CONTRIBUTOR BOOK REVIEW: UNLOCKING THE SKY BY SETH SHULMAN

Unlocking the Sky:
Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane
Seth Shulman
Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 16, 2003)

Centered loosely around an experiment to get Professor Langley’s famed failure of a flying machine (often dubbed Langley’s Folly) off the ground, some 11 years after its fateful demise, Unlocking the Sky is an interesting framed narrative that reconsiders both the history of aviation as well as our contemporary approach to invention and discovery.

For the most part, it succeeds wonderfully, using this narrative device to tell the story of Glenn Hammond Curtiss, who is arguably one of the most important figures to modern aviation— yet someone who was more comfortable tinkering in his workshop than stepping into the limelight. For this reason, this treatment that centers on various experiments and airplane constructions is a brilliant way to capture a man who was at home in these situations. Unlocking the Sky treats readers to an amazing era of aviation history and discovery in the way that it must have been interesting to the people involved— discussing ideas, adjusting the size of wings and propellers, hoping the wind will die down, and the like. We are placed in the workshop with these pioneers of aviation to experience the wonder of getting a piloted airplane to fly, and turn, and land— all to the cheers and roars of the entire world watching.

What did I learn from Unlocking? First off, Orville and Wilbur Wright were pretty bizarre, and were definitely jerks. Second off, Curtiss invented a variety of things that are still in use in aviation today— the seaplane, ailerons, landing gear, etc., etc. So, next time you read Jimmy Buffett’s Where is Joe Merchant, see that seaplane on the cover and think to yourself, “boy, that would be great to own a seaplane,” thank Curtiss (he’s dead now, but thank him in spirit), as well as Buffett’s cover artist.

As someone who is relatively terrified of flying, I was hoping that Unlocking the Sky could actually unlock the sky and make me want to get on an airplane. If this is your hope as well, might I suggest valium or a hypnotist? However, if you are hoping for an easy summer read that might give you some learnin’ in an interesting way, Unlocking the Sky will only cost you a couple of sittings.

In other news, I am drafting a letter to Harper Collins Publishing to offer a lawsuit based on their false advertising— as the sky still remains firmly locked for me.

The drawbacks to the book are twofold. At times, despite its attention to an all-American figure of an under-educated yet brilliant hands-on inventor, the voice gets a bit pretentious and overblown at times. Personally, I am no fan of this type of writing— especially in a biography— but it also doesn’t gibe well with the formation of the framed narrative and flashbacks that work so hard to present Curtiss in his true environment.

The other problem, which I have found in other biographies (or biography-type works as this isn’t truly a bio) is that it gets stuck on its thesis. In order for us to be interested in these people, the author needs to give us something to hook our teeth into besides “this person was alive.” In the case of Pollock it was “he was a lonely and depressed drunk,” and after a while reading Jackson Pollock; An American Saga I kept repeating to myself “I get it, I get it, I get it.”

Here, the messages are: “Orville and Wilbur Wright were jerks, Curtiss was a kind and generous spirit, and all inventions are an accumulation of ideas— an evolution of group thinking over time— not just a lone ‘a ha!’ in a lab someplace.”

At times during Unlocking, I thought “I get it, I get it, I get it.”

What is perhaps the most interesting facet of the book, besides the crafted storytelling, are the questions it poses regarding technological progress, invention, patents, and patent law. Our system of protecting ideas, meant to foster advancement of technologies, oftentimes becomes a hindrance to progress. In the case of the airplane, the Wright brothers’ patent was so broad they expected to receive royalties on any manned airplane. Far from promoting advancements in a new technology, this legally-imposed monopoly had people in great legal battles and personal turmoil during their development of the technologies that would lead to the jets and airplanes we have today.

It makes one wonder in today’s climate of searching out medical advancements and environmental solutions if the patent laws as they stand don’t fully suit our needs. As we all know, once lawyers and corporations get involved, it is hard to compete with their resources and money— even if you are in the right. Indeed, Curtiss was ordered to stop working on airplanes more than once by judges and the letter of the law, and without the help of Henry Ford’s legal team would have never got many of his ideas off the ground— literally.

Excuse me, I couldn’t resist.

Finally, as with all biographical material, I return to the book De Kooning: An American Master. In a similar approach, the authors attempt to get the reader into the studio to see de Kooning at work; at home with his art and struggles with creating powerful works. Shulman uses a similar tactic here in trying to get the reader into the workshop, centered on some pivotal experiments, and using these as a point of departure for presenting back story. De Kooning, is pulled off much, much better— the difference? Unlocking the Sky will cost you a few days of reading this summer, De Kooning, you will be lugging around to the pool and the beach until Labor Day.

Reviewed by Kurt Eidsvig
Eidsvig is an important contributor to Wazoo. Eidsvig, we have seen your art. We have seen your reviews. Where are your poems?

To hear Eidsvig's poems, attend one of his Boston Poetry Slams or satisfy yourself at his website, www.kurtcoleeidsvig.com.

Procrastination

Here's a snap, borrowed from my Uncle's blog, of my sister and me with my aunt and grandparents. I think Elspeth looks just like me and Heather looks a great deal like Merry, but maybe I'm dreaming.

Yes, I'm procrastinating. There are a handful of jobs to do outside before we leave for Ohio tomorrow morning. Among them, and the one I like least and dread most, is watering the plants and seeds. Why do I hate this? It is SLOW (about an hour and a half) and involves dragging the hose like a grumpy toddler's arm place to place to endless place. The fact that I'm nurturing plants, and can listen to the birds singing, lawnmowers humming, etc. doesn't make a spot of difference to me (at this particular moment). It is tedious.

Wazoo Farm received a general clean-up in the past two days; I heaped junk for the sanitation crew and weed-whacked and Martin pulled the mower up and down the hill (too steep for the riding mower WITH chains) until he about fainted. But things are looking better. Tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries are in. Herbs, zinnias, and the rest of my seeds go in after our return. I'll post snaps in a few days.

Here's a mystery. Johnny Appleseed, Miss Rumphius--all their whimsical lot--just toss seeds into crevices and crannies, and bingo! Apple trees and lupines appear. Not so for me. First I soak the lupine seeds all day, sow them after dark, and hope wildly for the best. Tossing seeds. Does it really, truly work? And after all our work pulling endless thistles and digging the hill the thistles are back. Nasty critters. You can actually buy thistles and plant them for salads and medical remedies. Anyone want mine?

The next big job for us is installing a fence. This is proving to be rather on the expensive side, but more to the point, who would like to come out and help Martin? I'll be fixing great food, mixed drinks, and cold ice baths for the workees. Any takers? Come now, post-hole digging in clay soil is FUN. Alright, but working with Martin IS fun. Here's a shout-out to Martin's DAD. Help! (The house next to us may be for sale). . .

Enough procrastination. The poor thirsty plants are begging for attention, as is Elspeth, who is supposed to be sleeping at this moment in her hot room in her warm crib. Life is very, very hard when you're only seventeen months old.

NAME THIS PEST!

Any etymologists or gardeners out there who can help me?

On my strawberry plants, along the stems, I've noted (and squashed) little worms hidden in a mess of frothy white bubbles. The bubbles are the consistency of saliva, and it looks for all the world that my strawberry plants are going rabid.

Then, as I was harvesting mint this evening, I noted again the same slimy froth (eggs???) along with the tiny little whitish/greenish worms.

Anyone know what these are?

And anyone know of a good organic/natural spray or solution?

YUCK! HELP ME, please!!!

Time

Here in Ohio, in the house where I remember my Nana and Grandpa, and now where my Grandpa says little and sleeps much, and has been remarried for much of a decade to a lovely, gentle person, here in this place:

As I sat on a folding chair in the basement, feeding Elspeth to sleep last night, I looked at the laundry line strung between posts. Laundry pins stood in a row like little lonely soldiers. I imagined my Nana's fingers, strong and swift, clipping up printed sheets, efficient and precise. And upstairs I remembered the voices of my great aunts and uncles as they clustered in the living room, the clatter of coffee cups, the burbling of the coffee pot.

My siblings and I used to play shuffleboard in the basement, amongst my Nana's endless rock collections, paint supplies, canvases.

But then, as I fed Elspeth and put her down to sleep, Merry danced about my sleeping, silent Grandpa. Later that evening Mom and I soaped and rinsed dishes side by side, and I remembered my Grandpa methodically rinsing every dish, stacking and then washing as my Nana put on a pot of coffee and laughter filled the kitchen.

Once again the incredible sense of disconnect, the sense that what is past is not past after all, the sense that time is nothing but an illusion--this hangs in the air. Deep inside I can't help but feel that time, the death of my great aunts and uncles and grandparents, the fading of my Grandpa--all this is real, but it is not all. Our Western understanding of time, this belief that all is linear, these words of "past, present, future; before, now, then--" all these do us a disservice. They are small words, labels we stamp on mystery, words that consign processes and people as impossibly finite.

Somewhere I feel that we are all still living together, in a place where time makes no difference, where death and birth are just memories of a place long ago, and the now, the now with everyone we love, is all there is, forever. It's not sentimentality, or a wish for what can never be, or a trembling silly vision of faces in the sky. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it is real. You can call it heaven if you want, but I feel again, as I often do, that it is already present, just beyond me, but here already if I could only touch it.

But I do hear now Martin playing a song, and I did hear just two minutes ago my Grandpa say words out loud in his old, strong voice.

Gardening at 9:30 pm

Summer has so far squashed any semblance of a normal schedule for me, though I am not complaining. I have had little or no time to write between trips and special days, family, friends, and the endless gardening.

Today: though the sky threatened rain, we loaded an impossibly good picnic into the car and headed for Ohiopyle Park. With my parents we hiked past Cucumber Falls down through shady paths lined with rhododendrons and ambled over large flat rocks that skimmed the river. Reference for scenery: Last of the Mohicans; McClowsky's coastal Maine; Swiss Family Robinson. See: Crazy kayak man with beach ball zipped up in his kayak so he can flip in the air.

Merry and Grandaddy climbed up the rocks and ducked behind the falls. They waved through a curtain of moving white water.

Once again, ice-cream at the Firefly Grill.

Last weekend: fire in the pit and hobo meals; Mom tore furiously at our hill until it was bald, and we madly seeded it with wild flower seeds last night.

Music of the Moment: Kings of Convenience
Movie of the Moment: Flushed Away
Book Rediscovered: Horse and His Boy, by CS Lewis (read in my father's voice to my own daughter)
Wishes: A Fence, a Slotted Toast Tray, a brick path, a tropical fruit smoothie
Good things: The girls, covered in dirt; Sheep and Fiber Festival in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania; Nettle juice

Tomorrow, we'll visit my ill Grandpa in Ohio, so I'll likely not write for a day or two. But do stay posted as I have more pictures on the line-up. . .

When Our Parents Were Younger Than We Are

Since the Guest Blogger seems to be distracted with other petty issues, such as his new summer class and the twenty trees that arrived while I am cooling my heels in Baltimore, I thought I'd jump on and post a picture.

So here's a snap of my parents when they were younger than Martin and I are now. They are just married, playing Monopoly:

These snaps always bemuse me a little, especially ones of my grandmothers at seventeen or twenty, in swimming suits or with dogs, giddy with being young and moving about in gorgeous arms and legs and glamorous hair. Puts time in perspective.

Good luck, guest blogger, planting those trees.

Tea for the Tillerman

This is Martin--I'm guest blogging for Kim this week.

So, we finally got our act together and borrowed a tiller. Here's the result so far:



Let me tell you, as a tiller novice, I had no idea how carried away--literally--you can get with one of those machines. The tiller I borrowed is a rear tine, self-propelled Troy-Bilt model. I guess it's pretty standard. Its owner, John, showed me how to operate it properly, but as in all things, theoretical knowledge doesn't instantly translate into applied knowledge. As John explained, when you till over previously untilled land, like turf, you have to use the shallowest setting or the tiller won't dig into the ground at all. When that happens, the tines, which are probably turning ten times faster than the front wheels, become the wheels, and the tiller lurches forward suddenly, then takes off at approximately twenty miles per hour.

Of course this happened to me. Several times. The first couple times, I couldn't manage to tell my hands to loosen their grip on the handle, and the tiller dragged me across the lawn. I felt like I was in a three stooges routine--I just needed Curly or Moe to swat my face with a flat-blade shovel.

I've got the hang of it now, and I'm wondering how we ever got along without it. Thanks to Chris and Pete for encouraging us to quit laboring over sod and borrow one of these babies.

Speaking of babies: Happy Mother's Day (a day late now) to all you ... mothers.

EARLY SUMMER at Ohiopyle State Park

Here are some images of early summer, from our trip two days ago to Ohiopyle State Park. It is beautiful there; if you haven't been and live in the area, do go. Make sure you follow your hike (where you will see waterfalls, wildflowers, dogwoods, hemlocks, and more) with a stop to river-rat infested Firefly Grill, where you can stuff yourself silly with french fries and Hershey's dipped icecream. Or skip the hike and throw yourself helter-skelter down the natural waterslides.

It was HOT for early summer, and the shady hike we expected was not as shady as we hoped.

The trees were still just awakening and leafing, though the lilacs and dogwoods were in full splendor.



Ah, SUMMER.

Celebrate! Plant some summer bulbs or put some lilacs in water on your kitchen table. Lose your muffler, crank up some hiphop with obnoxious base, and roar down the road with your windows open. Or eat peppercorn salmon, as we did tonight. At least drop some basil seeds in the warm ground. Summer, summer, summer!

Weary to My BONES

BONE-WEARY. Today I blithely shouldered my shovel and continued digging a bed around the Quaking Aspens. It was hot as blazes and I stopped every now and then when I became too dizzy or thirsty, to tie with twine my unwieldy daffodil and tulips into little growing bundles. The girls were happy in a blow-up pool from bad, bad Walmart; Martin was spreading straw around the strawberry bed not far from me.

You have never seen such a heavy bed as this. Every attempt at turning over the soil was all but thwarted by what looked, for all the world, like white modeling clay, baked to rock by years of sun. Also there were shards of glass and something large and metal and entirely unidentifiable.

These sorts of setbacks do not stop Martin and me from loading our car with tomato and pepper plants, lettuce, seeds, deer fence, posts, bleeding heart and yes, more roses. We are big dreamers.

And to the beds, I say, well, good luck. Plants have been making their way for centuries. We do our best within reason and hope the plants are brave and strong and adventurous.

Today is Martin's first day back in the garden full-time and I dare say he is a great deal more sore than I. This makes me feel better somehow, in a very selfish kind of way. He took over the clay bed and actually bent my steel Dutch shovel in the attempt; after he brought up a load of organic material from the bottom of the hill we dug in a shrub rose and flowering sage.

Martin has also taken on the duty of feeding us all well, though the Peanut-Ginger Noodles with Carrot-Cucumber Relish just about turned me into a human torch. Intense, yes. But tempered by good beer and spinach salad with apples, pecans, and optional goat cheese.

Anyone ready to come to Wazoo? Bring your shovel and your appetite.

Contributor Movie Review: Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Ingram Entertainment, 2005

Have you ever been alone in your car with the music up, maybe at a busy intersection or heading out of town at nightfall with a duffel in the trunk, and felt like your life—your story, your inner world, and the world around you--was soundtracked? Let’s say you’re already in a state of angst or mild vexation. The basic idea drumming in your mind is, What’s it all mean? What’s it all (me, friends, jobs, family, etc.) add up to? You’re coming home from work. You’ve got Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun” cranked, or maybe some Sarah McLachlan (“Good to Me”?) or Indigo Girls. Ok, not Indigo Girls, but you get the idea—a song or artist you know will only mimic, if not indulge and enhance, your current condition. You begin to experience irrational feelings of sadness and self-importance, and your thoughts verge toward a kind of ill-gotten empathy for the exquisite complexity of our lives: Everybody hurts (sometimes). How tragic and beautiful we all are!

Maybe it’s just me.

And there are other songs and moods your soundtrack might include. You’ve got music to “chill” by, music that gets you hopping, music that brings you down, music that says, “I’m carefree,” music that floats you, music that floors you. That’s the challenge of a mix tape (well, not tape anymore, but whatever): You need to take the listener on a journey, and you know the journey isn’t so much through the lyric content of the songs, thought that’s part of it, but through tunnels of self, of memory, of dreams.

Follow me so far?

This whole thing—the soundtracking of our lives—has got to be a late 20th Century innovation. Before recorded music, and before that recorded music became portable (i.e. the advent of car radio, walkmen, ipods), and before movie directors began heavily emphasizing the film score, it seems to me this would have been unlikely. It doesn’t help that increasingly directors appear to be abandoning traditional symphonic film scores for pop music—music that, when we hear it in a film, echoes previous experiences with that song or predicts others we will have.

The problem is, of course, that while these experiences may be part of the “real” soundtrack of our lives, and we might enjoy them (I certainly do), they are essentially escapist in nature. I have students that stroll from class to class with earphones on, and no doubt they spend a good deal of the time I don’t see—in their dorms, in the park, lounging in bed, driving, even eating—doing the same. My fear is that they, and that we and that I, will miss most of the real soundtrack: the birdsongs I can’t identify; the dialogue I can’t overhear; the troubled, unfocused thoughts I’d like to numb; the lives people beyond my windshield are living out day after day. You know, if I drive by a construction worker holding a “Slow” sign and I’m “soundtracking,” I think I’m more likely to appropriate what I observe and use it to my own self-absorbed ends. I might not really care about this guy no matter what, but there’s a chance I will if I can give him my attention for the few seconds I see him without the gloss of the song I’m imbibing.

What does this all have to do with Elizabethtown, directed by Cameron Crowe? Only this: Elizabethtown is an homage to the soundtracked life. A confirmed pop-rock junkie, Crowe (who you’ll remember from Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, a loosely autobiographical account of Crowe’s days as a young journalist for Rolling Stone) fills two hours of movie, and about 45 minutes of script, with music. I’d bet—I haven’t looked this up—that nearly fifty songs appear in some form in the film. I had fun ticking them off: “Big Love,” Fleetwood Mac; Wheat’s “Don’t I Hold You”; “Learning to Fly,” Tom Petty, and on and on. You’ve got Elton, you’ve got My Morning Jacket, you’ve got Kathleen Edwards and Ryan Adams. And those are just the ones I could name on the spot.

The problem isn’t just the lack of a substantial script. It’s that all this soundtracking has the effect of making all characters and plot points bow the knee to Orlando Bloom’s protagonist, Drew Baylor. To be fair, Drew’s hung up on himself from the start: He’s about to become a monumental failure at his job—the shoe he’s designed turns out to be the footwear equivalent of an Edsel—and tries to kill himself with a butcher knife-rigged stationary bike before his sister calls to tell him his dad has died. But instead of critiquing Drew’s emotional onanism, the movie only affirms it. For instance, when Drew visits his father’s extended family in Kentucky (Elizabethtown, where the film gets its name), we’d like to see the movie plumb some of the evident tensions: Drew is from Oregon, he’s well-educated, successful—at least to this point—young, good looking, and in a state of shock over the loss of his father; the myriad people he meets are provincial, good-natured, resentful about Drew’s mom “stealing” his dad away to the Pacific Northwest, and pretty much fulfill all the aw-shucks Southern exaggeration you can conjure. Should be plenty of grist for the mill. But Crowe cops out. He gives us a few stylish, quirky interchanges, and a bunch of sequences where we watch people talking and eating and laughing and crying and but don’t hear any of it: We hear Patty Griffin or Lindsay Buckingham, or whoever it was at that moment. Ditto for Drew’s weekend romance with Claire Colburn (ever perky Kirsten Dunst), and his aloof relationship with his sister (Judy Greer) and mother (I won’t begin to discuss Susan Sarandon’s ridiculous memorial service eulogy/dance in honor of her husband, just before a band plays “Freebird” and accidentally lights the hotel ballroom on fire with a paper mache bird that wings out on a cable over the mourners).

At Claire’s urging, Drew takes a road trip, scheduled to the last detail by Claire, who disingenuously suggests Drew work through his grief on his own, then call her. (In fact, she’s in control of him the whole time, pulling his strings, and by the end even waiting for him--*surprise*--to arrive at a county fair where a vendor is actually selling his doomed shoe, the Spasmodica. We’re supposed to believe that Drew experiences a kind of breakthrough on this road trip—the sort of moment Crowe gave us in Almost Famous when everyone on a band’s tour bus sings along to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”—but it doesn’t work here. Drew’s father, now ashes in a safely-seatbelted urn, rides shotgun, and at one point we see Drew talking to the cremated paterfamilias. He’s hitting his hands on the steering wheel, laughing, weeping, motioning (watch where you’re going!), etc. Do we hear any of this? No. We hear yet another song, no doubt appropriate to how we should be feeling at this moment.

And so we’re left in the cold. We’re the construction worker with the “Slow” sign, but instead of waving Drew by, we’re forced to watch him for 123 minutes. He’s in his own soundtrack, we’re excluded.

Reviewed by Martin B. Cockroft
"Martoon" rides a red wagon down a killer Pennsylvania hill, composes songs for his daughters, and cooks to-die-for Thai food.

Gardening After Dark

While Martin furiously graded, I danced with the girls and then put them to bed, Elspeth with her stuffed floppy dog and Merry with her dreams of Laura Ingalls. And then I ran downstairs and out the door.

Gardening after dark has its rewards. I don't worry about sunburn, for instance. And when I hit rock while digging up turf, I couldn't see well enough to discern whether the rock was movable or not, so I didn't bother trying too hard. In the dark I can imagine that the ugly pool is gone instead of slouching like an unwelcome, demanding visitor who smells terrible in the corner of our yard. (The lady who wanted it so badly removed part of it but never came back! O please, come back!)

And after my digging tonight, I sat on our porch and took in the quiet of the evening: stars brilliant, my neighbor (who gave me Tiger Lily tubers today) silhouetted behind his computer screen, the lights glowing from houses. I revelled in the feeling of being completely hidden.

I find that gardening demands more than you expected but then in turn gives more than you hoped. After sweating all day digging rocks, ankle deep in grass clippings, you receive a gift: the mellowing of eveningfall, colors beginning to glow; everything softens; the green of leaves and grass blades is so deep you feel as though you could stroke it like a cat. Leaning on your shovel, talking to a neighbor or better still, enjoying the quiet, the world fills you with a knowledge that does not make you feel like jumping up and down but nodding and saying, That's Right. After all, I knew it all the time.

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.

CONTRIBUTOR BOOK REVIEW: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: AN AMERICAN LIFE BY WALTER ISAACSON

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
by Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (May 4, 2004)

I am always pretty careful when embarking upon some serious non-fiction— 6oo some-odd pages worth in this case— as I have an inquisitive mind, but not one that can resist the yawner biographies that are mass-produced these days. Luckily, in Isaacson’s treatment of a much-written-about and much-mythologized subject he manages to create a compelling narrative and interesting voice that carries the reader (not literally, as I am unseasonably heavy right now) through the life and times of Benjamin Franklin.

Ben Franklin— or B. Franks as I have come to call him— was an exceedingly interesting guy. He invented things— bifocals, lightning rods, political cartoons; he developed organizations— libraries, fire departments, postal service; he signed stuff— peace accord with England , treaty with France , Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution; he…

Well, let me put it this way, HE IS THE BENJAMINS. When a rapper says “it’s all about the Benjamins, they’re talking about B. Franks. So turn down your Kanye West and listen up.

Although, that Kanye West is really on to something, don’t you think? Or what about that Fall Out Boy— not their new album, or even “Under the…” but that “Take This To Your Grave” is a real toe-tapper, wouldn’t you say? But I digress.

What struck me as most interesting about the book was the character of B. Franks— he was free-spirited and simultaneously diligent to his beliefs. For instance, while we might think of Ben Franklin as a pudgy old dude who was busy signing the Declaration of Independence and flying lighting kites, he was a fairly rebellious young kid. By 17 he had run away from Boston to Philadelphia and not long after that he hopped ship to live in London (which was a 6-week voyage at the time). Franklin was a globetrotter before the Grateful Dead even had a tour bus. It is astounding to me to think that in the early- to mid-1700’s B. Franks was living in Philadelphia, Boston, London, France— with trips to Montreal and all up and down the colonies. He was the most well-traveled and knowledgeable person about all 13 colonies up until the Declaration of Independence was signed— and maybe after.

I can’t help but think of all the times I sat around with my flunky buddies and we talked about a road trip and instead wound up at 7-11 buying Cheetos. B. Franks was criss-crossing the globe and meeting famous people all over the world.

By 17, it is suspected, that he was the best writer in “the colonies.” And he was self-taught for the most part. His style is considered a father to Mark Twain and American writing. Further, he is now considered the most important scientist since Newton — before Einstein and physics, etc.— for his experiments with electricity.

Also of interest was his dedication to true democracy (he was considered radical to many when they drafted the Constitution), as well as his commitment to the greater good in compromise. In an era when we too often can confuse compromise in politics with self-seeking, Franklin ’s personal style of pushing for the greater good— with compromise and diplomacy— reveals the necessity and strength of these tools when combined with a passion for common people’s rights and a disgust for aristocracy.

Probably my favorite scenes in the book come when Franklin hits Europe for the second time. By then he was considered a demigod for his discoveries with electricity and lightning. Consider this: before Franklin , when a town had difficulties with lightning, there was often a sense that God had somehow become upset with them. The solution? Build a taller church, with a big metal bell, which would inevitably get crushed by lightning. Franklin develops the lightning rod and people revere him. He not only saved their churches and homes— but the sense is almost that he got God to be happy with them again. When Franklin was a delegate to France in the 1770’s there were hundreds of coins, miniatures, and representations of him dressed as a frontiersman.

He was like the P. Diddy of his time— times 100. He attended a party in France — one where everyone was wearing powdered wigs. Well, B. Franks wasn’t down with that high-class stuff, so he wore his fur hat. The next year, women’s wigs fashioned in the manner of the fur hat he wore were a fashion craze in Paris . The next year he attended a function simply carrying a white hat in his hand. Of course, white hats were the next fashion trend in Paris . Who else besides B. Franks was a scientist, writer, civil servant, AND a fashion icon. Look out fashion week.

The one negative about the book? It is not juicy enough at times. Isaacson takes great care to provide a fair representation of the man. While much has been said of Franklin as an adulterer and a party animal, the book tempers these stories with a true sketch of the man rather than a sensational E! True Hollywood Story version.

All in all, a fascinating book. Not the best biography I have read (which goes to de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan), but a great one regardless.

As French financier A.J. Turgot said about Franklin :

“He stole lightning from the sky / and the scepter from tyrants.”

--REVIEWED BY KURT COLE EIDSVIG
Eidsvig is a wicked-good painter and poet who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Check out his art at the Wazoo Art Show (posted last month) and at his website.

BY M: Music Review (Sort of): Who's Your Daddy?

Music Review by M

Ok. First a couple of qualifiers:

I am a music geek, I guess, but I am not a music guru. I am not like John Cusack in High Fidelity, though I wish I were. I am not one of the purists who felt betrayed when British director Stephen Frears set the movie in Chicago, rather than London (where Nick Hornsby's novel takes place). With Jack Black I will raise my goblet of rock, but I will not claim to be able to name ten underrated hair metal bands, or ten Beatles B-sides, or ten best prog rock albums. I'm doing good to know what prog rock is. I have a flimsy album collection, mostly because we have no money for such excesses--not because I don't think it's important to own Dylan's Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks.

Kim calls me a music snob, too, and I guess if by that she means I get physically ill when someone begins singing Culture Club's Karma Chameleon, or that I respond with "rage and contempt" (to steal a phrase from poet John Berryman) when someone calls "Sound of Silence" a great song (it's sophomoric) or Dave Matthews Band the best in the world (they're pretentious) or Disturbed really, well, disturbing (shallow emotionalism), then, yeah, I'm guilty as charged.

I'm also an English teacher, which means I'm allowed to write long sentences like that.

I'm a poet, too, so I'll invoke Whitman: I will freely contradict myself. (I like a little cheese now and again. I actually enjoyed Lindsay Lohan's "Confessions of a Broken Heart" the first time I heard it, and I'll go to the mat for Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.)

By way of introduction, here are my ten favorite songs of the moment, in no particular order:

--Time of the Season, Zombies (and not because some chump on American Idol covered it a few weeks ago. I don't watch TV and didn't know anything about it until I searched for the song on YouTube. Now I feel like something's been stolen. And I did watch a bootleg of that version, and while passable, the Idol house band didn't even attempt Rod Argent's insane organ solo)

--Wear Your Love Like Heaven, Donovan

--Your Touch, Black Keys

--Bennie and the Jets, Elton John

--Peace Train, Cat Stevens (as a dad, I happen to know that it's of the more listenable songs on the Little People's album Things That Go--a better cover, for instance, than their rendition of the 5th Dimension's Up, Up and Away, which isn't a good song no matter who sings it)

--Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, Flaming Lips

--Crazy, Gnarls Barkley (though I'll probably get sick of it soon; I don't think it has staying power)

--Wonderous Stories, Yes

--Requiem, Eliza Gilkyson, or maybe Susan Warner's Did Trouble Me

--Spirit in the Sky, Norman Greenbaum (Merry's actually been requesting this as a bedtime song; you have to love lines like "You gotta have a friend in Jesus/So you know that when you die/He's gonna recommend you to spirit in the sky")

I guess that's ten. That's all the review I'll do this week.

Now you out there. You know who you are. Post your top ten of the moment.

NEW MUSIC COLUMN STARTS NOW

Now, GIVE IT UP
for the new music column, weekly this summer (and hopefully longer),
by music geek and jive turkey
M.

Great Winds, Great Rain at Wazoo

With friends we ate chocolate cake; on our deck, by the beat-up pool, we sipped frothy vanilla lattes as the children ran over the green hill down to the creek and the tire swing; we laughed and the children threw themselves down the hill in wild rolling tumbles.

It was lovely.

Earlier that day we lay under the maple, leaves still tightly wound, watching clouds and the girls' faces as they flew back and forth above us like birds. . .

This also was lovely.

We washed the dishes, put away chairs and children in their proper places. And a great wind blew up, and in one ripping thunderous clap, our house blew away. The children did not stir. Martin and I held onto door frames, clutched at useless objects: a lamp, a book, a fork. The children slept soundly. The piano rolled across the living room, playing keys at random in a pattern that sounded faintly like "When the Saints" or some medley my grandmother used to sing.

The children are still sleeping. Martin has looked out the window and reported that he sees a mass of thickly growing palm fronds. The air is warmer and feels tropical. Despite the heat I have put the pot to boil. In cases such as these the only immediate solution is a cup of strong tea.