Compulsively Aimless

Four hundred years ago, religious pilgrims left England for a journey that landed on the shores of what is now Massachusetts.  I have a handful of books on the Pilgrims from the Mayflower. 1. Of Plymouth Plantation 1620 to 1647 William Bradford edited by SE Morrison (1952).  Considered the most authoritative account about Plymouth and written by the settlement's governor and driving spiritual force, William Bradford. Bradford tells the story of the Pilgrims' first stop in Holland, their harrowing transatlantic crossing, the first harsh winter in the new land, and the help from Native Americans that saved their lives. The text was lost for a couple of centuries when it was rediscovered and published in the U.S. shortly before the Civil War. Its discovery and return can be credited with Abraham Lincoln's proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving. Editor and eminent historian, Samuel Elliot Morrison described the return to the U.S. as a "literary sensation."...

With the little mars of ownership and inscriptions, books can be transformed into something more than their content. They can symbolize a moment in time for the family member and the book. Here are a few examples from my library:  1. A Wonder-Book Tanglewood Tails and Grandfathers Chair by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1883).   The inscription in this book marks a moment in time for my grandmother then Dorothy Haynes, who received it as a Christmas gift in 1907 from her aunt Loucella. My grandmother would have been 12 years old at the time living in Sandusky, Ohio at the Ohio veterans home where her father was the chief surgeon. I try to imagine her Christmas morning where she opens the book around a Christmas tree with her for brothers and parents. This was part of a Riverside set of books that was popular at the time one of 13 volumes of Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s work.  2.  Napoleon,  Emil Ludwig 1926. The inscription on this book shows it it was given to my gra...

I’ve been lucky to inherit a handful of books that have come down through the generations on my mother’s side of the family. I think of these books as extensions of family members I never knew but can still understand their thoughts and interests. I try to imagine the life of the ancestor with the book. One day, the book was deliberately selected, or given as a gift, and then read by its owner. Their owners died and the books were taken down from shelves packed up and taken to a new home where they may have been read by the descendant of the owner. They are particularly special because they show the owners added their name to the book. This is to share what I have in two parts: books of the times and books as artifacts of a life. Part One: Spiritualism at the End of the 19th Century Spiritualism flourished in England and America in the 1840s to the 1920s. By the end of the 1800s, spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers mostly from the middle and upper classe...

As I buy more books, I'm updating some past lists. Here's one from 2012 with a few additions. Thought this one timely since every presidential election year, Ohio gets some time to be the big man on the Electoral College Campus. And remember, lists are random and incomplete samples of what's on my shelf at a moment in time. I learned the hard way moving to the east coast that Ohio was the Rodney Dangerfield of states. Telling an east or west coaster you’re from Ohio was a guaranteed death-knell to any conversation. The usual response is "oh" followed by an excuse to find the bar for a refill. You may even feel you are suddenly invisible. This is because we lack distinctive identities. There’s no aura of New York sophistication or the hipness of California or Seattle or intellectual superiority of Cambridge. We can’t charm folks with lilting accents, distinctive hats and boots or entice pastoral romantics with our picturesque fall calendars (even though ou...

  For a couple of semesters in college I worked at the on-campus student coffee shop, The Bandersnatch, named after the creature in Lewis Carroll's famous nonsensical poem, Jabberwocky . When you work inside a Lewis Carroll nonsense poem, you start to take nonsense seriously. While I was toasting bagels and brewing coffee, I thought about it enough to create my own incomplete, nonsense hierarchy. (The lists here reflect my myopia with modern pop culture.) 1. Understandable Nonsense. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously ," is a sentence composed by the MIT Professor of Linguistics, Noam Chomsky, and the best example I can think of as nonsense where the words are all understandable but whose meaning is nonsensical. This category is not a lot of fun, mostly because it seems to be the playground for academics to make linguistic arguments.    2. Mixed-Up Nonsense. Second degree of nonsense would be a mix of the understandable and made up. Carroll's 1855 Jabborwocky i...

                  Plato at the Rave Welcome to the rage cave both old and odd Dark Rebellion In front of the crowd he threw the detached claw into the maw and turned his back   on stone monkey gods with flames for eyes Ouch Ready for bed gashed my head filled with dread Furniture and Nothingness What’s good for the discount furniture store is good for the nihilist Everything Must Go! Throw in Bad Alliteration I destroyed the dessert for the deserving desert party At dawn it was desultory Fade to Black You’ll know it’s the end when light sneaks away   leaving    the space  vacant for darkness. Let’s Have Halloween License Plates Slogan: First in Fright! Perverse Boast He sang My spinster sister the sinister usurper Mark Your Calendars On Opposite Day I’ll watch my basement TV in the attic. Could it be a Song? His brain was original His heart was not like all the others it was broken. Cut Grass Sounds of the lawnmower...

  Artist Unknown   Second Story Mystery I remember living on the second floor the one you see from a passing car on an urban highway and wonder who lives up there with the light on so late at night well it's me watching the cars go by until one night driving home from my shift at the liquor store I run out of gas on some other urban highway and there it is above the rusting guardrail a square of light from the second story window and me wondering who is up there so late at night with the light on.                          Gray and Gold , John Rogers Cox, Cleveland Museum of Art   Without Schedule I want enough time to find a vantage point to view armadas of thunderheads crawl the western plains on tentacles of lighting and see the bruised sky after the storm at sunset. I want more time to understand the prevailing wind and observe patterns of crows and hawks and sit out on the land long enough to be watched by n...