A friend of mine had told me to read "An American Journey" by Colin Powell because she had enjoyed the book far more than she had thought she would. I took the book, it sat in my TBR (to be read) pile and I didn't give it much thought.
Then I decided to pick it up and browse. I got hooked.
My family isn't a military family in the formal sense -- but my grandpa was in WWI, my dad in WW2, an uncle in Korea and a cousin in VietNam -- and I was raised to honor our military and the men and women who serve. War isn't their fault.
And I'll be honest. I was raised during the Viet Nam War and understand more about WWII and Korea than I do Viet Nam. But this book really isn't about war. It's about a man's journey through the military, through war and peace, through his life. And an exceptional life it is.
There are lessons about family and honor and life and duty and respect and courage and fear. It is one good read.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Go Get 'Em Colin
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Thursday Thirteen #21
13 Things about Oscar Wilde. And boy was he ever!
1. Oscar Wilde was born Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.
2. His family consisted of his parents, Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee and 5 siblings: Henry, Emily, Mary, William, Isola. His father was a well known and respected doctor, his mother was a writer, but because of the era she lived in, wrote under an alias.
3. Oscar attended college at Oxford and graduated with many prizes for his works. After graduation, Oscar moved to London to live with his friend Frank Miles, a popular high society portrait painter.
4. In 1881, Wilde published his first collection of poetry. It received mixed reviews by critics, but helped to move Oscar's writing career along and precipitated a trip to the United States in December, 1881. He delivered a series of lectures on aesthetics that was originally scheduled to last four months. It eventually stretched to nearly a year, with over 140 lectures given in 260 days. In between lectures he made time to meet with Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Whitman. After returning to England, he then set off on a lecture tour of Britain and Ireland.
5. Wilde was popular on the lecture circuit and is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era -- he wrote and produced nine plays, but only one novel -- "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
6. He was known for his sharp wit and many of his famous quotes still resonate today. For instance, On Men:
"No man is rich enough to buy back his past."
"I delight in men over seventy, they always offer one the devotion of a lifetime. "
-- “A Woman of No Importance”
"I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean."
-- “Lady Windermere's Fan”
His quotes on Women:
"Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood."
-- “The Sphinx Without a Secret”
"It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing."
-- “Lady Windermere's Fan”
"My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important."
-- “A Woman of No Importance”
"I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting."
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
"I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to."
-- “Lady Windermere's Fan”
Quotes on People
"People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately."
-- Letter from Paris, dated May 1900
"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing."
-- “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”
"Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification."
-- “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime”
"It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
Quotes on Life
"Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
-- “Vera, of The Nihilists”
"The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations."
-- “A Woman of No Importance”
"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."
-- “The Duchess of Padua”
"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
-- “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime”
Quotes on Love
"Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman - or the want of it in the man."
-- “A Woman of No Importance”
"One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry."
-- “A Woman of No Importance”
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
-- “An Ideal Husband”
"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
"Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot."
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
7. Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884. She was well read, spoke several different languages and was very outspoken. They had 2 sons: Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886.
8. With a family to support, Oscar worked at Woman's World magazine from 1887-1889. The next six years were to become the most creative period of his life. He published two collections of children's stories and his first and only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray". It was published in 1890 originally as a short story in an American magazine to a storm of critical protest. This fueled him to expand the story and get it published -- which is was the following year. Its implied homoerotic theme was considered very immoral by the Victorians and played a considerable part in his later legal trials.
9. Oscar's first play, “Lady Windermere's Fan,” opened in February 1892. It was a financial and critical success and as a result, he focused on writing for theater. His subsequent plays included “A Woman of No Importance” (1893), “An Ideal Husband” (1895), and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895). These plays were all highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar as a playwright. He was the delight of the stage......until:
10. In the summer of 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, the third son of the Marquis of Queensberry. Bosie was well acquainted with Oscar's novel “Dorian Gray” and was an undergraduate at Oxford. They soon became lovers and were inseparable until Wilde's arrest and conviction four years later of gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years hard labor. His wife Constance took the children to Switzerland and reverted to an old family name, “Holland.”
11. Upon his release from prison, he and Bosie were reunited for a time, but the relationship didn't last. He wrote a play about his experiences in prison, but it failed to rekindle interest in his works.
12. Oscar spent the last three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. When a recurrent ear infection became serious several years later, meningitis set in, and Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900 in Paris, France.
13. Numerous books and articles have been written on Oscar Wilde since his death, one of note by his grandson, Merlin Holland, in 1997.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Thursday Thirteen #11
13 Bio/Autobio Books On My Shelf
I have always been a big fan of bio/autobiographies and have quite an extensive collection. I enjoy reading about other people’s lives, because most times, if they’ve written a book about it, their lives have been or are more messed up than mine. It’s comforting to know that even people who make tons of money and either have fans fawning all over them or great power started out as a screwball from a dysfunctional family.
So taking a quick look at the shelves of books, here we go:
#1 – Every Beatle bio ever penned by anybody in any year, including Pattie Boyd’s recent addition.
#2 – Many of the Classic Star Trek folks attempts at making money after they decided there would be no more Trek movies with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. This includes: Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
#3 – John F. Kennedy. “Reckless Youth”, “A Thousand Days” and others about Jackie and the other Kennedy women.
#4 – Frederic Chopin. His life story (as told by Franz Liszt, a one-time pupil of Chopin’s) and then one just about his years in Paris.
#5 – Jim Morrison. “No One Here Gets Out Alive” Doesn’t everyone who lived through the 60’s have this one?
#6 – Barry Manilow. “Sweet Life”. Yes, I know, but his childhood was very tough. Poor Brooklyn kid from a broken home, his mother was alcoholic, suicidal and fought with his stepfather endlessly. He was bone-ugly and as backwards as you can get – but used his talent and chutzpah to get him to where he is now.
#7 – Van Cliburn. I adore Van. I’ve adored Van since I could listen to a record. He’s a world famous concert pianist who was the first to win the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. The first pianist, I believe, to ever get a ticker tape parade in New York City!
#8 – Arthur Rubenstein. Another amazing concert pianist. He had terrible stage fright and went thru a period where he thought his hands were glass and would shatter if they touched the keys.
#9 – Joe Namath. “I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow Because I Get Better Looking Every Day.” A true classic from a true classic.
#10 – Keith Richards. Sure he is a drug addled rock star, but he’s also an avid book collector and reader. Really. Look it up!
#11 – Alan Alda. “Don’t Ever Have Your Dog Stuffed”. His mother suffered from mental illness, his dad was semi-famous and Alda had polio as a child. Another testimony to brains, perserverance and talent.
#12 – Vincent Van Gogh. “Lust for Life” A great read about a sad, tortured life.
#13 – Abraham Lincoln. The Sandberg “Prairie Years” along with many others – “The Wit and Wisdom of”, “Selected Speeches and Writing”, “With Malice Toward None”.
I could really go on and on – but these are the first 13 I ran across!
Sunday, August 26, 2007
The State of Male
I have been reading that book about Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Team of Rivals”. Well, something struck a chord with me as I was reading.
Take this passage, written from one Senator to another: "your friendship crowds (my heart) producing a kind of girlish impatience which one can neither dispose of nor comfortably endure...every day and almost every hour since (leaving) I have suffered a womanish longing to see you. But all this is too ridiculous for the subject matter of a letter between two grave Senators and I'll leave unsaid three fourths of what I have been dreaming on since I left."
You would most likely never hear a heterosexual male speak or write to another heterosexual male in the 21st century in that fashion. Why? You tell me. Is it:
1. A newly ingrained, pervasive fear of intimacy
2. Concern for the appearance of their manhood with men and women
3. Fear of being labeled homosexual
4. Fear of their professed non-sexual love for another man being blasted on Jerry Springer by their significant other
5. A simple, natural progression of genetics
6. Fear of being the joke of the neighborhood when everyone finds out, which you know they will
7. Fear of being rejected by the other person
That letter was written only 150 years ago. Two generations. Could we have mutated that much in so little time? Maybe. Maybe not. So, it is genetics or fear or both?
Genetics gave us Gandhi and Adolf Hitler. Also allowed us to walk upright and have opposable thumbs, to be self aware and think outside our reality. It also produced cancer and AIDS. So is the "how 'bout those Bears?" males of the 21st century a good thing or a bad thing?
Is it fear? Well, fear is a universal. From animals to man. Fear is a probably the biggest motivator next to procreation. Fear has an incredible hold over people, from the sublime to the obvious. Since we now know what we can have, we also know what we can lose.
My friend Anne suggests that perhaps because these men sustained so many losses – the death of wives, children, parents -- they did not fear expressing their love for the people in their lives.
Maybe that has mutated into a 21st century fear of expressing yourself exactly for that reason. Why open your heart only to have them leave or reject you – or post your personal correspondence on the internet? Perhaps those men 150 years ago weren’t afraid of the pain of life – knew it was gonna happen one way or another – and why not just say what you want to say. You’re going to survive or not. Typhoid or tuberculosis killed at random – a simple cut could become infected and deadly. A sore throat could mean rheumatic fever and a shortened life span. I guess in the face of all that, saying “I love you” to your fellow man isn’t such a scary thing.
Of course, I could be full of shit, and men write to men like this all the time. And just like those gents 150 years ago, don't expect a Doris Kearns Goodwin to publish their intimate thoughts and letters for all to see and have some future blogger try to read more into it than is really there.
Thoughts?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Why I Hate Good Books
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. By Doris Kearns Goodwin. I hate this book. Truly. I picked it up at the library on the advice of my friend Anne and I wish I had never seen it.
It is so damn good that I stayed up 1/2 the night reading and now am totally useless at work. I just want to go home, make a cup of tea and read ALL day. THIS is why I hate good books. Like a warm comforter, I want to stay inside it all day and not move. A good book makes me forget the laundry and my job and fighting kids and a wacky ex-husband and that pesky dental bill I didn't pay. A good book sucks me right in and I find I never want to leave.
This is one of them. Love Abe or not, her writing is magnificent (perhaps this why she won the Pulitizer?) and so worth your time. The book is daunting, but you are hooked from line one.
I know once I've finished reading it, I will know Lincoln better than Abe himself did.
That's good writing.
