October 19 - November 1, 2008

The Wordy Shipmates
Sarah Vowell
2008, hardcover
14 cards

This is a book about the Puritans, the Separatists and the Non-Separatists, but since it is written by Sarah Vowell it is so much more than that. Vowell positions what took place in the early days of the United States alongside the current wars the United States wages. With her humor and cynicism and wading through history to dredge up the good stuff, her approach also demonstrates how one can fuse one's practice, with one's beliefs in ways that inform the current state of affairs rather than just recount. And the book starts with a drawing by Marcel Dzama. With the recent election we might not be Ronald Regan anymore (p. 62), but we'll see.

Since it is the month of the holiday known as Thanksgiving I point your attention to the following statement: "Days of thanksgiving were earned. They would be appalled by US calendars calling for a holiday...What if we didn't deserve it?" (p. 198) Maybe this year it should have been November 5.

Some excerpts:
1- "The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed."
6- Middle East
-"Answer: Because Henry VIII had a crush on a woman who was not his wife."
-"(Martin) Luther's point was that, according to scripture, salvation is not a bake sale..."
7- "Luther translated the Bible into German so Germans could read it for themselves."
9- "hot Protestants" (Puritans)
11- The Humble Request, 1630- "Nothing uppity about us, Your Majesty, we're just hobos in the woods."
-Winthrop: "We shall be as a city upon a hill."
12- wrote their own books
-Ralph Waldo Emerson- "The art of writing is the highest of those permitted to man."
13- "The United States is often called a Puritan nation. Well, here is one way in which it emphatically is not: Puritan lives were overwhelmingly, fanatically literary."
14- Reverend Thomas Shepard Jr. to his son: "So I say to you read! Something will stick in the mind, be diligent and good will come of it."
15- John Adams- "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties..."
16- David McCullough
20- "check out those barbarian idiots with their cockamamie farce of a legal system, locking people up for fishy reasons and putting their criminals to death. Good thing Americans put an end to all that nonsense long ago."
21- General Cornwallis [so that's why that road name near me comes from]
23- the Great Migration 1629-40
24-25- Massachusetts Bay Colony's official seal [Dzama's drawing]- "Indian says, 'Come over and help us!'"
-"The worldview behind that motto- we're here to help, whether you want our help or not- is the Massachusetts Puritans' most enduring bequest to the future United States. And like everything the Puritans believes, it is derived from scripture."
26- 1801 inaugural address by Thomas Jefferson argues for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations- entangling alliances with none."
30- germs- "The kingdom of death extended from Chile to Newfoundland..."- map at the National Museum of the American Indian
-Squanto- "spoke English because he had learned it in Europe after he was kidnapped by sailors. By the time he made his way back to America, everyone he knew was dead."
34- text at the museum next to the map- "That initial explosion of death is one of the greatest tragedies in human history because it was unintended and unavoidable, and even inevitable. But what happened in its wake was not."
45- MLK Jr. 1957- "So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you 'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'"
54- John Adams- "The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed for the common good."
56- surveillance
59- Dolly Parton
-Winthrop's sermon, as a supposed early model for the idea of America, became a blank screen onto which Americans in general and Reagan in particular projected their own ideas about the country we ended up with."
-"And looking into the ways the sermon, or at least that one phrase in it [city on a hill] was used, throws open the American divide between action and words, between what we say we believe versus what we actually do."
62- "In the USA, we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues."
-"City on a hill, though- that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizen of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we are Ronald Regan."
65- Reagan: "...and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here..."
69- Abu Ghraib
74- regularly scheduled voting
81- blank pages
82- ferkins- kilderkin
86- state house, Boston- "one of the oldest upholstered chairs made in New England."
91- plaques in Boston
108- "A cross, to a Puritan, is not a symbol of Christ- it is a symbol of the pope."
112- pamphlet fight!
118- Vacation Bible school- "It was like arts-and-crafts camp, only churchier..."
119- lessons "be true to yourself, be not afraid to defy authority, be willing to die for what you believe in..."
127- "Williams's greatness lies in his refusal to keep his head down in a society that prizes nothing more than harmony and groupthink. He cares more about truth than popularity or respect or personal safety."
128- "...Winthrop is Peter Seeger...Williams is Bob Dylan plugging in at Newport..."
129- Williams "a man who devotes his life to keeping government out of the church- not the other way around."
148- "...Rhode Island was purchased by love."
150- "Williams, like Melville, is a tad too excited, too lonely, too longwinded, too strange."
-Melville- paper mill- "endless supply of paper on which 'I should write a thousand-a million-billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you!"
157- "I'm an indoorsy urban woman..."
159- "most useful, or at least the most telling" Algonquin phrases Williams translates: "We understand no each other." "You trouble me."
171- pirate
196- Foxwoods
197- dioramas
198- "When's Thanksgiving?"
-"might be June 15, 1637"
-"Days of thanksgiving were earned. They would be appalled by US calendars calling for a holiday...What is we didn't deserve it?"
236-237- (magazine subscription card) "she is either male property (Mrs.), wannabe male property (Miss) or man hating harpy (Ms.)."
238- plaque text
239- "To get to his city you see her name."
248- JFK: "For of those to whom much is given, much is required."

July 30 - August 2, 2008

Killing Yourself to Live 85% of a True Story

Chuck Klosterman

2005, hardcover

16 cards

Chuck Palahniuk and Chuck Klosterman are different people. I now know that. Even better, Chuck Klosterman's books are about music and they are interesting and they are well written. Klosterman writes about music as a listener but his gift is talking about it as it fits into a person's life, how it infiltrates thinking and understanding and relationships. While the larger subject of the book is an assignment about how rock stars have died, the personal epiphanies and thoughts of Klosterman loom larger than any discoveries that could be made (and rarely were) when say, standing on the spot of the plane crash of the Big Bopper Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. The observations Klosterman offers appear true to life he lives and there's a sense of honesty in the way he writes about them (even though that might factor into the 85%, 15% ratio). While he's wrong about a few things (no one needs to own Brittney Spears releases p. 16- thinking like this is why there are so many Jethro Tull records where used records are sold), that's ok, no one is perfect and if they were, that would probably be boring.

Some excerpts [with my comments in brackets]:

1- "Ohio. I was qualified to live in Ohio."

4- "We are all tourists, sort of. Life is tourism, sort of."

9- Chelsea Hotel- Stanley Beard, "The kind of person who wants to stay in Room 100 is just a cultic follower. These are people who have nothing to do....You will see that they are not serious-minded people. You will see that they are not trying to understand anything about death."

11- "I have no idea how people travel."

-"Death is part of life."

-"However, this is not necessarily true for rock stars; sometimes rock stars don't start living until they die." [The NYTimes recently had an article related to this- artists and death]

13- "Somewhere, at some point, somehow, somebody decided that death equals credibility. And I want to figure out why that is."

14- missing Car Rock

15- not owning vinyl or a turntable [hmmmmm]

18- diners [not that he really goes to many- chain restaurants instead]

19-compares a woman to the one in "Jolene" by Dolly Parton [How is this the first book I've read this year that mentions Dolly Parton????]

29- Honesty Room

-"...and one day I was structuring my entire life around spending time with her."

33- Springfield, Mass. Basketball Hall of Fame

-"Springfield is a poorly organized town." [So true!]

-"Like all museums, it's a rip-off." [not always true, but understood. Hall of Fames are always a rip-off.]

-"In theory, the Basketball Hall of Fame should simply serve as a pleasant distraction from the road and an opportunity to buy a t-shirt."

34- (Great White concert fire)- "In West Warwick, what used to be a tavern is now an ad hoc cemetery- which is the same role taverns play in most small towns, but not as obviously as this."

42- "Half the people who attend concerts only go so that they can tell other people that (a) certain shows were amazing, and (b) other shows sucked."

42-43- "I honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it."

- Chevy Cavaliers [a friend, when I told her about his mentioning of Cavaliers as a working class car alongside IROCS, said that he probably meant Cavaliers from the 90s. And if he's not, Jettas and other non-working class cars are for suckers.]

45- Synchronicity by The Police

46- "Like all modern people, I had no relationship with anyone in my building."

53- (Washington monument) "but what is this 500-foot masonry structure supposed to tell me? What is it supposed to make me understand? ... I'll never understand why people need to see things just so they can say they saw them."

57- Petula Clark Downtown list

58- "Artists who believe they have any control over the interpretation of their work are completely fooling themselves."

61- "Every summer, Hollywood movie studios convince millions of people to see blockbuster movies they know they're going to hate."

-"Who really cares who Lindsay Lohan is dating? Almost no one."

-"But it's still information they need to have. This is because those people care about something else entirely; they're worried about the possibility of everyone else understanding something they're missing." [v. true]

63- North Carolina

64- "...I must run: Running keeps me alive." [also in agreement here]

64- "This NC oxygen is delicious..." (mentions Superchunk) [yes except when it is above 90]

67- "At their core, the final outcome to every football game (including the Super Bowl) is wholly meaningless.

70- Mary Beth- dreams and media

79- The Standard Hotel

84- (people talking about dreams) "It's a way for people to be honest without telling the truth."

86- Wilco- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot- 9/11 [The thing he missed with this is that the album was streaming on the internet when 9/11 happened. That was the really eerie part of the album and 9/11.]

87- "...what can you say when skyscrapers collapse?"

91- "Right now, most rock journalism is just mild criticism with a Q & A attached. Nobody learns anything (usually) and nothing new is created (ever).

92- "...the pursuit of intellect and the so-called 'life-of-the-mind' makes people broaden their classification for what can be reasonably classified as important."

112-113- "We are always dying, all the time. That's what living is; living is dying, little by little."

141- Rumors Fleetwood Mac [which I discovered is a fabulous album only this year]

143- Jeff Tweedy- transcendent moments, unintentional

-CK mentions guitar strong at the beginning of Fleetwood Mac's "I Don't Want to Know" [my favorite song on the album]- "we loved hearing the inside of a song."

164- "Nothing is going to happen tonight."

166- "...reading was a kind of neutral, reactive way to spend an evening."

171- (3 import stores) "I will never understand what people want out of life."

173- "...the things I write are often things I would never say."

195- Thomas Jefferson to Lewis and Clark- seeing mastodons

196- westerly

198- Led Zeppelin and guys

201- talk radio- though Dick Cheney dead

202- "Right now it would be easier to find uranium than college kids."

205- "I don't miss high school at all."

-"I have nothing to say, but I can't stop myself from talking."

216- "That's the history of KISS and those are the contents of my heart."

217- "I love KISS because the world makes sense when I think about them. Art and love are the same thing. It's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. It's understanding the unreasonable."

224- Kurt Cobain's death- people unconnected to Kurt, Seattle or grunge- "...suddenly chose to remember themselves in a completely different way."

227- "...his death changed the history of the living."

-"Kurt Cobain was that popular-yet-unpopular kid who dies for the sings of your personality."

230- (people needing to believe he lived under the bridge) "...Maybe it's something they need to believe, because if they don't, they will be stuck with the mildly depressing revelation that dead people are simply dead."

-"...everything else has nothing to do with the individual who died and everything to do with the people who are left behind..."

231- checking email

232- "We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy."

-"But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like....4 or 5 of these people."

-"the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real and the feelings are real- but you create the context."

233- Lucy Chance- "The bar misses you."

235- "I am ready to be alone."