LookingLand

for the 50bookchallenge:

no. 57 ~ A Soldier's Heart by gary paulsen. coupled with an article from the Journal of Urology (don't ask, i work in a library, i just come across things) about Joshua Chamberlain's pelvic wound, it was a thoroughly demoralizing evening of reading last night. paulsen's book is, hands down, the most depressing Civil War story i have ever read. and get this: near as i can tell, it's geared for pre-teens. the story isn't much and hashes a number of tired stand-bys: kid runs off to enlist, lies about his age to get in, suffers the trials and boredom of warfare, sees things that would raise hair on a billiard ball (one particular description of what happens to horses under cannon fire will stick with me forever now, thank you, gary). the kid is wounded horribly and makes it home, but the final image of the book (gadzooks), is him sitting on the bank, thinking about "pretty things" and checking the condition of a well-oiled .36 he's brought with him to his solitary picnic.

and the final kicker, of course, is that it's based on a real person. i should have known it was going to be pretty harsh. it opens up with a primer on post-traumatic stress-disorder and how there was no treatment for it back in those days. the "soldier's heart" refers to one variation on what ptsd was called back then. the most common clinical term was neurasthenia, which referred to a mysterious debilitating depressive malady with no particular discernible physical origins from which most of the post-war servicemen suffered. which brings us back to Joshua Chamberlain, who also suffered from a "soldier's heart" and was even put out of battle service for a spell to recover after a nervous breakdown following the battle of Gettysburg. he rebounded, but apparently suffered from lingering agony (and a number of surgeries) after being wounded, as well as having intensely dark periods for the rest of his life (like so many men did).

geh. this was a real horrorshow of a little book and a good reminder of just how screwed up people emerged from this war. there was some good stuff the book, extra points for never mentioning hardtack, but overall uneven in the writing (perhaps because it's a tad dumbed down for 10 year-olds). i admit, though, i was irritated by an endnote which says that the carnage at Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle in American history, killing more men in two hours than all the previous wars put together. i believe that distinction belongs to the battle at Antietam (which i previously mentioned in my post of september 17th).



in other news, i am drawing, drawing, drawing, trying to take some risks with my composition choices, though so far they are mostly safe. anyway, it's going well.

: D

Mark 4:35-38

He saith to them that day,
when evening was come:
Let us pass over to the other side.
And sending away the multitude,
they take him even as he was in the ship:
and there were other ships with him.
And there arose a great storm of wind,
and the waves beat into the ship,
so that the ship was filled.
And he was in the hinder part of the ship,
sleeping upon a pillow;
and they awake him,
and say to him: Master,
doth it not concern thee that we perish?

this is less a spiritual commentary than a bit of research: i have a great image in my head for the opening of the whole Linwood Brown story and it involves this painting (or at least a replica thereof). i sketched some thumbnails (in a storyboard-like fashion) but i haven't decided precisely how to execute it. so i'm saving this here in the hopes that inspiration will strike when i contemplate the raging sea of galilea.

haven't much else to report. weekend class had me sucked into the black hole of uselessness, so i haven't been around much. i meant to post since last week, but have just been ridiculously busy (and not in too much of a fun way). but i won't bore you with the details. i'm determined not to gripe and moan in this blog.

hmmm. perhaps the posting of this rembrandt is a spiritual commentary after all.

later i have a book review, thoughts on the creative process, and maybe some sketches to share!

: D

for the 50bookchallenge:

no 50. ~ The Physician’s Wife and the Things that Pertain to Her Life by Ellen M. Firebaugh. this was fun. i was hoping for something more, but she tells some funny stories about being the wife of a country doctor before the turn of the century (this was published in 1894). she mostly focuses on how nobody ever pays their bills and how husbands are notoriously inconsiderate of their wives (she writes humorously, but i found her whining to be sorta cloying). it was nevertheless an amusing romp.

in pursuance: it's been muddling through the back of my head:

that the headquarters of every department, post, station, fort, and arsenal, be draped in mourning for thirty days, and appropriate funeral honors be paid.

thirty days gets us to mid-may, so just about the time that reporters are allowed in the courtroom, they ought to be taking the crepe down. furthermore, acting secretary of state orders:

...in honor to the memory of our late illustrious Chief Magistrate, all officers and others subject to the orders of the Secretary of State, wear crepe upon the left arm for the period of six months

i wondered about this because i thought: well that means everyone at the trial ought to be wearing mourning and yet none of their pictures show them to be! so i went back and looked at everyone again and here's a testament to my flimsy powers of observation: Holt and Hanty's staff are wearing mourning. it's true that most of the commission does not appear to be wearing it, however (Burnett is definitely not). it seems odd, but i'll try not to make much of that. i'm especially amazed that i failed to notice it on Hanty's staff.

( the blatant evidence )



this looks like the style of rosette that Dodd is
wearing in the picture under the cut. very cool.

man, i really love little details like that.

i have totally confirmed in the last week that the more attention i pay to lj, the less work i get done. during my week off from lj, i wrote 60 pages and completed a number of projects. this week, even though i haven't been posting much, i have been reading about all of you on my lovely flist, etc. and i've accomplished very little! yeeks!

quelle dommage!

but i am working and hope to find a balance.

in pursuance of said conspiracy: this past week i have been incorporating Mr. Hanty into my uber-outline/chronology and aside from his execution report, i'm done with him and Hancock (minus a letter or two of Hancock's that i continue to struggle with).

it's been nice to spend time with Hanty (i'm sorta glad i saved him for last since he gives me the warm fuzzies). much as i adore Poppet, Poppet just seems so hopelessly unapproachable on some levels by comparison.

Poppet's like someone who has fish for pets and owns a lint brush and keeps a separate drawer just for neatly folded socks (which he folds himself), whereas Mr. Hanty is very obviously a dog person who has never folded a sock in his life and who desperately needs a wife to knot his ties and make him breakfast (which he would then proceed to eat with too much ketchup). Poppet is wry and ironic; a philosopher. Mr. Hanty is more straight-forward, down-to-earth (while keeping up appearances of being decorous). He strikes me as someone you could unexpectedly make laugh so hard that he would shoot milk out of his nose. Poppet, never.

the picture of the day: at one time Mr. Hanty got to be on the face of the $1 bill in montgomery county ~ with a bunch of other forgotten generals. well except for George Washington there on the bottom.





i have to admit (in case i haven't already):
Mr. Hanty was kinda a hottie. His wife, Sallie, who was a wee
jealous, snarked on him during the war that other ladies had
better know he was married and keep their mitts at a distance.

catching up for the 50bookchallenge, these being an odd assortment of research ~ i usually don't actually read much biography and certainly not regimental history, but here were some necessary (and curiously interesting) evils:

no. 37 ~ Major General John Frederick Hartranft: Citizen Soldier and Pennsylvania Statesment by A. M. Gambone. if his kidneys hadn't killed him too young, Mr. Hanty probably would have written his own autobiography. but gambone does a fine job in his place. one gets the feeling, however, that there's so much more that didn't get included here. i skimmed the stuff about the Molly Macquires because it isn't terribly relevant to what i'm doing (though makes for interesting reading). even though gambone is clearly a fan, i feel the book is tempered well. Hanty had failings and his record of service is a strange mix of success and failure throughout his life. if anything characterizes Hanty, it's that he was a survivor and knew how to keep his temper when it mattered (though clearly had one). it's really too bad that he didn't get to tell his story ~ it would have been very interesting to see what he had to say about so many things.

no. 38 ~ History of a cavalry company: A complete record of Company "A," 4th Penn'a Cavalry, as identified with that regiment, and with the Second Brigade, during the late Civil War by William Hyndman. regimental histories can be pretty dang dry, but hyndman is an interesting writer, though has very little objectivity. it's always good to read a contemporary account though, because you can usually tell what the temper of a regiment was by the ways in which its officers wax on and off about it. hyndman admired Poppet muchly (that's obvious), though curiously says nothing of Poppet's post war defense of the Lincoln conspirators even though he goes on for two pages raising Lincoln to the heavens and denouncing the vile assassins. the omission is glaring.

no. 39 ~ A Brief History of the Fourth Pennsylvania Veteran Cavalry by William E. Doster. Poppet wrote two books, neither of which are really books. his "episodes" book is slightly more structured, with chapters at least, even though the content is all over the map. his regimental history has no narrative whatsoever. instead it's a collection of notes and speeches from the veteran's association related to the regiment. some of it is very curious and interesting. some of it is completely inscrutable. his dedication to the memorial at gettysburg is bizarrely dry (particulary for Poppet!). it's hard to tell what was going on here. my sense of Poppet is that he had no interest in writing books whatsoever, but in both cases caved to other peoples' requests to issue something. the fact that his books explain very little and reveal even less about himself personally is rather interesting.

more later (lots more).

in writing news, i'm slogging away at Eleison still. worked until 11 last night and finally had to go to bed. i can put in a few more hours this morning. Getting it out the door tomorrow is going to be tight tight tight. ughhh.

otherwise, i spent about 40 minutes idling through kauffman's American Brutus and for half a moment considered just letting In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy go. i mean, the point was to outdo swanson's Manhunt (that's where all this started). but really, the story's been told (and fairly well-told, even if i think kauffman comes to some strange conclusions to my way of thinking here and there). when kauffman puts so much weight on the testimony of people like daniel gillette (second-hand testimony, mind you), i wonder about him (and he's a lawyer who ought to know better!). on the other hand, i have to be grateful because he summarizes the more confounding things about the legal practice in 1865, which saves me huge, enormo headaches. still, for all its comprehensiveness, American Brutus emphasizes kauffman's agendas and doesn't explore a lot of other angles (the endless angles!). so while on the one hand it's sort of the crowning glory of texts on the subject, there yet remains details to be told. i don't presume ro fill the gap because he's writing history, i want to write fiction. but all of this does strengthen my case that i need to get away from a linear factual telling and perhaps indulge on the other side of speculation. besides which, i have yet to see anyone tell this story from the point of view of the lawyers (though clampitt wrote a long defense some years after the fact), or from the point of view of Mr. Hanty (who was in the unique position of being there, daily, without any agenda, and having an intimate connection to the accused). so there's still hope.

and: one of the people kauffman implicates in the conspiracy, by the way, is defense attorney fred stone. i'd forgotten about that and can probably use it.

and finally, kauffman's characterization (coming from a lawyer) of Poppet's closing argument as "bizarre and eloquent" seems to catch it dead-on. that's what i thought when i first read it more than 15 years ago, and it's still quite the puzzle today.

okay, must get back to work. picture of the day to come later.

happy tuesday all!

: D

yesterday i get a notice that the Hyndman book is about due back. Hyndman, i think: do i still have that one? where is it? what did i do with it? have i made copies? i do a quick search everywhere and can't find it. i submit a renewel online because i don't want it to be overdue. then later i do a more thorough search and find it at the bottom of a pile of books by my bed. good grief.

i have 23 books out from the library. several of them (like Fairfax's Georgetown memoir), i've had out for almost a year on renewels (it's okay, no one but me would ever want it). i recently returned about five books that i still want to read but which weren't relevent to what i'm doing, so i surrendered them. i'm assuming the other 23 are around here somewhere. in piles. there are four at the left of this computer. three at the right. i see another three on my other desk and i'm pretty sure there are about three on the kitchen table and about eight in my bedroom. i should return Poppet's memoir since i bought my own copy (they're sitting in my bedroom like reunited twins ~ mine's prettier though ~ hahahahaha).

so, it turns out that 10,897 words isn't really all that much in terms of content, really. at least not the 10,897 words that i squeezed out wednesday.

( assessments of wednesday's writing glut and Mr. Hanty's predilictions )

not sure how to proceed from here. maybe now that i have all the history under control, it would be best to outline the story arcs for the characters and focus on their journeys for a while.

tomorrow's the deadline. let's see what kind of rabbit comes out of the hat.

: o p

picture of the day to be posted later.

about school: i somehow managed to make my 15-page research paper about the Lincoln assassination (i can't decide if it's a gift or a sickness, really). sarah vowell would be proud ~ not of the grade i am sure to get, but hey, it's finished and now i can drag my exhausted self to the next thing.

about work: Eleison is going slow. but going.

about characters: i'm still reading Behrens' The Law of Dreams, also going slow. main character fergus has joined the bog boys. the story is losing appeal for me. fergus so far hasn't proved to be compelling enough to keep my attention. he doesn't seem to do anything particularly inneresting. this is especially striking in the scene in which he and a pal come upon a dying horse. the pal picks up a large stone and drops it on the horse's head to kill it. fergus just watches. the character is so disaffected you neither feel sorry for him, or outraged, or anything ~ leastways i don't. i like a good disaffected character (my own Lewis Fletcher behaves this way most of the time; to the point that other people think he's dead inside ~ but it's important to me that we know he's struggling, always). i'm sort of missing any glint of humanity that might make me care whether fergus gets his next meal and that's a big problem for me story-wise.

~ * ~

in pursuance (five days left!): wrote my first Mr. Hanty scene (finally found the right "in" for him) last night. i have a feeling he will amuse me muchly. he's so...hmmm...teutonic? that's victorian for bullheaded and angsty.

and why this is funny to me is anybody's guess.

i think, of all the characters, i may just feel the sorriest for him on some levels. he seems to have the knack for always being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and yet still manages to land on his feet.

no darlings to report. the draft of the scene is quite drafty. Czar NastyOwlFace makes a very brief appearance just to be nasty and owly (i suppose that's redundant).

and speaking of Mr. Hanty, his letterbooks have arrived (two weeks early!) and were awaiting me at the post office this morning (they were delivered on saturday but i wasn't here to receive them). this is why, by the way, i'm barely writing Hanty's scenes so late in the game. most of his stuff i can shoehorn in to the structure without a problem. his interaction with the other characters is pretty well plotted. it's what he does when he's off on his own that i don't have a handle on yet (but which the letterbooks will determine ~ on a day-to-day basis). i won't put my hope up too high for anything earth-shattering, but then i find all manner of joy in the mundane perhaps most of all. and so far as i'm concerned, the banal day-to-day operation is plenty sufficient to hang story points on.

and yay! this concludes the amassing of source material. there is nothing else out there that i need or desire at this point (yes, please check both ways for winged pigs). i literally giggled obscenely when i took the reel out of the box this morning (snert!).

( microfilm yummy goodness for the geekily-inclined, cut for being a whole bunch of huge )

i have not had a chance but to slap the reel on the reader and look at the contents, but already i can tell it's brimming with fun stuff. in this report (for May 5th), he announces the arrival of Dr. Mudd and 18 year-old Capt. Willie Jett (c.s.a. ~ one of Mosby's guerrillas who helped Booth and Herold cross the Rappahannock). he also talks about Mrs. Surratt (no. 157 who is moved to no. 200) and how she is not eating her food.

a brief (pun unintended) word about underwear: in this same report (the only one i got to read ~ picked at random) Hanty mentions about how they couldn't give prisoner 161 fresh underwear after his bath because the rivets on the chains of his feet prevented them (everyone else seems to have gotten fresh undies, so it's not clear whether they attempted to remove the chains or if it was just a given that they couldn't come off) ~ but it nonetheless answers about 862 other questions i had about bathing the prisoners and changing their clothes. not sure at this point who prisoner 161 is, but when i have a chance to study it, I should be able to find out.

so yeah, expect to hear all manner of lalalala about this nonsense for quite some time.

~ * ~

i am soooo looking forward to the 4th of july. a whole day to do nothing but write. i'm locking myself up in the house with a twelve-pack of diet Coke and not ceasing until this thing is done done done (well, almost done ~ i technically have until saturday night to make my deadline).

: D

i'm writing ~ sorry to be a non-responder for the weekend, but i've got a lot of catching up to do!

anyway, this is a long shot, but does anybody know this hymn? i would love to find a midi of it to see what it sounds like.

Farewell, farewell to all below
My Jesus (Savior) calls and I must go
I launch my boat upon the sea
This land is not the land for me

Ive found the winding path of sin
A rugged path to travel in
Beyond the chilly waves I see
The land my savior bought for me

Farewell my friends i may not stay
the home I seek is far away
Where Christ is not I cannot be
This land is not the land for me

My hope my heart is now on high
There all my joys and treasures lie
Where seraphs bow and bend the knee
0, that's the land, the land for me.

( some other hymns i am saving for later )

poore, pitmann, and peterson brothers, that is.

okay, i was up after midnight (so so bad) just going through Poore's and trying to demarcate (with posties) the division of days.

poore's is a nightmare! the manuscript is completely random and disorganized. was this guy on the pipe or what?

on the positive side:

the context and wording of the various objections and rulings on the objections is much more explicit. in both Peterson and Pitmann, they kinda summarize what the deal is. here the arguments are transcibed (sometimes at quite some length ~ boy, that ewing can talk!)

the content is very similar to the Peterson copy, but the variations in word choices
are interesting ~ enough to make you wonder whose copy is more faithful. the subject matter isn't affected, but there are small nuances throughout worth mining.

after reading Poppet's cross-examinations in Poore's copy, two things strike me: Poppet comes off much much more aggressive in this transcript than any others ~ in fact, several times the president of the commission tells him to let the witness answer a question in their own way when Poppet insists on trying to strangle a yes or no out them. i did not expect this at all. though it's hard to ascertain tone from the page, my impression on this read is that Poppet's a great deal less level-headed and much more frustrated in this version than any of the others.

on the negative side:

it's incomplete!!! holy mackeral! poore published the first three volumes and the last installment didn't sell so well, so i guess they didn't bother publishing the testimony and closing arguments from June 14-25th.

this is crazy-making for me because all the important stuff in the case i'm looking at happens in the last week of the trial! foo! foo! foo! i really desperately wanted to see Poore's take on the June 14th testimony of the doctors especially, etc.

[and there followed the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair].

( some couple of things that stand out even stranger than they did before and impressions of Poppet in a different light )

anyway, so now i can say i've seen Poore's transcript and i'm glad i did because it's provided some much-needed objectivity about Poppet's temperament during the proceedings. I have to remind myself that he wrote his memoirs 40 years after the fact and that at the time he was 28 years old, had just passed the bar, and was basically working what had to be the crappiest job for a lawyer in all of washington, and had been assigned a case which it's evident (by his own words) that he didn't want to undertake in the first place ~ on top of which he had clients who were pretty obviously guilty, had just about admitted as much, and were unwilling or incapable of giving him any information to help themselves.

one of the historians somewhere mentioned that it's a wonder Poppet bothered trying to mount any kind of defense at all.

no. lie.

: o p



~ crabby bingham, self-absorbed holt, and squirrely burnett ~
all three prosecutors were so bent on convicting jefferson davis, et al.
in absentia at this trial, that the particulars of the accused before them
seemed to be treated as almost inconsequential.

or, rather, a few words ~ briefly, for the 50bookchallenge:

no. 35 ~ Valedictory Oration, presented before the Senior Class of Linonia Society, June 17, 1857 by william e. doster. hey, it's bound, it was published, i'm calling it a book. i read this last night before bed and though there were a number of phrases throughout that struck me, this one stood out the most:

To the poet of our times and nation then, I would say, strike at the national heart, cultivate the love of the Supernatural, the Beautiful, the Antique, the Sublime, the Holy, and the True, and above all, engraft the spirit of your song on the massive proportions of an over-practical republic.

who'd've thunk i'd find a kindred spirit in Mr. Poppet.

and here i wrote a long ramble about ambition and politics and capitalism and a dozen other things Poppet touches on in this address (in which his youth and passion tell wonderfully), but i've decided not to post any of that. his exhortation sufficiently covers it.

19 days. i am writing, but much too slowly. i need to finish Jack and Eleison (soon soon!) and then i will be able to dedicate myself to this more fully. dunno if i will finish it by the 7th, but i'm still gonna try.

~ * ~

to all of you who left such positive, affirming thoughts about the literary manager i wrote about the other day, thank you!

picture of the day: it's a beautiful morning here and all seems all right in the world. hope the cool breeze lasts. happy day, all!