Letters of Spring

On this day in 1922, writer E.B. White wrote to his mother from Columbus, Ohio. He and a friend were on a road trip to Seattle, and he was writing to congratulate his parents on their wedding anniversary. He said:

"Spring has arrived in Ohio. This is a flat state where red pigs graze in bright green fields and where farms are neat and prosperous — not like New York farms. We roll along through dozens of villages and cities whose names we never heard… Sheep come drifting up long green lawns where poplars throw interminable shadows, come drifting up and stand like statues beneath white plum blossoms, while far down the land and off in the fields a little Ford tractor moves like a snail across the furrows. Lilacs are in full bloom and the lavender ironwood blossoms are coloring all the roads."

On this day in 1934, two weeks after the publication of his novel Tender is the Night,novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his wife, Zelda, who was institutionalized for schizophrenia. He wrote to her:
"The chances that the spring, that's for everyone, like in the popular songs, may belong to us too — the chances are pretty bright at this time because as usual, I can carry most of contemporary literary opinion, liquidated, in the hollow of my hand—and when I do, I see the swan floating on it and — I find it to be you and you only. The good things and the first years together, and the good months that we had two years ago in Montgomery will stay with me forever, and you should feel like I do that they can be renewed, if not in a new spring, then in a new summer. I love you my darling, my darling."

Hubbell's Voice

This is what I imagine Hubbell's voice would be if he could speak. And it happens to be the voiceover I do for him on our hikes at the park. So now many people in the Nashville area happen to think this is what Hubbell's voice sounds like too.

Mark Twain

It was on this day 100 years ago that the man who's often quoted as saying "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated" did, in fact, really die. What Mark Twain actually said to the journalist who came to his door in 1897 to investigate his presumed fatality was "The report of my death is an exaggeration," but the various misquotes about Mark Twain's denial of death have taken on lives of their own.It wasn't the first time Twain would be forced to fend off rumors about his death. A decade after his legendary repudiation, The New York Times printed a premature obituary for Mr. Twain. He'd taken a steamboat trip with some friends from New York to Virginia for the Jamestown Exposition of 1907. While they were there, thick fog nestled in along the coast, reducing visibility and making it temporarily unsafe to travel by boat. Twain's friends opted for alternative transportation and took the train, but Twain didn't really like rail travel, so he decided to wait till the fog cleared and then return by boat. So he was delayed. By now he was a huge American celebrity with reporters tracking his whereabouts. When he didn't appear in the New York Harbor on the day he was scheduled to arrive, The New York Times ran a story announcing that he must be "lost at sea." A couple weeks later, the 71-year-old Mark Twain wrote up a mock article for The New York Times,which ran under the headline: "MARK TWAIN INVESTIGATING. And If the Report That He's Lost at Sea is So, He'll Let the Public Know."Two years after the lost-at-sea speculation, in 1909, 73-year-old Mark Twain proclaimed: "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"He was eerily accurate in his prescience. He died of a heart attack that next year, on this day exactly one century ago — April 21, 1910 — at the age of 74, precisely one day after Halley's Comet's closest approach to Earth. He was buried next to his wife in Upstate New York. His only surviving child placed next to his grave a monument that was 12 feet long, or two fathoms deep — the depth at which it's safe for an average steamboat to pass, a riverboat expression known as "Mark Twain," from which Samuel Clemens chose his pen name.

Mason Jennings

I really like reading about how he fell in love with music again. It's like reading a private letter. Just love it:

It all kinda started at Christmas when my sons and I were hanging ornaments on the tree. We have an ornament that is a little electric guitar and my six-year-old son was looking at it and asked, “What’s this Dad?”
I said, “What??? It’s an electric guitar.”
To which he replied, “What’s that?”
Well, I was kinda horrified so I ran downstairs and pulled out an old hollowbody electric (that is my wife’s), an amp and I came upstairs, plugged it in and ripped into “My Generation” by The Who. Well, my one son actually climbed me in point 2 seconds and leaped off my shoulders while the other one looked like I had plugged the lights on the tree into him. They flew around the room dancing for two straight wonderful hours. I got the point. I grew up playing only electric and it was like remembering how to be free. For many reasons, it was so needed. So I got free.
The next week I headed into my studio and recorded “City Of Ghosts” and away I went. I wrote about the war and being a parent in “The Field”, two topics close to my heart. I wrote about being a teenager and how heavy that time can feel and how it can shape the path you take. So, gratitude is in there somewhere. I wrote about doubts and fear, about God and Spirit, and about hope and possibility and things that are elusive and hard to name. I wrote mostly about them, and they came into the room like angels and beasts.
This whole time I knew the record would be called Blood Of Man. I also kept hearing two phrases in my head during recording. Maybe you can decipher them, for I know not where they come from or what they mean exactly: “Do you remember when the world was young?” and “In the beginning there was blood on the lamb.” Whew.
I wrote about how hard it is to be 34 and be a parent and sane and married and true and positive and yourself and a man and funny and a decent person and a not decent person and human and in love. I turned the music up so loud so often that my ears rang every night. I wrote about death, of course. I wrote about life. I wrote about pain and addiction. And I let it flow and left it raw. I worked fast and I let my heart lead.
I guess I have come to the point in my life and my art where I just want to make music that I love and not mess with it. If people dig it: cool. If not: cool. I will be making it anyway. I have to. I realized that too. By the grace of god: I have to make music. More importantly: I get to.
Also, before anything, I am a music listener. So, this record has not been messed with in any way. What you have is exactly the music I listen to in my van and the way I have given it to my friends on CD-Rs. My hope is that it can help where help is needed. Music saved my life and I am so grateful for it. Thank you for listening. Rock.

Mason Jennings,Minnesota

The Grapes of Wrath

It was on this day in 1939 that John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. The novel tells the story of three generations of the Joad family, who lose their farm in Oklahoma and set off across the country for the paradise of California, only to encounter extreme poverty and corrupt corporations trying to make a profit off them. He wrote the novel at an incredible rate — about two thousands words a day — in a tiny outhouse that had just enough room for a bed, a desk, a gun rack, and a bookshelf. He finished it in about five months. When he was done, he wasn't very satisfied with it: He wrote in his journal, "It's just a run-of-the-mill book, and the awful thing is that it is absolutely the best I can do." And he warned his publisher that it wouldn't be very popular.

Reality Check

Today I saw a picture of a friend's boyfriend on facebook and my first thought was, 'sheesh, he looks old for her. Looks like he's early thirties.' It was at that moment that I realized that he and I could have attended high school together. 'Old' is a relative term, no?

The Great Gatsby

One of my favorites...

It was on this day in 1925 that F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was published to mixed reviews.Fitzgerald knew there was something missing in his novel. He wrote in a letter: "The worst fault in it I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe."It didn't sell very well, either. But The Great Gatsby slowly gained popularity, and by the 1960s, it was considered a classic of American literature. Today it is one of the most-taught books in high schools.

Sittin' Alone In The Moonlight

Sittin' alone in the moonlight

by Bill Monroe

Sittin' alone in the moonlight,Thinkin' of the days gone by,Wonderin' about my darlin'.I can still hear her sayin' good-bye.
Oh, the moon glows pale as I sit here.Each little star seems to whisper and say,"Your sweetheart has found another,And now she is far, far away."

"Sittin' Alone in the Moonlight" by Bill Monroe, from the album "The Music of Bill Monroe." © MCA Records, 1994.

Billie Holiday

It's the birthday of "Lady Day," jazz singer Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore (1915). The facts of her life are fuzzy because she exaggerated or just made up much of her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues (1956). But there's no doubt that she had a difficult childhood. Her father left and soon her mother did too, to work as a maid, and left her daughter in the care of relatives. She left school after fifth grade and went to work, and she ended up in Harlem. She worked for a brothel and was arrested for prostitution, went to jail, got work waiting tables and sometimes singing as well. When she was 20 years old, she filled in for a better-known performer, and the jazz writer and producer John Hammond heard her. He announced that she was the best singer he had ever heard, and that helped to launch her career. She became famous for her bluesy, intimate versions of jazz songs, and she wrote some of her own, including "God Bless the Child" and "Lady Sings the Blues."

I don't know why no one thought of this sooner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFicqklGuB0