jersey. 

As we reached the low point in this part of the cavern and the tour guide was announcing this fact, I immediately remembered where I met this woman. "Excuse me, but you look familiar," I said.

"I was thinking the same thing," said she.

Also, just so you can better visualize this, she was probably in her 60s and I was fresh out of college.  

"Are you from New Jersey?" 

"Why, yes. How did you guess?"

"I believe you had a table at the rummage sale in Martinsville."

Well, yes, that was where we met, though I can't recall if she sold me a brownie or was selling quilts. 

As my mother is fond of saying, "Isn't it funny the things we remember?"

EdNote: Illustrations created by DreamAI

Elmore Leonard Delivers the Goods in The Moonshine War

Anyone familiar with his work will probably agree that the late Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) was one of the great writers of crime fiction. The characters and situations he creates are memorable, and there is always a payoff. 

I first became aware of Elmore Leonard while attending a 1985 writer's conference in Mankato. During one of our lunch periods I was seated with Joe Soucheray who told us about a novel he was working on. He was about six chapters in at the time, trying to write like Elmore Leonard, whom he considered the gold standard when it comes to this kind of storytelling. 

Over the next two decades I probably read half of his 50 or so novels as well as some of his short story collections. When I later wrote my own first novel, The Red Scorpion, there were elements of the story patterned after Leonard. Create interesting characters and put them an in interesting situation. The hero must be heroic and the bad characters truly scary and -- assuming the reader still cares about your hero -- there's something at risk, usually life and death.

This week I picked up The Moonshine War, which Leonard wrote earlier in his career. As has often been the case, I could hardly put it down. It takes place in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, a region that Leonard must have been familiar with because he's had stories there before and he knows both the setting and the moonshiner's world so well. My own grandfather was a moonshiner. When the revenuers (Federal agents) came to bust the stills he fled to West Virginia with his seven-month-pregnant wife. My father was born there two months later.

* * *

The central hero in The Moonshine War is Son Martin, a quiet man who makes good shine. His father has passed away, and he also lost his wife previous to the beginning of this story. He's a respectful and respected young man with a few quirky habits. Early on we learn that he also has secrets.

During the war (WWI, not this moonshine war) he confided to another man--Frank Long--a secret that he immediately regretted sharing. His father had produced 150 barrels of primo moonshine to be aged for eight years that he'd hidden somewhere, and now Son Martin was to be the heir. Its value would be astronomical.

Frank Long had a memory like an elephant, and the notion of acquiring Son Martin's fortune was eating him alive. Son Martin's moment of weakness was now coming back to bite him, like a rattler in those lush Kentucky hills.

Long has made a plan. His scheme: to pose as a Federal agent and bust Son Martin's neighbor moonshiners to pressure Son into yielding up his treasure. Things go awry when Long recruits some bad men be his "muscle" on this scheme. Very early in the story you encounter a couple of truly scary bad guys, and Frank Long lives to regret what he has set in motion. Lesson here: Don't play with fire.

* * *

Elmore Leonard is skilled at building the kind of tension that keeps readers turning the pages. His characters and stories feel authentic, so much so that in this case some readers will have a problem with the book. It takes place in the summer of 1931 and Son Martin has a black man named Aaron helping take care of his place. In Eastern Kentucky during those days Aaron would be been referred to with the n-word. Modern readers may disregard the heroic nature of the man Leonard paints here, or the special bond Aaron and Son share. They will stumble over the fact that this word is used in the book. 

For what it's worth, Elmore Leonard is a master. Hollywood must think so as so many of his books have been turned into films. If you like liked the movies--3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Mr. Majestyk, and nearly two dozen more--you will love the books.

Bluegrass State Photos Bring Back Memories

People and places of Kentucky

Courtesy Gary Firstenberg

aka Muddy Waters

Grave of Chester Arthur Burnett. Howlin' Wolf features
prominently in Dylan's Murder Most Foul.

*

My grandfather was born there (in Eastern Kentucky), and his father and his grandfather. I remember visiting my great-grandfather when he lived on the mountain in Eastern Kentucky across from Yellow Rock, and later again when he had moved to Bear Track, population 36 at the time. I can trace my roots back through great-great grandparents and their parents all the way back to Daniel Boone, whose offspring I am. "Daniel Boone was a man..."

I have so many memories, including visiting the places where the newborn Abe Lincoln lived, one being pictured above. Mammoth Cave, Cumberland Lake, Gethsemani, the Trappist Monastery where Thomas Merton is buried. After I'd grown there were business trips to Louisville for truck shows and National Street Rod Association events, and to Chevy Chase for diesel truck competitions.

In short, it's a beautiful state with a lot of history for me personally.

* * * *
Photographer Gary Firstenberg sent me these fotos from Kentucky as he continues on his points-of-interest road trip through the Midwest.

Related Links

Gary Firstenbergs Recent Midwest Travels
Best of Gary Firstenberg Collection

Daniel Boone Was A Man

"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks."--Daniel Boone

Portrait of Daniel Boone by Alonzo Chappel

I've been reading an interesting book by Daniel Immerwahr titled How to Hide an Empire. It's a book about all U.S. holdings outside the 50 states. The introduction provided new insights (for me) into the Pearl Harbor assault that became the basis for this blog post on Pearl Harbor Day.

Published in February of this year, it was named one of this year's ten best books by the Chicago Tribune. On Amazon it is self-described as a "pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire."  The subtitle of this book is A History of the Great United States.

The first chapter of Immerwahr's book is titled The Fall and Rise of Daniel Boone. For what it's worth, I am a direct descendant of Daniel Boone, so when I see a full chapter on his life written as an intro to an important book, it catches my interest.

I'm pretty sure I've read more books about this pioneer who opened the Wilderness Road than most Americans, and most of my peers. That he has been a personal inspiration goes without saying. The URL for this blog is Pioneer Productions.  (pioneerproductions.blogspot.com)

While researching my roots, in order to verify the historical narrative that had been passed down through the family, I discovered that our Newman lineage wasn't descended from just one, but from two daughters of Daniel Boone. A pair of second generation cousins married to become the progenitor  of the Newman line.

All this to say that I know quite a bit about the Boone legacy, and have been continually learning more. For example, it wasn't until I moved to Northern Minnesota that I learned what he did for a living. He was a long hunter. Or, in the lingo of this region Up North, he was a Voyageur.

Voyageurs were French Canadian trappers and hunters who would go off into the wilderness for months at a time and return with beaver pelts and other game that they had gathered and hauled back to be sold in the markets back East. The Upper Midwest has a more recent history of these kinds of men, by which means I came to understand that Boone was a similar specimen from a much earlier earlier time.

As a long hunter, he learned the best routes to where the most wild game could be found. Through these explorations he learned of the Cumberland Gap which enabled him to gain access to regions West of the Appalachian Mountains. As a result he was commissioned to cut a 200 mile swath through the mountains that would later be tagged the Wilderness Road.

* * * *
AND SO it was interesting to discover this first chapter of the book dedicated to shining a light on this frontiersman. These long hunters were not all that respected by the powers that be. They lived on society's fringe and were, to some extent, nonconformists. According to Immerwahl, "The founders viewed frontiersmen like him with open suspicion."

Immerwahr, though, sheds additional light on another aspect of Daniel Boone's story: his international fame. He was increasingly well known in Europe.

Best book on the life of Boone.

During his lifetime, he was not respected by the powers that be, Immerwahr says, nor did he have high regard for them. At one time he oversaw a million acres in Kentucky and lived as a surveyor. Unfortunately, because he failed to properly file "deeds" the many friends whose lands he surveyed lost their land and he made right to them by giving them his own land. In the end, he had no land of his own which prompted him to leave the country.

He pretty much despised the legal systems that robbed him of everything he had so that in his twilight years he and his living sons moved to what is now Missouri which was a French territory that eventually became U.S. territory through the Louisiana Purchase.

His reputation grew after his death. James Fennimore Cooper based his Leatherstocking novels on the exploits of Daniel Boone. Boone also became famous in Europe, as noted in this section of an Amazon account of his life.

The legend of the American frontier is largely the legend of a single individual, Daniel Boone, who looms over our folklore like a giant. Boone figures in other traditions as well: Goethe held him up as the model of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "natural man," and Lord Byron devoted several stanzas of his epic poem Don Juan to the frontiersman, calling Boone "happiest of mortals any where." 

But folklore is not history, and we are fortunate to have a reliable and factual life of Boone through the considerable efforts of John Mack Faragher. The contradictory admirer of Indians who participated in their destruction, the slaveholder who cherished liberty, the devoted family man who prized solitude and would disappear into the woods for years at a time--the real Boone is far more interesting than the mythical image, and in this book we finally catch sight of him.


What Immerwahr notes is that the people on the fringe, who had once been "banditti" (white savages) and a thorn in the side for the "gentlemen" rulers who attempted to maintain control of the young nation's development, were later being called pioneers and spoken of as heroes. In other words, historians re-branded Daniel Boone and his ilk.

Boone was a peaceful man whose one regret was that in the defense of Boonesboro and the settlements of Kentucky he was forced three times to take the life of a Native American. He was a man highly respected by the Native tribes and at one time he was adopted into an Ohio tribe where he lived for two years. His was a remarkable story and he was a man bigger than life.

* * * *
TWO PARAGRAPHS FROM WIKIPEDIA
Daniel Boone (November 2, 1734 [O.S. October 22] – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, woodsman, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Although he also became a businessman, soldier and politician who represented three different counties in the Virginia General Assembly following the American Revolutionary War, Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky. Although on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains from most European-American settlements, Kentucky remained part of Virginia until it became a state in 1791.

As a young adult, Boone supplemented his farm income by hunting and trapping game, and selling their pelts in the fur market. Through this work, Boone first learned the easy routes westward. Despite some resistance from Native American tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775, Boone blazed his Wilderness Road from North Carolina and Tennessee through Cumberland Gap in the Cumberland Mountains into Kentucky. There, he founded the village of Boonesborough, Kentucky, one of the first American settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 Americans migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone.

* * * *
As for me, he was and always will be my great-great-great-great-great-great Grandfather.

Related Links
History.com on the creation of the Wilderness Road
History.com: 8 Things You Might Not Know About Daniel Boone 
10 Best Quotes from our Favorite Outdoorsman
Who Was Daniel Boone?

Stand Up And Be Counted: Census 2010

Well, we just received our Census form Monday and it looks like the easiest Census I can ever remember. I’m sure that in part it’s because they really want it to be a no brainer so more people than last time will complete and send it in. There are no questions about income, and not really much beyond what is your name and when were you born.

Just for the heck of it I pulled out some old census form from the 1800’s to see what kinds of things they asked back in the old days when a census taker would actually go door-to-door and talk to every household.

Somewhere about twenty years ago I had done some serious genealogical research which led me into all the various arcane ways people dig up their pasts. I was striving to verify that what was rumored about our family being direct descendants of Daniel Boone was in point of fact a fact. I learned at the time that one can rent from the local library, for three dollars a roll, a microfiche of every census ever taken. In order to do this properly, though, you have to actually research the history of the geographical region where your kin were located. For example, my kin were from Lee County, Kentucky. But Lee County did not exist before 1870, so I had to obtain records for Owsley County, which itself was created from Clay, Estill and Breathitt Counties in 1943. Many Owsley County records were destroyed in disasters in 1929 and 1967.

Estill County was created from Clark and Madison Counties in 1808. A disaster in 1964 destroyed some of these records. But, Estill County Censuses were still available for 1810, 1820, 1830, 1840 and 1850. And for what it's worth, the North half of Lee County was once part of Bourbon County. (Which came first, the bourbon or the county name?)

Kentucky itself obtained statehood in 1792, so in the 1790 census it was designated Kentucky County, Virginia, and there was a census that year which included a John Newman, whom we have reason to believe was one of our early Newman settlers there. I have photocopies of many of these censuses, and the first, in 1790, was clearly intended to simply get a count.

By 1850, the government was interested in quite a bit more info. In addition to names, age, sex and color of all members of a household, they also wanted to know your occupation, the value of your real estate, your birthplace, how long you have been married, amount of schooling, whether or not you can read, enumeration date, and a space for additional remarks by the census taker.

By 1870 this evolved to where they not only wanted your real estate value, but the value of your property. They also ask if your father and mother were foreign born or not. Again they asked whether you can read or write (someone else is taking this down) and how many in the household were eligible to vote.

For the record, each year throughout the late 1800’s when the question was asked regarding being able to read or write, the answer was no. For many a-decade we Newmans were illiterate hillbillies.

So here it is, another census year. And there were no questions about where you folks were from, or how much your house is worth. Or even whether you can read or write. Or whether you’re a vegetarian or carnivore. Or whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi.

If you haven’t received your 2010 Census yet, it’s coming soon. It’s painless, and will be over as quick as a wink. Just make sure you slide it into the envelope correctly. You’ll see what I mean when you get there.

The Trail Of Tears

"When a white army battles Indians and wins, it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre." Chiksika, Shawnee

The relationship between our U.S. government and the native peoples who occupied these lands before the coming of the Europeans has had many tragic moments. One of the most appalling was the removal of the Cherokee, Choctaw and others from their native homelands in the Southern Appalachians to a desolate space called Oklahoma.

In 1830 Andrew Jackson championed the Indian Removal Act which was essentially a forced deportation. There were objections raised in some quarters. Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court stated that the act was unconstitutional. President Jackson said, essentially, "Try and stop me." In other words, the president had the army, the Court had pieces of paper.

Alexis de Tocqeville, French philosopher who was studying the American experience at the time, wrote of this forced removal, "In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction... one couldn't watch without feeling one's heart wrung."

Yet, amazingly, the country allowed this thing to happen. All through the 1830's the various tribal peoples were forced out and relocated to other lands. Thousands died along the way. As they made their way west from the Carolinas, however, many escaped and disappeared into the forest hills of Tennessee and fled north into Kentucky. This is when certain of my Kentucky kin appeared on the scene in Eastern Kentucky, though they probably disowned their roots at that time for fear of reprisals. Every family has its secrets.

Today, most people give little thought to this forgotten incident. Yet we honor President Jackson with his portrait on our twenty dollar bill. No wonder history is so messy and confusing.

EDNOTE: Most of the paintings and illustrations on my blog are available for sale. If you see something here that makes you say, "I gotta have it," be sure to let me know and we can negotiate a price. I am also interested in painting portraits. I am always seeking new and interesting subject matter. You can see my style here, and the prices will be very reasonable. Feel free to contact me.

Click on images to enlarge.

Unfinished Stories (Part 8)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

Gary Spencer, the last man alive to have read all of Richard Allen Garston's works, changed his name to Father William and now resides at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Father William had agreed to open up a little regarding Garston's writings and life. In this second dialogue, Joe Urban learns of the content of Garston's stories. It's probably my favorite part of the story.

The Unfinished Stories of Richard Allen Garston (Part 8)
Dialogue Two

I returned to my room with pen in hand, hastily outlining the details of our conversation. While my record may be imprecise in certain respects, overall it captures the essential elements of our conversation.

Our second conversation was immensely different. We spoke of the stories themselves.

His stories had a strange effect on me. When later I returned to my room it was as if my brain had become benumbed by liquor (though I had had none other than the Kentucky Bourbon which saturates the unique Trappist fudge they manufacture) or that I had fallen into a stupor of some sort. Whereas I spent the first night furiously attempting to reconstruct our dialogue, the second night left me in a state of introspective psycho-emotional inebriation. The first day's dialogue was liberating because I had attained a remarkable sense of self-forgetfulness. The stories of day two, on the other hand, were like a mirror, and ultimately I could not close off my day without attempting to find in myself the causation for this dark resonance.

Now that a measure of time has passed, I have no notes to adequately re-construct the day, or the stories. Here is the best of what I recall.

We began by the garden and walked along a narrow path to a field below the Abbey. I reminded him that he would tell me about the stories, and he began with this.

"Here's one I remember vividly," he said, "about a man who spent his whole life writing and re-writing the same story. The first half of his life it kept getting longer and more complex. The novella became a novel, which subsequently became an epic. The story ultimately grappled with every conceivable theme and the infinite permutations on those themes.

"The second half of his life he began to distill each facet of the story down to its unifying essence. For decades he re-wrote and edited and revised and polished his prose so that it became a lengthy, but finely crafted poem. This he continued to tighten and sharpen until it became ever more pointed, and potent. As the old man's heart weakened, the power of his verse strengthened.

"The last week of his life he attempted to compress all of his life's work into seventeen syllables..."

"A haiku!"

"Yes."

"What happened next?"

"It's unfinished."

This is how the day went. Stories were summarized and apparent meanings attached to them, stories about old people, children, orphans, criminals, natives, Orientals, immigrants, slaves, rich, poor, warriors, powerful, powerless. Stories from all stations of life, all facets of time, all portions of human history. Stories differing as greatly as mountains differ from deserts, rivers from butterflies, mould spores from the sun. Complicated puzzles, plots, games, dazzling wordplay, a hideous monster who had healing powers; a murder, told from the point of view of a piece of furniture, and the incriminating fragment of testimony it offered; a magic stone that made children tell the truth when they touched it; a temple made of daisies that turned men into birds; a stone that gave supernatural knowledge; the man who held the answer to a question no one dared to ask.

The stories were strange, dense, multi-dimensional, yet so simply told.

There was one story about a man whose hands and feet had been cut off during the Spanish Inquisition. He survived the atrocity and, in a story called The Ghost of Isla Rosa, went on to gain revenge on his tormentors.

In another story, Don Quixote, Oedipus and Bertrand Russell become engaged in a debate regarding the thesis "Is it futile to Dream?"

Another story I remember had something to do with time. Evidently it was built around the premise that history is elastic. That is, that future events can change past ones. I'm not sure what it was really about, but I recall being somewhat impressed by the manifold distortions of reality inherent in this concept.

Then there were the innumerable stories about struggle. Struggles with lust, with greed, with the need for freedom, with impulsiveness, the longing for spontaneity... struggles with materialism, solipsism, discontent, passivity, hypersensitivity, futility, austerity, pugnacity, hysteria... and ultimately the struggle for meaning and significance. These latter were difficult for me. They had a pointedness that frightened me.

There were also enigmatic stories, bewildering riddles, ambiguous conundrums and labyrinthine psychological spectacles.

Some of the stories he told in deplorable detail, others he summarized in a few swift sentences, and still others he simply alluded to or implied. He may not have said a word about them but I knew of their existence by the way he avoided speaking of them. I regretted the lack of time, and somehow he felt shortchanged as well.

Finally there were the suicide notes.

"Emma shared with me the introduction to one of these," I said.

"Emma?" he said. The way he said it threw me off because I couldn't tell if he were indicating he knew her, or didn't know her.

"Garston's sister-in-law. Wife of the brother, you know, the one who burned his work."

"I know, yes, I know."

Father William took an inordinate amount of time composing his thoughts. Eventually he continued to tell me of the thousand and one suicide notes.

"Ironic, isn't it?" I asked.

"What's that?"

"Well, all that energy spent attempting to keep his characters alive. But no one was able to help keep him alive."

"Yessssss," said he, enunciating it with a prolonged hiss.

I thought of the fragment. I thought of Emma. And I wondered now what I was really looking for.

CONTINUE