A Lost Moment in Time: Harry Truman and the Seedling

By Craig: Recently I sold my house and moved across town where I bought an old Tudor that was built back in the 1970s. This got me thinking about the number of places that I have lived during the 49 years of my existence. I came up with the number 10. I don't have a clue as to the average number of places that a person lives in a lifetime, but if I were to guess, 10 times would probably be on the high side. I have known some people that still reside in the home that they grew up in. I would think, however, that most people would at least move on from their childhood home even if it is down the street, or in the same town. My grandparents on my mother's side were both born in Worcester Massachusetts, which is where I was born. Neither of them ever left. They both died only minutes away from where they had been born. In fact, I don't believe either one of them ever left the eastern seaboard of the United States. Their grandson, however, since leaving Worcester county in 1986 at the age of 17, has traveled around the globe. I have been back home, but only to visit, and only a smattering of times since I left 31 years ago.

When I was born I briefly lived in an apartment in Worcester with my parents and twin brother Jay. We then moved to another apartment for a short while. I was too young to remember either of these places. However, I remember the 3rd place where I lived. It was on Queen Street in Worcester in my grandfathers house. We lived on the 2nd floor of a triple decker, a house that I have previously wrote about on this blog. As it was right across from City Hospital, I associate it with the sound of ambulances and death, as it is also the house where my grandfather died while shoveling snow on his back deck after the blizzard of 78. We had moved out of there when I was five, but the house has always remained in my mind and I think about it often. While I have many memories of going to visit my grandparents there after we had moved out, I have very few memories of actually living there. One of those memories came to the surface just recently after being dormant for a number of years.

A few weeks ago my son and I took a two week road trip across the United States, and one of our stops happened to be the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence Missouri. I had always been fascinated with Truman. He was the last President to not finish college, and seemed to have ascended to the nations highest political post very quickly and against all the odds. If I were to guess, Truman himself probably didn't quite understand how he managed to become President of the United States. My son and I also went on a tour of Truman's home on Delaware street. It was a humble place for an ex-president to live. The floor in the kitchen was linoleum, and the docent explained that Truman had used thumbtacks to hold the linoleum down in spots that had ripped. These tack were still plainly visible. Truman's library was also a humble affair. A small room with a chair and some book cases. It was about the same size as my library and I couldn't help but notice that some of the books looked familiar. While I was here I thought back to my childhood on Queen Street.

It was late December of 1972. I was four years old. A few days earlier my father had given my brother and I small clear plastic cups with soil in them in which we planted a seed. we were entranced by the small green sprouts that had suddenly appeared like magic. The television was on. It was an old black and white affair, a floor model that sat near a window in the living room. On the screen I recall seeing a flag draped coffin being carried by pallbearers. It seemed to be a solemn and sad procession and as a four year old I was not sure what it meant. I only knew that it was the end of something. I guess my instinct told me that. I must have asked someone what it was, and someone must have explained to me that it was the funeral of Harry Truman. It was a few days later when I looked at the plastic cups and noticed that one of the green sprouts had turned brown while the other was thriving. Death was a finality to this existence, and I guess it occurred to me that week back in 1972 that death was real. Harry Truman and my seedling had taught me this. However, I also perceived that life was quite arbitrary and indiscriminate. Why had one of the seedlings died while the other blossomed into a fine looking flower?

My son and I walked outside into the garden at the Truman Library. We were the only ones out there. As I stood over the burial plot of Truman and his wife Bess I couldn't help but think of that brown withered seedling from so long ago...but at the same time remembered the flower that had bloomed full of life.

Is Time Fake?

By Jay

It seems that everything in this world is fake.  The American Heritage Dictionary defines “fake” as “having a false or misleading appearance; fraudulent…”  So what exactly in this world is fake? 

Well, I’d say just about everything…  But that doesn’t mean everything is bad.  It just means that nearly everything surrounding us is fake.  Let’s take a look at entertainment.  Hollywood spends billions of dollars every year producing movies so that people can vicariously experience something that they will never experience in real life.  Everything is fake about the movies – from the stories to the acting to the wardrobe to the set – everything.  Even movies that purport to be based on real stories are fake.  They are nothing more than actors playing parts on sets spouting words written for them by screenwriters.  Fake.  The entire Hollywood star system and world of celebrities is fake – from popular actors and singers to sports stars and other notables – these people are elevated in the eyes of the public to nearly godlike status with thousands of yellow journalists all over the world exaggerating and reporting details of their private lives.  Yet people love it!

Then there is religion.  From Christianity to Judaism to Mahometanism to Buddhism to Hinduism to all the other countless smaller religions out there – nothing is real.  They are all based on the words of gods or prophets or arcane priestly figures that all purport to know the way of achieving peace for the soul (something else that might be fake).  Christianity is the biggest.  People actually believe that a man who was crucified in circa. 29 A.D. rose from the dead telling a select few individuals in his rather vague way of speaking to spread the truth of his message, which is pleasant enough to read about but rather slight and embarrassingly platitudinous for an omniscient creator.   Yet where I live there is a church on just about every corner, which just goes to show how vital religion is in the lives of many people.  Though the foundations of religion are inherently fake, many of them have spawned some of the greatest literature in the world as well as that of art and architecture.  Christianity alone has produced such brilliant minds as St. Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas and many more.  And yet all is based on fictions created by certain canny individuals from the world’s past. 

As I sit here in my library writing these words, I look around and see all the fake things that surround me.  Fictional works by various authors such as Hugo, Irving, Hawthorne and others…  Historical volumes by Parkman, Prescott and a host of other early as well as modern historians – all reporting details from various sources which may or may not be true based on who is doing the telling…  Volumes of poetry – mere whimsical images set in a tight and constructive language – nothing more than translated thoughts or visions artistically rendered by the poet…  Christian philosophy and history of over two thousand years – all based on purported divinity…   

                                                        Dr. Frederick Cook's Fake Peak

The world has been full of imposters and frauds since time immemorial – from charlatans to politicians to scam artists – all engaging in fakery of some sort for either profit, publicity or power.  Of course, this doesn’t make us all imposters and frauds; however, I would almost wager to bet that if we really looked hard at the settings and situations in which we live, we would find that just about every facet of our lives has some aspect of unreality about it – from the image we have of ourselves that we try to project to others all the way down to our inmost thoughts and the burdensome doubts that plague our intentions and actions.  But can all of this be labelled under the heading fake?  I don’t know.  I really don’t know anything and am even more in the dark now than I was when I knew everything at age 18.  I should be getting wiser in my later years, yet all that seems to surround me are thoughts and beliefs that grow cloudier and murkier with the passage of time.  I suppose that before I leave this world – if I have the luxury to contemplate my imminent departure – all will appear nothing more to me than confounded nonsense cloaked in some garbled and indistinct mess.      

Yet I am satisfied with the fakeness that surrounds me.  I am perfectly complacent within my fakeness and revel in its overall meaninglessness.  I know that time itself is fake.  It appears to be nothing more than a construct of ours to fathom the past and the future that has not yet arrived; however, I so want it to exist simply for the fact that I wish to reflect upon the past – not only on the hazy details of my own meager existence but also on the events that preceded my inauspicious arrival.  So I believe that it is real, much like the myriad of fakeness that inspires the whole world to throb to the beat of nothing.     

Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native, and The Name Inside the Book

By Craig: Our time on this earth is fleeting. I sit here tonight listening to the rhythmic ticking of an alarm clock. I never set it, but its tick is soothing and it eventually lulls me to sleep. I usually read a book every night before I go to bed while the clock is ticking. The books pages contain nothing deep or scholarly. It's usually a Louis L'amour novel, or something similar. Lately I have been reading Thomas Hardy. A few months ago it was Gaston Leroux and Jack London. I tried reading War and Peace but found it too dry. In fact, I have tried reading War and Peace off and on for the last 30 years. I never make it past the first chapter. I did manage to get through Dicken's Bleak House. I kept waiting for the meat of the story, but it never came. I guess it was apropos. After all "Waiting" and "Time" are two of the themes of that book. Indeed, Jarndice vs Jarndice (The law case throughout the book) went on in perpetuity through the generations. I guess that is how it is in life. Everything goes on into the future...nothing is ever totally resolved...things change...and time never ends even though you do. Where is the resolution to existence? Is there ever one?

I am in the process of selling my house and have started to pack up some of the books in my library. I own hundreds of books. I should correct myself and say "I am the current caretaker of hundreds of books." A person never really owns anything. The concept of ownership is a specious one. The proof of this is found in every library. A lot of my books are decades old, some of them are centuries old. I have always been fascinated with the names written inside of the books which denote previous ownership. I recently finished Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. I enjoyed the book so I decided to read his The Return of the Native. The copy that I possess is an old hardback with green boards. It was published by Harper and Brothers in 1922. Where I acquired the book I have long since forgotten. Perhaps I purchased it in a lot when I was selling books back in the early 1990s? Maybe it was given to me by somebody and I have forgotten the when! and the who! I had never read Hardy or had even given him any thought until my late cousin Trevor, in England sent me a book on Wessex Tales by Hardy a number of years ago with a glowing recommendation to read his works.  Well Trevor...I'm just getting around to it now wherever you might be! Anyway, where this book came from escapes me. I opened it up and as I usually do I looked at the front leaf. A simple name was inscribed inside "Louise Kirk." I sat there looking at it wondering who Louise Kirk might have been. The ink was faded with age on the yellowed leaf. It was obviously old as it was written in ink from an inkwell. I guessed that it was probably inscribed by Miss or Mrs. Kirk sometime around 1922. There were no other clues. There was simply the name. Louise Kirk once possessed this copy of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native. This was certain as her name was clearly written inside the aging book...The book which I, the latest caretaker, was about to sink his teeth into. I thought about the age of the book. It was 95 years old. How many people have read this copy that once belonged in the library of Louise Kirk? Was she the only one who read it? Did it sit on a shelf collecting dust and yellowing for three quarters of a century after her reading? Did her son or daughter pick it up during the Eisenhower administration and peruse through the leafs?  I Know that I have had the book for at least 20 years...where was it the preceding 70 or 75? Who was the caretaker? I did not know a Louise Kirk or anyone named Louise for that matter yet the book sits here in all its faded glory on my nightstand begging to be read. It seems to breathe..."Please Read Me Craig! You and Louise have neglected me for so long!" I want to ask it some questions. What happened to Louise? She must be long in her grave. The drama that unfolded as she read Hardy's masterpiece dissipated from her mind shortly after the reading as it will from me when I am done with it. I thumbed through the pages and started reading it, but I gave up and flipped back to the front leaf and thought about Louise Kirk. I did a quick Google search but came up with nothing. She could have been one of numerous Louise Kirk's who had lived in the past century. Perhaps she had married and became Louise Jones...or Louise Smith?  She had lived a life...How long I did not know. The only thing that connected me with her was this book...The book, one of many of which I find myself caretaker. I picked up a ball point pen and carefully wrote my name under that of the previous caretaker Louise Kirk. Perhaps in 95 years someone will pull this volume off a shelf somewhere and see two names and wonder...