danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Saturday morning Mrs. Hill and I awoke before dawn and sleepily drove ourselves downtown to stand in line for the fall Friends of the Alachua County Library book sale. Twice a year the FOL hold this sale in their big warehouse on Main Street to raise money for the public library and get rid of the thousands of donated books. It’s such a big deal that people come from far and wide, especially collectors and dealers who intend to resell what they buy. It has been over a year since I braved the FOL sale, since other commitments prevented me from attending. But this year the sale fell on a Saturday after payday, and so it was that we were in line by seven o’clock in the morning.

Our goal was to be in front of the guys who grab all the CDs regardless of title or artist, solely to resell elsewhere. That turned out not to be an issue this time, however, since these fellows failed to materialize at all, and, in any case, there were no legitimate classical music CDs save one EMI disc of Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Mahler Symphony No. 9. I purchased it.

I also purchased several art books, including one of the Uffizi Gallery, which Miriam and I toured in 2001 in Florence. I also got something I had been wanting for a long time, a book of Klimt. One of the music-related books I got is very interesting: a dictionary of musical themes, in which countless pieces of classical music are broken down into their various motifs, written in notation. That will be very helpful. We also got scads more of the great travel guides published by DK. They are generally over $20 new, but they are all $5 or less at the FOL sale, which still makes them among the more expensive titles there. Most hardcover books are priced below $2.50.

Miriam had her eye on several paintings in the poster and print tent, all of which, it turns out, were painted by the same fellow. Everyone that passed the tent before the sale opened remarked about them, particularly one featuring a devil and two goats, and another with a beehive. It seemed certain that these would be the first to go, especially when there was one man who was really talking them up to his friends and family. But what baby wants, baby gets, and, indeed, Miriam walked out with those four pictures, which now await suitable wall space to be hung.

The check-out line had grown astonishingly long by ten o’clock, and my arms were near broken from carrying such a heavy box of books. But we made it out of there with our booty, and I went off to work.

Filed under: Art, Gainesville, Literature and Books, Music on October 15th, 2007 | No Comments »

Congratulations to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Vice President Al Gore on their winning the 2007 Nobels fredspris. The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the greatest honors any human being can receive, and, with three exceptions (1973, 1978, 1994), has been awarded to people or organizations who have contributed something worthwhile to humanity. I have seen the prize once in person–the one awarded to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964–and even as an inanimate object it inspires some awe.

Mr. Gore can be extremely proud of what he has accomplished as the public face of climate change-awareness. I hope once he receives his medal on December 10th in Oslo, and sets it on his mantle alongside his Emmy and Oscar, he has given serious consideration to the prospect of a presidential run. I think of all living Americans only two come to mind who I believe could steer our nation from its perilous course leading it away from its core values, and one is Al Gore. The other, alas, in not legally eligible to be elected president.

So, Mr. Gore, if you’re reading this (and, really, why wouldn’t you be?), please, sir, announce your candidacy, and claim the office that you so justly deserve, and for which you are uniquely qualified. A Nobel-laureate president would mark a profound about-face for our troubled ship of state.

Filed under: Current Events, Politics on October 12th, 2007 | No Comments »

Mrs. Hill proposed that we convert what had at one time been a window in our living room to a built-in bookshelf.  As director of physical plant this task fell to me.

Long ago our house had a covered patio, with a door and a window (exactly like this house).  When the patio was enclosed the window was removed, and a new door was added to the outside, while the former door became an interior one.  The window opening was left essentially bare, as you can see in this photo of our house on the day we moved in.  I trimmed it up and painted it white some time back, but it wasn’t ideal.  And, considering how many books we have that need a place, Miriam’s shelf idea seemed like the perfect solution.

I began by taking apart all the wood pieces surrounding the original brick window frame.  I cut, sanded and assembled some new boards into some I salvaged, and carefully installed the whole contraption in the opening.  But arranging it so as to have four shelves for books didn’t give enough clearance for our taller tomes, so I took it all out and reassembled it to accommodate three shelves of books.  Then I cut and attached a sheet of plywood on the back, caulked and painted everything, and (ta da!) it was complete.

Mrs. Hill was pleased with the results, and so am I.  Built-ins rule.

Filed under: House, Literature and Books on October 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

I wrote a bit yesterday about Ken Burns’ latest film broadcast on PBS, and how it made me feel, but I thought I’d write now about my thoughts on the film itself.

The War probably does accomplish what it set out to achieve, namely offer the viewer a sense of what life in America was like between 1941 and 1945, when millions of men left their homes for far off places most had never heard of, and the lives of every other person in this country were disrupted in a most profound way. It isn’t easy to forget the images of heroic men storming Omaha Beach under a hail of gunfire, or raising the flag on Iwo Jima; it is, perhaps, easier for those of us too young to have endured the daily realities of life during the Second World War to forget how something as mundane as an evening meal or routine as travel were so radically affected. The War describes all of this well.

But the filmmakers chose to concentrate exclusively on the experiences of citizens from four cities only: Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota. In so doing they obviously missed out on countless stories. They no doubt realized that any attempt at a comprehensive telling of the American experience of World War II would be impossible for a film, even one over 14 hours in length. (For something like that you’ll have to turn to the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project.) Better to give an impression, I suppose, with a fair warning that the picture was not aspiring to be a complete telling of the story of the war, or even close to it. For a more international approach, and one which includes interviews with historians as well as combatants, see The World at War.

Still, the selection of towns and individual interviewees proved remarkable for their breadth of experience: men from these four cities were everywhere from Pearl Harbor to Bataan to D-Day to the USS Indianapolis as it carried “Little Boy” to Tinian Island en route to Hiroshima. And many of their stories were poignant. The one that most touched me was of an American POW in Japan, who had endured years of harsh treatment and near starvation with little expectation he’d live to see home again. His parents in the States had long before received a telegram in which he was declared dead. He did not know this, however, and when he was liberated on VJ Day and sent by ship to San Francisco where he made a telephone call to his house in Alabama, his mother fainted upon hearing his voice. And there were plenty of heartbreaking tales of servicemen who, after being introduced to viewers with family photographs and interviews with relatives, were followed from battle to battle, and made real with excerpts of letters home to parents or sweethearts, and whose deaths were revealed in matter-of-fact telegrams.

And, as has been the case with every Ken Burns film, the soundtrack of The War is apt, with a profoundly beautiful song called “American Anthem” this series’ equivalent of The Civil War‘s “Ashokan Farewell”. It is crushingly nostalgic. Here is the first verse:

Ultimately, The War demonstrates something I hold to be a truth: there is nothing more dramatic than real life.

Filed under: History, Musings, Television on October 8th, 2007 | No Comments »

This afternoon I watched the final episode of Ken Burns’ latest film, The War, bringing to a close two weeks of rapt viewing. And in spite of the detailed depiction of the allied victory, the subsequent jubilation and triumph of good over evil–and if there ever was a more clear-cut defeat of wickedness, I do not know it–I felt a great hollowness at the series’ conclusion.

For all the valiant and heroic deeds, gut-wrenching horrors endured and incomprehensible sacrifices made in World War II, the realization once came over me that no man today could possibly prove worthy of those noble, selfless acts, and this made me simultaneously grateful for my countless blessings, and regretful that I will most probably live my entire life without repaying the incalculable debt I owe to men now old or dead.

I was awakened to these feelings years ago, in the final days of an idyllic holiday that took me to northern France, where, at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, I was overcome with grief at the sight of seemingly endless rows of immaculate white marble crosses, marking the final resting places of 9,387 military dead, the vast majority of whom were killed at an age younger than mine on that perfect spring day. What can I ever do to earn that? Four hundred thousand Americans died in the Second World War, and millions served. They gave their very best in service to their country. All I can give is my thanks.

Filed under: History, Musings, Nostalgia, Television, Travel on October 7th, 2007 | No Comments »