Some Turning Points

An end-of-year tradition has become the making of lists. I have one – top of the head (and of the moment - I might possibly be leaving something out - as memory is tricky), but about turning points in my life. This end-of-year tradition is good enough timing for me even if most end-of-year lists attempt to define the closing year (or decade etc.) or somehow to place a particular focus on certain events in the past year. These lists tend to be “best” lists, though more and more there seems to be a trend toward “favorites” or most this or that lists. The number of things listed is arbitrary - ten wasn't enough - I settled for 12 but even that wasn't quite enough.

My list is both more simple and more complex and has nothing in particular to do with the past year or decade, etc. Perhaps the passing of my life but not really as intend to live through additional decades. My list is about influences or “turning points.” My list is one of writings, events, music that caused a profound change in my outlook, my actions, my habits. Mostly I am (as yet) unable to articulate the changes beyond the simple realization that the items on the list changed the direction of my life.

As an example, as a boy well into puberty (I don’t remember my age), I once stumbled across a little bookstore in Odessa, Texas that was all within a single room of a house. I liked to read (had learned to read “The Little Red Hen” before first grade). I remember that I was on my way to a school event and was early with time to spare and I stayed in the bookstore looking at the books. One book – I have no idea what the title was or who wrote it – caught my attention and as I read about boys and masturbation I suddenly knew that my own world was a world inhabited by others who also had similar experiences and concerns. It changed my life utterly – knowing that I wasn’t some weirdness on the flotsam of humanity. But enough. Dear readers (if such I have) here is the very personal list of the most life-changing events during my 60+ odd years:

1. Some book (title and author unknown) read in a little bookstore in Odessa, Texas (see above).

2. Something of Value, a movie directed by Richard Brooks

3. Report to Greco and Zorba the Greek, books by Nikos Kazantzakis

4. The History of Western Philosophy, a book by Bertrand Russell

5. Jules et Jim, a movie directed by François Truffaut (starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, and Henri Serre)

6. This is It and Other Essays, a book by Alan Watts

7. The Lost Son and Other Poems, a collection of poetry by Theodore Rothke

8. Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book by Friedrich Nietzsche

9. Siddartha and Demian, books by Hermann Hesse

10. The poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko

11. The poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay

12. The Searchers, a movie directed by John Ford

I could have also included the 1969 "People's Park" March in Berkeley or the late '60's Veterans Peace March in San Francisco with a handful of veterans of the Spanish American War. Something about those will need to wait for possible future postings. Also, this is not a list of favorites - I would include many different movies, books and poems. Any such lists must also be separate posts.

From Every End of the Earth - Just Like Us

I don't much read the Washington Post web site anymore but there do continue to be bits of reporting and writing worth the time. Nancy Trejos has a book review of From Every End of This Earth by Steven Roberts that has caused me to add the book to my "want to buy" list.

But the true sacrifice is made for the children. I've learned this from my own experience as the U.S.-born child of a Colombian father and Ecuadorian mother. My parents arrived in New York City with no college degrees and unable to speak English. But they found jobs -- my father served food to patients at a Manhattan hospital, my mother cleaned Park Avenue apartments by day and midtown offices by night -- and managed to save enough money to buy a house in Queens and send me to Georgetown University.

Roberts focuses much of the book on children like me -- Generation Next. "Being a child of immigrants can be a complicated way to grow up," he writes. "Generation Next is often pulled between the past and the future, between celebrating their own tradition and creating their own identity."

Postscript:

I may be on a roll - here's another book to add to my list of "must read" books: Just Like Us.

There are few books that can juggle both the human emotion and struggle against the controversial political backdrop that is America as well as Helen Thorpe’s “Just Like Us.” An accomplished journalist, Thorpe not only engaged in relationships with the stars of the book for 5 years, but uncovered the true face behind the issue of immigration. As the wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, she treaded carefully and reported on the issue and its players throughout the years with skill.

. . . and a Happy New Year!

I don't much mind Garrison Keillor's rant on the UU propensity to change things (holy or not). I'll let it mostly pass but would like to share a quote with Garrison from Earl W. Count, 4,000 Years of Christmas:

Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something very beautiful, something which compels our understanding.

Dulaman

Remembering old snowfalls

Yeh, we had a little snow in Houston yesterday reminding me of a snowstorm on February 4, 1956 in Plainview, Texas. Not because of any resemblance between the storms, but because of the rarity of the event. We seldom get snow in Houston, at least on the ground for longer than a nanosecond. The February 1956 snowstorm in Plainview set a record for for most snowfall in Texas for a 24-hour period. We had 24 inches over the course of a full day and night - for you finger-counters, that is an inch of snow an hour. We lived in a two-story house just to the north of Plainview in Seth Ward and on the back (north) side of the house we had a snowdrift that completely blocked view of the house.

Well, checking on the Internet I find that the record has been broken by a March 2009 snowfall in Follett, Texas (in the Panhandle).

Heavy snow accompanied by strong winds and blizzard conditions, occurred between the mornings of March 27 and March 28, 2009 across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. The most snowfall recorded in the Texas Panhandle occurred in Follett, Texas where a record-setting 25.0 inches of snow fell between 8 a.m. March 27 and 8 a.m. March 28. This surpasses the previous record 24-hour snowfall for the state of Texas which was 24.0 inches and occurred in Plainview, Texas on February 4, 1956.

I've no idea what the 24-hour record in Houston might be.