HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? or... MAYBE I NEED A CHAINED REMOTE

A while back I heard a beautiful overture by the British Composer Edward Elgar, played on the classical music station of Minnesota Public Radio. At the conclusion of the piece, the announcer mentioned that the work had its premiere at “an English country fair” in 1890. That simple announcement got me to pondering: For the great majority of those who heard Elgar’s overture that day at the fair, this was the one and only opportunity they would have to do so. It’s not impossible that a very few were able to hear it again, perhaps in a London concert a few months or years later, but only a very few, if any. And none would have had access to the precursor of the radio I was listening to; the first tenuous radio broadcast was fifteen years in the future. If a music lover at that English country fair that day found the piece to be yearningly beautiful, that’s all she was left with: yearning.

I heard the Elgar piece because I can listen to classical music any hour of the day or night. If I find a piece to be yearningly beautiful, I click on iTunes or Amazon and order it as a CD or MP3, so it is then available whenever I desire. I wouldn’t trade places with the country fair-goer, but it is not unreasonable to wonder which of us had the deeper aesthetic experience. As Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

The Chained Library at Hereford Cathedral

A few years ago, Caryl and I worshiped at Hereford Cathedral in England. After church, we toured the “Chained Library.” The Cathedral has had a working theological library since the twelfth century; the literal chaining of the books was simply a medieval security system. (Especially before—and even after—the invention of the printing press, a purloined book would be impossible to replace.) I love arranging and rearranging the volumes in my little library—and adding books with a frequency that requires some creative shelving. As with my musical “library,” I have hundreds of books within easy reach even here in my 12’ x 15’ study, and any title I want is available at my wonderful local bookstore or its online site. (Amazon as a last resort!) But I wish I had the imagination to inhabit the

A corner of what I like to call "My Library."

mind of a medieval cleric as he pulls a single leather-bound book out of the stacks--backwards, so that the chain doesn’t twist--and the book lands open in his hands. (And I think I’m a book-lover?!)

I am of the generation that, in childhood, had to get out of the chair and walk across the room to change the TV dial to one of three channels, depending on whether we wanted to watch Maverick or Sky King or Disneyland or Captain 11. I am not nostalgic about this. (Well, maybe a little.) I mention it because we recently “cut the cable” for the opposite reason: We were paying for 800 channels and watching only three (okay, seven) of them. Now, with Roku and Spectrum and Netflix and Amazon and Broadway HD, we are unchained from the 800, and free to choose among the really good programs on the streaming channels. Really, really good. Our new complaint/mantra is “Too much good TV!” If we add the PBS programming that Caryl and I have watched every Sunday night (and now Friday and Saturday) for forty-eight years--and the programs of other networks included in these packages--to the offerings on our new streaming services, here is a partial, random, list of really, really good TV that we are watching now, or can get to on TiVo, or find with the juggling of two remotes: Masterpiece (currently, Victoria), Sherlock, Father Brown, The Amazing Mrs. Meisel, Stranger Things, The Queen, Call the Midwife(!), Crashing, This Old House, 800 Words, Vera, Last Tango In Halifax(!), Monarch of the Glen, Nashville, Grantchester, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Hollow Crown(!), Colbert, Conan, Highway Through Hell (my one guilty secret reality show!), Nature, Nova, Frontline, American Experience, the new Broadway musical adaptations of Wind in the Willows and From Here to Eternity, many HBO offerings, and more. (Let the judging of our TV tastes begin—certainly l’ve left off your favorite program.)

TV test pattern used for sign-off at midnight.
Good luck trying to binge-watch Stranger Things!

Speaking of HBO, Caryl and I nodded in agreement when we first heard, “HBO is the new Hollywood.” (HBO’s “Deadwood,” described by my demure wife as “Shakespeare with the F word,” is still the best thing ever shown on TV.) HBO was followed by Netflix Productions and Amazon Originals and Hulu… Now they’re all New Hollywood, and, mostly, excellent. Not to mention the regular “old Hollywood “ flicks that are included in their offerings. The memory of standing in a line that ran around the corner—to see Spartacus at the Elks Theater in Rapid City in 1962—fades as I pick up the remote to watch it again on Netflix.

A predictable conclusion to these musings would be to look back in the spirit of what we English majors call ubi sunt (“Where are they now—the old simplicities of yesterday?...”), to plead for the return of the three-channel Crosley Television Set in the living room, to look back in longing at that English country fair—to be sitting under a tree with a picnic basket, a Victorian orchestra serenading the scene. But that is not the conclusion I draw from these observations of history and progress. It is rather to raise again the question that accompanies all progress: “What have we gained, and what have we lost?” I make no attempt at a complete answer to this question, but the question itself helps us to temper our excitement with the new by setting it in the context of another question: “What makes for a good life?” It might sound wishy-washy to say that the good life must be found somewhere along a spectrum which includes a solitary country symphony concert on the one end and an iPhone with a thousand MP3s on the other. This is undoubtedly too mathematical a scale to judge matters of art and the heart, but it invites us to consider and apply an idea that has accompanied and tempered all progress: The Golden Mean. The answer to the good life question is neither “the olden days,” nor “anything new!” but a learning-from-the-old, and an adaptation of the new to a standard set by common sense, a balanced personal life, and supportive relationships. I don’t need to give up my iPhone and all its apps, but I also need to remember, as Sherry Turkle reports, that an iPhone at the dinner table—even turned off and upside-down—is an intrusion into the flow (and feel) of conversation and the connections of the lives around that table. The Golden Mean.

So now that we have nothing but quality TV and a home collection of classical music, perhaps we are not (in the words of Neil Postman’s cogent title) “amusing ourselves to death.” (“Hey, I’m watching Shakespeare here! I’m listening to that Elgar overture again!”), but could it be that we are enlightening ourselves to death? The quantity of high-quality television shows—of which my list, above, is a small percentage—reminds me of that truism about visiting the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.: If a visitor spends a minute at each display, he will not make it through the museum in his lifetime. 

This essay was sparked by that TV program list, which I started for a personal project of cutting down on some of this excellent TV-watching—limiting it for the sake of a balanced life and recovered time. If I cut some of it out, I’ll have a better answer to Caryl’s question, as she steps into my little library: “Are you ever going to read all of these books?”

THE sMALL OF AMERICA

The Mall O', adding another hotel wing.

One of the surrealities of these modern times is that the Mall of America, forty miles from our home in Faribault, is an international tourist destination. Folks in Germany and Japan and France buy airline tickets and arrange vacation trips to Bloomington, Minnesota, to devote—I suppose—a number of days to explore all that the Mall has to offer.

It is expected that a certain sector of society—namely, the American husband—will disdain the Mall experience, but I kind of enjoy it, in the same spirit that I enjoy going to the state fair (and only at about that frequency); it throbs with a kind of fun energy. (Partly because of all those people from Germany and Japan and France.) So, although my appraisal comes with the caveat footnoted below,* I am not writing to deride or denigrate the Mall O’, but to offer something better—including a better tourist experience for our international travelers. And for you.

Northfield, Minnesota is a mere fifteen miles from where we live. It is forty-five minutes for the big-city dwellers of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and—for those jet-setters—is just as accessible (with an additional twenty minutes or so) to the International Airport as is the afore-mentioned Mall. Caryl and I love our home and our life in Faribault (a town with an interesting history and vitality of its own), but these days our hearts belong in Northfield, because that’s where Beret and her Joel and their kids—our grandkids Sam and Violet—live.**

Truth be told, I write this not to lure the Germans or the Japanese, but to sing the siren song of Northfield to those of you who live within driving or occasional visiting distance, and, more to the point, just to lift up what I like about the place.

Northfield is a college town, with two of the nation’s finest: the beautiful campuses of St. Olaf and Carleton. (Beret and Joel are St. Olaf grads.) These two anchors lend the town both an air of stability and an ever-youthful buzz. The downtown sits in a river valley between the two campus hills. It is this downtown that I initially set out to write about.  (I know this is already sounding too much like a Chamber of Commerce puff piece, but I’ve only just begun….)

Four representative establishments of this little burg worthy of a visit:

The Rare Pair is already (without my help) a shopping destination for folks from all over the area—and for parents and alums who are dropping off college kids or returning for the Christmas Festival or a concert. It offers the perfect blend of the latest hipster threads and a more traditional stylishness. The RP clientele is probably 80% women, but there’s a good men’s section that has both of those categories, too. 

I'm not sure if my Stormy Kromer cap, from
the Rare Pair, is hipster or traditional

Beret works at the Rare Pair. I used to tell people to “look for the beautiful blond,” until I realized that she was one of many. (And—only in Northfield—for a while she was one of two “Berets” in the store.) Everyone at the Rare Pair is friendly and welcoming and helpful—no matter what their hair color.

Goodbye Blue Monday is the Platonic ideal of a coffee house. Décor (what décor?), selection, vibe, efficient but friendly baristas. (Oh, and the almond croissants!) I have read that to get the best espresso you have to go to Italy. Well, I went to Italy this summer, and I came back to Goodbye Blue Monday (okay, I was coming back anyway). I found nothing better in Italy (in fact, a lot of push-button machine espresso drinks).  GBM does it by hand and produces a consistently excellent cup. Some of the baristas even know how to do that picture thing on top of the perfectly formed crema.

The Tavern Restaurant. Built into the ancient stone walls of the lower level of the historic Archer House Hotel. Always full of happy diners; always friendly. It has become—for Caryl and me—our “local.”

But le Coeur de ville of downtown Northfield is Content Bookstore. It is for me both an oasis and a reprieve. A reprieve because, as I have confessed elsewhere, the last bookstore left Faribault as I was happily clicking away on Amazon. But no more. For a variety of reasons, I now use Amazon for research or as a last resort. The most important reason is that I simply want this bookstore to stay here—to be here for me. For us. This means I have undergone an attitude adjustment: Instead of clicking on Amazon, I email my friends at Content and inquire, “Can you order for me….” Instead of looking

Content sells books both new and used.

impatiently at my watch, drumming my fingers and expecting the Amazon serf/elves to deliver an order to my doorstep in the next ten minutes, I am happy to pick up my books during our next trip to Northfield (see “Grandkids,” “Blue Monday,” and “Tavern,” above). I fantasize that—in my relationship with the bookstore—I will develop the same quirky correspondence and lasting mutual affection as that between book-seeker Anne Bancroft and bookseller Anthony Hopkins in “84 Charing Cross Road.” (I guess that puts me in the role of Anne Bancroft; I hope my Content friends find me as charming.)

(By the way, if I’m looking for a special sauté pan or paring knife, I buy it or order it from The Measuring Cup kitchen store—right next door to Content Books. A few more bucks (than Amazon), a bit of a wait, and another excuse for a latte across the street at Blue Monday! Attitude adjustment.)

Since this is not, in fact, a Chamber of Commerce piece, I am not going to list every last business in Northfield, but we appreciate many more: The Ole Store Restaurant, Tandem Bagels, the Contented Cow pub, Grundy’s hamburgers at The Reub (or is it The Reub hamburgers at Grundy’s?)….

And I am not completely discounting those international tourists. They really oughta come to Northfield. When Caryl and I visited England, we had a wonderful time in London, but what gave heart and soul to our experience were places like Wath-in-Nidderdale and Chipping Norton and Woodstock and Padderdale. Not to mention Madderdale. And, in the same vein, we discovered that our English hosts were interested in the wild American west. What better place for them to visit than Northfield, whose doughty citizens and shopkeepers defeated Jesse James and his gang in 1876.***

In a stroll of a mere two-and-a-half blocks, a visitor can walk from The Tavern, to Blue Monday, to Content Bookstore, to the Rare Pair--and end up at the very bank doors out of which the James Gang ran for their lives.

Then back up the street to the Tavern Lounge. (Did I mention that there’s a bar above the restaurant? Just off the Archer House lobby.)

I’ll meet you there after you pick up your bookstore order.

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*I don't want to inject politics into this homey post on Americana, but I was dismayed at the ham-handed way the Mall responded to the recent "Black Lives Matter" demonstration. I agree with the defendants' lawyers that the Mall ought to be considered a public square.

**Just as our hearts are also tugged toward Boston/Quincy, Massachusetts, where our Anna lives. Another place in which we love spending time. We're looking forward to a visit in three weeks.

***The captured members of the James-Younger Gang were jailed and tried in Faribault, the county seat. I like to tell my Northfield friends that this means that Faribault really defeated the gang, but they don't buy it.

Northfield has developed a beautiful walkway along the
Cannon River. Here it is set up for the annual Market Fair.

NOTE: I think of this blog as part of a conversation. I realize that the "Comment" section of this site is unwieldy, but I invite you to try it. For the time being, the only alternative is to share your responses to this essay on Facebook, either to my Timeline, or as a private Facebook "Message." (I actually prefer email, but the trolls make it difficult for me to post my address here.) I value your part of the conversation.

THOUGHTS OCCASIONED BY RE-STOCKING MY LIBRARY

To begin with, my title is just a bit pretentious. It’s not as though I have a collection like Thomas Jefferson’s, which he donated to re-stock the Library of Congress after the conflagration of the War of 1812. I had some ceiling damage in my study, and needed to completely empty the room for the plasterers, then, to re-assemble the room -- desk, computer equipment, and a small wall of books. The “library” of my title.

But the process did elicit some thoughts:

1. Although I agree with people wiser and more prescient than I that books will be with us for a long time to come, I couldn’t help the feeling that I was engaging in an almost-quaint activity, like returning a bunch of scrolls to the scrollery. Some writings I wouldn’t think of having except in book form, but for general reading, ten of the last twelve books I’ve purchased have been on Kindle (actually, the Kindle app on my iPhone).  When I wonder how long the transition will be, really, from the book to whatever is next, I’m haunted by Benjamin Franklin’s reflection upon first seeing manned balloons over Paris: “This is such a wonder; it will be a mere thousand years before mankind will be traveling by air as a common practice.” The Wright Brothers flew 120 years later, and fifty years after that jet passenger liners were flying from Boston to Paris.

2. I was convicted (if that’s the right word) by the number of books I have purchased and not read, and those that had book-marks one-quarter or one-half or two-thirds of the way through, where I left off reading them. In almost every case, I had thoroughly enjoyed the books that I had partially read, and in almost every case I still want to read those unread. I know that Adult Attention Deficit Disorder is the fad diagnosis of the day, but I wonder….

3. There were so many books that I had read – and with great pleasure. Our re-stocking project was slowed by my pausing to comment, “Oh, this was a good one…” as Caryl waited patiently to hand me the next one.

4. Three of the books, lifted coincidentally from the storage box one after the other, brought to mind a category of “great endings” (which was actually the impetus for this blog post). And, in the spirit of endings, I will end with them:

The ending of A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean:

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

The ending of The Donner Party, a book-length poem by George Keithley:

After this life we will listen
to the long river running through the soil
saying it is Spring— 

the sun has begun to burn
the brown needles nesting on the ground
around our graves. 

The jays perch in the pines and cry
and wherever we may sleep
among the dead we will rise 

together under the trees
like men who are set free
from the folly of a dream 

into the fragrant morning
to hear the heavy stream
of our blood begin to sing, 

our souls awake and warm once more 

and weaving like a fire

when the light begins to dance
in the land of our desire.

The ending of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Yes, fellow LOTR nerds, I know it’s not the actual ending. But it really is.)

“Well, here at last, dear friends on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” 

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

A LIBRARY, A BOX OF BOOKS, AND A KINDLE

Carnegie Library, Huron, SD 1909 ~ 1965

I am grateful that my parents, my teachers, and the phonics-heavy “Alice and Jerry” series in first grade taught me how to read. Beyond these seminal reflections, I hold in memory two distinct episodes of what were, without exaggeration, life-changing experiences of the introduction of books into my life – books as physical objects of learning and enjoyment. I was apparently a good reader from the start. But it was these experiences that turned me into a book reader:

It was probably the summers after third, fourth, and fifth grades that I would ride my bike the eight blocks from our house to the Huron Public Library. At least part of the time I must have been participating in an organized summer reading program for kids. (Here’s to summer reading programs for kids!) I think I had a chart to fill out. The memory is as much physical and tactile as it is mental: The cool marble floors of the 1909 Carnegie Library building, the hot summer day left behind outdoors, the meaningful hush produced by the neck-craning grandeur of the high ceilings and book-lined walls, the kid-height bookcase island in one of the alcoves. And, of course, the solid feel of the book as I pulled it from that case – just browsing, I discovered it myself – and the light riffle of the pages as it falls open to “How the Leopard Got His Spots” in Kipling’s “Just-So Stories,” and the scrape of the chair as I take the book to the nearest table. I can’t wait until I get home – I’ve got to read this here: “How the Camel Got His Hump,” “The Elephant’s Child,”…. The memory is of the book – and the place of the book. The temple of the book.

Then, comic books (now I am exaggerating), until:

In my junior year in high school I was looking for something in a back corner of our basement, and I came upon a box of books. Hard-cover books with slip-covers intact. Not musty and smelly, but clean and almost like new. Like all smart young moderns, my parents had belonged to the Book-Of-The-Month club in the early years of their marriage, and this was a trove they had packed away in our move from Huron to Rapid City (or maybe earlier). It was the thrill of discovering “Just-So Stories” all over again – and the weighty feel of these tomes: “Clarence Darrow For The Defense,” “Dear and Glorious Physician” (a novel about the Apostle Luke – with some authentic, uh, earthy parts in it if you get my meaning), a novel called “Yankee Pasha.” I read book after book out of this box. And, like the bookcase in the Huron Library, I still have a picture in my mind’s eye of exactly where I found that box, and I’ve been a book reader ever since. (I didn’t return to comic books, although I’d kill for a good copy of “Donald Duck and the Pony Express Rider,” c. 1958.)

The rapid development and acceptance of the e-book (ten of the last twelve books I’ve purchased have been on Kindle) cause me to wonder (not rant – just wonder) what experiences children will have in the future that may be equivalent to the cool alcoves of the Carnegie Library or finding that box of books in my basement.

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Addenda:

It is obvious from the modest building pictured in the photo, above, that I am remembering it from my kid's-eye view. But it does kind of look like a temple, doesn't it? It was torn down in 1965 and replaced by a blond brick building of one level. You know what that looks like. It doesn't look like a temple.

I have another Carnegie Library memory. In the sumer after my junior year in college, I had a job selling dictionaries door-to-door (forgive me) in Washington, Indiana. There, too, I came upon the cool confines of an historic Carnegie Library on a hot day. I visited again and again, my dictionary bag slung on the back of the chair. It was during those visits that I discovered the treasures of The New Yorker, Harpers, and The Atlantic magazines -- which have become part of my life. The lure of the library was such that it, shall we say, interfered with my sales performance. I ended the summer owing the dictionary company twelve dollars.

This now-classic video depicts similar wonderment at the transition between the use of the scroll and the printed book. (Just in case you haven't seen it.)

I have reflected on my gratitude to those who introduced books and reading to me in this post: "Thank You, Miss Zamow,"  -- and more experiences with discovering books in "The Lord of The Plastic Revolving Book Rack."


I am proud, happy, pleased, and excited that one of our daughters is a librarian. She and her lively colleagues have moved far beyond Carnegie 1909, and have answers to book questions that I haven't even thought of asking.

THE LORD OF THE PLASTIC REVOLVING BOOK RACK

My local grocery store has a paperback book rack that I’d never really noticed before. This time I noticed it and brushed by, supercilious nose in the air. What literary nourishment could I possibly find at Nelsons County Market? But then I had a flashback – to a time when I did, indeed, find a number of interesting books displayed in just this kind of rack.

When I was a senior in high school, I did not disdain such displays. Miss Zamow, my A.P. English teacher, had ignited an interest in reading, and whenever I was in the drug store in Baken Park (Rapid City’s first strip mall – this was 1964, it had to have been one of the first strip malls in the country), I’d spend long minutes twirling the plastic tower of books, hoping to find something as engaging as “Return of the Native” – our most recent A.P. assignment.  (Although I’ve tried in vain to convince my daughters that I was not, in fact, a nerd in high school, they’ve, alas, seen the class photos. I’m afraid I’ll have to admit that the best way to picture this scene is to imagine that kid from Napoleon Dynamite listlessly watching the books whirl by on the rotating rack.) Anyway, it is at that very rack that I discovered Solzenhitsyn’s “One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Who knew! A world classic at Rexall.

Later, a spin of the same carousel brought forth “The Lord of the Flies,” then (speaking of spinning carousels), Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” (No one evokes a midwestern boys' world like Ray Bradbury.)

After my first year of college I had a job in a small town in far northeastern South Dakota. In another drug store at another plastic rack I picked up a book called “The Lord of the Rings” because the title reminded me of that other “Lord” book that I had recently read. I took it back to my room, opened it, and didn't close it until I got to the end, saw with panic that it "continued in Book Two," jumped into my car, and zoomed almost frantically among the other small towns of that quadrant of South Dakota until, on another rack in some other corner pharmacy, I finally came upon “The Two Towers.” (A week later the cover headline on Time Magazine was “Lord of the Rings Sweeps the Nation’s Campuses.” Thus, I’ve always taken credit for being the American discoverer of J.R.R. Tolkien.)

A few years later, visiting my wife’s farm home, we drove into town on some errands. Another small town, yet another Rexall Drug Store. This time it was the fat paperback edition of “Lonesome Dove.” I had never heard of it or Larry McMurtry – so once again a good read was accompanied by the joy of discovery.

I could go on. Actually, I couldn’t. From that time on I graduated to the world of funky neighborhood book shops, Barnes and Noble, and, now, Amazon – leaving the paperback racks circling backward into the past.  But I wonder? Have I been missing something? Just when I’ve discovered Whole Foods, the Atlantic food editor is recommending the produce and groceries of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart! Should I, in fact, be looking among the paperbound spy thrillers and bodice-rippers next to the film department at Walgreens to find (or even discover!) the next great contribution to world lit?

It would be a good ending for this essay if I could report that I went back to that grocery store book display and found “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” or “The Sonnets of John Donne: A New Interpretation.” But I didn’t. I didn’t go back, that is. But next time I walk by, I’m going to pause … and look… hopefully….

I Told You So

In my previous post I speculated that techonolgy would come up with a way to produce a physical book on demand. I don't claim that I was the initiator of this idea -- just that it struck me as inevitable. Well, it's here -- a machine that's been dubbed an ATM for books.  At a relatively low cost, it creates a book (from an ever-growing list of available titles) described as being of "library quality." This raises a number of questions: What effect will this have on the book publishing industry? How about libraries? And -- one of the most intriguing questions, I think -- How will literary and cultural life be affected when anyone can produce a "published" book to be marketed Amazon-like from a personal web site (or even from Amazon)?