Musings . . . by Karen Lynn Allen

Echoes of the Twelfth Century in Golden Gate Park

2012-02-10T14:42:00.000-08:00

The magnolias were in bloom yesterday at the Botanical Garden in San Francisco. The sky was cornflower blue; the sun’s rays were warm and golden. Spring usually arrives the first week of February in this city, a fact for which I am grateful, especially if January has been cold and wet. So I took a bike ride to Golden Gate Park where the unfurling pink and white velvet of magnolia petals were a delicious treat.

Do they chant Gregorian?

As I strolled through the arboretum, in the midst of the Rhododendron Garden I ran across a circular seating area made out of stones that struck me as old. Very old. And the stones had personality. Soul, even. As I examined them, I noticed the stones were cut and carved in shapes that reminded me of, well, a medieval church of all things. Odd. What were medieval-looking stones doing in the arboretum of a city not exactly known for medievally-inspired architecture?

Time for some research! It turns out these stones are not medieval-looking, they are the real thing, remnants of a twelfth-century Cistercian Spanish monastery. I kid you not. They are likely the oldest things you can touch in the city limits of San Francisco. How they ended up halfway across the world surrounded by rhododendrons is your usual story of power, greed, bureaucratic incompetence, and Byzantine San Francisco politics, combined with a dab of grace and a sprinkle of serendipity.

What's left of the monastery

Construction began on the Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria de Ovila (in the Spanish province of Guadalajara) in 1188, probably to help hold the border area that King Alfonso VIII had recently reconquered from the Moors. A small monastic community thrived there over the centuries but eventually faded to the point that in 1835, by royal decree, the monastery was secularized and fell into private hands. Over time the site decayed, any portable parts of value were sold, and its buildings were used as barns and even a manure pit. Volunteer shrubbery grew from the vaulting. One can imagine goats traipsing through the abandoned interior.

Our story now advances to another century and another continent where the brashest of characters arrives on the scene—William Randolph Hearst, media tycoon extraordinaire. He has just had so much fun building Hearst Castle in San Simeon that he has another project in mind, a true blue medieval castle to replace his mother’s burnt down summerhouse near Mount Shasta. Medieval castles scarce in California? If you’re William Randolph Hearst, this is not a problem. Just get one from Spain!

Hearst and Morgan, medieval on their minds

Good old Hearst, looting the treasures of Europe right and left like they were bonbons for the taking. His agent in Spain recognized Hearst’s potential castle walls in the decrepit Santa Maria de Ovila monastery. He quickly arranged to buy the structure from the owner who, it fortuitously turned out, could use the extra $97,000 in cash. Julia Morgan, Hearst’s trusted architect who had designed his “castle” in San Simeon, drew up the plans for the proposed Wyntoon Castle based on the components Hearst had purchased. The monastery’s Chapter House would become the castle’s entrance hallway; the Refectory would be the “armory” that would display Hearst’s extensive collection of armor. The castle plan even included an eight-story tower with Hearst’s study, of course, occupying the top floor. The monastery’s church posed a problem due to its great size (150 feet long and 50 feet tall.) Try as they might, it seemed too large for an assembly hall or any other room appropriate to the castle. Solution? Put the swimming pool in it! Problem solved. The price tag for this medieval fantasy quickly rose to a cool $50 million. In comparison, Hearst’s yearly income ran about $15 million, so you can see this castle was an expensive dream indeed.

Bye-bye Spain

Whatever his shortcomings, Hearst never lacked ambition. In 1931 a hundred laborers were hired to take much of the monastery apart and pack ten thousand of its stones in crates. Although shipping even a single antique stone out of the country was illegal according to Spanish law, the King of Spain had just abdicated, the government under the Second Republic was in turmoil, and much could be gotten away with, especially considering the project was providing so many unemployed Spanish workers with jobs. (I suspect a bribe or two also greased the wheels.) The crated stones made their way via small trench railway to ferry to trucks to eleven German freighters waiting in the port of Valencia. From Valencia they sailed across the ocean, through the Panama Canal, to San Francisco where they were off-loaded at a warehouse near Fisherman’s Wharf. There the stones would wait while the site of Wyntoon Castle was prepared.

Hearst, dachshund, and castle substitute

But in 1933 the Depression caught up with Hearst. Money grew tight enough that work couldn’t begin on the new venture. The stones sat patiently in their warehouse accruing storage costs. Business went from bad to worse until eventually Hearst realized he would never be able to build his medieval dream. He built at Wyntoon a less expensive “Bavarian Village” instead. (Again, I kid you not.) He tried selling the monastery stones but there were no takers. Storage costs kept accumulating.

Franco suggested the stones be returned to Spain. Hearst did not oblige. Finally, in 1941, Hearst presented the stones to the city of San Francisco as a gift with the understanding that the monastery would be reconstructed and made into a Museum of Medieval Arts right next to the DeYoung museum in Golden Gate Park. The city was thrilled! Plans for the museum were drawn up. In return for Hearst’s generosity, San Francisco took care of the little problem of the $25,000 in outstanding storage debt. The stones were then carted to Golden Gate Park to await their transformation.


Crated stones fire 1941 (SFPL photo)

Stones on fire 1958 (SFPL photo)

But there were more bad years ahead for our stones. Money for the construction could not be raised. People disagreed where the museum should be built. The Board of Supervisors couldn’t gather consensus for a bond issue. A government Park commission couldn’t resolve the matter, and then a neutral citizen’s commission failed to make headway. As the years passed and the stones sat in the park unprotected from the weather and vandalism, they endured five (count them, five!) fires, at least two of them arson. One wouldn’t think stones would burn, but the heating and then sudden cooling by water as the fires were put out took their toll, fracturing some of the stones internally. Brambles grew over the stones strewn in unorganized piles. Some smaller ones were carried off altogether to parts unknown. By 1960 it was determined that only half of the stones were sound enough to use in construction.

Stone graveyard?

In the decade of Haight Ashbury's ascendance, the Recreation and Park Department was given responsibility for our poor forsaken stones. Someone practical decided to put the stones to use, and a number found their way into various gardens in the park, including the Arboretum and the Japanese Tea Garden. A few citizens still had the goal to at least rebuild the Chapter House of the monastery (a large room where meetings were held), but the price tag was now $3 million and funds never emerged.

New home

In the meantime, an order of Cistercian monks in Vina, California had a dream of reclaiming the stones for religious use—and for Cistercian religious use at that! They set their sights on rebuilding the Chapter House as a part of their own abbey. But they would have to be patient. It took thirty-nine years, from 1955 to 1994, before they finally convinced the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco to release the stones that remained of the Chapter House to them on permanent loan. There was public outcry in San Francisco at the decision (“The museum is giving away ‘our’ monastery!”), but the stones went to their new home nonetheless, and construction began at the Abbey of New Clairvaux. All these years later, the reconstruction is still underway (but almost finished!) if you’re ever passing Vina, California (population 237) and want to see what a twelfth-century Chapter House of a medieval monastery looks like.

A portion of the rest of the stones can be found strewn throughout Golden Gate Park, especially in the Botanical Gardens. The Library Terrace Garden (near the Main gate) has a wall and seating area constructed from the stones, some of which were undoubtedly column capitals and other ornamentation. I also spotted some carved stones in the Fragrance Garden, and the Rhododendron Garden (most easily accessed from the North gate) boasts the architectural whimsy that first caught my notice.

When the twelfth-century stonemasons put that monastery together, maybe they imagined their handiwork enduring centuries of weather as it sheltered monks and novitiates during the daily rituals of monastic life. Maybe the masons could even envision their stones facing fire and defilement. (Through war? Conquest?) But could they have dreamed that one of the richest and most powerful men in the world would take their stones to the other side of the planet for his personal pleasure? (Probably not given they didn’t know the world was a sphere and had another side.) And could they have imagined a city filled with skyscrapers that would want their stones to make a monument dedicated to the craftsmanship and art of their era? Or that this grand city would fail in their quest and decorate their gardens with the stones instead? Or that, eight centuries after the stones were first cut, monks separated so far in time and space from their medieval brethren would patiently gather some of the stones and use them to again shelter monks and novitiates in the daily rhythms of monastic life?

The world spins and comes around, all in its own time. In the winter-spring sunshine, I sit on these stones carved so long ago, admire their soul, their beauty, and consider their grand journey through space and time.

Note: The Rhododendron Garden in the Botanical Garden is not the same as the Rhododendron Dell that is located east of the Academy of Sciences. (It is easy to confuse the two.)

Sources:
www.sacredstones.org
http://www.outsidelands.org/monastery-stones.php

The Cruelties of Gilligan's Island, Hamlet and Chopin

2012-01-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

All boats carry Hamlet costumes in case of shipwreck

My introduction to both Hamletand the opera, Carmen, was through a Gilligan’s Island episode--you know, theone where a movie producer crash lands his plane on the island with them. He sends out a distress call, so itlooks like at last help is on the way--hurrah! But, before the rescue, Gingerwants to convince the producer to cast her in one of his movies. So ourintrepid castaways come up with the brilliant (at least brilliant to all futurepop culture) idea to stage Hamlet setto tunes from Carmen. (And also, itturns out, from Offenbach’s Tales ofHoffmann, but I just learned that.) The producer is impressed, so impressedthat he slinks away to be rescued without them so he can produce Hamlet, The Musical as his own originalidea. Poor islanders, foiled again.

My childhood speaks

Gilligan’s Islandran from 1964 to 1967. This astonishes me because it means that during the70’s, when I saw it, I only ever viewed it in reruns. (In between Bewitched and I Love Lucy episodes. Oh that Desi.) And, boy, did I view it. Gilligan’s Island was a staple of mychildhood. I must have seen every episode at least three times, especiallyduring the long rainy Seattle summer afternoons when only reruns filled theairwaves. Television had enormous power and influence on me during those years.To say it was my window on the world is a vast understatement. What anastonishing use of my time and childhood.

Matches the shag

I grew up in a classic, brand new subdivision rifewith young families and children where every house was decorated in HarvestGold or Avocado Green. Your choice of color would determine the shade of yourshag carpet, appliances and panel of hideous frosted glass located next to yourfront door. I’m sorry to remind you that this is how many of us lived in the70’s, I truly am. I just spent five minutes looking at photos of ugly 70’skitchens, and it is more depressing than I can say.

In this classic, hastily-built subdivision there were threechoices of floor plan—rambler, tri-level or split level. Every friend’s homeyou went into you knew where to find the bathroom because you’d already been inthree other houses exactly (and I mean exactly)like it. Even as a child I knew this was wrong, that I was living in anarchitectural wasteland. My subdivision was named “Wellington.” I assume thiswas after the Duke of Wellington, defeater of Napoleon, victor of Waterloo. Icould weep.

For the rambling man

My house was of the rambler variety. Three bedrooms, two baths. It looked something like the photo to the right, exceptit was brownish-olive-brown in color.Brown was very seventies. Peoplewore brown, decorated with brown, and had lots and lots of brown hair. Menhad brown moustaches and sported brown sideburns. People began to eat brownbread and macramé brown hanging plant holders with brown jute that would holdbrown plants once the poor things died.

No mowing

My father didn’t want to mow grass (he had allergies), so hecovered our front yard in rocks. It looked a little like the photo to the left, except, well, less attractive. But I do admire his willingness to experiment. Every other yard in the entire 80-housesubdivision had a freaking lawn. We were the strange ones.

Though I didn’t read Hamletuntil my freshman year of college, it must’ve been sometime during thepurgatory just this side of hell known as junior high that it dawned on me thatthe play in the Gilligan’s Islandepisode was a highly abridged version of one of the greatest works in theEnglish language. The source of most of the episode’s tunes probably didn’toccur to me until I studied opera during my junior year abroad and saw Carmen for the first time in Florence.

Now, though I love Carmen,I’m not a huge fan of Hamlet; he’stoo petty and indecisive for me.(He was the son of the king, for crying out loud. His rightful throne was usurped. Why theheck didn’t he get some nobles together and chase his uncle out of Denmark?) Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice and TheTempest are my favorites of Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve got a soft spotfor Romeo and Juliet. But Gilliganwill forever whisper in my ear (to the melody of the Habeneraaria), “To fight or flee, to fight or flee. I ask myself to be or not tobe?"

So two of the heavyweights of the Western canon were introducedto me by the likes of Lovey and Thurston Howell the Third. Faux, ersatz, a parodybefore I had any idea of what was being parodied. Did my culture value me solittle or the works so little that I was fed the spoof rather than the realthing? I guess it could’ve been worse. No doubt children these days miss nary a classic via The Simpsons.

Pusher

But Chopin—Chopin was different. He didn’t come through the back door. He was introduced tome as he ought to have been--whole, genuine, the real thing--straight into mysoul via the ephemeral elegance of ballet.

Trapped in my seventies subdivision, attending a school that mostly bored me to tears, my onesaving grace, besides reading a book a day, was ballet lessons. I took ballet at first twice a week,then three times, then pretty much most of Saturday added as well. And Chopinwas the music of the barre, of the center floor, of the porte de bras. Yes, histempo was often altered slightly so my teacher, Mrs. Bruce, could sternly count, “And one, and two, and three, and four,” but it was still him directlyresponsible for the rippling notes.

A young girl's heroin

Ballet! Not only did I get introduced to Giselle, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and LesSylphides, but also art, because one Christmas Mrs. Bruce gave usall posters of dancers by Impressionists (Degas! Renoir!) as gifts. Mine was this beauty on the right. She was on my bedroom wall until I wentaway to college. And classical music! Tchaikovsky, of course; but also Ravel, Liszt,Saint-Saens, and a host of others. (But not Beethoven. I became acquainted withhim later.) It was rapture, euphoria, cultural heroin. Like having two hundredyears of European civilization injected straight into my veins. I was hooked, ajunkie for life. No wonder I loved ballet fiercely for five years even though Ididn’t have the body for it. (I had no turn out, my legs and feet just wouldn’tdo 180 degrees, and classical ballet is cruel, cruel, cruel. You have the bodyor you don’t. After the body, then comes talent, determination, lyricism, andeffort. But the body comes first.)

Eventually I gave up on ballet after glimpsing that thisrarefied, mysterious world wonderfully far from shag rugs and television laugh tracks might also beaccessible through literature and college. Chopin’s music still beckoned, so enigmatic and sublime. Life would be a glorious wonder if only entry into his universe could be obtained.

Suburban soul food

There are cruelties and there are cruelties. Ballet ismerciless. It knows its enchantment and demands everything of you that can begiven. It is so heartless it can turn away emaciated orphans from its doorwithout a twinge of regret. Gilligan’sIsland in comparison was a TV dinner cook. Its intentions were no doubtbenign enough, but when I was literally starved for culture, it fed me Twinkiesand Cheez-Whiz.

But Chopin, it turns out, was the cruelest of all. Yes, hefed my soul when I had little else to sustain me, and yes, I still hear tracesof that magic world (secret garden?) as I play his notes on my piano. Butthere is never a final passageway to enter, no key to turn in the last lock. Yes, the floating preludes, the hushed nocturnes, the soaring waltzes limn themysteries of the human experience. They allude (so delicately!) to the vast,lost chambers in our souls we long for but never visit because we’ve forgottenhow or never knew the path. But his music promises what might be, not what is. Andit’s not a promise that it keeps.

Did he promise a rose garden?

Perhaps this isn’t Chopin’s fault. Perhaps he just glimpsed these worlds, too, and the best hecould do was communicate potential, not define how to achieve it. Perhaps,indeed, sensing a plane of consciousness askew to our own, one just out ofreach, that we catch sight of only from the corner of our eye or in a fleeting run of notes, is an immutablepart of being human (transcended by a few lamas and saints.) We get the moments, the glimpses, andmust bear it best we can. Even if it means we live out a Gilligan’s Island version of Hamlet.

Ulysses S. Grant--Out of Love But Still Very Fond

2012-01-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

The Man

This a sequel to my previous post, I Am In Love With Ulysses S. Grant, written just as I began the perusal of his memoirs.

Ah, Ulysses. Hiram Ulysses, actually. During his appointmentto West Point, his middle name got mixed up as his first, and when he got tothe Academy, he didn’t argue about it. Sign of a good solider, I suppose, takewhat comes. Put up and shut up.Except Grant’s genius was that during the Civil War, “do what you’retold” was not what he did.

Grant was a math guy. In the Mexican-American War he was aquartermaster—the officer in charge of supplies, rations, clothing, and shelter. Though I still don’t understand howsomeone good at supplying an army (and later commanding an army) could be sohideously bad at running a small business as Grant, his memoirs show thatlogistics was indeed a key strength. He was always considering how to getsupplies to his army or cut them off from the enemy, either by choking offsupply routes or destroying the supplies themselves. (Sometimes the enemy’ssupplies were still in the fields and smokehouses of the Confederate citizenry.As Grant saw it, this was what Sherman’s march to the sea was all about.) Lookingat the state of Lee’s army at Appomattox, this strategy appears to have worked,though the terrible casualties, the noose of Grant’s forces preventing escape, and the desertions due to low morale no doubtcontributed as well.

Raring to vanquish

Grant’s other great strength was his tremendous impatience,almost fury, to trounce his opponents. While out west, often cut off from communication with Washington and hishigher ups, Grant took the initiative and attacked when and where he thought hecould win. (When your superiors are terrified to act for fear of blame, doingfirst and informing later is an effective tactic as long as the result is asuccess that your superiors can take credit for.) He rose through the ranks through sheer nerve and competence when such qualities were scarce.

Go-Getter Sheridan

Once Grant was promoted to general-in-chief of all theFederal forces and had to operate out of the east, you could palpably feel hisfrustration with the idiotic interference of Stanton and Halleck (be cautious!be defensive!) who would change Grant’sdirect orders without his knowledge. And you can understand his vexationwhen his subordinates failed to follow orders or followed them too late to beof use. Grant loved Sherman and Sheridan because they could get their men marchingoff before most other commanders could put one leg out of bed.

Reading the memoirs I was amazed at how often the Federal troopsmade very early morning (3:30 am!) or all night marches. In the west, Grant wasoften able to use his predilection for early movement to surprise his opponent.It worked less well with Lee because Lee started doing it, too. Perhaps Lee heard about Grant’s tacticsin the western battles and adjusted accordingly?

Hasty military bridge--Chickahominy, Virginia

Cut those supply lines

Another aspect of the war that astounded me was how oftenrailroads were ripped up and then laid right back down. To disrupt the otherside’s supply lines and troop transport, each army had a small army constantlyburning ties and twisting rails into curlicues. Then when the otherside gained back control of the area, they would put down new ties and unbendthe steel. Bridges were alsoconstantly destroyed and rebuilt, although Grant’s army did often carry aroundpontoons with them to get over rivers in a pinch. And all this was doneincredibly rapidly, without backhoes, chainsaws or cranes.

Loathed

Though I still admire Grant, I have to say my infatuationhas faded, as infatuations are wont to do. He was more of a black-and-white guythan I like, though I realize seeing the grey in things does not a good generalmake. In a war, there are only two sides: yours and the enemy’s. Grant wasclear why he was fighting, what needed to be done, and what sacrifices wereworth making. Though he didn’t like his men dying, he accepted the deaths and maimingas the cost of winning. He acknowledged the valor and tenacity of theConfederates but believed them wrong, wrong, wrong. He respected Lee, admired Lincoln (though pooh-poohed him when he put his pretty civilian head towards military strategy) and despised theConfederate president, Jefferson Davis.

In the first half of Grant’s accounts, before he becamecommander-in-chief of the Northern army, I got more of a sense of thoughtfulness,more wry acknowledgement of the twists and turns that fate throws us mortals. Perhapsin the second half Grant became more cut and dried because he was growing veryill and felt the need to make the case for his version of history before histime was up. He seemed defensive that people claimed Lee was the bettergeneral, he didn’t really acknowledge the terrible destruction done to theSouth by Sherman and other Northern forces or later during the Reconstruction.(He doesn’t go much into his presidency at all.) He sincerely believed slavery was wrong but didn’t mentionthat both he and his wife owned slaves for a time. He didn’t believe in socialequality between blacks and whites.

The Surrender

Grant was a great general who rose through the ranks of theNorthern army because no one else could or would do the job in an even halfwayeffective fashion. Since he wasn’t a political appointee or career military, hehad little to lose in terms of salary or position and so was willing to takerisks. Poor, poor Lincoln to have such miserable, patheticgenerals who refused to do much of anything. Grant was so young, only 41, whenhe became commander-in-chief. This in itself is a measure of how desperateLincoln was. There is ahysterical telegram from Lincoln (in Washington) to Grant (on the battlefields)that beautifully sums up what Lincoln was going through:

"The Peacemakers"--Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, Porter

“I have seen your despatch in which you say ‘I want Sheridanput in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himselfSouth of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes, letour troops go also.’ This I think, is exactly right, as to how our forcesshould move. But please look over the despatches you may have received fromhere, even since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there isany idea in the head of any one here, of ‘putting our army South of the enemy’ or of following him ‘to the death’ in any direction. I repeat to youit will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour,and force it.”

Basically Lincoln is flat out telling Grant that everyone associated with the war in Washington was a useless, incompetent viper and that he himself couldn't do much about it.

What might he have done?

Grant wasn’t a man who had the patience or finesse forpolitics, and he was inclined to assume people would follow orders correctlyrather than suspect they would screw up (which happened with dishearteningfrequency.) He seemed to feel that since Southerners caused the war theydeserved a certain amount of retribution—especially South Carolina. Heindicated that President Johnson’s accommodations of the South immediatelyafter the war were what prompted the drastic measures of the Reconstruction.From everything he writes of Lincoln, it is indeed a great tragedy that Lincolnwas assassinated. Lincoln was the one man who would've had the patience, compassion, political skill, and credibility to knit North and Southback together with an even hand. Reconstruction certainly made advances forAfrican Americans and gave them a brief spot in the sun in terms of politicalpower, but all those advances were soon washed away and replaced by a heavy handfor over a hundred years. Less retribution, more healing, and a firm commitmentto education, economic opportunity, and enfranchisement of African Americansover the long haul would have been so much better.

Are Grant’s memoirs a literary masterpiece? Well, they have immense value and are, byand large, highly readable. They’re more oriented towards military history thanI had expected (though he does spend time on his childhood and cadet years) andmy eyes did glaze over from time to time as each creek, swamp and bayou crossedwas discussed in detail. Even so I got a lot out of the work. Grant’s voicespeaks to us from another place and time with a freshness that is remarkable. ThoughI don’t know if he was always honest with himself (he never mentions hisdrinking), he does write with a candor and integrity I have rarely found inmemoirs. I got a great sense of what it was like to be him, in his shoes,directing troops, fretting about an enemy’s retreat or how to feed the army's horsesbefore the grass is growing again in the spring. I love how after a week of battle he found a borrowed change of cleanunderwear extremely pleasant; I wonder at how he only mentions in passing that his son nearly diedof illness while he was holding Vicksburg under siege.

Was he a great man? I believe so, though some of this wasdue entirely to his unique response to a unique demand of history. Was hemoral? I would say close, but since I have a few reservations he doesn’t quitewin the cigar for that in my estimation. Do I know all his demons, did I plumbhis soul? Unfortunately, no. The memoirs don’t go that far, and I can’t say Iblame Grant for his reticence. Whowants their soul plumbed a hundred and thirty years after they’ve leftthe earth? But he left us his voice, his intelligence, and his understanding of his place in history, and I am glad to know the man and my country better because of it.

I Am in Love with Ulysses S. Grant

2011-12-07T20:10:00.001-08:00

The Man

I realize this infatuation may only be a passing fancy, but Ihave begun reading the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. It is a two-volume set, consisting of 552 pages (althoughI’m reading it on a Kindle which results in never having a true feel for whereyou are in a book.) In any event, I’ve set out on a journey to plumb this man’ssoul. It’s nice to have a long read to look forward to.

Grant wrote these memoirs at the very end of his life, as hewas dying of throat cancer. Seems to me a meaningful vantage point from whichto ponder one’s place in history. A man of humble beginnings, Grant hadenormous successes and enormous failures. Some of these would alter the fate ofa nation; others the fate of a people. Some brought him shame and financialruin.

Grant Booster

Mark Twain characterized Grant’s account as “a great, uniqueand unapproachable literary masterpiece,” a war memoir comparable in stature toJulius Caesar’s. (There’shyperbole for you, to be expected since Twain was involved in publishing andselling the book.) Fifty years later, holding court underneath her Picasso’s,Gertrude Stein claimed Grant’s book to be one of the greatest written by anAmerican. Walt Whitman said of Grant, “In all Homer and Shakespeare there is nofortune or personality really more picturesque or rapidly changing, more fullof heroism, pathos, contrast." (I cannot resist also including this quotefrom Whitman, just because it makes me smile: "I do not value literatureas a profession. I feel about literature what Grant did about war. He hatedwar. I hate literature.")

Of course not everyone was a fan of the man. Henry Jamessniffed that Grant’s prose was “hard and dry as sandpaper.” Matthew Arnold heldthat Grant’s use of English was “without charm and without high breeding.” But let them say what they like. Dyingand nearly destitute, Grant clung to life and churned out up to fifty pages aday so that profits from the book might provide for his family. He finished themanuscript and died five days later.

A curious man. I am in love with his voice. It wasanti-Victorian, not flowery and verbose but spare, direct, even acerbic. Yet not cynical, at least not by modern standards. The amusement and wit is gentler, forgiving, and always demonstrating a clarity and intelligence that I admire.

At his best?

They say Grant had great courage and coolness under fire. Itcertainly showed during the Battle of Fort Donelson. It was while researching theperformance of Gideon Pillow (perhaps the worst general in the Civil War) in thatbattle that I first ran across Grant’s wry recollections. It was no doubt whatset me on a course, six months later, to delve into his memoirs.

My question at the moment: how does an aware, intelligentman of his caliber, a great strategist and imperturbable tactician (unruffled by bolting horses or bullets flying overhead), make suchastonishing, bonehead errors of judgment? His presidency was one of the mostcorrupt on record, and some of the worst excesses of the Reconstructionhappened on his watch. He went on to end his life in financial ruin due to laxoversight and further poor judgment. And yet he says this about theMexican-American War (with which I am in complete agreement):

“I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this dayregard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by astronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic followingthe bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in theirdesire to acquire additional territory.”

I cannot but believe Grant was a moral man. Moral in, Isuppose, my complex, rather torturous definition of the term. (You have to seeall the complexities, the good and the bad, the dark and the light, and all themurky grey areas in between where things are never clear and people try andfail, and maybe don’t try so hard and fail but have to be forgiven anywaybecause, in the end, kindness is the only true religion. And with all this,knowing the tragedies and the pettiness and the failures and the sadness,knowing your own failures and the reefs you’ve foundered on, you still mostdays attempt the right thing, that which will cause the least suffering and mostwell-being for all. You strive for what your conscience can best live with, because there is, inthe end, no other choice. And if you can do all this without bitterness, witheven a sense of humor, by god, you’re a saint.)

(I have not often managed to live up to this definition.)

I wish Lincoln had lived to write his autobiography. Hecould be hysterically funny and I’m sure such a book would be a rollicking goodtime (not unlike Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography which is a hoot.) I’m also a fan of Robert E Lee and wishhe’d written memoirs so I could hear his voice without all the mythologizingand interpreters, though in his writing Lee is invariably such a gentleman andso circumspect that perhaps little of his inner personality might have shownthrough.

But what is left to posterity, mostly due to a pressing needfor cash, is the account of a man who, as a West Point cadet, just wanted to becomea math professor and who probably would’ve been happier, when all was said anddone, had that happened. But his soul, his demons, his moral center? Does thearc of the universe indeed bend towards justice, kindness, redemption? Ah,that’s why I read. And why I write. To find out.

Watch Out for Peaks Ahead

2011-11-30T09:12:00.001-08:00

They can be pretty from afar

We are at an interesting crossroads in history where aperfect storm of crises is going to create significant, rapid change. Many commonplace parts of modernsociety will hit their peak and then not instantly disappear, but undergo adecline. How slow or swift the decline will be depend on the circumstances aswell as various levels of corruption and/or government intervention (assumingthe two aren’t synonymous.) Sometimes the peak may be a temporary one, if wecan manage to reorganize ourselves and our resources in a sensible manner. Some of the descents, however, arepermanent or at least will last for several generations.

The financial crisis is all around us and will last at leastanother five years, if not ten. World Peak Oilalready happened in 2005 (U.S. Peak Oil was in 1971), and world crude oil productionis in gentle decline hidden by demand drop due to the recession. The oil crunchwill strongly hit in 2013 (or sooner, if anyone decides to airstrike Iran.) Andthen there’s climate change, the ultimate humdinger that’s awfully hard topredict anything about except that it will likely cause drought, famine,flooding, forced migrations, massive species extinction and a lot ofdeath. But given its uncertaintyand longer timeframe (ooh, maybe fifteen or twenty years before the real onslaught ofeffects) let’s not worry about that one just yet.

Let’s get back to our immediate Peaks—Finance and Oil—andthe other Peaks related to them that have appeared or are soon to appear on thenear horizon. Now perhaps youbelieve Peak Oil is a hoax made up by oil companies and/or environmentalists.Perhaps you think the financial crisis is on the way to recovery and anotherhappy finance bubble is around the corner. Even so, just as an intellectualexercise, let’s pretend there’s less oil and financial wealth ahead for the vast majority of the human race. What would be the result?

Less liquidity, less energy, for starters. Which will lead to:

*Peak Credit, which will lead to

US Consumer Debt Levels

*Peak Consumer Debt

*Peak GDP

*Peak Housing

*Peak College,

*Peak Exotic Vacations,

*Peak Vegas

and *Peak Stuff.

(Basically, any activity or item financed by home equityloans for the past decade will shrink.) This will lead to

*Peak Self-Storage,

*Peak Housing Square Footage

*Peak Lawns and Peak Yards

Which leads to *Peak Lawn Gnomes, *Peak Pink Flamingos, *Peak Lawn Mowers and *PeakLawn Pesticides

It doesn’t necessarily lead to Peak Remodeling. Nor PeakHousing Density. Nor Peak UrbanInfill. Nor Peak Family Camping. Nor Peak Knowledge, Peak Community College, or Peak InternetConnectivity. Anything that can betransferred digitally—data, news, movies, video games, magazines, books, music,etc.--probably will not peak soon, though its hard copy form probably alreadyhas. This is not to say there willbe much profit in any digital media, however.

As the rate of oil pumped out of the earth slows belowdemand, all oil-importing countries are going to see some significantshifts. They will include:

*Peak Plastics, (which will lead to Peak Product Packaging,Peak Recycling, and Peak Cheap Plastic #@$% from China)

*Peak Paved Roads and Peak Asphalt

*Peak Internal Combustion Engines

*Peak Cars (which will lead to Peak Home Garages, Peak AutoMechanics, Peak Gas Stations)

*Peak Commute Distance and Vehicle Miles Traveled

US Vehicle Miles Traveled

*Peak Auto Weight

*Peak Trucking Freight

*Peak Bottled Water

*Peak Soda Pop

*Peak Human Body Fat

*Peak Suburbia, Strip Malls and Parking Lots

*Peak Blueberries in February from South America

*Peak Chain Restaurants

*Peak Resorts

*Peak Downhill Skiing

*Peak Gasoline-powered toys (jetskis, speed boats,snowmobiles, etc. except where they provide actual economic benefit.)

*Peak RVs

*Peak Air Conditioning

*Peak Airports, Planes and Air Travel

But not peak rail, bicycle, boat travel or freight. Not Peak Public Transit. Not peak energy efficiency. Not peak alternative energy. Not peak vegetable gardens,chicken and goat raising, or beekeeping. Not Peak Food, Water, or Energy Prices.Not Peak Ceiling Fans, Peak Attic Insulation, Peak Solar Hot Water Systems. NotPeak Resiliency or Peak Self-Sufficiency by any means.

US Health Costs compared to rest of world

As people and governments grow poorer we will soonexperience

*Peak Healthcare

*Peak Pharmaceuticals

*Peak Lifespan in the US

*Peak ADD and ADHD

*Peak tranquilizers and anti-depressants

*Peak Prisons

*Peak Medicare, Social Security and Welfare

*Peak Washington D.C.

But not Peak Food Stamps (otherwise too much social unrest).Probably not Peak Lottery as it’s a way for people to gamble cheaply. Not PeakRetirement Age (for a while). And not Peak Family, Peak Community, Peak Relationships. These will be on the increase.Unfortunately, not Peak Homeless, Peak Crime, or Peak Disease. Sadly, probablynot Peak World Population until Peak Famine hits first. Does Peak Energy lead to PeakFertilizer which very quickly leads to Peak Food, even here in the U.S.? Let’s hope it doesn’t come tothat. Long term, Peak Arable Landdue to climate change is going to be bad enough.

As I said above, many of these peaks don’t have to bepermanent. They could be temporarydownslopes creating local peaks until we retrench, reorganize in a way thatmakes sense given our resources, and then we can go forward again. Some of these Peaks in my view arebeneficial; some are going to cause a lot of suffering that is doubly sad dueto the fact that, with some foresight, we could have avoided them. In generalwith this list I’m not saying what should happen, just what is likely to happenas I gaze into the Peak Crystal Ball.

The Great Beaufort "Skedaddle"

2011-11-07T09:37:00.000-08:00

They were at church when the wordcame. In the pews of Saint Helena’s in Beaufort, South Carolina, master andslave alike heard that an enormous Yankee fleet was massing off Point Royal Sounda mere ten miles away. If Confederate defenses didn’t hold, the town would haveto evacuate in a matter of hours. It was time to pack and to pray.


View of Beaufort, Dec 1861

In 1861, Beaufort was one of thewealthiest, most cultured cities in America. The town boasted not only alibrary of three thousand volumes but also some of the most erudite, educatedmen in the South. Having built their elegant Greek Revival mansions withballrooms, chandeliers and two-story piazzas, planter families gathered hereeach summer to escape the heat and ague of their Sea Island plantations, aswell as socialize and talk politics. Secession politics. For more than a dozen years cries forsecession had risen from Beaufort, much of them led by its native son,rabble-rousing, fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett, remembered as the “Father ofSecession.”

The Confederacy knew full wellthat Port Royal might be a target for a Northern base, but they couldn’t besure other sites weren’t also in the running and so were somewhat lackadaisicalin establishing defenses for Port Royal Sound. During the summer of 1861, localplantations reluctantly provided slaves to begin construction of two forts toguard the Sound’s entrance: Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island and FortBeauregard on Phillips Island. But not only were the forts still incomplete by November,the artillery installed fell far short of what was originally proposed and evenfarther short of what was needed when the Yankees came calling.

Plans had been underway in theNorth to take a Southern port since early summer, with Lincoln himself involvedin the selection. After all, to implement the “Anaconda Plan”—a tight blockadeof the Southern coastline intended to cripple the Confederate economy—U.S. Navywarships needed a place to refuel with the coal that gave them power. PortRoyal was one of the choicest deepwater ports on the Southern coast. That amassive Northern fleet was poised to sail was common knowledge to anyone who couldread a newspaper once The New York Times published the details inthe article, “The Great Naval Expedition,” on October 26^th. The onlyunknown was the destination, a secret that, remarkably, was successfully kept. It wasn’t until they were at sea thatthe captain of each vessel opened a sealed envelope telling him where his shipwas headed.

The Great Naval Expedition en route

The fleet that set out on Oct 29^thwould prove to be the largest U.S. naval and amphibious expedition in theentire nineteenth century. Itincluded 17 warships, 25 colliers, 33 transports, 12,000 infantry, 600 marines,and 157 big guns. Port Royal, with its two cobbled-together forts supplied withonly 2500 men, 4 gunboats, and 39 guns between them, didn’t stand a chance.

Bombardment of Port Royal

Nature came to the South’s aid inthe form of a storm that sank some of the Northern fleet along the way, and thenrough water delayed the day of the final attack. But when November 7^thdawned clear and calm, the water so still it was glassy, enough of the North’swarships were available to commence battle. Union ships concentrated theirenfilade on Fort Walker. To the soldiers inside, the sound of artillery wasdeafening. By noon, only three of Fort Walker’s water battery guns were stilloperational; by 2:30 p.m., all powder was gone. The time had come to abandonthe fort. The command at Fort Beauregard, concerned about being trapped onPhillips Island with no line of retreat, quickly followed suit. Thankfully,casualties on both sides were light. Accounts vary, but the Confederatesfinished the day with between 11 and 59 killed and an equivalent number woundedor missing, while the Union fleet saw 8 dead and 23 wounded.

Even with the enormous attackingnaval force, Sea Island planters had been so confident in the defending fortsmanned with recruits from their very own Beaufort Volunteer Artillery that manywatched the battle from shore on nearby Saint Helena Island. But whenConfederate cannons grew silent and cheers reverberated from the Northern ships,they knew something had gone dreadfully wrong. They hurried home to evacuate,no doubt pained to leave bolls of valuable Sea Island cotton still unpicked inthe fields.

When news of the battle’s outcomereached Beaufort, a kind of panic ensued. Facing an invading army of Yankeeswas too dreadful to contemplate; flight was of the essence. But what to take,what to leave behind? The daguerreotypes? The silver? Of course the familybible must be packed. Some loaded up carriages, hoping to stay ahead of the Yankeeson the long overland route to safety. But Beaufort was lucky that day—there wasa steamer anchored in the river that could take hundreds swiftly to Charleston.However, it had only so much room. Furniture, clothing, horses, and the vastmajority of their most valuable property—slaves—would have to be left behind.In the tumult, even food and dinner dishes were abandoned on dining room tables,testament to the haste involved. That evening the steamer departed overflowingwith Beaufort’s white citizenry along with every jewel and sentimental itemthey could squeeze on board. Legend has it that when Yankee forces arrived twodays later to occupy the town, they found just one white man remaining inBeaufort, and he was dead drunk.

What must the deserted slaves,who spoke Gullah, their own Sea Island patois, have thought as the ladensteamer chugged away from Beaufort’s dock? Did they realize that history hadunexpectedly turned a corner right in front of them, and that now, aftercenturies of captivity as a people, they were suddenly free? Perhaps thepolitical ramifications didn’t sink in that night, but before the first Yankeesarrived, clothing and other finery had been looted (liberated?) from the grandhomes, and food and liquor thoroughly consumed in an understandable celebrationof events.

Five generations now free (1862)

It is estimated 8-10,000 slaveswere left behind in the Sea Islands when the white population fled. They weresoon joined by thousands of others who escaped to the region once they realizedthat Northern occupation meant freedom. They all needed food and shelter, and since the EmancipationProclamation had yet to happen, their legal status, beyond being “contraband,” wasunclear. The Army asked for help and received it in the form of the Port RoyalExperiment. Financed and organized by Northern abolitionist charities, theExperiment worked as a test case to create self-sufficiency among the formerslaves. Its success points to what Reconstruction might have been if less corruptionand more competence had been at its helm. Northern missionaries and teachers flocked to the Sea Islands to createschools and aid societies. Former slaves were allowed to farm the confiscatedplantations and were paid $1 per 400 lbs of cotton they were able to harvest. The Penn School on St. Helena Islandwas one of the earliest schools established for freed slaves and can be visitedas part of the Penn Center today.

Yankees at home on a Beaufort piazza (1862)

The Union Army found Beaufort apleasant setting for officer’s quarters, administrative offices andhospitals. Because the Armyoccupied Beaufort until the end of the war, the fine mansions, while sufferingdamage, were not burned to the ground like so many other Southern towns and surroundingSea Island plantations. To this day Beaufort’s centuries-old live oaks and antebellumcharm remain. Port Royal turned out to be as advantageous a harbor as the Unionhad hoped and did much to strengthen the potency of the blockade. After thewar, most planter families—their sons dead, their plantations burnt, theirBeaufort homes sold in government auctions for back taxes (often without theirknowledge)—never returned. The civilization that was antebellum Beaufortvanished into the night with that last steamer.

It is rare that the wheel offortune spins as violently as it did on November 7, 1861. The town that hadadvocated so fiercely for secession was the first to feel the brunt of anoccupying army. A people remarkable for their wealth lost almost everything ina matter of hours. A region that so defiantly insisted that its way oflife—slavery—was non-negotiable ended up being the first to have a colony offormer slaves experiment with what it meant to be free. The Great Skedaddleindeed.

Photos above are from (in order): Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Harper's Weekly 11/9/1861, Harper's Weekly 11/30/1861, Library of Congress, Library of Congress.

The Civil War--A Rough Beast Slouches

2011-11-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

In 1849 things were good in Beaufort, South Carolina andabout to get better. Over the next decade Britain’s demand for Sea Islandcotton would go through the roof with prices to suit. From 1850 – 1860 a great many of Beaufort’sgrand houses were built as the money flowed in. Though friction with the Northwas increasing and inflammatory talk about secession was escalating, they were adamant that their way of life was not negotiable. What wasjust around the corner for the white population of Beaufort—collapse, calamityand ruin--no one saw coming.

Conundrum

The seeds for the Civil War were sown long before 1861. Even our founding fathers knew they’dembedded a desperate conundrum into the Constitution with its expressprotection of both human rights and slavery in the same document. Benjamin Franklin foresaw much when hesaid, "Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that itsvery extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open asource of serious evils." Thomas Jefferson knew trouble lay ahead when he said about slavery, “Wehave the wolf by the ear and feel the danger of either holding on or lettinghim loose.” Patrick Henry wrote,"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolishthis lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in ourday; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, apity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

The Triumvirate at Work

Pity their descendants as they might, the problem that wastoo thorny for these great men to solve was left for a future generation tosuffer through. Two economic systems fought for dominance—the South’sagricultural economy made possible by slave labor and the North’s industrialeconomy with its denser population and huge influx of immigrants. Both wanted to expand into the westernterritories, the South to preserve the delicate balance of power in Congress, the North to populate the vast plains and the westwith their burgeoning population. Theentire first half of the 19^th century was spent in compromise toprevent these two forces from tearing the country apart. The great triumvirate of Webster, Clayand Calhoun plied their wiles in the Senate year after year to preserve the youngnation. But in the end the internal contradictions of the competing ideologiesand economic systems were too much. The center could not hold. As Yeats notesso often happens with war, “a blood-dimmed tide” was loosed upon the world.

The Wages of Rhetoric

Did antebellum Beaufort have no inkling as events began tospin in an ever-widening gyre? Could they not see that the rhetoric theycheered would turn into fields of blood and mud? Perhaps no one, Northerner or Southerner, could haveanticipated half a million lives would be lost. Indeed both sides expected the conflict to end in a matter of months. Perhaps Jefferson was right that both holding on toslavery or letting go involved disaster. But could the South havetransitioned away from a slave economy in a way less catastrophic anddestructive? Could they have avoided the rough beast slouching towards them? This is what Beaufort 1849explores.

Those who believe their way of life is not negotiable mayfind, indeed, that history does not negotiate.

THE SECOND COMING (William Butler Yeats)
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Beaufort Angel Oak

2011-10-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

According to Beaufort sources, any oak tree that has grown until its limbs touch the ground is an angel oak. Here is a very fine Beaufort specimen obviously cherished and accommodated by the people who are its custodians. (I won't say owners. Owners of the house come and go. The oak remains.)

The granddaddy of all angel oaks is the one that deserves capital letters, Angel Oak, and it lives on Johns Island near Charleston. (It is thought to be 1500 years old and one of the oldest living organisms east of the Mississippi River.)

These oaks have weathered hurricanes and floods, witnessed centuries of human cares and concerns, the generations passing beneath their limbs. All trees have their own energy, personality, if you will. These trees have wisdom.

Beaufort 1849 Now Available on Apple iBooks

2011-09-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

Find Beaufort 1849 on Apple iBooks, available through the iBooks app or the iTunes Bookstore. Available in six countries--Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, United States. Can be downloaded to the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

Just out of curiosity, do you use an e-reader? Which one? (Leave a comment!) I've been using a Kindle lately, though I do still peruse regular books.

Eternal Jane Eyre

2011-08-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

I recently watched again the new film version of Jane Eyre directed by Cary Fukunaga. Is it the quintessential Jane Eyre for all time? Hard to say, but it is very fine on a number of fronts. The casting for Jane and Rochester are quite good (Jane is young, small, and plain, but not homely); the cinematography, especially of the moors, is marvelous; they’ve portrayed the brooding gothic manor of Thornfield perfectly; and the costuming is impeccable. The gypsy fortune teller scene is left out (how is this possible?) but the River’s part of the story is interesting and woven in well with the rest, an uncommon achievement. Of the five or so versions of Jane Eyre that I’ve seen, I’d say this is my favorite. Two thumbs up from me.

When this movie came out in March, The New York Times had a nice piece on how Jane Eyre had been filmed at least 18 times for cinema and another 9 times for television. Holy cow. It may be one of the most filmed books ever. Obviously, Jane Eyre has a quality that makes us revisit her again and again, with Janes and Rochesters of all sorts trotting across both the screens of our culture and the mental screens of our minds.

Just wrong for the part

There have been gothic Janes (1943), happy Janes (1934), old Janes (1970), musical stage Janes (2000—I saw it! I liked it!) and even a Katherine Hepburn stage Jane (1937). (Evidently she was awful. The playwright who wrote the stage adaptation demanded she be removed from the cast.) And let’s not forget Zombie Jane (I Walked With a Zombie, 1943, infused with voodoo, supposedly inspired by Jane Eyre. I’ve got to see this. Wonder if it’s on Netflix?)

Happy Jane

The happy Jane version of 1934 (available in bits and pieces on Youtube) bears only a passing resemblance to what Brontë wrote, but it has its amusements. Jane is a buxom, platinum blonde who could double for Jean Harlow. Rochester is an affable English gentleman with intense, longing stares. Thornfield Hall is Georgian palace downstairs and Eastlake Victorian upstairs. And the costuming! No corsets for this Jane, her high-waisted dresses no doubt made her look fashionable in the 1930’s but are entirely wrong for the 1840’s. After spending many hours pouring over fashion plates in Godey’s Lady’s magazine, I confess I admire period flicks that pay attention to detail. In the new Jane Eyre, Rochester wears spiffy silk waistcoasts, (I’d love to see them come back in fashion!) although they could be even bolder in color. And Jane’s dresses hit the mark beautifully. Corsets may be a nasty business, but worn correctly they convey the constrained female reality of the time.

Jane meets Rochester

Over the years, some versions of Jane Eyre have emphasized the gothic horror of the novel, some the tormented Rochester, some the romance, some the proto-feminism, some the perfidy of the aristocratic class, some the oppression of the servants (with new servant characters created!) Each generation accentuated the theme that resonated most with the prevailing sensibility. Or perhaps each generation projected on Jane the meaning it wished. Like all great art, Jane Eyre has a thousand facets in which to see one’s reflection.

Though it might come as a surprise, Jane Eyre was controversial when first published by “Currer Bell,” as can be seen in the pages of Beaufort 1849. It is passages such as this that were startling in 1847:

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. . . . Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” (Ch 12)

In Beaufort 1849 Aunt Winnie sniffs this theme out in Jane Eyre before her fingers even touch the book, so of course she doesn’t want her self-willed niece to read it. The last thing Cara needs is encouragement to exercise her faculties or escape from confinement. That she will receive exactly such encouragement from Jasper Wainwright is part of what makes Winnie instinctually dubious about him from the beginning.

Elizabeth Rigby--no fan of Jane

Aunt Winnie’s misgivings reflect a wider strain of criticism of the time. Shortly after Jane Eyre appeared, Elizabeth Rigby, British author and art critic, laid into our poor Jane with a vengeance. “The impression she [the character, Jane] leaves on our mind is that of a decidedly vulgar-minded woman--one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a relation, and whom we should scrupulously avoid for a governess.”

Ouch. And it gets worse. She accuses little Jane of being unworthy, uninteresting, pedantic, affected and unlovable. She calls her “an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit.” And the very worst accusation: Jane Eyre is anti-Christian, fomenting class warfare and even revolution. “There is throughout it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against God's appointment--there is a proud and perpetual assertion of the rights of man, for which we find no authority either in God's word or in God's providence--there is that pervading tone of ungodly discontent which is at once the most prominent and the most subtle evil which the law and the pulpit, which all civilized society in fact, has at the present day to contend with. We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.”

And so Elizabeth Rigby has put her finger on the element that endears the book most to me: Jane’s assertion that she—small, plain and poor as she is—still has a right to be the center of her life, the heroine of her own story. She has the right not only to be “discontented” but to express the truth and object to what is unjust even if that means “murmuring against God’s appointment.” From childhood on, Jane demands to be treated with the consideration and respect due every single person on earth. That this was viewed as heretical, unchristian and subversive doesn’t surprise me. “A proud and perpetual assertion of the rights of man” echoes the opening of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and I’m sure this wasn’t a document Elizabeth Rigby was fond of either.

Here is Jane with Rochester, her conventional superior in every way (age, size, wealth, power, position, sex): “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! . . . . I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!” (Ch 23)

Jane is profoundly egalitarian in a society that was profoundly elitist. She asserts a worldview that was diametrically opposed to the power structure circumscribing her life. And yet it is her determined voice that echoes unwavering and insistent across a century and a half, while the armada of other, less vulgar books published at the time have sunk into obscurity. It’s no wonder Charlotte Brontë’s creation made Elizabeth Rigby uncomfortable: Jane Eyre challenged the very cornerstone of her civilization. I would say writing it was an act of great courage, although Brontë might not have considered it so. She might have just thought it necessary. She wrote in one of her letters: “Imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised . . . When she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?”

Charlotte Brontë

By the end of Brontë’s short life (she died at thirty-eight) even though Jane Eyre was quite popular, she could have had no indication that her small, plain heroine had made any difference to class structure, political thought, or the course of history. Today British aristocratic privilege is almost eradicated from the earth, its power eviscerated through war and the impossibility of profiting indefinitely from endless empire. Elizabeth Rigby, while she rates an entry in Wikipedia, is remembered primarily for her criticism of Jane Eyre as an acute example of critical judgment blinded by cultural bias.

Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” I hope this is true but I can’t be certain. Clearly, however, history bends towards irony of an acerbic nature. I expect subversive Jane will keep popping up on our screens and stages (this outspoken orphan who will not flinch from the truth) as long as we pretend charity but offer little, as long as we create hierarchies of wealth and power that preclude human worth and dignity, as long as we hide our monsters in the attic and pretend they’re not there. And we won’t even know why Jane, in whatever guise—Gothic or feminist, Harlow or mouse—keeps materializing with her fierce indignation before us.

Perhaps justice is a dish best served poetic.

Congrats to Beaufort, South Carolina on Their New Bicycle Amenities!

2011-08-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

I just read in the Beaufort Gazette (doesn’t everyone peruse their website daily?) that the town of Beaufort is in the process of adding sharrows to some of their busier streets. In addition, they’ve recently installed ten bike racks at various places around town. Says Mayor Billy Keyserling:

"Our goal is to make it comfortable and safe for people to move throughout Beaufort, whether they're on foot, in a car, on a bike, in a wheelchair, on a bus or riding a horse-drawn carriage. Roads need to be more than just thoroughfares for cars and trucks."

What an enlightened view.

Though the downtown and historic districts are wonderful for walking, Beaufort is even more fabulous for bicycling. It’s flat, and, except for a few roads, the traffic is calm and leisurely. (The horse-drawn carriages certainly help with this. You want to calm your town’s traffic? Sprinkle a few carriages here and there and traffic drops to a nineteenth century pace before you can say Edgar Allan Poe.)

I can’t say I’m a big fan of sharrows, painted arrows on the road indicating that the lane is meant to be shared between cars and bicycles. On any road with a speed limit above 25mph, bike lanes are much better. That way bikes have their space, cars have theirs, and far less conflict is to be had by all. But at least sharrows remind drivers that bicycles may be present, and in that respect they are better than nothing.

Here in San Francisco I’ve been a hardy urban bicyclist for the last three years. I bike or walk half my trips, including grocery shopping. I’d do even more if I weren’t constantly shuttling teens around in carpools. But bicycling in San Francisco, while enjoyable and rewarding, is rarely a tranquil experience. Beaufort, on other hand, as one glides under moss hanging from oaks in the sleepy afternoon heat, offers a timeless, limpid serenity. Lovely. Though I have to admit I’d rather experience this serenity this in temperatures under 90 degrees than over.

Charleston is another great bicycling town with its own brand of bicycle chic, and Hilton Head offers some of the best physically-separated bicycle infrastructure in the country. They deserve their silver medal as one of the nation’s top bicycle-friendly communities!

Bicycles are one of the most efficient machines human ingenuity has ever devised. If it weren’t for the fact that they didn’t appear in America until after the Civil War (although reports of something called a velocipede popped up in Scotland as early as 1839) and also for the fact that Beaufort’s antebellum roads consisted mostly of sand lined with oyster shells--not the best bicycling surface before rubber tires came on the scene, although very pleasant for horses, I imagine--I might have tried to slip one into Beaufort 1849. Instead, the characters ride on horseback or in carriages, or, when they’re in need of a constitutional, they walk. As proper antebellum characters should. Ah well. I can bicycle in Beaufort now.

Beaufort 1849 Now Available on Kobo Books

2011-07-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

Beaufort 1849 is now available as an ebook on Kobo Books. Kobo ebooks can be read on a Smartphone, desktop computer or tablet, or on a Kobo eReader.

Beaufort 1849 on Kobo Books

Publisher's Weekly Review of Beaufort 1849 (July 8, 2011)

2011-07-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Beaufort 1849
Karen Lynn Allen
Cabbages and Kings Press (www.cabbage-king.com), $13.95 trade paper (306p) ISBN 978-0-9671784-1-7

In this lively historical novel, set in Beaufort, S.C., at the apex of the town's antebellum period, prodigal son Jasper Wainwright returns to his family plantation after 12 years abroad to educate his kin about the evils of slavery. When he left Beaufort for Harvard University and world travel, Jasper was known as a hellion, savage drinker, and frequent duelist. Returning now—with an education and in the company of emancipated slave Spit Jim—to visit his cousin, Henry, at the lovely Villa D'Este, Jasper is stunned that Henry's niece, Cara Randall, is no longer the child he remembers, but a poised, intelligent, self-taught young woman keen to expand her mind and horizons. Having rejected numerous local suitors, Cara has no intention of marrying, and Jasper—widowed after a disastrous marriage—vows never to make the same mistake again. But both will be proven wrong, if the matchmaking Henry has his way. Cara is a singular, independent female in a culture of aristocratic entitlement, and she and Jasper aim to change the town's brutal system of slavery and bigotry in their own, converging ways. Charged with subtle period detail and boasting fully developed characters, Allen's work is sharp, smart, and well focused.

Link to Publisher's Weekly Review of Beaufort 1849

Spitting in the Wind, Past and Present

2011-07-07T17:57:00.000-07:00

To spit in the wind is to attempt the impossible, a waste of one’s time and energy, even if for a good reason or cause. In Beaufort 1849, Spit Jim accuses Jasper of this when, after reading an enlightened letter to the editor in the Charleston Courier, Jasper perceives a faint chance that the South might voluntarily transition away from a slave economy. Jim, justifiably antsy to leave the South, doesn’t believe it for a second. “No one gives away wealth and power just because someone writes something sensible in a newspaper once in a while,” he tells Jasper caustically and urges him to leave both the South and this futile hope behind as soon as possible.

But Jasper sees the tragedy that lies ahead if the South doubles down to defend its way of life. At the dawn of what is now known as the Second Industrial Revolution, he’s aware that not only is public sentiment in the North and in Europe growing against slavery, but that the wealth and power of the world is beginning to swing heavily towards mechanization, industrialization, and energy supplied by coal. Try as it might, there will be no way for an agricultural South to maintain its economic and political parity with an industrialized North. Flush with immigrants and a growing middle class, the North is already vying for its economic system to prevail in the new territories and states as the nation expands. Further, as cries for secession mount in Beaufort, Jasper foresees the sheer impossibility of the North letting the South become a separate, hostile, militarily-powerful country stretching along its entire southern border, competing to annex land and resources. Because the South will be on the wrong side of economic (not to mention moral) history, Jasper realizes that in the coming fight for dominance the South is likely not only to lose the battle but to have its entire civilization crushed in the process.

Jim, born and raised a slave, is just fine with the prospect of the South’s destruction. Jasper, however, argues that given the suffering that will likely result, they should try to head off the brewing violence by advocating for reform. And so he begins his impossible task of convincing Southern planters to voluntarily give up a portion of their wealth and control, turn slaves into citizens and willing participants in the economy, begin mechanized farming, and industrialize by creating mills to manufacture cotton into cloth for local markets. (The South will eventually do some approximation of all of this, but not until enduring great suffering, death and hardship, and even then the collapse of the Southern economy and widespread poverty will endure several generations.)

I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that Jasper does not succeed in preventing the Civil War. Was he a fool even to try? Indeed, what are the odds that any one man could change the mind of an entire civilization? The reader of Beaufort 1849 knows Jasper is spitting in the wind from his very first attempt.

But if Jasper foresees disaster for the people he loves, isn’t he morally obliged to do what he can to avert it? How hard should he persevere, how much should he sacrifice?

Imagine if you were to visit a beloved cousin you hadn’t seen for a number of years. When you arrive, though he and his family appear quite prosperous, it soon becomes evident that the family is living beyond their means and that their prosperity is fueled by debt—credit cards, home equity withdrawls, no interest balloon payment loans, etc. As you hear about their recent Caribbean cruise, admire their remodeled kitchen, see the four new cars parked in the driveway, your feeling of impending doom for these people you love grows heavier and heavier. What do you do? Perhaps have a quiet talk with your cousin. And what will be the outcome? Most likely denial and perhaps a testy, “Mind your own business, everything’s under control.”

And what if your cousin lives in an entire town of people relying on ever-growing amounts of debt to maintain their lifestyle? What would your obligation be to change their behavior that is bound to make them poor, angry, unhappy and even desperate in the long run? If we like arguments, perhaps we might get into a few heated ones at a BBQ and make ourselves none too popular. For a subtler approach, we might offer hints that fall upon deaf ears. Perhaps we will be told that this way of life poses no problem, and how can we argue because, after all, it’s worked up until now? Perhaps we are indeed Cassandra’s, doomsters who want to frighten everyone into being miserable and giving up the good life because we can’t stand to see others enjoying themselves.

Upton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Now what if your cousin made his living strip mining coal or marketing cigarettes? What if your cousin lived in early Nazi Germany and didn’t seem troubled by the murders and disappearances because his mercantile trade was finally booming again? What if your cousin imported goods from Asia made by children and young teens for wages that barely kept them fed? Or what if your cousin lived in a slave economy, all his friends and neighbors owned slaves, and he used slaves to farm his fields?

I first saw the phrase, “Denial is not a river in Egypt,” on a button worn by a NA (Narcotics Anonymous) member out with a bunch of compatriots on a day trip to Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The support and camaraderie that this group (who had likely been through hell) were giving each other was important, but so was the acknowledgement that change only occurs when one is willing and open to it. After one has identified and admitted the problem. People who don’t believe they have a problem are unlikely to change. And people whose wealth and ease depend on a particular way of life are likely to defend that way of life rather than perceive problems with it. In fact, they are most likely to perceive problems with the person criticizing it.

Now, what if the town living an unsustainable way of life (along whichever measure you wish—economic, moral, environmental, resource consumption, etc.) is not your cousin’s but your own? What if it is not your town that is on a dangerous path, but your entire country? Your planet? Jasper has the option of leaving the South, and due to his struggles with alcoholism and commitments he’s made to Jim, he knows he can’t linger in Beaufort for long. In contrast, though most of us could probably change towns, countries would be difficult, and the planet impossible. Is pressing for change then more imperative even if deaf ears and anger seem to be the only result? Or is it wiser to hunker down, accept that the worst may indeed come, and put our energies towards preparing our families and those we love as best we can? As Dmitry Orlov observes, “Big changes happen slowly at first, then all at once.” There may be less time to prepare than we think.

But what if “the worst” means the suffering and death of millions if not billions through drought and famine? What if “the worst” means our children will have available only a fraction of the energy and natural resources we currently enjoy? What if “the worst” means that half of all species currently on the planet will be driven to extinction? How bad does the future have to be to make inaction unbearable? Or is it all too clear that any attempt is simply spitting in the wind. A waste of time and energy. Pointless.

I don’t have an answer to this quandary. Anyone who understands compound interest, can interpret charts and graphs, and has a basic understanding of science will have to weigh their ethical obligations against the practical realities of their lives. I have no doubt that each of us will feel called to different actions depending on our temperaments and life situations.

All stories involve problems. In comedies, through courage, ingenuity, cooperation, dramatic epiphany or perhaps plain luck, people manage to overcome their predicaments. In tragedies, they fail. The antebellum South was a tragedy. Rather than adapt to the demands of the time, the white populace risked everything to preserve an unsustainable way of life. The result was economic ruin and the collapse of their civilization.

Which are we living right now, comedy or tragedy? Do we need pluck, gumption and courage to heroically prevail against impossible odds? Or should we cultivate our ability to accept and adapt to the inescapable forces that history is already winding up to throw at us, however dreadful and harrowing they may be? I just don’t know.

(A note on the first cartoon above: when occupying New Orleans in April of 1862, Major General Benjamin F. Butler issued a proclamation indicating that any woman who harassed a northern soldier by any show of contempt would be arrested as a prostitute. This didn’t make him very popular in New Orleans, but it did cut down on the spitting.)

Gideon Pillow: Coward, Liar and Scoundrel for the Ages (But, Oh, What a Name!)

2011-06-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

The Glory of a Great Name

In the movie Shakespeare in Love, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are discussing Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter when Marlowe suggests the character Mercutio. Later, Viola outlines the idea of Twelfth Night with a Duke Orsino. “Good name,” Shakespeare says both times with admiration and a little envy, and I can entirely relate. As a writer, a good name can fill me with admiration, elation, and downright covetousness. And so it was when, researching the Civil War, I stumbled across the perfidious Gideon Pillow.

As I pondered the near perfection of the moniker I could only sigh deeply. Since the real Pillow could not be incorporated into Beaufort 1849, and since naming a fictional character after a real person alive at the time could cause confusion, there was no way to include the glorious name in my book. I had to be satisfied with calling one of my characters Gideon Pickens, a weak echo at best. But there is more to Mr. Gideon Pillow than just his name! As Henry Birch says in Beaufort 1849, “My, my. We have a complete bounder on our hands.”

Born in Tennessee in 1806, Gideon Pillow practiced law in his home state as the partner of future president, James K Polk. Through his connections with Polk, he served as Brigadier General of the Tennessee Militia. Ten years later, when the Mexican-American War started up, Pillow deftly used political patronage to join the U.S. Army as a brigadier general. And then in 1847 President Polk promoted him to major general! Lesson learned: make friends with those who will ascend to high places.

So far, so good. At the age of 41, Pillow appeared to be a rising star in the military. But then he made the mistake of crossing General Winfield Scott, commander of American forces in Mexico. Now, “Old Fuss and Feathers” Scott is considered by many historians to be one of the ablest generals in American military history. (He was also responsible for at least a portion of the terrible human toll during the Cherokee removal from Georgia, but that’s another story.) After the major action of the war--action during which Pillow had altogether shown a great deal more incompetence than competence--Pillow felt he hadn’t received enough recognition and glory. So under the pseudonym “Leonidas,” he sent letters to the New Orleans Daily Delta and Picayune newspapers, as well the American Star and the Pittsburgh Post, crediting himself for recent American victories at Contreras and Churubusco. (Interesting to see that even in that day and age people worked the news media spin.)

Can't beat the caption above

Scott, however, knew very well that Pillow had done next to nothing to achieve those victories and that others deserved the credit. When the dastardly letters were exposed as Pillow’s handiwork, Scott arranged for a court of inquiry into the matter. Believing Scott’s actions politically motivated, President Polk came to the defense of his former law partner and recalled Scott to Washington. During the court of inquiry investigation, Pillow persuaded Major Archibald Burns to claim authorship of the letters and publicly take the fall for him. It was not widely believed however, and Pillow was discharged from the army all the same.

Said Scott in his memoirs, Pillow was "amiable and possessed of some acuteness, but the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty:—ever as ready to attain an end by the one as the other, and habitually boastful of acts of cleverness at the total sacrifice of moral character.”

Always ambitious, Pillow went on to try for the nomination for vice president but failed twice, in 1852 and again in 1856. His next shot for public glory would be the Civil War.

When the war began, Pillow joined the Confederate army as a brigadier general in the Western Theater. He is best remembered for two battles, the first being the Battle of Fort Donelson. Fort Donelson was a Confederate stronghold in Tennessee that protected the vital manufacturing and arsenal city of Nashville. The battle turned out to be Ulysses S. Grant’s first big success, and indeed was a vital victory for the North at a time when the Union army was showing little progress at all.

Now Fort Donelson was under the command of Brigadier General John B. Floyd, a political appointee who, although he had been Secretary for War for the United States right up until nearly the Secession, had no actual experience in conducting war. Second-in-command was our friend, Gideon Pillow, who in theory had experience in the Mexico, but as we know was really a fraud who tended to talk big and do little.

Confederate troops at Fort Donelson numbered 18,000, whereas Grant had about 25,000 Union troops at his disposal. To capture a fortified position generally took a three to one advantage in numbers, so you can see Grant had almost no business even considering attacking Fort Donelson. But fresh from his victory over nearby Fort Henry (mostly due to the badly-engineered Fort Henry conveniently flooding the Confederates out) Grant was confident of success at Fort Donelson as well. It turns out this confidence was largely due to his knowledge that Gideon Pillow was in command inside that fort. Said Grant in his memoirs:

Pillow deflator

“I had known General Pillow in Mexico, and judged that with any force, no matter how small, I could march up to within gunshot of any intrenchments he was given to hold. I said this to the officers of my staff at the time. I knew that Floyd was in command, but he was no soldier, and I judged that he would yield to Pillow’s pretensions.”

And Pillow did not disappoint! And yet to be fair, Pillow did actually achieve success in battle before he managed to completely screw it up. With the fort surrounded in large part by Union troops, the Confederate officers knew things looked bad for them, so at dawn Pillow directed an assault of 10,000 men into the unprotected right flank of the Union line in an attempt to open up an escape route. This way they would cede the fort but not lose the men.

Surprisingly, luck went with him. Pillow had a massive force filled with talented men, among them Nathan Bedford Forrest, and he had the advantage of surprise. Not expecting the Confederates to take action that morning, Grant was away consulting with a gunboat officer too wounded to come and make a report to him. Other than telling his underlings to stand their ground, he didn’t leave much in the way of instructions, so when Pillow’s forces attacked, they found unorganized resistance, brigadier generals unwilling to help each other without explicit orders from Grant, and troops who were curiously clueless about how to resupply themselves with ammunition even when there was plenty lying about in boxes on the ground.

After a few hours of heavy fighting, the Confederates pushed through and the escape route was clear! The Confederate troops fought with backpacks of three days provisions on their backs. They were ready to head to south to safety.

The heat of battle

It was right about then that Grant returned from his visit to his wounded officer. Much to his surprise he found a battle going on, a battle in which his side was being routed. Wounded and demoralized men were everywhere; noise, smoke and chaos abounded. Characteristic of Grant, he didn’t freak out. (No matter how bad things were, Grant never freaked out, a good quality in a general.) He quickly figured out that the Confederates were pressing for escape not a combat victory, he determined where they would be weakest, and he started giving orders. From his memoirs:

“I directed Colonel Webster to ride with me and call out to the men as we passed: ‘Fill your cartridge-boxes, quick, and get into line; the enemy is trying to escape and he must not be permitted to do so.’ This acted like a charm. The men only wanted some one to give them a command.”

He had one general attack the enemy's west side, the other the enemy’s east. And then Grant had his turn of luck in the expected form of Pillow’s bad judgment. Just when the Confederates had created their escape route, and indeed, were halfway to leaving, for some incomprehensible reason Pillow decided to regroup and resupply his troops before pushing forward. To the amazement of all he ordered his troops back into their trenches, and all advantages gained by the Confederates that morning were lost. Grant quickly exploited the opening given to him, and by the end of the day the Union army was poised to take the fort.

That night was a bad one for the Confederate leadership. General Floyd was edgy. Having committed what amounted to treason as U.S. Secretary of War (shipping arms from northern armories to southern ones to better position the South when Secession came was just one example of why the North might like to hang him), he decided to skedaddle out while the going was good and offered the command of the 18,000 troops to his second-in-command, Gideon Pillow. But Pillow then decided that it was also too dangerous for him to be captured for reasons known only to himself. So he handed the command to third-in-command, Brigadier General Simon P. Buckner who accepted responsibility for the welfare of the troops, and Floyd and Pillow fled in the dark of night. Nathan Bedford Forrest, furious at the general level of incompetence and stupidity, said, “I did not come here to surrender my command,” and stormed out. He also left during the night, escaping with his cavalry of 700 by mucking through swamps and fording swollen creeks to the south.

Though the next morning Grant would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender from Bruckner, he and Bruckner were old buddies from West Point and the Mexican war. They discussed Pillow’s flight the previous night, and how Pillow had expressed concern that his capture would be a disaster for the Southern cause.

"He thought you'd rather get hold of him than any other man in the Southern Confederacy," Buckner told Grant.

"Oh," replied Grant, "if I had got him, I'd let him go again. He will do us more good commanding you fellows."

The fall of Fort Donelson and the loss of so many men was difficult for Pillow to spin, though he did try. But his next battle, the Battle of Stones River, where Major General Breckinridge found Pillow cowering behind a tree and had to order him forward, spelled the end for Pillow’s combat assignments. Though he went on to administrative positions in the Confederate army (where he could do less damage), he had successfully earned for all time the distinction of being one of the worst generals in American history.

Five Simple Technologies to Improve Your Family's Resiliency

2011-06-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

With this post I’m switching to another subject that, when I’m not writing fiction, I spend time researching and thinking about: energy and its sources and uses. Since there are many connections between energy and water (energy is used to pump and transport water, and in the case of hydroelectricity, water is used to make energy), when I'm energy blogging I’ll sometimes talk about water was well.

Whether it’s due to peak oil or a hurricane, war in the Middle East or a heat wave, there are many factors that could create spot shortages in energy, could cause prices to rise sharply in the short term, or could gradually but inexorably inflate energy costs in the long term. Although different energy forms are not completely interchangeable (for example, electricity cannot easily substitute for oil in the US without major upgrades in our electrical grid and transportation infrastructure) they are fungible enough that a shortage of any one of them will cause prices to rise for all. Even without natural disasters or wars, I expect short term we will see gasoline prices increase (unless the economy tanks sharply, pulling commodity prices down with it), and longer term we will see electricity prices rise significantly for peak hour use (i.e. periods of max air conditioning).

So, to make your family resilient either in the face of a temporary shortage or a longer-term escalation in price, here are some simple, highly cost effective technologies you can employ. Though some may seem laughably obvious, the majority of Americans employ only one or two, and often even those ineffectively.

1) Attic sealing and insulation. Very simple, fairly cheap, and yet not nearly as widely used as it should be. It’s important to remember that there’s a difference between movement of heat and movement of air. Insulation prevents movement of heat but if there are gaps, holes, etc, between the lower floor and the attic, it won’t prevent air movement. At any temperature, air moving across the skin makes us feel cooler than we otherwise would, so sealing up these holes and gaps is a good idea. If you already have some amount of insulation, someone may need to go into your attic, pull back that insulation, look for gaps and then seal them with caulk, expanding foam, or rigid foam board insulation. Then you (or a service) can add insulation until it’s about knee deep. If your house is now drafty and poorly insulated, you can save as much as ½ to 1/3 of your monthly winter heating costs. Remember also that heat wants to rise more than it wants to travel horizontally, so insulating your attic is more important than replacing single pane windows unless they’re very leaky and drafty.

2) Ceiling fans. As stated before, at any temperature, movement of air across the skin makes us feel cooler than we otherwise would. So in the summer months, ceiling fans are a great way to combat heat using far, far less energy than air conditioning units. In South Carolina I noticed many houses and shops use both air conditioning and ceiling fans so that the air conditioning can be set at a much higher level—say 80 degrees—and still be quite comfortable. A ceiling fan can save you as much as 40% of your summer cooling costs. Ceiling fans are more energy efficient than floor fans, but they are also more work to install properly.

3) Programmable thermostats. Don’t heat or cool your house when you’re not there to benefit! And at night use a blanket or a ceiling fan to help warm or cool you to a comfortable temperature. Programmable thermostats cost about $35. They are not all that difficult to install or program, though, sadly, 40% of Americans who have programmable thermostats never actually program them. (Ouch!) During the winter, take advantage of this simple technology to a.) automatically turn down the heat when you’re gone to 55 degrees, (most pets can do ok with 61 degrees), b.) turn the heat down at night to whatever temperature keeps you comfortable under a couple blankets, and c.) turn on the heat an hour before you get up so the house is pleasant again. You can experiment with the settings that work best for you, but heating the house up to 70 degrees 24/7 costs you way more than you need. In the winter, our house generally varies between 55 degrees at night and 63 degrees during the day, but I’m willing to wear lots of wool. (I also encourage my kids to use those other little technologies called sweaters and slippers.) In the summer, leave the air conditioning off until an hour before you’re going to return home. Or you could leave your blinds closed during the day and when you come home, open up the house to the cooler evening temperatures and use a whole house fan to push the hot air out and pull the cool air in. Another low tech tip—plant deciduous trees on the south side of your house that will shade the house in the summer and let in warming sunlight in the winter.

4) Bicycles, racks, and panniers. The bicycle is one of the most efficient machines mankind has ever devised. It takes less energy per mile to go by bicycle than by any other mode of transport, including walking. For most terrains it’s easy to cover a mile by bicycle in six or seven minutes. For distances under two miles, when you factor in time to walk and park your car, it’s generally as fast to bicycle as drive. And you don’t need to be Lance Armstrong kitted out in Lycra! You can wear regular clothes, ride an upright bicycle at a leisurely pace and be no sweatier or tired than if you’d spent the minutes strolling your neighborhood. To make your bicycle useful for errands, get a rack with panniers. This will allow you to carry two grocery bags full of stuff with ease—the load will be on your bicycle, not on your back! If, like me, you live in an area with hills, consider an electric bicycle. These are substantially more expensive but they essentially make the hills flat and can be an excellent car substitute if an oil shortage arises.

5) Water Filters. Why pay for bottled water if you can filter water from your tap that tastes as good for a fraction of the cost? Having a good filter on hand also means you can tap many sources of water in case of an emergency (say an earthquake, hurricane or tornado) that shuts down the water supply system. There are many filters on the market--one I like is the Big Berkey water filter. From their website:

This system removes pathogenic bacteria, cysts and parasites entirely and extracts harmful chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, VOCs, organic solvents, radon 222 and trihalomethanes. It also reduces nitrates, nitrites and unhealthy minerals such as lead and mercury. This system is so powerful it can remove food coloring from water without removing the beneficial minerals your body needs.

Even if you don’t use a filter to reduce chemicals in your normal drinking water, in a crisis it might be handy to turn water from a rain barrel, creek or pond into safe drinking water. For some reason, Berkey doesn’t ship to California or Iowa. (I think it has to do with these state’s laws.) Remember, as gasoline prices go up, any liquid shipped by truck is bound to increase in price as the shipping weight involved is substantial. If you really like carbonated beverages, you can get a home carbonator like this for around $100.

So five simple, inexpensive technologies that can vastly improve your family’s ability to weather an emergency or save you nearly their upfront cost the first year by reducing your energy (or bottled water) bills. I hope you'll give them a try.

Head in the Beaufort Clouds

2011-06-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

Carolina sky

It rained in San Francisco yesterday on the last day of May. It rained again today. If you lived in San Francisco you would know that it never rains here this time of year. Nor in May do we get billowing, puffy clouds with dark undersides that roll northeast as if looking for trouble in the Sierras. Even though the sun sometimes shines through the downpour, one begins to despair of summer at all. And so on these obstinately cool, winter-like days when my strawberries are unlikely to ripen and bike rides are sodden excursions, my thoughts turn to South Carolina--Beaufort, to be specific--where it did not rain yesterday and the temperature reached 97 degrees. Now there’s summer for you, even if the solstice has yet to arrive.

A view to what was

There was a time, a stretch of two years, when my thoughts often turned to Beaufort. I thought of Beaufort while sitting at my kitchen table, while doing the Tai Chi form, while driving across San Francisco to pick my daughter up from school. I remembered how the light filtered through the Spanish moss, how the river ebbed and flowed with the tide, how the cord grass swayed in the wind. I ruminated over the masses of oysters growing on the city’s piers, the daytime’s suffocating heat, the evening’s lively breeze. When I shut my eyes I saw the stately houses, the ancient arching trees. My thoughts were not so much of Beaufort as it exists, but of Beaufort as it was, though the present Beaufort was my signpost to the former age.

The way lamps used to be lit

The way to get around

Though I could visit Beaufort (and I did) I couldn’t visit 1849, at least not in person. I read books and books, both factual accounts and narratives from the period, in my quest to digest the values and the language, the customs and the manners, the technologies, cuisine, and cultural reference points of the era. Armed with legions of details, I then had to think through my characters, how they moved through this world over a century and a half ago, parsing what would have been important to them and why. In 1849 women still wore petticoats because hoop skirts had yet to come into fashion. This made their clothing heavier and hotter than a decade later. In 1849, whale oil was still used to fuel lamps rather than kerosene. In fact, the world had just about reached peak whales and peak whale oil, although no one then yet knew it. In 1849 laundry was a heavy, hot affair and no one with money did their own. In addition, since dyes were not colorfast, most top layers of clothing were brushed, not washed, preferably by a servant. In 1849 roads in the South were poor and trains not yet prevalent, so for a town like Beaufort, being on a steamer route connoted a nearly cosmopolitan connection to the exterior world.

Crushed

In 1849, most Americans (Thoreau one of the few excepted) felt pride in the crushing of Santa Anna and the Mexican army and saw nothing amiss in forcing Mexico to sell of a third of its land at a cut-rate price to its stronger neighbor. In 1849, gold was practically leaping into the hands of miners in California, Chopin was writing his last waltzes in Europe, and the engines of the industrial North were revving up, even if the South couldn’t hear their echoes yet. In 1849, the last good president had been Andrew Jackson a dozen years before, John Calhoun (South Carolina’s “cast iron” senator) was on his last legs, and manifest destiny was no longer a doctrine but an achievement in progress. In 1849, things were changing in America with more speed and uncertainty than the average citizen was comfortable with. Though the last five sentences are all gross generalizations, it gives broad brushstrokes of the American 1849 mindset. But what their memories would have consisted of—that was harder to reconstruct.

Granddaddies

What I gleaned from my reading was that historical cultural memory of the era proudly focused on the glorious revolution that their grandfathers had achieved and the momentous first-of-its-kind government they’d subsequently created. In 1849 these grandchildren knew they had inherited something grand but were growing uneasy as to whether it was a legacy they could keep. The Bible, the Magna Carta, ancient Rome, and ancient Greece were their touchstones. George Washington and Mr. Jefferson had been known (or at least seen) by men and women still alive. In 1849, most people were aware that life was less dangerous, brutal and short than it had been for their forefathers, and they were grateful. The Civil War and its awful grinding slaughter did not lurk unpleasantly in their past. At that point the pain involved in rending the nation in two was not something they could conceive of. Though certainly adept enough at hangings, whippings and other brutality, they were also incapable of imagining the systematized factory barbarity that the twentieth century achieved at Auschwitz that still haunts our collective memory today. We can envy their innocence, but events that should have featured prominently in their historic conscience—the Trail of Tears, the horrific sea passage of the slave trade—most seemed to dispose of with a shrug.

No looking back

1849 in America was not a time of regret for past failings or longing for what was. That would come later, at least for the South. Instead it was a time of expansion and optimism, of growth and domination. For those growing cotton, it was a time of great wealth. For centuries now America, priding itself on its optimism and expansion--geographically, economically, and otherwise--has been little interested in all but the most superficial glances backwards. Perhaps those who are confident of the future always have little patience for history. Perhaps like a shark we must always swim forward or perish.

Salty pillar gets a good look

Perhaps only those who are uncertain about what lies ahead try to see what the past can tell us. Like Lot’s wife, they are the ones who, with wavering step, turn back to glimpse the fire and brimstone. For this momentary act of defiance, Lot’s wife (she never even gets her own name) is transformed into a pillar of salt. But the Bible gives us the story of Lot and his doomed cities precisely to encourage us to look back, to reflect, to learn. Sometimes looking back, even to the summer of 1849, is a means of swimming forward.

Why Remember the Civil War?

2011-05-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."--Abraham Lincoln

I have ancestors that fought on both sides of the U.S. Civil War. My mother’s kin fought for the Union and my father’s for the Confederacy. Generations later, both families made it to California, one via Kansas, the other by way of Oklahoma. Both came to the Golden State during the Depression, and it was this historic event that I heard the rumbling echoes of as I grew up. The tales of my childhood were of how my great-grandmother, a widow, would have starved if my grandfather hadn’t sent her money home from the WPA camp. And how my grandmother, an independent woman working as a nurse until she was in her thirties, proudly saved a sizeable sum of money before she was married.

If there were stories about battles in my family, they were about my grandfather’s stint on Okinawa (horrific.) I knew nothing of Manassas or Fredericksburg, and I only grew aware of Gettysburg when required to memorize the Gettysburg Address in school. (Thank you, Lincoln, for keeping it short!) Remarkably, I covered the American Revolution four times in my academic career, but never the Civil War. I had a vague notion that the South had slaves and that the slaves escaped on railroads. Since slavery was bad, the North had been in the right and so of course won the war.

Exodus isn't just a book in the Bible

I was six and a half when I heard “a king” had been killed (I asked what country he was king of), a murder shortly to be followed by that of Bobby Kennedy. It was the same year my parents continued their own parents’ migration by leaving California for Washington State. San Francisco’s summer of love in 1967 had been too much for them, and they fled for the calmer climes of suburban Seattle. Little did they know that a mere three years later the bottom would drop out of Boeing and the Seattle economy, creating a exodus so enormous that a billboard near Sea-Tac airport read, “Will the last person leaving Seattle, turn out the lights.” That economic recession colored my entire childhood and, in a way, shaped most of my twenties, though at the time I was relatively unaware how history could be an active participant in a person’s destiny.

Dress like Martha

Ah, history. We can’t do anything about it. It’s dead. It’s gone. Doesn’t remembering just evoke pain and recrimination? Why not live and let live, go forward afresh and new? This year, 2011, is the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. It is nothing compared to the bicentennial of our country’s founding. Now that was a party. 1976—seems like yesterday. Stars and stripes were everywhere, on every product, in every ad. Schoolhouse Rock had Saturday morning cartoons about it, and people even sewed their own Martha Washington dresses from Butterick patterns.

"I'm just a bill . . ."

The Declaration of Independence was an unequivocal milestone in human achievement, and our war of revolution (unlike the recent humiliation in Vietnam) was one we could all feel good about. We won. We were right, and through our courage, fortitude and wisdom, we established a precedent for the world to follow. The French fleet who’d really signed the deal for us weren’t mentioned much, and Loyalists who bet on the wrong horse and had to leave everything behind to flee to Canada weren’t brought up at all. The subsequent near annihilation of the native peoples of the continent didn’t get much play, nor did how the legitimization of slavery by the Constitution and our Founding Fathers was a betrayal of the country's founding precepts, not to mention it left a huge mess for following generations to resolve. No, the American Revolution was crystalline in its fife and drum purity and unambiguous goodness.

Sesquicentennial Splendor

Compare that national extravaganza to this year. Now, it’s true that a sesquicentennial is fundamentally less exciting than a bicentennial—heavens, the word itself is a pain to pronounce. So what we have are a few new books out, some magazine and newspaper articles on the Civil War, some low-key, local events. But I would posit that this is at least partly because we’re not sure how to view this war anymore. What used to be clear is murky these days. The South’s bitterness has mellowed and developed a different patina; the North’s righteousness has turned into something more ambiguous and wistful. Yes, the Civil War ended slavery, but we’re starting to remember that that had not been its original intent. Yes, the war saved the Union, but if the Constitution had been a contract, both sides had violated its terms, and who was to blame that there was no exit clause? And we’re more aware these days that in every battle, one side’s victory meant the others side’s death and maiming, and as such they can’t be celebrated, only mourned.

Dead Americans

618,000 Americans died in the Civil War war, 68,000 of them African-American. That was the cost of that war. Though few understood it at the time, those 618,000 husbands, sons, and brothers were consumed by an epic battle of industrialization wrestling agriculture for the reins of the North American continent. Which is not to say the Civil War was not about slavery—it was. But it was also about the deal that had been brokered by the Constitution that had been unraveling for decades. It was about changing technologies and energy sources, and how society necessarily had to evolve as a result. It was about immigration and conflicting, competing economic models. And, like most wars, underneath it all it was about money and power and who would possess them.

Soldier and family

In the end, the South chose to dig in its heels rather than adapt to the moral, economic and technological pressures demanding it change. In the end, the North couldn’t allow a powerful, hostile country to stretch all the way across its southern border. If they didn’t fight the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, they would’ve inevitably fought them a few years later over control of the western territories. For its security and future wealth, the North had to both defeat and crush the South to remove it as a threat. That this would impoverish and embitter a future third of the country for the next century was either not taken into account or considered an adequate price to pay.

The Civil War is valuable to remember as an example of what happens when patched-together compromises can no longer hold. It’s what happens when adaptive small changes—often known as reforms—are resisted, forcing large changes—often known as revolutions or collapse—to come all at once. It’s what happens when, in the face of historic forces, a people says its way of life is non-negotiable and then finds out that, indeed, history does not negotiate.

There is value in remembering people and events in all their complexity--their good and their bad, their dark and their light. We gain when we comprehend the entirety of a person or an era (or as close as we can get to it) rather than a sanitized, one-sided version. The Civil War, with its suffering, loss, and heartache, should make us sad and even uncomfortable. And it’s important to acknowledge that our leaders, even the ones we most admire, had failings as well as strengths. This approach doesn’t make for a good party. There’s no basking in any nostalgic, rosy glow. But an honest look back lets us embrace both the wonder and the warts of our history and let us know ourselves—our own virtues and our own failings--better because of it. In this way the mystic chords of our nation's memory, dissonant though they may still be, can slowly grow in harmony.

Pearl City Control Theory, a Novel Available as Ebook $2.99

2011-05-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

Pearl City Control Theory, a novel of city Buddha-mind walking, love and breaking free is available as an ebook on both Nook and Kindle for just $2.99.

It's a modern comedy of manners set in urban San Francisco, very different than Beaufort 1849! Here's the description:

When Sara’s husband, Mark, goes to the East Coast for law school, Sara stays behind in her beloved San Francisco. Their marriage will be BCDR -- bi-coastal, dual rental. It’s only for three years, Sara tells herself. An admirer of efficiency, she intends to keep loneliness at bay by moving in with her erratic sister, Amanda, and by staying busy at work in her newly promoted position as a manager for a large consumer products manufacturer.

But Sara’s tightly controlled world starts to crack when she accepts the help of an inscrutable mentor and begins volunteering at a domestic violence shelter on the weekends. As mercurial Amanda does her best to disarray the order of Sara’s life, challenges at work and at the shelter test Sara’s resolve and illuminate the fissures in her careful structures. To top it off, Sara finds her mentor far too helpful when she knows she shouldn’t be seeing him at all . . .

Win a free copy of Beaufort 1849!

2011-05-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

I am guest blogging for the next couple days at author Suzanne Adair's blog.

Suzanne Adair's Blog--The Improbable Story of Robert Smalls

Leave a comment on this post at her blog for a chance to win a free copy of Beaufort 1849!

Between the Wars

2011-05-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

Roaring through the twenties

I’ve been on a jag lately of immersing myself in the culture of upper-crust Britain in the decades between the world wars. Though I’ve long been a fan of P.G. Wodehouse and Mrs. Dalloway, now, from re-watching Granada Television’s Brideshead Revisted (oh so good), to reading Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate, to tearing through a number of lightweight Georgette Heyer period mysteries, the twilight of the British aristocracy has been on my mind. Ah, the details that no other era can match! Mannish women wearing monocles, the plover eggs at an Oxford luncheon, snobby countesses in tiaras, bathtubs full of newts. Who can forget Poirot in his white spats, or Bertie chasing his cow creamer while his faithful Jeeves rescues him from a dreaded Aunt or two? In this manic world, Cedric and Lady Montford prance together in their jewels, Sebastian laments about the bad mood of his teddy bear Aloysius, and the butler never does it but gets killed instead.

Lloyd George--no fan of lords

It’s an odd literary flowering that documents this period of frantic parties and still opulent displays of wealth. The first World War, the great one, had finished this particular group of people off, even if they hadn’t realized it quite yet. But the changes had been raining down for a while, working to erode centuries of privilege stretching from the Middle Ages. One could say it began with the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1846 that allowed cheap grain to be imported into Britain from other countries, lowering domestic agricultural profits. Others might say it was the invention of the spinning jenny and the cotton gin that created a capitalist-mercantile class, a class that spent most of the nineteenth century fighting to expand its wealth and influence at the expense of its more refined brethren. The aristocracy, however, not without a trick or two themselves, fought back and hung on. As late as 1880, these seven thousand families owned four-fifths of the land in Britain. They dominated government and social prestige, controlled the Houses of Parliament, and filled the ranks of the army, church and civil service with their second and third sons. In 1884 another blow was struck with a series of reform measures that allowed nearly 60% of the male population to vote. (Gosh, sounds radical.) And then in 1913 Lloyd George, a Welshman no fan of landlords, pushed through his “Land Campaign” with higher taxes for landowners, government control of rents, and higher wages for laborers. The coffin for the aristocracy had been built and the grave dug, but the body was still kicking. Then came the war.

The dead left behind in France

The young men of this class and era, schooled at Eton and Harrow and Cambridge and Oxford, had been groomed to lead and rule, so when war with the Kaiser came, they promptly volunteered to command troops for king and country. But it turned out to be a different kind of war than anyone expected, and in France and Flanders men died or were maimed in horrific numbers. It was a bloodletting that diminished all of Britain but impacted aristocratic young men in disproportionate numbers.

Party time

The war also brought an abrupt end to many repressive Victorian mores, and when the armistice finally arrived, the freedom was exhilarating. Still, even in the midst of parties and gaiety and cocktails and flappers, the landed gentry sensed something was wrong. Already financial troubles were knocking at the door even if they did their best not to listen. Already the older generation raged at the assaults on their wealth and prerogatives, or worse, resigned to their fate, sold off millions of acres of inherited land--one of the largest transfers of territory in British history--just to stay afloat. Country houses and London town homes soon followed until the landed class had no land to pass onto their children. With the corpse in the coffin, the twenties and thirties were a glorious two-decade wake.

The final, most undignified blow followed the second war. After a hefty increase in taxes to pay for debt brought on by the war, and a hefty increase in wages for the average worker, no one could afford servants at all. Without chambermaids, valets, gardeners and cooks, estates couldn’t be maintained, dinner parties couldn’t be given, and being an Earl or Duchess grew suddenly irrelevant. It took Hitler and WWII to hammer down the final nails in the British aristocratic coffin, and then that class was buried into obscurity and irrelevance for good.

Though there is art and architecture from these decades that evokes the style and exuberance and wild social change of the era, I think it is literature that captures it best. This is true even if the novel or story was written slightly later and tinted by nostalgia for something that can be revisited in memory but never regained. Was this lost world a paradise? Well, it was certainly nice for those seven thousand families. Should its passing be mourned? A harder question to answer. Yes, something has been lost, and the world is still missing it. But dead bodies have to be buried. No one wants to live with zombies in tiaras and spats.

The Aiken-Rhett House: Take a Ride on the Roller Coaster of History

2011-05-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

I like grand old houses, their craftsmanship, their whimsy, their attention to detail. A fine house can charm the senses and even, on occasion, uplift the soul. But best of all is when a house has a story to tell.

Aiken-Rhett house in 1865

Often a century or two of renovations muddy the narrative or even lose the storyline altogether in favor of central air and indoor plumbing--modern conveniences that are understandable enough, I admit. However, to my delight, in Charleston, South Carolina, there exists a house where the whispers of history are abundant, where layers of generation upon generation are still plainly in view. It is a house that depicts the rise and fall not only of a family but of an entire civilization. It is the Aiken-Rhett house.

The house was built by Charleston merchant John Robinson who, with the fickleness of early nineteenth century fortunes, lost it soon afterwards. It was then bought by William Aiken, Sr., a prosperous Irish merchant, to be used as rental property. (Pretty grand rental property, even back then!) When Aiken Sr. died in a carriage accident (notice a theme of reversals?) the house was left to his son, William Aiken, Jr. He promptly moved in with his bride, Harriet Lowndes, the beautiful and well-educated daughter of a South Carolina political grandee. She spoke four languages and was destined to become one of Charleston’s leading hostesses. This son of an immigrant had truly made his way into Charleston society.

Grand Entryway

Slave quarters and other outbuildings

Time for renovations! The house was expanded and upgraded into one of the most magnificent residences in Charleston, a city not lacking in resplendent abodes. Aiken himself became a big cheese not only in Charleston, but the entire state, elected both governor of South Carolina in 1844 and a member of Congress in 1851. Owner of a number of plantations, he was also one of the largest slaveholders in the state. At the back of the Charleston house were outbuildings where the ten to twenty house slaves that worked there during the antebellum years could often be found—in the kitchen, laundry, stables, carriage house, and in their living quarters in the upper parts of these buildings.

In the 1850’s the price of cotton went sky-high. Time for more renovations! The interior was redecorated and an art gallery was constructed for the collection of paintings and sculptures that the Aiken’s brought back from their extensive tour of Europe.

We’ve ridden the roller coaster of history up for the Aiken-Rhett house. Fasten your seatbelts for the ride down.

Remembrance of things pas

Though a slave owner, Aiken was a Unionist and did not support secession. However, like most Southerners, after Fort Sumter he supported the Confederacy, tying the fate of his family to Confederate fortunes. During the bombardment of Charleston, many of the grand houses were pounded into rubble, but this house escaped due to its placement further up Charleston’s slender peninsula. However, when Charleston fell to Union forces in 1865 the house was looted and Aiken arrested and taken to Washington for trial. He was later released due to the intervention of northern politicians he’d made friends with during his political heyday.

Dining Room

Though their house had been looted, abused, and most of its valuables stolen, the Aiken family managed not to lose their home to federal taxes like so many in Beaufort did. They hung on and stayed on, as did most of the old families in Charleston. Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash, as the saying goes. In the Aiken’s case, this meant wallpaper peeled, and carpets grew threadbare. It meant fabrics and plaster began to disintegrate, and in some places dry rot set in. With little money for wood or coal to heat large spaces, grand rooms were shut up entirely. It meant multiple generations lived together, paying expenses as best they could. Harriet Lowndes Aiken lived in the house until her death in 1892, the grand ballroom becoming her bedroom. Her daughter, Harriet, and her son-in-law Major A.B. Rhett raised their five children in that house. Their descendants occupied it until 1975.

Over the course of a hundred and fifteen years, remarkably few alterations were made. Electric lights were bought to some rooms. Heating panels were added to the dining room. The slave quarters were left nearly untouched. The brilliance of the Historic Charleston Foundation that now owns the house was its choice not to restore the house according to one period or another of its long history. Instead, with one or two exceptions, they’ve preserved the house just as it was when they received it, in all its decaying grandeur.

Ballroom

Walking through the grand double parlor with its fragments of wallpaper and full-length portrait of Harriet Lowndes Aiken, we sense the soirees to which the fashionable elite of Charleston flocked. Waltzes echo in the mirrored ballroom; on the piazzas we almost glimpse the young ladies in wide skirts laughing with their beaux. In the dank basement warming-kitchen, we sense the constrained lives of the slaves; in their painted and plastered living quarters in the outbuildings, we discern the slaves’ hierarchy in status as well as their chance for privacy and camaraderie. We can even admire the pleasant life the Aiken horses must have led in their rather elaborate stables. And then we feel the years rain down on the impoverished household, taking their toll in roof shingles and rooms left purposely shut up and untouched. Even in its last stages of decay, the dining room still must have been grand. And even as plaster fell and gardens became riddled with weeds, the Aiken-Rhett family clung to the house out of survival and proud testament to what once was.

Like a ballgown found moldering in the attic the Aiken-Rhett house conveys more in its shambles than a reproduction would in pristine counterfeit. It tells us that as a civilization prospers, so do its dwellings. And after that civilization collapses, the buildings are often all that remain, silent narrators of a story distant and sad, whispering to us from across the centuries as the roller coaster of history glides on.

(Govenor Aiken makes a brief appearance in Beaufort 1849, but, sadly, his house does not, except in as much as it influenced the conception of the Birch home in Beaufort, Villa d’Este. All photos above are via the Library of Congress.)

The Civil War is Apparently Not Over

2011-04-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

When I first began to research my book, Beaufort 1849, I was under the naïve impression that the Civil War ended in April of 1865, when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Boy, was I a Civil War noob!

Persistence of memory?

With so much water under the bridge, I blithely assumed there was a general consensus on the war’s W’s and H--where it was fought, when it was fought, how it was fought, who fought it and why. As I read and read, I came to understand that none of these questions have a definitive answer yet, not among scholars and not among average Joes. Indeed, from slavery to states’ rights, the question of why the war was fought is still contentious enough to provoke tantrums, if not actual fistfights. (In contrast, when’s the last time a Brit brawled with an American over the Troubles in the Colonies?)

Still in the fight

Which leads one to wonder whether the Civil War actually ended at all. An alien visiting our planet (not knowing our penchant for re-enactments) after witnessing battles between men in blue and grey uniforms with their cannons and explosions of gun powder and then reading heated and vituperative rhetoric on internet blogs might be forgiven for concluding that the Civil War has stretched centuries. The war’s significance and origination are still debated endlessly, from the depths of doctoral theses to the scratchy static of call-in talk radio. On discussion boards, William Tecumseh Sherman is characterized anywhere from avenging angel to Genghis Khan and Hitler rolled into one. Further evidence of passions flying high is that one particular symbol of the war, the Confederate flag, is still so inflammatory and carries such heightened meaning that rational discourse about it is just not possible.

Like it was yesterday.

In general, Americans tend to have amnesia about their own history. (Spanish-American War—what’s that? A foreign army once burned the White House to the ground? Not a chance.) But when it comes to the Civil War, memories are fresh. Even the names we have for the conflict reflect on-going contention: “War Between the States,” “War of Rebellion,” “War of Northern Aggression,” “War of Southern Independence.” That trauma creates scar tissue is to be expected, but when people are still arguing over flags, definitions, and names a hundred and fifty years later, something is clearly unfinished. Reflection and analysis are always valuable; choler and bitterness reflect a festering wound still unhealed.

No, this war isn’t over, and the cannons, even after a century and a half, are not yet silent. Not by a long shot. Happy sesquicentennial, America.

Real Books--A Vanishing Species?

2011-04-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

According to Publisher’s Weekly, this last February, for the first time ever, sales of e-books surpassed sales of all other forms of books—hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback and audiobooks. With sales increasing so rapidly, e-books will likely outsell all other categories of books put together by the middle of next year. So one must ask, is the physical book on its way to extinction?

The next polar bears?

I confess to having a Kindle. My first was a hand-me-down from my husband (a true gadget guy) when he upgraded himself to a newer one. The early model had many design flaws, and after hearing enough complaints from me, my husband gave me the latest greatest version last Christmas.

I like my Kindle. It’s readable, light in weight, and the battery lasts over a week. But what I appreciate most is that I can get books cheaply and whenever I’m in the mood. (Who doesn’t like good value and instant gratification?) I don’t have to plan ahead or even walk to my local bookstore or library. I click a button and I have a new book. Magic.

Did I mention it’s light and e-books are cheap? I’m reading three books right now concurrently and was able to make progress on all of them while traveling the other coast visiting colleges with my high school daughter. Three real books (one of them 952 real pages) would have filled a good chunk of my suitcase and would have cost me $26.64 versus the $14.95 I paid. (To be fair, one of the books was a classic free in e-book format.)

So as a reader, I am beguiled by the good value and convenience e-books provide. But as a member of a literate society, I am disconcerted and uneasy at the breakneck speed they are superseding the real. Last month, the independent bookstore in my neighborhood closed its doors for the final time. Though it was already on its last legs due to chain stores and on-line competition, the advent of digital undoubtedly pounded the final nail in the coffin.

These days media of all types transform with bewildering speed, each one as changeable and enticing as a kaleidoscope, each one calling for our attention. In such an electronic wonderland, bookstores are scrambling to reinvent themselves as places that still have meaning. Which leads to this question: just how important is physical interaction with ink on paper?

When I walk into a great bookstore filled floor to ceiling with works old and new, it’s like entering a cathedral. It’s a place of communion and awe. Ideas and stories whisper and buzz from pages, fellow worshippers smile slightly, acknowledging communal connection. The bookstore owners, while perhaps not high priests, are at least deacons knowledgeable in the sacrament. For these basilicas of literature to disappear completely into the night, to be replaced by nail salons and Dunkin' Donuts, is a terrifying thought. Visiting a web page, clicking a button is just not the same. Even if I don’t visit them regularly, like a soaring cathedral a bookstore’s very presence fills a profound spiritual need. I might very well be better off tithing to a venerable bookstore than to my church.

Perhaps as bookstores slip away, libraries will fill the void. But libraries, chronically underfunded, are going digital, too. The most popular service any library provides now is free access to the Internet, and many libraries offer e-books on loan. E-books require no shelving, no special cataloging or tough plastic on their covers. They can be turned into large print books at no extra cost, and the books don’t get torn, ruined, or lost. For people who have trouble getting to the library, especially the elderly, they can be a godsend. A collection of e-books can be managed at a fraction of the cost of physical ones. In ten years, I have to wonder, will physical libraries--with their community rooms and staff that give you recommendations and remember your children’s names—even exist?

Last but not least, as an author I’m wary of e-books. For an e-book, the cover is merely a postage stamp-sized selling point, no longer a subliminal communication each time the reader picks up the book. With an e-book there is no heft and weight in the hand that telegraphs the kind of book to a reader. (Le Petit Prince! War and Peace!) After an e-book is read, it is rarely loaned out to a friend. It’s never donated to a library; it’s not traded in for another book at a used bookstore; it doesn’t sit on a shelf beckoning recall or attention. With no physical reality, once an e-book is consumed, it only exists in the memory of the reader. With the vast quantity of books these days published in flimsy paperback rather than durable hardcover, the lifespan of a book is already short enough. In the digital world, an e-book becomes a pebble dropped in a pond with potentially very few ripples.

People need stories, from banal to transcendent, so although the delivery mechanism may change, some type of storytelling will continue. I’ve also read speculation that physical books will never entirely die off, that people will still value and acquire beautifully bound copies of books they really love. One’s collection of books will become an important personal statement, not unlike the art hanging on one’s wall. And because human beings need places of physical communion, I’ve no doubt we will create them in one form or another, from coffee houses to communal gardens. But as the kaleidoscope rotates, as bookstores fade and their elements transmute into something altogether different, the uncertainty is unsettling. In the rustle of a turned page I hear the whispers of scholars and students and poets and bibliophiles echoing across the centuries, all the way back to the moment Gutenberg first applied ink to his printing press. And I feel, very profoundly, a sense of loss.

Nose Tweaking, the Ultimate Insult

2011-04-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

Tempted to tweak?

Though difficult to imagine today, there was a time when grabbing someone’s nose and giving it a twist was an insult so egregious it was likely to end in one of the parties’ death. For centuries in both America and Europe, violation of a man’s honor demanded retribution by duel, and though by the middle of the 19^th century duels were theoretically illegal in all states, they were prevalent among the elite class in the South up until the Civil War.

Evidently the nose was a particularly sensitive spot for insult, probably because in those more modest times it was the part of the man always public and exposed and tended to be associated with a man’s assertion, will and confidence. Present day psychologically-inclined historians even speculate that the nose was a stand-in for—how should we put this delicately?—another item of protuberant male anatomy synonymous with masculinity. So to insult the nose was to insult the man deeply to the core.

As we see in Beaufort 1849 nose tweaking is how Johnny finally goads Jasper into a duel:

“No,” Johnny said, shaking off his host and turning back Jasper. “You’ll fight me, Wainwright, or you’re a coward.” There was a collective intake of air at this, followed by several gasps as Johnny accentuated his defaming words by reaching out his hand to tweak his adversary’s nose. Johnny might have succeeded if Jasper hadn’t grabbed him hard by the wrist, or perhaps he did succeed for the briefest of instants, it was impossible for anyone besides the two involved to know for sure. But now the course was set. The insult was too grave to be ignored by even the most lenient of standards, and the standards for gentlemen in Beaufort, South Carolina were not lenient.

A personage no less than President Andrew Jackson possibly suffered the dishonor of a nose tweak—while he was president! (Where was the Secret Service?) Five years after Jackson had removed naval officer Lt Robert Randolph from military service, the disgraced man approached Jackson, made as if to shake his hand, and then reached out to the jutting appendage instead. (As we know from our twenty dollar bills, Jackson had a good-sized one.) In response, Jackson tried to beat Randolph with his cane but was prevented by the other men in the room. A friend immediately offered to go kill Randolph, but Jackson refused because one’s honor could only be defended by oneself. Afterwards Jackson denied that Randolph or anyone else had ever successfully tweaked his nose, thus his honor had not been compromised. Jackson was no stranger to duels--in the course of his life, he fought in thirteen and had been wounded so frequently (with the bullets often not removable) it was said that he “rattled like a bag of marbles.”

I wonder which customs we feel strongly about today will cause people 150 years from now to scratch their heads and say, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

Robert Smalls, the Sequel

2011-04-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

From The Improbable Story of Robert Smalls, you may recall that after Smalls piloted his way to freedom during the Civil War, he received $1500 as his share of the prize money for the captured boat, Planter. As related in Beaufort 1849, the town of Beaufort, South Carolina was one of the first taken by the Union forces, and the mansions of Beaufort were turned into Army headquarters, barracks and hospitals, preserving them from destruction later in Sherman’s fiery path.

After the war, the U.S. government imposed taxes on all property in Beaufort, starting from the date of occupation. (They didn’t, ahem, offer to pay the owners of the houses rent for the use of their buildings during the same period.) This forced most antebellum residents of Beaufort to lose their homes because either they couldn’t pay the taxes or had yet to return to Beaufort and had no knowledge that the taxes were in arrears. Grand mansions were auctioned by the government off at a fraction of their original cost to build.

Robert Smalls, however, benefited. With the proceeds of his prize money he purchased his former master’s house on Prince Street in Beaufort. He also started a business, opening up a shop for freedmen (former slaves). He joined the Republican Party and was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, the South Carolina State Senate, and five times to the U.S. Congress. He participated in the writing of the new South Carolina state constitution and was largely considered the most powerful black man in the state for five decades.

The Reconstruction era was one of the more ignoble in our country’s history. At first Southern white men were widely disenfranchised politically and economically. Then the tide turned and African-American men were disenfranchised even more virulently of many of their newly-won rights. (Women of both races would have to wait quite a while for their enfranchisement.) Though some positive things happened for freedmen, corruption was rampant. As the Reconstruction era wound down and Southern whites did their best to reduce African-American political power in order to regain their own (while the North turned a blind eye), Smalls was accused and convicted of bribery. He was subsequently pardoned as part of a deal that also dropped charges against Democrats who had been accused of election fraud. (I smell a set-up from the very beginning?) He spent the rest of his days in Beaufort as a shop owner and customs official.

My favorite part of Smalls’ story is not his Civil War heroics nor his legislative record, but rather this anecdote. In 1875, long after the war, his former mistress--old, widowed, ill, and dreadfully impoverished--showed up at the house on Prince Street, perhaps believing it was still hers. Instead of turning her away, Smalls not only let her in, he ensconced her in her old bedroom and took care of her until her death in 1904, including personally serving her meals. Of all Smalls’ notable achievements it is this compassion and kindness that I find most astonishing.

In Smalls' life we find war, politics, heroism, public service and scandal in a story that limns the tumult of our nation's struggle. We see a spectacular rise, an ignominious fall, and a humanity that shines across the centuries. Robert Smalls, Beaufort hero.

The Night Before the Duel (excerpt)

2011-04-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

As the party guests were loaded on the boat, Jasper retired to his room to find Jim with a whale-oil lamp lit and a magazine on the table in front of him. “I hear you’ve landed yourself in some trouble,” Jim said, barely glancing up when Jasper entered.

Jasper shook his head. “I hate the South. I really, really hate it.”

Jim shrugged. “Then let’s leave. Tonight.”

“If I did,” Jasper said, “it would disgrace Henry until the end of his days.”

“As near as I can tell, he’s not the one doing the dying,” Jim pointed out. He eyed Jasper critically. “You know, you left the South but it didn’t leave you. If your white man’s honor is more important to you than your life, so be it. But don’t pretend you’re doing it for Henry. You’re doing it for yourself.”

Jasper sat down heavily in a chair. Of course Jim was right. After Johnny’s challenge, it was his own honor at stake, his own social acceptance in Beaufort, as marginal as it was, that now hung by a thread. The honor of a gentleman might be just a matter of custom and values but it was as real as a set of manacles. He either had to leave tonight with his tail between his legs or fight tomorrow. And he just wasn’t ready to leave.

“Will you come to the duel?” Jasper asked at last. “Put me back together if any pieces fly off?”

Jim nodded with resignation. “So long as he doesn’t get you in the heart or the head, I can probably patch you up. Funny how you managed to avoid French husbands calling you out when you deserved it, and now, when you don’t deserve it, you wind up with this. I told you that petticoat would cause you trouble. Admit it, I was right.”

Jasper had to smile. “You’re always right, damn you.”

“And I’m also right about you wasting your time trying to change something that’ll never change.”

Jasper considered the assertion. “When you weigh it against all the potential suffering, it’s got to be worth a try.” Jim shook his head as he stood up. “You really have to go?” Jasper said.

“You need me to hold your hand?” Jim asked.

“If I only have seven hours left to live, I could use some company.”

Jim snorted. “Now that I’ve seen the world, I can truly say what I’ve always believed: southern white men are the biggest idiots on earth. I don’t know why we worry about freeing the slaves. A few more years of you all shooting holes in each other, and there won’t be any of you left to be masters.”

“Have a nice ring shout,” Jasper said sourly to Jim’s back as he left. Of course Jim was right: he was an idiot to be caught up in what was essentially a lover’s quarrel. Though he might recognize in Cara an unusual sensibility being squashed by the South’s parochial culture, being maimed or killed by her rejected lover was hardly doing her a service. Yes, the whole farce was absurd. Unfortunately, there was no way out except through.

Glancing at the table, Jasper picked up Jim’s reading material and idly examined it. It was the maiden volume of a magazine called Æsthetic Papers, and the essay it was opened to was titled, “Resistance to Civil Government,” by some New England transcendentalist named Thoreau. Wondering where Jim had gotten it, Jasper pulled his reading glasses out of his waistcoat and sat down to read about the moral imperative not to cooperate with an immoral government.

The Delights of 19th Century Literature Should Not be Inflicted on the Young

2011-04-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

Dickens--Torturer or Genius?

“Nooooooo,” I can hear a million high schoolers cry. “Don’t make us read one of those books. We’d rather set our hair on fire and wrestle fat pigs while calculating azimuths than touch one of those again.”

So sad. Too many people have been flung into the dungeons of “real” literature by being given the wrong book at the wrong time. If this happened to you, causing you to resolutely turn your back on what people solemnly intone as “the classics,” I urge you to reconsider!

Part of why I decided to write a book set in 1849 was due to my deep love of 19^th century literature. But each author—whether it be Dickens, Austen or Tolstoy—takes some getting used to. The diction, vocabulary, and even sentence structure, while not as gnarly as Shakespeare, are distant enough from our own to require acclimation to an unfamiliar terrain. But once you make the two-century leap, remarkable satisfactions await.

Let’s start with Dickens. Brilliant man, truly, but he can be uneven--after all, he wrote a heck of a lot. Many high schools shove Great Expectations down their students’ throats, (I did it to my son—sorry, sweetie!) probably because it’s a coming of age novel and relatively short (for Dickens.) The problem is that while the first hundred pages are great and the last hundred pages are exciting, the middle two hundred can drag like a dying horse hauling a comatose Godzilla. The most accessible Dickens novel, hands down, is A Christmas Carol. Yes, everyone has seen a trillion versions of it, but the real thing is funny, lively, and contains both fabulous character sketches and brilliant descriptions. And did I mention it’s short? This is the Dickens teenagers should cut their teeth on. Once you have that under your belt (and let’s say you’re over 25), you could try A Tale of Two Cities (I love Sydney Carton, a sarcastic 20^th century type of guy trapped in the 18^th) or, my absolute favorite, Bleak House. (The worst thing about this book is its title. Trust me.) I advise waiting to read Bleak House until you’re 35, though. When you’re done with the book, watch the 2005 BBC version. Fabulous.

We’ll move on to Austen. In my opinion, her most accessible book is easily Pride and Prejudice. While I enjoy and admire all six of Austen’s complete novels, this is the one I can reread every few years, each time smiling at the humor and savoring her incredible turn of phrase. Teen girls who are big readers will lap up this one from age 14 on. The rest of the world might want to wait until age 28 or so.

There are, of course, scores of 19^th century literary possibilities. I’m a fan of Trollope’s Palliser series (for ages 30+, unless you just love Victorian literature.) I thought Vanity Fair readable enough, and The Woman in White a pretty good mystery. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes I have read every dozen years, starting at age 12. Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter left me cold, but The House of Seven Gables was interesting, the brooding gothic of Jane Eyre holds up pretty well (keep reading at least until you get to the fire part—it’s worth it) and Melville’s novella, Bartleby, The Scrivener, is nothing short of astonishing. After you’ve dipped your toes into Victorian literary waters and you’re ready for a longer swim, it’s time to tackle the big kahunas. There are reasons why Anna Karenina (better than War and Peace) and Les Miserables are classics. Get into their rhythm and swing and you will find two stories that echo and reverberate across the centuries. I think they are best appreciated after age 28—maybe even later. Following these, if you’re a true Victorian nut and the thought of a sentence lasting half a page thrills you, it’s time to talk Henry James. But inflict the guy on17 year olds? How cruel can you be?

What is your favorite piece of 19^th century literature, and at what age should it be read?

Charming Cemetery--an Oxymoron?

2011-04-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

"Charming cemetery" may indeed be an oxymoron, but in my mind the cemetery in the churchyard of St. Helena's in Beaufort is downright winsome. It's why I set two important scenes of Beaufort 1849 there--the place exudes gravitas and history. I don't even mind walking by this graveyard in the moonlight, which I did several times my last trip. Any ghosts I saw were all the friendly kind. At St. Helena's the dead are part of the community, their jumbled, worn headstones still in conversation each week with the living.

(photo by Melinda Adams)

The Improbable Story of Robert Smalls, Beaufort Hero

2011-04-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

This is a piece of history I wish I could’ve incorporated into Beaufort 1849 but the timing just wouldn’t work.

Robert Smalls began his life in 1839 in a slave cabin in Beaufort. In his teens he was sent to Charleston and hired out to work for wages that his owner would collect, a not uncommon practice. He worked in a hotel, as a lamplighter and then on the wharves and docks of Charleston. He married, had children, and eventually worked his way up to a wheelman, learning to pilot the Charleston harbor. Though undeniably constrained by the realties of slavery, his life had much more scope for initiative and resourcefulness than the average slave.

Now comes the exciting part. During the Civil War, Smalls was assigned as wheelman on the steamer, Planter, an armed dispatch and transport boat used by the Confederacy. On the night of May 13, 1862, the white crew decided to spend the night on shore, probably to amuse themselves with the distractions Charleston had to offer. Robert Smalls and the seven other slave crewmen took the opportunity to strike. With a Confederate flag flying and Smalls dressed in a captain’s uniform, at 3 a.m. Smalls backed the boat out of her slip and made way to a nearby wharf where the families of Smalls and other crew members were hiding in wait. After loading the contraband passengers, Smalls brazenly chugged the boat past the five Confederate forts guarding the harbor. Then, taking down the Confederate flag and hoisting a white sheet in its stead, he made a beeline for the blockading Federal fleet just beyond. Luckily the first US Navy ship he encountered noticed the sheet moments before it was set to open fire on the renegade vessel.

Smalls turned Planter over to the U.S. Navy, along with its cargo of artillery and explosives. Even more valuable, he handed over a codebook that revealed Confederacy secret signals and placement of mines and torpedoes around Charleston harbor. In addition, due to his comprehensive familiarity with the area, Smalls was able to offer extensive information about the harbor’s defenses.

The North was delighted! Smalls was an overnight hero and media sensation in Northern papers. Congress passed a bill awarding Smalls and the other seven crewmen $1500 in prize money for the captured vessel. Two weeks after the daring escape Smalls even met Abraham Lincoln himself, who was impressed by Smalls’s account of his exploits. Smalls’s deeds became a major argument for allowing African Americans to serve in the Union Army, and Smalls himself served as a pilot for the Union forces. In 1863 Smalls became the first black Captain of a vessel in the service of the United States.

This is just the beginning of Smalls’s accomplishments, but the rest will have to wait for another blog post. I’ll just observe that as much as Smalls was lauded by the North, he was in equal parts reviled by the South. In a war, one side’s hero is almost necessarily the other side’s varlet.

The Benefits of a Brisk Wind

2011-03-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

On my last trip to Beaufort Spanish moss was everywhere. It hung from the live oaks but also from other shrubbery and even telephone wires. It was thicker and even more evocative than usual, catching the light in its swaying, ever modulating green-gray wisps.

But the residents complained that the moss was too prolific. Now Spanish moss is not a parasite. (It is technically not even moss but a bromeliad.) But even as an epiphyte, absorbing nutrients and water from the air and rainfall, if it gets too thick, it weighs down branches and prevents light from getting to the leaves of its host.

The owners of one grand home had hired someone with a cherry-picker to strip every last piece of moss from their tall oaks. But I have to say those trees looked awfully bare and plain after that.

What the town needed, residents said, was a good storm to blow the moss out of the trees. Then there would be balance again. Only with storms could the trees and the moss naturally live in harmony.

Mental travel

2011-03-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

Once I realized that Beaufort was indubitably the location of the story I had in me to tell, naturally I had a burning passion to see the place. However, due to family responsibilities and the sheer cost of travel, I had to postpone my first visit for many more months than I liked.

What to do? I read everything about the city I could get my hands on--from dry history books, to on-line newspapers, to old fiction set there. Since the San Francisco Public Library is curiously lacking in materials about Beaufort, South Carolina, I had to buy many more books than I liked, but now these volumes are old friends.

In my near frenzy to see the place, I took to walking the streets via Google Maps street view. I would make my way down Craven Street into the Old Point, glimpsing houses through the shrubbery, getting frustrated with dead ends, trying to get a sense of what this town was all about.

So when I actually got to Beaufort the first time, it was quite a surreal experience. To be surrounded by an entire town that was simultaneously foreign and familiar created a dichotomy more unnerving than I expected. In a dream-like way I knew the order of the streets, that if I turned left here I would see such and such building, that if I continued straight for three blocks I would find the river. I recognized house after house I'd never seen, stepping along roads where even the asphalt was strangely familiar.

Ah, but as you might guess, the real thing easily outstrips the virtual. Google maps couldn't capture the light through trees, the richness of the resurrection ferns, the allure of the Spanish moss. It couldn't reproduce the timeless serenity of the antebellum homes, the play of the tidal river, or even offer me up a dolphin. It could convey structure but not soul.

Maybe someday we humans will master virtual realities complete enough to truly fool our senses, like the holodecks on Star Trek. Until then, the best form of mental travel might very well be a good book.

The elegant joy of touring South Carolina

2011-03-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

My friend, Melinda Adams, from Cabbages and Kings Press, went with me on my book tour of South Carolina to keep me company, doubling the fun. She was the trip photographer and took the excellent picture of a chandelier hanging in a Beaufort garden that is now in the header of this blog. (Also at left, in its full, uncut glory.)

I thought long and hard about what would happen to this chandelier if it hung at arm's length from a sidewalk in San Francisco. It would be stripped in one night, most likely, or its crystals would be fractured by the wind.

I didn't get to see the chandelier at night with lit candles, but the sunlight reflecting through its prisms was grand enough.