Read With Me! Audiobooks while driving.

 In January and again in April, I made the twenty-hour drive to visit my daughter. Yes, flying is faster, but I prefer to drive as long as it's possible to do so. Driving that far in a day or two does wear on a person, though, but listening to audiobooks helps the time pass much more smoothly.

In my day-to-day life, I rarely listen to audiobooks because when I'm home, I prefer books I can hold, but I do appreciate audiobooks on a long drive, especially when I'm doing that drive by myself with no one to talk to. Because of those long drives this year, I've listened to more audiobooks in 2022 than in all the prior years combined. It still isn't that many compared to the number of audiobooks that others consume, but, as I said, I tend only to listen to them on long drives.

Some books don't work well as audiobooks, and some narrators are far superior to others. One thing that I don't like about audiobooks is their pacing -- I can read the physical book faster. In fact, the pacing of the narrator of "The Great Alone," by Kristin Hannah, became so tedious to me that I stopped listening to it and checked out a physical copy once I'd arrived at the town where my daughter attends college. Then, I flew through the rest of the book. Since it's such a long book, it would have taken over 15 hours to listen to the complete audiobook, and even though my drive was longer than that, I don't like listening to the same story for 15 hours straight.

Hannah does an excellent job of pulling her readers into the setting of this story. Alaska is by far the most important 'character' of the story. I hate snow and ice and cold, so this novel made me shudder for many reasons.

On the flip side, I listened to "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" by Kim Michele Richardson in its entirety on the drive home because the narrator was phenomenal. Katie Schorr narrated it, and her voice really pulled me into the story. This novel grabbed me more than the "The Great Alone," too, because it's a story about books and their importance upon the backwoods' people of Kentucky years ago. It's also about a unique blood condition that made certain people have blue-tinged skin.

Another novel that's about books is "The Lost and Found Bookshop" by Susan Wiggs. I listened to the audiobook, and enjoyed Emily Rankin's narration, but I need to find a physical copy to look back through it for all the great book commentary and recommendations that I couldn't take note of while driving. I love reading books that are set in places I've visited, so this book kept bringing up great memories of my trip to San Francisco from a few years ago, and it made me want to get back there again.

My least favorite audiobook this year, so far, was "Bastard Out of Carolina" by Dorothy Allison. As a literary person, I'd often heard of this book, but I'd never thought to read it. Then, I happened to see it on my library's bookcase of audiobooks to check out as CDs. I listen to some audiobooks that way while driving, and I listen to others via my phone and the Libby app. I was a bit surprised to find that book in my small town's library of audiobook selections, so I checked it out for my drive. 

What a crazy, horrifying story. It's semi-autobiographical, which makes the things that happened to the girl in the story even worse. I almost stopped listening numerous times, but I powered through in the hopes that there would be some sort of satisfying resolution at the end of the story. There is not.

I do believe that this is a novel I should have read in its physical form instead because it gave me no pleasure as I drove, which is one of the things I like about audiobooks.

My favorite audiobook, by far, this year has been "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've learned" by Alan Alda. I loved it so much because Alda narrated it, and I absolutely adore him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H*. It's not a novel, but rather a memoir, so listening to the author share his own stories was simply heartwarming and quite comical at times. I learned a lot about him and his fascinating upbringing. 

This was a book I could easily listen to over and over. It's also very short with only four and a half hours of listening time needed to complete it.

I've long wanted to read a novel by Lisa See because I had a connection with her mother, the author Carolyn See. It was a small connection, but it was a meaningful one. Carolyn wrote one of my favorite books for writers: "Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers." In it, she recommends sending out "charming notes" to editors, agents, publishers, writers, etc. five times a week. While I haven't been able to make myself do that (yet), I did write one to her years ago telling her how much I loved her book. And then she wrote back to me!! I've kept her postcard in a special place since then because of her kind words to me. 

Sadly, Carolyn passed away a few years ago. I sent Lisa a note saying how special her mother's postcard was to me and how much I love "Making a Literary Life." Lisa wrote back to me, too! Like mother, like daughter. Lisa is a much more successful author than her mother was, but Lisa writes almost exclusively about Asian women and culture, and I've never been interested in Asian things. However, I wanted to read at least one of her books because of how much I appreciate her mother, so I listened to the audiobook of "The Island of Sea Women."

I did enjoy this book because of the swimming aspect of it, but this story is full of tragedy, and I did get tired of that. I'm perfectly okay with things going wrong, but I like a bit more balance in stories. However, this novel is based upon the very real "sea women" divers of South Korea, and what they do is fascinating.

Another long audiobook I listened to is "Truly Madly Guilty" by Liane Moriarty. 

This story is set in Australia, and that was perhaps the most interesting part of the story for me. It was simply too long at over 17 hours of listening time, and I would have preferred reading the physical copy of this one. However, I think this would have been one of those novels where I just would have skipped to the end to find out what had happened at the barbecue to get it over with. Moriarty took up a lot of time to build up to something that wasn't really all that interesting, in my opinion.

While I didn't listen to the following audiobook this year, it's still my favorite audiobook I've done so far. 

"The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown is about the University of Washington's rowing crew and all they went through in their quest to get to the Olympics in 1936 and win the gold. While I probably would have enjoyed the print version, hearing Edward Herrmann narrate the audiobook kicked the story onto a new plane. He had an amazing voice, and his many acting years helped him hone it perfectly. If you don't know who he is, here's his photo from a while ago: 

If you've never heard of the book or only read it in print version, I urge you to get an audiobook version of "The Boys in the Boat" and give it a listen. 

With half a year remaining of 2022, I'm not sure how many more audiobooks I'll listen to because I'm not planning any long drives in the foreseeable future, but I have been listening to my book club's current selection through the Libby app. I started it that way and had fully intended to read the physical copy when the library got mine in, but I was so enjoying the audio version that I've just kept listening to it.

It's "The Fountains of Silence" by Ruta Sepetys. The reason I'm so enjoying the audio is because it's set in Spain during the time of Franco's dictatorship, so there are a lot of Spanish words sprinkled throughout along with historically significant moments that all pertain to the subject I used to teach. I enjoy hearing Spanish whenever possible to keep myself fresh. 

The Valley of the Fallen in Spain is mentioned a lot in the book, and I've been there. Bullfighting has a small part in the story as well, and I've been to a bullfight in Spain -- I don't plan to ever attend another one, but I wanted to have the experience at least once. The nice thing about this book is that the chapters are all extremely short, so I can listen to entire chapters in a matter of minutes while driving short distances or while doing my morning yoga.

The Libby app has made it easier for me to try more audiobooks, but I still prefer, and will always prefer, physical copies of books. However, I've come to see and appreciate the value of audiobooks more and more this year, so I expect that many of my future longer drives will be passed while listening to a book or two.

Read With Me! Feeling Discontented this Winter?

The following is a guest post I wrote a couple years ago for a blog about Steinbeck. I've updated it a bit to share here because I think so much of what I wrote five years ago is even more relevant today. When I chose to read The Winter of Our Discontent, I confess it was because of the title rather than the content. But John Steinbeck’s novel is an apt expression of what I see as the winter of our discontent in the United States today (and for the past few years), and it reflects the reality I faced every day in my classroom when I was still teaching.

As John Steinbeck fans know, The Winter of Our Discontent tells the story of a simple grocery store clerk, an outwardly respectable man named Ethan Allen Hawley, and his moral descent into corruption and crime. Steinbeck’s moral tale gave me plenty of “ah-hah” and “why, yes” moments—the kind of experience one expects from excellent literature. As Steinbeck notes in the novel, “A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”

Though written years before the invention of the internet and social media, Steinbeck’s cautionary words are well-suited to our digitally-driven era. At this point in Steinbeck’s narrative, Ethan is thinking about how he has to shape his stories, or lies, to fit his hearers, and about a king in another story who told his secrets down a well because “It only receives, and the echo it gives back is quiet and soon over.” 

If only that were true today. For every tweet sent, there is usually a careless reader who misunderstands, misinterprets, or misappropriates the sender’s message, creating a backlash that becomes a raging beast that takes on a life of its own.

I don’t spend much time reading the comments people leave below online news stories or Facebook posts, but when I do I’m amazed at how far they wander from the point of the story or post. As Steinbeck knew, we take things out of context and add our own prejudices when we read or listen, and while I enjoy friendly banter as much as he did, I’m tired of the nastiness to which people increasingly resort when they don’t understand or approve of someone else’s point. I’m especially disgruntled when negative comments come from leaders who ought to know better and and who are setting a poor example for others.

As a school teacher, I recognized the truth in John Steinbeck’s unflattering portrayal of Ethan’s teenage children, particularly Ethan’s son Allen, and this line from the novel really made me laugh: “Three things will never be believed–the true, the probable, and the logical.” Often my students didn’t believe me when I'd tell them something that was demonstrably true, but they'd give instant credence to the next rumor they heard or read online, repeating it as if it were gospel truth. 

Fewer and fewer adults seem capable of logical thinking, so I probably shouldn’t  have been surprised. If you’re a teenager who isn’t capable of sound reasoning, you’re unlikely to believe someone who uses it. Like their parents, too many adolescents today are prepared to accept negative surface propaganda while doubting deeper truths.

Is this because people want to take the easy way out of every problem, as Steinbeck suggests in The Winter of Our Discontent? Ethan is appalled when he learns that the patriotic essay for which Allen has won a cash award has been plagiarized. But Ethan’s reaction is hypocritical, because by this point in the story he has stooped pretty low himself. Unlike his father however, Allen shows no remorse, defending his behavior in much the same way my students defended their reliance on the internet so that they didn’t have to do any thinking for themselves. Instead, when Allen’s plagiarism is exposed he gets mad at the person who ratted on him and utters the rallying cry of all cheaters and thieves: “‘Who cares? Everybody does it.’” 

Like John Steinbeck, I care, and I care very much. Just as I wearied of calling out cheaters like Allen in my classroom, I now weary of all the hypocrisy raging around me in our world today. 

Ethan has had his own “Who cares?” moments growing up, but he had the advantage of a perfect teacher in his Aunt Deborah, a character I liked because I love words, grammar, literature, and everything associated with language, just as she does. When Ethan comes across the word talisman and asks her what it means, she tells him to look it up. As a result, he recalls, “So many words are mine because Aunt Deborah first aroused my curiosity and then forced me to satisfy it by my own effort. . . . She cared deeply about words and she hated their misuse as she would hate the clumsy handling of any fine thing.” When he finds the definition of talisman he discovers new words that he is forced to look up, too. “It was always that way,” he says. “One word set off others like a string of firecrackers.”

I highlighted the passage in the novel because I love the simile, and I love the way Steinbeck manages to incorporate his passion for words into an otherwise depressing story. Now, more than ever, we need Aunt Deborahs in our lives to make us aware of the beauty and magic of words at an early age. 

No doubt this idea impressed me because of the prejudices I bring with me when I read John Steinbeck: others might roll their eyes because they don’t share my experience. Steinbeck fully understood the limitation we bring to our reading, and he wrote The Winter of Our Discontent in part, I believe, to help readers participate in the remedy he offers. Much has changed since The Winter of Our Discontent was written, but the deep truths to be discovered in Ethan’s story apply today. The winter of our discontent in the United States will end eventually, I hope sooner rather than later, but The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck will always have lessons for us—if we have ears to listen and love words enough to understand.

Read With Me! Favorites from 2021.

 Every year I make a reading goal of 50 books. Some years I achieve that goal, some years I fall short, and some years I actually exceed it. This year I hit the mark right on the money.

My favorite of the year was "The Weight of Ink" by Rachel Kadish.

Here is the column piece I wrote about it:

Let me begin with a small confession: I bought The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish because of its beautiful cover and its intriguing title. Admittedly, the story, itself, also sounded intriguing, but the cover and title were simply too lovely to resist.

Now, after having read the book, all I can say is, “Wowza, what a story!”

It’s set in two time periods of London. In the 1660s, a young Jewish woman named Ester Velasquez does the forbidden -- she serves as a scribe for an old, ailing rabbi who was tortured and blinded in the Spanish Inquisition. In the early 2000s an ailing historian named Helen Watt and her reluctant assistant, a floundering American Jewish grad student named Aaron Levy, are summoned to a grand old home on the outskirts of London to look at a genizah that was found walled up under a staircase.

A genizah is a repository for timeworn sacred manuscripts in Judaism. The genizah that was discovered in the old house takes Helen and Aaron on a journey through the ancient words inked upon the pages contained in the cache.

We readers are taken on a wonderful journey, too, into a past and its people, both real ones like Sabbatai Zevi, Julian of Norwich, Baruch de Spinoza, and William Shakespeare, and fictional ones like Ester and her beloved rabbi as well as the rabbi’s devoted servant, Rivka, and many others who helped and hindered Ester as she toiled at her forbidden passion of learning. While the modern portions of the story concerning Helen and Aaron attempting to make sense of the wondrous find are indeed interesting, the real story belongs to Ester.

She fled Amsterdam in the care of the rabbi after her parents’ deaths, she wrote and learned (both of which were forbidden to Jewish women then), she survived the plague that killed roughly a fifth of Londoners, she endured and survived the continued persecution of Jews, and she found a way to pursue doing what mattered most to her -- learning, thinking, philosophizing, writing, and corresponding -- even after the rabbi’s death.

“A woman's body, said the world, was a prison in which her mind must wither.” Thus was the sentiment of the timeframe and religious constraints in which Ester lived. However, through her quill, ink bottle, and parchment, Ester’s mind soared, and her words survived, hidden away for more than three hundred years, until they were set free by two historians whose lives would never be the same. 

Words matter. Being able to read, to write, and to think freely all matter more than some people realize. The title of the book comes from a passage on page 196 when the blinded rabbi tells Ester what he truly lost when he lost his sight. “. . . I came to understand how much of the world was now banned from me -- for my hands would never again turn the pages of a book, nor be stained with the sweet, grave weight of ink, a thing I had loved since first memory.”

The Weight of Ink is a weighty tome itself at almost six hundred pages, but I was sad when the story came to an end. For now, I will simply gaze once more upon its lovely cover and remember the wonderful story that lies within.

I sent a copy to the author in September, and she replied shortly after. As an author, I enjoy hearing from anyone who has read and liked any of my books, so I feel that other authors enjoy that, too. The few times I've written to authors whose work I've admired, they have written back to me, so I encourage other readers to do the same.

A novel I'd long wanted to read was "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo. Naturally, I couldn't write to him once I'd finished his book, but I did write a column piece about it. Here it is:

Victor Hugo published his well-known novel about a deformed bell ringer in 1831. I own a Barnes and Noble Classics edition published in 2004. In it, there is a biography about Hugo in which I learned that the writer was so beloved that two million people joined his funeral procession through the streets of Paris. That simply boggles the mind to imagine such a thing.

I also learned that when Hugo married Adele Foucher, his brother, Eugene, had a permanent psychotic breakdown because Eugene was in love with her, too. I suspect that Hugo used that breakdown as the impetus for the extreme psychological breakdown of a central character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

That character is the archdeacon, Claude Frollo. Anyone who has watched the Disney movie version of this novel will remember the creepy scene in which Frollo watches Esmeralda dance, and he sings the song “Hellfire.” Personally, I will never be able to watch that movie again now that I’ve read the novel. What he puts the poor gypsy girl through simply because he can’t control his inner demons is absolutely atrocious. Also, in the novel, Frollo is thirty-six years old to Esmeralda’s mere sixteen years of age. I don’t know why Disney chose to animate this story, to be quite honest.

In that animated version, Captain Phoebus is portrayed quite heroically. Nothing could be further from the truth in the novel. The only hero, the only man with a solid moral compass in the entire array of male characters, is Quasimodo, yet he is loved by no one because of his severe deformity and exterior ugliness.

The hunchback and the young gypsy are inextricably bound together from childhood until the bitter end of their young lives. When Esmeralda was one year old, a band of gypsies stole her from her mother and left the four-year-old Quasimodo in her place. The grief-stricken mother left him in a box for foundlings and then holed herself up in a small cell for penitents in the hopes that her daughter would be restored to her. A crowd of people initially wanted to kill the boy because of his deformities, but Frollo adopted the youth and set him to a life of being the bell ringer of Notre Dame. Frollo did this because, at that time, he bore a sense of fraternal love for his much younger brother who he was raising after their parents’ deaths. That brother, Jehan, never amounts to anything and suffers an ugly fate the same night that all the other main characters suffer their horrible fates.

It’s that word “fate” that led Hugo to write this novel. He saw it carved upon the walls in Notre Dame, written in Greek, one day during a visit to the cathedral. The word stayed with him, and a famous novel sprang from it. The fate of everyone in the story comes to an end on the same night, and they all hinge upon misguided love. Most die, but Phoebus doesn’t; he suffers a fate worse than death -- Phoebus “. . . also came to a tragic end: he married.”

This novel is very tragic, yet it contains a lot of humor, too, as evidenced in that quote. Hugo also interjects treatises on historical elements, architecture, and even how the printing press was considered to be a horrible invention that would ruin everything. He puts so much into this novel that one reading does not suffice to take it all in; nor does one small column suffice to give it the credit it deserves. Read the book and judge for yourself.

Each year, I tackle a few of the Pulitzer Prize winners of fiction. I read three this year. They were "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis, "Empire Falls" by Richard Russo, and "Years of Grace" by Margaret A. Barnes. Even though Barnes won her Pulitzer 90 years ago, I still thoroughly enjoyed her novel, and I wrote my first column of 2021 about it. Here it is:

Great books often find us when we most need them. After a year of very few ups and many downs, I was desperately in the mood to read something to take my mind off negative things for a while. Knowing I had over thirty Pulitzers still awaiting me, I scanned their covers until my eyes fell upon the lovely-sounding title Years of Grace by Margaret A. Barnes.

I recall thinking that our world could use a few years of grace, so I took the book off the shelf and riffled through its pages. Since my copy is a Franklin Library edition, it doesn’t have any explanatory book jacket information, so I  conducted a quick online search to learn more about the story. It sounded like something I’d enjoy, and I saw that the book is largely out of print and hard to come by, so I figured I owed it to Margaret A. Barnes to, perhaps, breathe a little life back into her 1931 Pulitzer winner if her story could breathe a little joy back into me.

The novel is wonderful and as delightful as its title; yet, it’s also packed full of nuggets of wisdom from a by-gone era that are as relevant today as they were then. The 563 pages of this novel simply flew past as the story enveloped me, and I physically felt myself become more relaxed as I read.

Simply put, the story is about a Chicago girl named Jane Ward and her life from the age of fifteen to the age of fifty-one. To be honest, Jane doesn’t really do much -- she attends a couple years of college, gets married at a young age, has three children, and then becomes a grandmother -- but that’s what makes the overall story so wonderfully relatable. In the long run, most people don’t really DO a whole lot with their lives, but they still fully live those lives on an inner plane.

Barnes’ writing style is simple, yet profound. Jane’s life is simple, yet profound. Throughout the story, I was treated to Jane’s ever-changing, ever-questioning, ever-maturing inner life, and I marvelled at how very much a girl who came of age in the 1880’s is exactly like a girl (me) who came of age in the 1980’s. By the end of the book, Jane has surpassed the age of fifty, as have I, and in the final section, she has a few existential crises much like I’ve had, and much like we all have as we approach old age.

Here is a part of that: “Your inner life -- how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties! . . . Why had things turned out as they had? Predestination was probably the answer. Cause and effect. One thing leading to another. Free will was only a delusion. Why not turn fatalist, pure and simple, and not worry any longer? Not care.”

Jane does care, though, as do I, and as does every rational person. We all care about something. We’re in strange times, but we can be like Jane in this lovely book, and, even if our outward life may change in ways we don’t like, our inner lives can be very fulfilling. We all have a “secret stage on which the passionate personal drama” of our own lives plays out. 

I’ve now read sixty of the ninety-six Pulitzer winners of fiction. I’m glad I waited until now to read Years of Grace by Margaret A. Barnes, but it won’t be the last time I’ll read this quiet, calming, wonderful book.

Rarely can I let a year go by in which I don't read something by Willa Cather. She's one of the best-known and most-beloved of all Nebraska authors. While I, too, am a Nebraska author, I will never hold a candle to Cather's mastery of story telling or the legacy of literature she left behind. This year I read "Death Comes for the Archbishop."

For sheer fun and enjoyment, I reread "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry" by Gabrielle Zevin. I liked it better this time, and I suspect that if I were to read it a third time, I'd probably find something else about it to love even more.

While these are probably my top fives out of the fifty books I read this year, I enjoyed many others as well. Here are five more that I really enjoyed and that I would recommend to others:

As you can see by two of those, I enjoy reading books about books and authors. Those are about the only kind of nonfiction I read, but I do also read essays and pieces that deal with or are written by Transcendental writers.

I hope to reread "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau in 2022 and continue through my book of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I will also work on whittling down my Pulitzers of fiction, and I will read more classics as well as quality contemporary literature. My goal will once again be fifty with the hope of reading many more than that but being content with whatever number I manage. After all, I'm writing full time now, so my focus is on creating my own books for others to enjoy.

I challenge you to read as much as you can in 2022, to read quality books whether they are fiction or nonfiction, and to nourish your mind with great words the way you nourish your body with great food.

Happy New Year and happy reading to you all! In case you are wondering the names of my books, here is a photo of them.

Roam With Me! Along the Blue Ridge Parkway

 

On October 17th, my boyfriend, Kim, and I drove about 100 miles of the 469 miles that comprise the National Park called the Blue Ridge Parkway. We started outside of Asheville, North Carolina, at about mile marker 390 and continued northeast until roughly mile marker 290 where we got off south of Boone, North Carolina. Here is the map of that section:

We picked up this map at the Folk Art Center which is located along the Parkway. Inside there is a wonderful array of regional art and handicrafts. It was all quite pricey but of exceptional quality. There is an information booth there as well, though, and they have these maps available for free and can answer any questions. We were just starting out our drive and didn't see any need to ask the volunteer manning the booth anything, but even if we had wanted to ask her something, there was an annoying visitor ahead of us badgering the elderly volunteer lady to pinpoint an exact date in which she and her family could return next year in order to see the trees in all their autumnal glory.

Basically, their conversation went like this: 

    Visitor: "I'm trying to plan our family vacation for next year, and I need to know when the trees will all have turned. They are mostly still green now, and we want to be here when they are varied."

    Volunteer: "I understand, but I can't give you an exact date."

    Visitor: "But I need to know, so we can book our hotels and make our plans for next year. We thought they would have turned by now, but they haven't, and we don't want to be disappointed next year, so tell me a better time to come."

    Volunteer: "I can't really . . . "

    Visitor: (interrupting) "Certainly, there has to be some way for you to know."

    Volunteer: (heavy, calming sigh) "Ma'am, it's Nature."

At that comment, Kim and I turned and walked away, covering our laughter. "Ma'am, it's Nature." What a great answer. Nature does what Nature wants to do, people. What we found, though, as we drove the northerly route, was that the trees grew markedly more colorful the further we went, so if that visitor had simply driven north and even on up into Virginia, she would have seen many trees that had already turned shades of yellow and red. 

We stopped at many of the overlooks, and there are far more of them than appear on the useful paper map. Far, far more of them. The view from each overlook took our breath away, and just when we thought the view couldn't get better, the next overlook would prove us wrong. For example, here is the first overlook that we stopped at, and it's not mentioned on the map. You can see on the sign, that we are not yet at a very high elevation, but the view is still incredible in the photo below the sign. We were very fortunate that the day on which we visited the Parkway was a very clear day, so we could see really far.

Shortly after starting our drive along the winding road that is the Blue Ridge Parkway, we rounded a curve, and a very large animal jumped onto the road in front of us. For the briefest of moments, my mind didn't accept what I was seeing. Here is the thought processes that went through my head: "Holy crap, that is a giant black dog! Wait, that's not a dog! That's a fricking bear!" Out loud, I suddenly started shouting, "BEAR, BEAR, THAT'S A FRICKING BEAR!!! Holy crap, that's a bear!!" Kim was in a bit of shock and panic as the driver, so he slowed but never completely stopped. I only managed to get a very crappy photo of the bear through my side window as we passed by her. We know it was a "her" because Kim saw her three cubs running back up on the mountain on his side. We hope that mama and her cubs managed to get together again after our passing and that none of them got hit by a car. The maximum speed limit on the Parkway is 45 MPH, and in some places, due to the sharper curves, it slips down to 20 at times. Anyway, here is the cropped crappy photo of the bear we saw cross the road in front of us. The cropped version looks much better than the original photo.

After we shook off our utter surprise at seeing our very first bear in its natural habitat, we continued driving and stopping at overlook after overlook. Most of the time, we stopped for the views, but there was one time, after many curves in the road, that I told Kim he had to stop simply because I was feeling very car sick. Fortunately, since I hadn't eaten anything yet, I didn't need to vomit, so, even though I was a bit hungry, I was glad I hadn't eaten prior to doing the drive.

We went on a weekend in the fall, so there were many others on the Parkway that day. If, or when, we go back to drive more of it, we will visit on a weekday instead, but most of the time, the road wasn't crowded, and only one spectacular overlook was packed with people. Here are a few more overlooks and their views.

Perhaps you notice that the views get better as the elevation increases. I know that's obvious, but when you are standing at the overlook gazing out over those beautiful views, you think that the view can't get any better, and then you drive farther and gain more elevation only to find that the next overlook contains an even more impressive view. I love being on a beach and being able to stare out over the ocean, especially at sunrise or sunset, but these views along the Blue Ridge Parkway rival those ocean views for my adoration of Nature's beauty. "Ma'am, it's Nature" and Nature, when left alone, is gorgeous.

I mentioned that there was one overlook that was especially crowded. It was the Yonahlossee Overlook, and the tiny parking area was full, so many people, including us, had to park along the road and walk up to it. The walk along the narrow trail on the outside of the road was so worth the view when we got there. 

I felt like I could see forever from there. Shortly after this, we passed through Julian Price Memorial Park where we stopped for a few minutes to admire the lovely lake there. By this time, we were tired and ready to leave the Parkway because we'd spent around four hours driving on it. If, or when, we return, we'd like to visit it often and take the time to go on one of the many hiking trails that branch out from some of the overlooks, camping sites, picnic areas, and parks like the Julian Price Memorial Park, which has a trail you can hike around the lake.

It's so pretty. If we hadn't been so tired by then, we would have done the hike. Naturally, no photos can do the Blue Ridge Parkway the justice it deserves, so if you've never been there, I highly recommend that you visit it, but remember, "Ma'am, it's Nature," so respect it and enjoy what Nature has to offer.

Here is proof that we found more colorful trees as we went north, and I'll end with a view of  Grandfather Mountain.

Read With Me! "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two years before I retired from teaching to focus on writing, I had the Advanced Junior English class dumped in my lap literally one day before the school year began (because the teacher who was supposed to teach it and many other classes decided to not show up for the school year, so when I say it literally fell on my shoulders one day before the year began, it quite literally did." At the time, I was not happy about this at all because I lost an elective class I enjoyed teaching to teach a core class that I had absolutely nothing planned for. 

However, it turned out to be a class I really enjoyed teaching and that I wish I'd taught for many years. A small part of that was because I enjoyed the students in the class, I'll admit to that, but the main reason I really liked teaching it was because it was a class about American Literature.

In staying one step ahead of the students as I read through the textbook and decided which sections I wanted to focus upon (you can never cover everything in a textbook in a year -- well, not if you want the students to be able to keep up and for them actually to learn anything, that is), I found myself blown away by the section dealing with the Transcendental era led by Emerson. Sadly, until two years ago, I don't believe I'd ever been introduced to him. I had heard of him, of course, but I don't think I'd read any of his work.

I definitely had touched on works by other Transcendentalists through my long ago years of study at UNL because I know Thoreau, Dickinson, and Whitman, but I was never shown them together, and I just don't recall ever really learning about these great thinkers and writers. What I found when I began really reading them two years ago were my intellectual kindred spirits. I saw my own philosophies reflected in the words of writers who are long dead. I also realized why the movie "Dead Poets' Society" has always been so meaningful to me -- it is chock full of Transcendental quotes and philosophies.

"Walden" by Henry David Thoreau rocked my world when I first read it, and I continue to glean nuggets of wisdom each time I reread it, but today I want to look at the essay that Ralph Waldo Emerson is perhaps best known for -- "Self-Reliance."

The title alone tells you a lot, but it's what is inside the essay that makes a person really pause and think. The overriding point is to be a non-conformist. In the world I see reflected through the media and the few online social platforms I use, I wish more people would read Emerson's essays and really think about what they say and then apply those thoughts to their own lives. It's the "really think" part that I fear so many people shy away from doing anymore, but if high school juniors could do it and embrace this essay and others along with the entire text of "Walden," then literate grown adults also can.

I find the entire essay to be revelatory, but I won't share it all here. I will, though, share a few quotes from it in the order in which they are found within the essay.

1. "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that lot of ground which is given to him to till."

2. "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."  -- This is one of the most often quoted lines from this essay and rightfully so. We must believe in ourselves if we ever hope to accomplish something meaningful to ourselves.

3. "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." -- This would apply to being a woman, too. To being your own person. If you blindly follow what others are doing, why are you even here? What are you accomplishing with your life? Now, I don't promote anarchy or rule breaking for the simple act of breaking rules to show you're a nonconformist, but I do promote thinking before you act and deciding if what you are doing is true to who you really are. If it isn't, then why are you doing it? 

4. "I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique."  -- That final sentence says it all for me.

5. This one is my favorite: "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." -- It was the Transcendental focus on solitude that really drew me into their world because I believe in the power and beauty of solitude. I wrote a poem called "Solitude" a long, long time ago which is about the wisdom we can draw from solitude, and I included it in my book State of Georgia . . . and Other Writings.

6. "For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure." -- Can you say "cancel culture?" Emerson lived in the 1800s. I wonder what he would think of our world today? 

7. "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

-- as Phoebe says on Friends, "Oh, my God, he's not even appreciated in his own time. I'd give anything to not be appreciated in my own time." If you get it, you get it.

8. "Your genuine action will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing."

9. "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession." 

10. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." -- I believe that if more people had real principles and stuck to them, society and the world would be better for it. So many people wish for world peace; perhaps this could actually bring it.

In my retirement, I am focusing on my writing, but I am also focusing on me. One of the things I do each day, or at least a few times each week, is to read from Emerson's essays and other writings. When I have made my way through them, I will then turn to rereading Walden by Thoreau and some of his other writings. Then, it will be Whitman's turn as well as Dickinson's. Then, I'll probably simply start over because with each passing day, month, year of my life, my own wisdom grows and my perceptions of things change a bit. 

One thing I do know now is that two years ago I had an English class dumped in my lap, and it turned out to be one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. I hope you'll consider reading some of Emerson yourself if you never have or if it's been a long time since you last did.

Ride With Me on a Repatriation Escort.

 If you happen to live anywhere in Eastern Nebraska, then you may have followed the news about the repatriation of Louis James Tushla from Atkinson who died aboard the USS Oklahoma on December 7, 1941 during the infamous bombing at Pearl Harbor. After many years, his remains were finally identified, and he was brought home to be officially laid to rest.

You may also have heard about the motorcycle escort of American Legion Riders from Atkinson and other posts who accompanied his remains from Omaha to Atkinson. I was one of those riders; I joined the escort in Norfolk along with quite a few other riders. Norfolk to Atkinson was the final leg of the escort, a distance of 95 miles -- 95 miles of pure, unadulterated patriotism like nothing I've ever seen before.

That's what I want to tell you about. While the repatriation of a fallen hero was the reason for the ride, what happened during those 95 miles opened, or reopened, my eyes to the reality of things instead of the false narrative that is thrown in our faces everyday.

Since I was riding, I couldn't take photos. Even though we were driving very slowly a few times, there wasn't a single time that my feet hit the pavement for those entire 95 miles, so there wasn't an opportunity for me to even snap a quick photo of what I saw even though I really wanted to. 

Instead, I'm going to do what I most like to do -- show you through my words what I witnessed.

Leaving Norfolk, a police escort took us to the edge of town, and other police officers manned the few lights we had to pass through, keeping traffic stopped. Not only did those officers hold up the traffic, but they also stood and saluted us as we passed. People lined the streets on foot and in their vehicles, holding flags of every size. The majority had one hand over their hearts, too. If they weren't holding a flag, then they were holding a cell phone and filming our passage -- I figure that I appear in hundreds upon hundreds of cell phone videos. At the edge of town, a line of military vehicles marked our transition to the highway.

I thought then that we'd simply drive on to the next town where there'd be more people awaiting us, but I was wrong. People awaited us along the entire stretch of highway from Norfolk to Atkinson, sometimes in large groupings and other times it would just be a solitary driver who had stopped and got out of his or her vehicle to watch us go by. There was a large group gathered at the Battle Creek junction, and the crowds everywhere were of all ages.

Naturally, when we reached Meadow Grove, the highway was lined again with people as it was with each town through which we passed after that. Firetrucks were out, and flags flew from their buckets as well as from raised tractor buckets and extended telehandlers and anything else that could be raised. 

Along the highway, I was most impressed and moved by a young truck driver who had exited his semi and was standing in front of it ramrod straight and immobile as we drove by him. He clearly was an ex-military man. A guy mowing his large yard that abutted the highway stopped mowing and watched us pass by, a huge grin on his face. An elderly woman leaned on a cane and was also supported by her daughter or granddaughter; there was a chair behind her, but she stood as we passed, and she put her hand over her heart. Men held their caps in their hands, women clapped, small children waved small American flags, teenagers held high huge American flags, and everyone stood as we passed.

The firetrucks in O'Neill met us coming into town and, in turn, escorted us through the town at a snail's pace, so that the throngs of people lining the whole length could get a good look, and we could get a good look, too, at the reception for this young man so many years after his death. The local radio station was playing Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." loudly over speakers as we passed; that song always chokes me up. Aside from that song, though, our passage everywhere we went was marked by reverent silence. People waved, but no one shouted or carried on in anyway that would be even the slightest bit disrespectful toward Tushla and the ultimate sacrifice he made.

At Atkinson, we drove through town in sort of a parade until we got to the Legion. There they served us hamburgers, and I had one of the best chocolate cupcakes I've had in a while. The family, the town, and the entire community was so appreciative of our escort because they never thought Tushla would be brought home. The American Legion there is named for him and for John William Farley who died at sea during WWI. Farley's remains were buried at sea, so there's no coming home for him. Tushla, thanks to advancements in identification, is finally home.

Those of us who escorted him home were deeply honored to do so. It's why we are Legion Riders. However, this particular escort was unlike any I've ever done, and I've been a Rider for eight years. My boyfriend has been one much longer, and he says the same. We got choked up numerous times along the route -- he more often than me because his son was in the military when he died by suicide.

If the nation and the world could see what I saw on Thursday, it would silence so much of the crap that's being spewed and would show how very much the heart of this nation loves the United States and what the flag of this country stands for. While I try to avoid the majority of garbage that's out there inciting division, I still see enough of it to make me fear for the future of the country; however, I now have a renewed hope and a belief that patriotism is alive and well, at least in Northeast Nebraska.

Kim and I after the long ride.

My bike and others cooling off after the long ride.

Sorry for the glare, but this is a photo of the information about Farley and Tushla that is located inside the Legion Post that is named after them in Atkinson.