Further Backdrop to What's Made Us into Us

.


Tuesday
April 24, 2007
FURTHER BACKDROP TO WHAT'S MADE US INTO US; for Jay

Dear Jay,

Hello again. I trust all's well with you and yours. I neglected to mention in any of my recent open letters that April 20th marked the 25th anniversary of Harry's death and that he was buried in the Richmond Cemetery on Shakespeare's (probable) birthday a quarter of a century ago -- which, poetically, was his best friend, Cecil McCall's, birthday. Also, I was born a week after Shakespeare (and a week before Freud) on April 30th, so we'll be eating out with Jaromir & Magda this coming Saturday evening to celebrate both her and my birthday. I'll be turning 58 -- which means that you must have turned 50 this year; but I've forgotten the date. Sorry. Please remind me. Thanks.

I believe strongly that one of the most important functions of a memoir or autobiography is to let other people -- particularly the next generation that's coming along -- gain some measure of insight into their own lives by gaining some measure of understanding of who we believed ourselves to be, what we were like, and how we came to be the way we were during our short dance here beneath the sun. In keeping with this concept, you'll recall that I recommended David McCullough's enormous biography of Harry Truman to my other favorite cousin Jane Stone in a recent open letter.

This evening, in keeping with this same concept, I'm recommending to you (and Jane and Kevin and anyone else who's interested) a 1998 novel by the magnificent Jane Smiley entitled THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON. It's set mostly in the landscape which would one day become "the greater Kansas City area" (or what the broadcast media term "the metro"), during that momentous era (1854-1865) we now refer to as "Bloody Kansas."

In a nutshell: Lidie is an unusually moxy young woman from Illinois who physically resembles the novelist herself and who comes out here with your new husband to homestead (as did W.K.'s & Phoebe's parents) in the 1850's, in part to assure that Kansas will enter the Union (as it did in 1861, the year Harry's mother was born) as a Free State. In other words she and her groom are abolitionists, a sort of mid-19th century version of ourselves. After her husband is murdered by pro-slavery bushwacker types, Lidie bobs her hair, disguises herself as a young man, and sets out to walk (And this is much of what fascinates me about the story.) . . . to WALK from Douglas County, Kansas, all the way across Jackson County, Missouri, through the farm country which became the city where you grew up, over into what is now Independence, to exact revenge by executing the men who've murdered her husband.

This novel, like much of Smiley's writing, is positively Shakespearean. But more to my immediate point: Smiley's description of the LANDSCAPE of this rural "Ur-" or Proto-KCMO is utterly enchanting. The hills and dales especially. And the dense woods. (A foreign visitor once remarked to Walt Bodine: "How wonderful, to build a city in a forest.") Even though I read Smiley's book quite a few years ago, I didn't grasp the significance of the landscape through which Lidie travels toward her revenge until I took this job with the school district and began patroling every inch of the landscape where this story is set. It's made us us.

Yours in History Therapy,

Uncle Bunky

(Galen)


.

Writing As A Subversive Activity

Monday
February 26, 2007
WRITING AS A SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY

Dear Jaromir & Magda,

Thanks again for the spontaneous detour to the Chinese buffet Saturday evening. Please forgive me if I came across as a bit more distracted than usual; I was concerned about Marie's & my getting the grocery shopping done before our energy started to flag. But we both enjoyed the table talk and now have more material upon which to build future conversation when I can be more focused.

Thanks, too, for helping me to set up the blog. I tried without success to access it from home, but I was undoubtedly doing it wrong. No big deal. Perhaps Magda and I can figure it all out, some upcoming Saturday afternoon between 4:00 and 5:00 at the Leawood Branch.

This blog-birthing exercise has provided me with considerable food for thought, particularly with regard to the type of writing modes which have worked best (and not so best) for me over the past 40 years. For instance, the modes of composing/drafting which have proven most effective for me during that period have been journaling and letterwriting. My best song lyrics, poetry, fiction and nonfiction have all been drafted/composed either in a journal or in personal correspondence -- or, in some few cases, in "business" correspondence. Although I'd be perfectly willing to experiment with blogging, I have my doubts as to the quality of the products of any such experiments.

A more nuts & bolts issue here is the fact that the only reason I'm at all able to write at work (or in any other of my life's stolen moments) is that I'm able to do it on this dinky mailstation gizmo, which weighs little more than a pound and is about the size of a dictionary or bible. And the brutal naked truth of the matter is that blogging from my mailstation is quite simply a non-option. The flip side of this problem is that dragging a laptop with me to work (or to any other venue where WRITING AS A SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY might take place) is wholly infeasible.

When's Magda's next paper due and what's it on? RSVP. Thanks again for sharing your Saturday evening with us. It's always a pleasure to visit with you both. Write or call and let us know how your week is going.

Until Next Time,

Galen

P.S. And thanks for the cell phone tips. Have you tried any of them? RSVP. /gg

A Sort of Chestnut Circle Overview

40 YEARS OF GALEN IN 80 WORDS -- FOR PAT HOGAN


TODAY'S QUOTE:

"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts."

-- from THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS (1918)


Friday
July 27, 2007

Dear Pat,

Thanks for your e-mail of June 14th to our other address (msmith2210@aol.com). I apologize for not getting back to you sooner -- and promise to try to do better in the future.

First of all, it was wonderful to hear from you after . . . how long? I was at the 10th and 20th East High Class of '67 Reunions, but must confess in all candor that I have little recollection of whom I saw or visited with or danced with, etc. Would love to hear all about what you're doing these days. Will attempt to condense my own past 40 years for you here to bumpersticker size, depending on how much text space my limited little mailstation gizmo affords me this evening; although the surest way to this end would be for you to go to my blog and simply scroll through it at your leisure. I think that there's even a recent resume in there, as well as the first 30 or so pages of the rough draft of my memoir-in-progress, tentatively titled THE TOOLMAKER'S OTHER SON. Simply google me at:

mythoklast.blogspot.com

Of the folks you mentioned in your e-mail, I know precious little. Lucy & Gaylord moved to Kansas City long before I did, had a daughter and divorced. Both are attorneys. I spoke to Lucy by phone, perhaps 13 years ago. Virginia had passed away a few years earlier. (My own mother died in 1990, my father in 1982, both in Wichita.)

My last contact with Bill, Paul, Virginia, Molly, Abbey, and any of the others would have been at "Uncle Dick's" (V's brother's) memorial service, circa 1988. Regarding Mar, Collins, Helmick, Wood, Princell, Consolver, Dugan, etc., I'm clueless. Benjamin got married, lived several years in Germany, and has settled with wife Ann in Davenport, IA as an extreme right-wing Fundamentalist. (I'm dead serious!) Rick Craycraft is still up in Portland area, working hard at many things, as nearly as I can make out. I visited briefly with Dr. Trombold, perhaps 4 years ago, but he's moved back to Wichita.

My guess is that you've had access to more recent and more accurate information on all them than have I. My cousin, Dr. Jane Stone, who is an anthropologist, has convinced me that the sort of social fracturing and fragmentation (Diaspora?) we're looking at here is simply the norm in modern America. Very few shades of THE BIG CHILL, except among the bourgeoisie.

In 1993, I made a paradigm shift in my "career" (such as it ever was), gave up on whoring after a tenure track college teaching job and decided on a life of almost certain penury, so as to experience, observe, research, learn from, take in . . . a vastly more valuable body of "real world realities" and wisdom than mere conventional academia was ever going to afford me . . . by going "undercover" (as t'were) in the field of security. After putting in two years as a notetaking "art guard" at The Nelson, I move into armed hospital security for 9 years, arriving here in the KC School District with my .38 and my writing implements in early '06. Am learning faster than I can write. Fascinating stuff.

Meanwhile, Marie & I have been domestic partners for 15 years. She's a bit older, but bright and enjoyable. I'm happy.

Would love to correspond. Also, my cell is: 816-807-4957. Leave message anytime and/or write . . . please.

LOOKING FORWARD,

Galen Green

Self-Portrait of Our Diarist with Cell Phone; 2007