Soupbones Reader

After ‘tabling the motion’ about a table for my upper patio area for a few years, I’ve finally taken some action. Now that the stairway railing is in, I want the top of the stairs to be a more inviting place. I saw this homemade ‘reclaimed lumber’ patio table (sitting on a bed of gravel even!) in an issue of Sunset Magazine.

A quick phone-camera grab of the 'inspiration' table

One of the reasons I moved so slowly on this project is that the patio space is a strange shape, and round, square and rectangle tables didn’t seem to fit. So this reclaimed homemade table idea appealed to me. I am making a custom table that is the same shape as my patio area! It is working out great. Here’s how it looks today, waiting for redwood planks: (I know that right leg looks a little tilted, but it’s ‘mostly’ an optical illusion.)

Custom table allows for custom fit

Sometimes it’s not age or alcohol. Sometimes you’ve just run 26 miles and are struggling to get up the stairs. Well, I’ve finally installed a stairway railing. A big thanks to my friend Curtis for welding it together for me. You can see Curtis in a video over at weldcrafts.com. Our friend Kerry helped me design it a bit, too. We did the right thing and had it powder-coated, so the finish is glossy and tough. It is so nice feeling like you could catch yourself if you tripped on those steep old stairs. Come by and give it a try (if I know you, or would want to).

Railing braced while it sets-up in the concrete post-holes.

Curtis posing with his work, in a weldcrafts.com T-shirt.

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Good that I got to this book report when I did. Although I read the book back in September 2008, right now there is much being made of “Mark Twain’s Autobiography” finally being published 100 years after his death. Rumor has it (and I heard the rumor from my own mom) that Mark Twain insisted his autobiography not be published until 100 years after his death. What he actually said, was, “From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out. There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”

The word is “unexpurgated.” Mark Twain insisted in 1909 that his opinions, political and otherwise, not be included in versions of the book prior to 2009. There were three versions released previous to the one being published today (1924, 1940, and 1959), and all of them were expurgated. To expurgate is to “remove obscene or objectionable material.” I read a heavily censored version from 1924. Imagine what they found objectionable back then that might have flown in the 1959 version, even! But my assignment is my assignment: Find a “C” book on the library shelf that looks interesting, read it, and report a few nuggets back to my dear readers. So, I read the 1924 version of “Mark Twain’s Autobiography, Volume 1,” by Samuel Clemens.

Another duel

2008 was a while ago, so my main memory of this book is tied to Aaron Burr. Like Burr, Mark Twain found himself challenged to a duel. Twain was sitting-in as editor of a newspaper in Nevada, while the primary editor was on a vacation to Europe. Newspaper editors in those days were rascally, opinionated asses, and would take slanderous pot shots at each other in their paper’s pages, and quite often in the local bar if they happened to end up there at the same time, which they did regularly. The feuds would escalate to physical violence and property damage that only Twain can describe.

Another editor eventually challenged Twain to a duel. If you read my Burr post, you know that duels were already illegal, and that it was already customary to not aim for your opponent, even 100 years before these editors planned to pace one off. Yet, they each took time to practice. Twain says that he had an instructor who was a sharpshooter. The two participants practiced in separate valleys with a hill between them. Twain’s opponent sent a scout to the top of the hill to see how good Twain was shooting. Twain had been aiming for a barn, and mostly missing. His coach was making a demonstration, and took aim at a little bird in a tree. Twain also had his gun up and had the bird in its sights. Just as the opponent’s scout made it to the top of the hill, Twain’s coach shot the little bird. When the scout focused on the scene, he saw Twain lowering his gun, and he saw the feathers of this little bird, floating out and down from a central point of explosion in the tree branches.
He ran back down to his team in the other valley, and soon word came that the opponent had canceled the duel.

Fugitive

The similarities to Burr’s situation continue. You’ll remember that Burr was a fugitive from New Jersey for much of his life, because dueling was illegal, and he had essentially murdered Alexander Hamilton. Well Twain was sitting in his newspaper office a day or two after the duel was canceled, and the sheriff came in to say, “Clemens, tomorrow I gotta start looking for you. You might want to leave the state tonight.” He did, he never returned, and he was a fugitive from the state of Nevada the rest of his days. I think. It was 2008 when I read this. Check Wikipedia if you want a teensy bit more reliable source.

It’s a big book

If this book report inspires you to read more about Twain, let me warn you that the new version of the book is 500,000 words long published in three volumes, and experts say it is not something you would read from cover-to-cover. Instead, you’d want to “read a little bit of it everyday, for the rest of your life!” Good luck with that!

Here are a few articles that validate my story about the previous versions of this same biography:

• Dead for a Century, Twain Says What He Meant
• Mark Twain’s Autobiography Flying Off the Shelves

Fast Tube by Casper

Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
By Nancy Isenberg
2007
Penguin Group, NY NY

Going in, I knew two things about Aaron Burr. That he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and that he was one of only two sitting vice presidents to shoot someone (Dick Cheney being the other one).

As you may have garnered from the book’s title, Burr caused a lot of trouble considering he was a founding father. I guess Jefferson and Washington really didn’t like him, and Jefferson even prosecuted him for treason. The book says that Burr was painted out of a Revolutionary War painting. The book convincingly paints a better picture of Burr. He was a man with strong convictions on the side of doing what’s right. He was anti-slavery, believed women were equal to men, and cared about the rights of the common man.

Aaron Burr invented the class-action lawsuit. He gathered a bunch of tenants together to sue a landlord. It was the first case of its kind.

Parenting

He was an inspired but strict parent. Even though he was often away at various congressional sessions, he had his children write letters to him regularly. He would correct them and send them back. He believed that education represented the sum total of a persons adult potential, and he made sure his children were “constantly employed” and that “no time was absolutely wasted.” Busy children excel. If I’m ever a parent, this little nugget will come in handy.

The duel

I’m vague on the reasons (I never promised you high reading comprehension scores), but Hamilton hated Burr, and ran a huge smear campaign against him during the election of 1800 (the one to choose our third president). This election was as contentious as ours in 2000, with Jefferson and Burr getting the same number of electoral votes. The House of Representatives had to settle it, and Hamilton rallied against Burr in a big way. So Burr became our 3rd VP, and The Hamilton/Burr stew reached a boiling point.

Duels were illegal, but New Jersey had the lightest penalty, so the duel was held there. Our sitting vice president participating in an illegal activity—one punishable by death in New York (hence the decision to go to Jersey). Duels were already largely just a face-saving ceremony, and it was customary to fire your shot in the air, and not actually aim for your opponent. But Hamilton, just before the 10-paces part of the ceremony, when the two men were at their closest, said to Burr, “I do not intend to waste my shot.” You can almost hear Burr saying, “Then bring it ON!!” Probably something in an older English style, like, “Then bring it forth, my good sir.” And so they really did aim for each other. Hamilton missed, Burr didn’t. Hamilton died the next day, and Burr was a fugitive from New Jersey and New York for most of his remaining days.

I remember that he got involved in grabbing land from Mexico, and other swashbuckling, war-like adventures in the years after his vice presidency.

He was indeed one of our key founding fathers (I think you can say that if you were in the executive branch in the first 3 or 4 terms, you were one of the key players). But he suffered from the transition all of these men made from revolutionary fighter to founding father. The book says that during the revolutionary war it was cool to be seen as a young rebel, but as soon as we won, “the act of nation building became enshrined in the province of fathers.” You needed to be old and stately for this new phase, and Aaron Burr was still genuinely a young man (like 21 in 1776, to Washington’s 44, and Jefferson’s 33). He was even considered for the VP position under #2, John Adams (41, in 1776), but was too young. He grew old through a lifetime of adventure and doing what he felt was right, and that alone is a nice legacy.

DK and I happened to have a big lunch together at Bull Dog’s Barbecue in Martinez just a few hours before we were scheduled to run. So when the time came, neither of us really wanted to run. But we’re not quitters, so we showed up for our run anyway. We ran what I call a ‘tourist run,’ and it’s the trusty GPS watch that makes it possible.

Instead of having a particular route in mind, we just started the watch, and started running. I could keep an eye on our time and mileage, and we could just explore. We were down near the Martinez waterfront, but instead of running the normal path, we went east, between the Bocce courts and the skate park, cut through some very well kept baseball diamonds, saw a rodeo arena, then took a left out onto a muddy jetty kind of thing that looked like it could hold a good sized pond in place, but all that was there was a huge bed of cracked earth. It was eerie looking, like maybe something from another planet. We ran on the jetty between that dead pond and the Carquinez Strait, and came out with muddy shoes in front of the Marina. Then we joined our normal route for a while. Part way through we noticed a huge freight train off in the distance, coming toward Martinez from Crockett. It had three big headlights on the locomotive, and there was just enough daylight to see that it was a really long train. We decided to race it, to try to get to the Union Pacific yard before it did–or at least before it was gone! It was an absolute blast to sprint like a little kid. According to the Garmin, we reached a 5-minute mile pace for a stretch there. We got very close to making it. We were close enough for the train to be big, and loud, but technically it had left the yard by the time we got there.

What was so nice about that decision to sprint was just the organic target that train provided. I mean we weren’t using our watch, and doing very specific intervals or anything, we were just out being tourists, and found a real-world reason to run as fast as hell for a few minutes. It was awesome!

Woody Allen: A Life in Film
Schickel, Richard
2003, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago

What I thought I already knew about Woody

• He said “80 percent of anything is just showing up,” which I’ve taken very literally, and it has worked well for me. But he talks about it in this book, and now that I know the whole story, I’m going to have to slightly amend my interpretation.
• He likes younger women. This is clear to me not from the Soon-Yi story, but from his casting choices in the last few decades. He talks about this too, and we’ll discuss.
• That he was a stand-up comic at places like the Hungry-I in San Francisco, and that he loves New York, and plays clarinet in a jazz band, and all that.

About the book

This book is nothing more than a transcription of a television interview the author conducted with Woody Allen. The interview is 109 pages, and comes after a long introduction that took up 70 pages and was filled with big words such as “palliatives,” which the author uses twice. The interview is just slightly deeper than one of those ‘press junket’ interviews. Schickel is a film critic (for Time Magazine and others), and in the introduction and the questions, comes across as a self-important guy, like any number of local-station ‘entertainment reporters’ that get flown down to Hollywood to interview the stars of a new release. In these junkets, the star sits down, and the reporters file through the interviewer chair, one after the other. The movie company even provides the cameras, and hands the reporter a tape on their way out. Maybe that’s how they work, I don’t really know. All I know is this guy seems just like one of those reporters, who tries so hard to have a personal moment—a friendship in 2 minutes—with a huge celebrity.

What’s funny is he’s particularly pompous throughout, but waits until the second-to-last sentence of the book to say, “forgive the pompous phrase.” As if “the human condition” is the only pompous phrase in a book filled with them! Woody, however, is great in the book, and I learned a lot.

Because I already don’t like the reporter, and he’s trying so hard to present an (imaginary?) established relationship with Woody, I get a big kick out of Woody beginning most of his answers with No, no. I wouldn’t say that,” and “No, that’s not how it was,” or “You’ve read that film completely wrong.” The best and most personal attack is, “If we socialized, you’d know that I do that kind of thing all the time.” Here, Allen basically let’s the world know that he doesn’t know Schickel from Adam. Okay, enough picking on the author. I’m just jealous.

One of the minor, but early themes I picked up from the interview is that Woody Allen is not nearly as scattered as his characters. He is in fact a “willful man, who will do what he feels he needs to do, and say what he feels needs to be said, no matter the obstacles” (p.61).

Also, he doesn’t have a very high regard for psychotherapy. He is not obsessed with death, or afraid of it, the way his characters always are, but death’s inevitability does shape the core of his view on life. He does not believe in God. He believes in luck. “There are a certain number of things in life that cannot be tackled head-on. Love, a good relationship, is one. There’s a big element of chance in it. You really do need a break” (p.131).

I like both of these points. I tend to want to be liked, and that frequently means bending my will to match the will of others. That has caused me some trouble. To have conviction, know what I want, and make it happen through my own will, is something I strive for… if it’s okay with everyone I care about!

And the love thing. It’s a recurring theme in many of his movies, but I’m still glad he spelled it out for me in this interview. Your will cannot win at love. The other person really has to want the relationship, too. I’ve been on both sides of the losing equation, and it’s a total bummer. But it’s truly amazing when you find that person who’s will matches yours! In Annie Hall, Annie’s spirit gets up from the bed while she’s making love with Alvy, and wanders around looking for a sketch pad. But, in The Purple Rose of Cairo, Jeff Daniels is an actor on a movie screen, and he hops down off the screen to spend some quality time with Mia Farrow in the audience. You win some, you lose some.

More things that resonated with me

About Zelig (that’s a movie character who appears in many famous news event clips. He just seems to be everywhere at the right time. It’s kind of like the Forrest Gump news clips), Woody says: “What interested me was the kind of person who assimilated into every group because he or she wanted to be liked, and was a different person to every different group he was with. You’ll see them… they’ll be discussing something very simple. They’ll be discussing a film and they’ll say, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t like the last James Bond film. I thought it was very foolish and silly.’ And then they’ll be speaking with someone else, and the other people will lead by saying, ‘We saw the James Bond film. We loved it.’ And this person will suddenly shift and say, ‘Yeah, that had some exciting things in it.’ They are suddenly abandoning their own persona so they don’t cause waves, and they’re liked by the other person.” Ugh. I do that kind of thing all the time, even for simple things like my opinion of the latest James Bond film. I’ll throw a change-up, just to be liked. To my friends, I promise to be more committed to my opinions in 2011.

The 80 percent thing. He really did say it, but he said it to a group of young playwrights, and his advice was to “Write your play. Let it be a bad play if it has to be, but don’t strike out by not writing your play.” So, it turns out that physically showing up and just standing there—my literal interpretation of his quote, which I have used to stay gainfully employed for almost 30 years—may not be enough! I probably should have produced some actual work, good or bad, during that time! I like the new interpretation of the quote. I’ve never been published, but I’ve never even submitted an article. I really haven’t shown up to do the work. Ah, it’s so clear now! I gotta put the effort into writing my play (I don’t want to write a play, and I’m committed to that statement).

On work ethic, I must say we agree. Woody does a film a year, every year. But he’s not a workaholic. He says (p.146) when discussing a workday on the set of a movie, “If I don’t have it too well, and I could do one more shot, but it’s six o’clock and I need to be at the Knick’s game at seven, I blow-off the shot and go to the game.”

Work-life balance is key. So that’s what I got from my “A” book. Off to a pretty good start.

Allen. I started with Woody Allen. I wonder if Soon-Yi started with Woody Allen? In my case, I started my effort to read 26 biographies, from A to Z, back in July 2008. I’m not in a rush, obviously. I’ve been reading consistently, but I do take large breaks to read other books, like the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series, and hundreds of self-help books. Just Kidding. As I write this introduction I am on the letter K. I haven’t taken great notes on all of the books, but I think that has actually helped. Now each book has naturally distilled itself down to the few things I remember, and I can make blog posts of a reasonable length! Also, by waiting a bit to post about each book, it gives me a chance to ponder the connections between the subjects, and between the subjects and me. For example, you probably knew that my “B,” Aaron Burr, killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. But did you know that my very next letter, “C,” Samuel Clemens, also participated in a duel? Born a lifetime apart (Clemens was 1 when Burr died at 80), they were still prepared to battle it out 10 paces from their opponent. I think reading biographies alphabetically may allow me to make connections between people in history that haven’t been made before.

I enjoy reading biographies (and autobiographies), and getting my history lessons from a first-person perspective. Biographies often include a record of the times and spaces that this one person moved through, a record of events in history that this person experienced. They can be more engrossing than reading an over-arching, cinemascope view of events. Of course there is no substitute for the thrilling books by David McCullough. They have a very important place in making history an engaging place to get lost, but biographies just add that doppelganger element, where you are there, over the shoulder of someone, watching history unfold a day at a time.

Over the years I have spent some quality time over the shoulders of Al Capone, Richard Brautigan, Nelson Rockefeller, Tom Waits, and Harry and Bess Truman, (although that was a collection of their letters—she stayed back in Missouri while he was in the White House—so a Truman may still end up on my list at the T-spot). Of course (I’m hoping anyway), I’ve read dozens of others that I just can’t remember. My memory will be jarred when I see their books on the shelf, and I promise not to repeat subjects, or count any books I’ve already read. It’ll be 26 new people to learn from, in alphabetical order.

I wish I had thought of this just a little bit earlier because before starting I had just finished one of the best books I’ve ever read, and it would have made a great “B.” Manhunt is about the 12-day search for John Wilkes Booth, and of course it includes all the exposition about Booth and his life before he shot President Lincoln. Did you know he was such a well-known actor that he could have easily requested a visit with the president, and killed him in the oval office if he’d wanted? It’s a fascinating book that my niece Sarah gave me. It’s been bouncing around my circle, and everyone loves it. It’s a page turner.

I hope you enjoy the series of blog posts, which I will release occasionally until I catch up to myself!

Here’s how this works: I stand at the library, browsing the biography section for the letter I’m on, and I’ll choose an available book on someone that interests me, someone I can learn from.

Okay, here we go! 26 excuses not to focus on my own life!

You probably know about tricks you can play on your brain to make it think something is real that isn’t. One example is stereo photography. A flat image for your left eye, and a slightly different flat image for your right eye, fools your brain into thinking it is actually seeing a live, three-dimensional scene.
Well, if you bother to get up early and leave a car parked at the finish of your run, and then ride back to the start, and run point-to-point back to the parked car, your brain will assume you’re going on a long run.
We did that this Saturday. It was 9 miles. One of them in the rain. It’s not the kind of distance you’d normally do that car drop off thing for, but it really made it into a fun morning run. Much better than an out-and-back, or a loop. Here’s a photo from Sarah’s blog:

It’s been a tradition of mine to run in an organized Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. But this year I ran with Lupe and a group of ultra-marathoners on an informal outing. We ran Castle Rock, and were about two miles into the flat main route when one of the runners suggested a steep left turn. He pointed to the trail ahead of us, and said the steep trail just loops around and joins this trail a couple of miles ahead. He also said it was mostly flat!

We trucked up to the top of the hill. Puddles of water were coated with ice. At the top we came to a T, and based on the description we expected to hang a right and head up to the point where this trail would join our original route. But our leader said no. We needed to go left in order to get to a point that was clearly to our right! We followed him with holiday cheer (and some light-hearted jeers), and did indeed end up joining our original trail ahead of where we left it.

It was a fantastic run. Steep, crisp, and with lots of fun company. I was happy that I was able to keep up with them, until I realized they were planning another run the next morning. 18 miles of steep trails! I was able to keep up with them on what to them was just a leisurely 7 mile stroll to get some time on their feet before their big one the next day!