What's on your Kindle?

Ebooks are such a great invention. Even though I love physical books and regularly acquire new ones, books for my Kindle and iPad are just as important to me. The classics in particular are works I'd likely never have on my shelves, but in e-form they are just collections of a few trillion or so electrons. Over half a century ago, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield and The Merchant of Venice were foisted on my immature brain, and I hated them all. Never even finished reading them, actually. In the last couple of years I've read them and others through to the end--oh, wait, I still gagged on David Copperfield halfway through, but that's the great thing: the ebook keeps my place forever, so in a weak moment, perhaps with onset of dementia, I can resume following Master Copperfield's adventures.

Jane Eyre turns out to be a good story, but why assign an anti-semitic play to a poor ninth grader? As it happens, not much penetrated my brain back then, so no harm was done. Other works began to seep into my brain before high school was over, but it's only now that they are making significant impressions. Take The Iliad, for example. So far it's mostly fighting, with spears ripping through skulls--and darkness fell upon him. The brutal fighting gets a little old, but Homer's similes are humdingers:

He rushed across the plain like a winter torrent that has burst its barrier in full flood; no dykes, no walls of fruitful vineyards can embank it when it is swollen with rain from heaven, but in a moment it comes tearing onward, and lays many a field waste that many a strong man hand has reclaimed--even so were the dense phalanxes of the Trojans driven in route by the son of Tydeus, and many though they were, they dared not abide his onslaught.

My ebook collection is heavy on the classics, poetry, and self-published novels. If I'm blessed with a long life, maybe I'll get to read all of them.

So, to paraphrase the Capital One TV commercial, What's on your Kindle?

Maggie and Kim: dear leaders?

Last night we watched The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as the aging Margaret Thatcher. Say what you will about Maggie's politics, she was one tough woman. Streep portrays her brilliantly as a widow who hallucinates that her husband is still alive and who has moments when she flashes back to her glory days in Parliament. No one, but no one, ever pushed her around. When she was Prime Minister, she declared she had no interest in managing Britain's decline; her goal was to put the "Great" back in Great Britain.

The movie is a stark contrast to the memoir I just finished reading, Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee--A Look Inside North Korea by Jan Jing-sun. The author had been poet laureate for Kim Jong-il, which gave him the status of "Admitted," one of the very few people with the despot's blessing. In North Korea, no one is allowed to write anything, including poetry, unless officially directed to do so, and the only permissible poetry is praise of the Dear Leader. Jang was assigned to write an epic poem about Kim's glory, and at some point he and a friend had enough of the lies. They attempted a dangerous escape into China.

Thatcher was eventually challenged for leadership of her party, and she stepped down. Kim held absolute power until his death, as likely will his son Kim Jong-un.

I'm planning to write a review of Dear Leader for the Internet Review of Books. Meanwhile, the book and the Thatcher movie are well worth your time.

A murder and its consequences

Gavrilo Princip, assassin
of Archduke Ferdinand

This week, we've been reminded, is the 100th anniversary of the assassination by Gavrilo Princip of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, considered to be the trigger that ignited World War I. Princip had thrown a bomb at the couple's carriage, but it bounced off the top and failed to hurt them. Only when they kept going and their carriage driver took a wrong turn did Princip, by pure chance, meet them again and succeed in killing them.

But what if that assassination had failed? Maybe the Great War would have started anyway with some other spark. But let's assume not. What might today's world look like if the War to End All Wars had never taken place?

Let's see. The Russian Revolution was a direct outcome of the Tsar's disastrous participation in the war. World War II flowed from the reparations and resentment from the first. Where would Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin have been without all that misery and destruction? Perhaps they would have been no more than long-forgotten thugs. Mao Tse-Tung learned his ideology from the Soviet Union, so China may not have had Mao and his Great Leap Forward. The United States would not have sent troops to Europe, thus ending our isolationist outlook forever. Historical artifacts such as the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires would have lingered, if not lasted. European powers would not have redrawn the Middle East into countries with artificial boundaries, as with Iraq and Syria.

And what about the Cold War? No communist Eastern Europe, no American troops in Europe, no Holocaust, no Israel (maybe), no nukes, no space race, no satellites, no Internet or GPS, no Korean or Vietnam Wars, no European Union. No President Truman, a World War I hero who integrated the military, helping to advance the cause of civil rights. We might not have had an interstate highway system, at least in part because war hero Dwight Eisenhower would not likely have become president. Of course some of our technological advances might have happened eventually, perhaps generations later, spurred on by other wars.

Of course, other disasters might have--surely would have--happened instead. How today's world would have looked without the Archduke's murder is impossible to know, as unpredictable events cause unpredictable chains of consequences. That war was utterly wrong and pointless, yet its destructive energy yielded, for both better and worse, the society we live in now.

My Dream Endorsement for When Pigs Fly

President Clinton talking about When Pigs Fly

I won't lie. After a phenomenal 2012, my ebook sales hit the skids and haven't recovered--yet. The
successful tactics of '12 faltered in '13, and truth be told, I've been too busy in '14 to even try much marketing when results are so paltry.

So it's with pleasure I share with you my dream endorsement. No, really. It was a dream I had this morning just before my wife told me I was sleeping too late. In an unspecified city I am walking on the sidewalk, and President Bill Clinton sees me and beams with delight. "Hey Bob!" he says, hardly able to contain himself.

Then he shakes my hand with a strong grip. "I loved your book, man."

Next he's giving me a bear hug as I ask him, "You mean When Pigs Fly?"

"Oh yeah, man. That was great."

So there you have it: a presidential seal of approval for my work.

In my dreams.

Nightly entertainment

Walter White,
maker of meth and mayhem

In the evening, after emails are read, dinner done and dishes washed, we spend a couple of hours watching TV shows on Netflix. The run-of-the-mill fare doesn't interest us, and comedies with laugh tracks are a bore. In fact, most comedies are a bore--this from someone who loves to laugh. Our tastes run to dramatic crime shows and smart drama, and if a little humor is occasionally woven in, that's a bonus. Some of the series we have truly enjoyed in the last couple of years include Boston Legal, Grey's Anatomy, Friday Night Lights, Damages, Dexter, and Breaking Bad. My wife is not a sports fan, so for a series about a high school football coach to capture her rapt attention is quite an accomplishment, which is what Friday Night Lights did for both of us. But the most fascinating series are those with deeply flawed characters--a vile, cutthroat lawyer, a serial killer who targets other murderers, a high school chemistry teacher turned meth maker. Now we're watching Walter White, who has lung cancer and has turned to making meth to support his family when he's gone. He sets off a chain of disasters that might make you think the world would have been better off if he'd been strangled in his crib. But he sure is fascinating.

Z is for Zilker Gardens in Austin, Texas

A gate at the beautiful Zilker Gardens in Austin, Texas. If you are ever in Texas's capital city, be sure to visit there. 

I'm so glad you stopped by to visit my blog during the A to Z Challenge. It's been fun sharing some of the places my wife and I have visited.

A gate at Zilker Gardens

Park bench, Zilker Gardens

Water lily

Y is for Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park, I am told, is one big volcano waiting to erupt either today or a thousand years from today. And when it does, one is probably better off somewhere on the other side of the world.

X is for Texas

"All my exes live in Texas. That's why I'm in Tennessee." 

--Sanger and Linda Shafer

Dang, iddn't that cute? My mom and my three older brothers were born in Texas. Mom came from the tiny central Texas town of Paige, population Not Much. All of us spent most of our lives in Massachusetts, but Mom clearly missed her childhood home and the fields of springtime bluebonnets. Now that my wife and I are retired, we live only a short drive from the Texas border and the city of El Paso, where I go once a month for my writers' group meetings.

Rio Grande in the Big Bend area. Mexico is on the left bank.

Cholla cactus and bird's nest, Big Bend area.

W is for Mount Washington

As with all of the places mentioned in my A to Z blogs, one or two photos don't do justice to Mount Washington, the tallest point on the eastern seaboard of the US. I know of three ways to ascend this monster: the cog railway, the road, and hiking. We have done the first two and wouldn't even dream of doing the third. The weather can turn from summer to winter in moments and kill the unprepared hiker. Mount Washington holds a world's record for strongest surface wind ever recorded, at 231 miles per hour. We rode up in a van one September day and saw ice-covered boulders on the way.

V is for Vermont

Stone house, Chester Depot, Vermont

My wife's father was born in the sleepy town of Chester Depot, Vermont, known for its stone houses. Her grandmother lived in Manchester, Vermont until age 102. There was a sturdy woman. We motored up Vermont-way many times over the decades that we lived in Massachusetts.

U is for Utah

When we first visited Utah, it seemed as though every which way we turned we found another national park. Heck, I had never even heard of Canyonlands National Park, and suddenly there we were, completely taken in by its beauty. We've returned a few times, once to visit Antelope Island on Great Salt Lake. Virtually nothing lives in that lake, we were told. It's much too saline for fish. The only life seems to be tiny shrimp that are noticeable for the odor of their tiny little carcasses and the tiny bugs they attract.

On Antelope Island, Salt Lake, Utah
where the antelope play

But wait, don't let that stop you. A causeway connects the mainland to the island, where antelope and buffalo abound. If you ever have the chance to visit Utah, for goodness' sake do it.

T is for Taos, New Mexico

San Francisco de Asis, near Taos

A lovely, quirky little town north of Santa Fe. Images of the San Francisco de Asis church have been captured on canvas by Georgia O'Keeffe, on film by Ansel Adams, and on digital cameras by thousands of people like me. It dates from the late 1700s. If you visit Santa Fe, try to make time for Taos and the Taos Pueblo, a community said to have been occupied for over 1,000 years.

Curio shop, Taos

S is for Shiprock

Any fan of the wonderful Tony Hillerman novels has read about Shiprock, the majestic rock formation that stands out in northwestern New Mexico near the Four Corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. It is a holy place for the Navajo, who don't want people to get too close to it. Listen closely to the wind, and perhaps you will hear the spirits of Tony Hillerman and his detectives Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn wandering across the desert landscape.

R is for Rio Grande Gorge

If you follow the Rio Grande southward, it changes dramatically. The Rio Grand Gorge is near Taos and has carved a path through rock that's hundreds of feet deep.  The Gorge Bridge is nearly 600 feet above the river.  But we folks are thirsty in the Southwest. We dam up the river at Elephant Butte and Caballo Lake, we drain it off, and we drink it up. The river depends heavily on Rocky Mountain snowmelt, so when the snows don't come, the water flow is greatly lessened. By the time you reach my home city of Las Cruces over 200 miles to the south, the water can be completely gone. You can walk across a dry river bank without wetting the soles of your shoes.

Q is for Quebec

We visited Quebec several times and have always loved the place. Montmorency Falls lies on the north side of the Saint Lawrence River just across from Quebec City. There is a lower, more modern part of the city, while the walled upper part, Haute Ville, is centuries old and was a battle site in the French and Indian War. The building is the elegant hotel Chateau Frontenac, which oversees a boardwalk and the river.

Chateau Frontenac	Montmorency Falls

P is for Pompey's Pillar National Monument

We had never heard of Pompey's Pillar National Monument, which sits alongside the Yellowstone River in Montana, until our visit to the area last year. Carved on the side are Native American petroglyphs and the signature of explorer William Clark. I walked to the 150-foot summit using the stairway you see in the photo. Although I saw some of the carvings, the lighting didn't lend itself to decent photos.

O is for Organ Mountains

The Organ Mountains are a rugged, gorgeous mountain range separating Las Cruces, New Mexico from the White Sands Missile Range. Wikipedia says it's 85 miles long, though I would not have guessed it was nearly that long. Anyway, it provides a perfect backdrop for the city. When we were new here and still trying to find our way around, we always knew we could get home by heading toward the mountains.

N is for New England

My wife and I grew up there, so it's natural that we have a lot of New England photographs. This is a lighthouse with picket fence in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I took it in the summer of '04, the year before we heard the siren call of the Southwest.

M is for Mount Shasta

Until well into middle age, my wife and I had never been to California. Since '99 we started making up for it, visiting San Francisco, Yosemite, Napa Valley, and much more. A few years ago, we drove our RV up the west coast as far as Oregon. On our way back we stopped near the utterly gorgeous and how-could-you-possibly-miss-it Mount Shasta. When we registered at the local RV park, I asked the clerk where I could get the best view of the mountain. She told me she had no idea, that she had lived near the mountain for so many years, she had stopped seeing it.

L is for Little Bighorn

View from the top of Little Bighorn

We visited Little Bighorn National Monument in eastern Montana in the summer of 2009. Here in 1876 a band of Lakota Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne led by Chief Sitting Bull annihilated the outnumbered U.S. 7th Army cavalry regiment led by General George Armstrong Custer. The photo is taken from the top of the hill where the battle took place. Later, markers were placed where bodies had been found.