I used to be a woodcarver, ...

I used to be a woodcarver, but now I'm not.

A Satisfied Reader

I recently became Facebook "Friends" with Red Shuttleworth, a poet and playwright from the state of Washington.  We ended up exchanging books - he sent me a book of his poetry and I sent him  Laying Track.  Following is his reaction to my collection of essays.  

Red Shuttleworth

Real excited to receive Lynn Bueling's LAYING TRACK AND OTHER PERSONAL ESSAYS. The newspaper essay and the book (more than review) essay are both slowly disappearing. Hurrah for essayists and for the newspapers that still publish them. Hurrah for essayists like Lynn Buelingwho, among other things, keep alive the memory of great regional pugilists, like North Dakota's Charley Retzlaff who gamely (abrupt, sudden loss) fought Joe Louis. Thank you, Lynn Bueling!

Sport Champion

At one time I enjoyed attending rodeos and became a fan of Mandan’s famous bucking bull, Little Yellow Jacket.  The Berger family from Mandan raised him, and with a little rodeo experience, he became a three-time Professional Bull Riders World Champion Bull in 2002, ’03, and ’04.  Almost 84% of his would-be riders were thrown from his back to land in the dirt with an average buck off time of 2.66 seconds.

A famous contest featuring Little Yellow Jacket occurred in April, 2003 at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs when a champion rider named Chris Shivers tried riding him for a $1,000,000 prize.  He lasted less than two seconds.  

We watched the bull compete for the last time in North Dakota in 2005 at a highly-promoted rodeo with among others my daughter-in-law who had never attended such an event, but who unfortunately couldn’t get into it.  Maybe it was baby Lucas whom she was soon expecting that swayed her attention.

Little Yellow Jacket earned induction into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2006 with the appellation of being the “most famous bull in the world.”  He died in September, 2011 at the age of fifteen.  I bought the model from the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs and like to look at it up there on a shelf.

Some Poetry Considerations...

I purchased the recent copy of the “North Dakota Quarterly,” a publication of the University of North Dakota, which features a number of articles about Tom McGrath, the poet from my hometown of Sheldon, North Dakota.  Reading through it, I verified something that I thought I’d read once before.  He once attended Louisiana State University and studied under the able guidance of Robert Penn Warren, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of ALL THE KING’S MEN, the story of the autocratic governor Huey Long of Louisiana.  But more about that tomorrow.

While I don’t profess to be an able critic of poetry, it seems as if Warren’s influence on McGrath is obvious.  Take for example a passage from McGrath’s “Letter to an Imaginary Friend” where he writes, “In the dusk the bats hustled./ The hawk wheeled and whirled on the tall perch of the air;/ Whirled, fell/ Down a long cliff of light, sliding from day into dusk.”

Compare Robert Penn Warren’s lines: “Night of the falling mercury, and ice glitter./ Drouth-light of August and the horned insect booming at the window screen.  

I recognize similar cadences and use of descriptive language in the two.  This is all great “stuff” to my poetry-greenhorn notion.  McGrath’s LETTER to an IMAGINARY FRIEND can still be purchased from various sources book sellers and the “Quarterly” from the UND bookstore.

The Unexamined Life...

If the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said, I wanted to examine the meaning of “demagogue.”

A demagogue or rabble-rouser is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Demagogues have usually advocated immediate, violent action to address a national crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. Demagogues overturn established customs of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so. Most who were elected to high office changed their democracy into some form of managed democracy. Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens.

They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, nothing stops the people from giving that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population.

Just sayin’…

TR's 1904 convention badge

My dad went to auction sales just for the fun of it and collected lots of "junk." He acquired this convention badge from 1904 featuring Teddy Roosevelt on one side with his vice president candidate, Charles W. Fairbanks, a U.S. Senator from Indiana on the reverse side. No, it's not for sale

The NP Caboose

I bought this model caboose at a garage sale a couple years ago because it bore the old Northern Pacific markings.  A lot of history surrounds that rail line as it ran through North Dakota.  They started laying tracks in 1970, but didn’t see completion until September, 1883 when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the golden spike in Montana.  The company wore their name until 1970 when it merged with other lines to form the Burlington Northern Railroad.

The caboose tagged along at the end of trains until the 1980s when it became replaced by a little device called either a “Flashing Rear End Device” (FRED) or an “End of Train Device” (EOD).

The little square house or cupola on top of the caboose is generally attributed to an old conductor who wrote in 1898, “During the '60s I was a conductor on the C&NW. One day late in the summer of 1863 I received orders to give my caboose to the conductor of a construction train and take an empty boxcar to use as a caboose. This car happened to have a hole in the roof about two feet square. I stacked the lamp and tool boxes under the perforation end and sat with my head and shoulders above the roof ... (Later) I suggested putting a box around the hole with glass in, so I could have a pilot house to sit in and watch the train.”

Energy Concerns

In a video blurb made by Arnold Schwarzenegger regarding pollution of the atmosphere, my estimation of him rose.  He made a comparison between two different fuels -  gas and electric.  In two rooms, a gas engine runs in one and an electric motor whirs away in the other.  If you participate in the experiment, you have the option of entering either of the clearly labeled rooms but must close the door behind you.   Which room will you enter and stay in for the hour? By the way, a gas mask may not be used.  We all know the answer; it’s a lesson well-stated.  We need more people like Rachel Carson holding sway with their irrefutable arguments.  

Descriptive Writing

Some writers can get pretty cheeky and irreverent when they describe characters they’ve written about.  I’ve never forgotten how one man who sat with Jim Harrison described him when they visited at Livingston, MT to gather information for a 2011 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE article called “The Last Lion”:  “His head looks as though it belongs on the end of something a Viking would use to knock down a medieval Danish gate.”  

A writer for a 2016 article in ESQUIRE said Harrison's voice sounds like he's spent half his life gargling gravel.

Harsh as these sound, the writers were admirers of Harrison.  A definition of Descriptive Writing says its purpose is to describe a person, place, or thing in such vivid detail that the reader can easily form a precise mental picture of what is being written about. The author may accomplish this by using imaginative language, interesting comparisons, and images that appeal to the senses.  I think that is fair.  Straight factual writing would be boring without some spirited writing tidbits thrown in.

Baxter Black,  a popular but skinny cowboy poet says, “My calves are so puny, I have to tamp dirt in my boot tops to hold ‘em on.”  Of course those of us who have built fences and tamped the dirt around the posts so they’d stand firm and straight probably can form Baxter’s mental picture most easily.

One of the best short stories ever written, “Genesis” by Wallace Stegner, tells of the young Englishman who came to the Canadian prairie to learn how to cowboy.  Stegner is a master of description: “The sun was just rising, its dazzle not yet quite clear of the horizon, and flooding down the river valley whitened with the dust of snow, it gilded the yellow leaves that still clung to the willows, stretched the shadow of every bush and post, glazed the eastern faces of the log ranch buildings whose other side was braced with long blue shadows.”

I can picture this: “The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog’s coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse’s fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep’s wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for the animals and for the wind, for a man’s trouser cuff or the hem of a woman’s skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement.” from Chapter 3, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, by John Steinbeck.

This simple line from Beryl Markham’s WEST WITH THE NIGHT grabbed me, “I learned what every dreaming child needs to know — that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.”  This made me think about my younger days.

No end would be served to continue listing examples because they can be found easily with just a little reading.  My shelves hold 300-400 books, some I haven’t read, so I’d better get busy.

Thoughts on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Thoughts on …

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

By Robert M. Pirsig

I’ve been on a motorcycly twice in my life.  One of those times was when my brother’s friend came over riding his Honda bike.  I asked if I could try it out, and with his affirmative answer, I climbed on and promptly killed the engine.  Thinking it was underpowered, I started it up again, “goosed” the throttle, and headed for the side of the shop beside which was piled all the junk iron saved for welding repairs.  It wasn’t underpowered!  I hit that pile of iron before I could think to steer it away.  I was on crutches for several days thereafter.

The other time was when I climbed on behind Larry Sprunk on an Indian motorcycle and went for a ride down a dirt road.  We seemed to go faster than I thought comfortable, but when he finally let up on the throttle, he turned around and said, “You just turned 80 miles an hour on a dirt road.”

I use the above experiences in working up to comments about a book I like to lift off my shelf occasionally - Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance.  While it is such an unlikely name for a book that is fast approaching classic status, it offers much to think about.

On the surface the book features the author, his son, and another couple driving on their motorcycles across country from Minnesota to California.  One or two of their overnight stops are familiar to us who live here.  On another level it is a philosophical journey that he likens to Plato’s character Phaedrus who searches for what defines “good.”

Little gems can be lifted from the narrative, such as this: “Phaedrus wandered through this high country, aimlessly at first, following every path, every trail where someone had been before, seeing occasionally with small hindsights that he was apparently making some progress, but seeing nothing ahead of him that told him which way to go.”

My copy is a newer edition and contains an interesting afterword where he talks of how his son, some years later, was mugged and murdered on the street.  Pirsig relates later on his wife becoming pregnant and that they determined to abort it because of their advancing ages.  He had been obsessing in his philosophical way with wondering where the soul of his son had gone.  He said an intense feeling came over him that made him announce to his wife that the pregnancy must continue.  The afterword ends with a line that the little girl tapped on his keyboard:  “ooolo99ikl;l.,pyknulmmmmmmmmmmm.”  He went on to day that if this gibberish passed the eye of the book’s editor, it would he her first published work.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.  - A Pirsig quote

A New Day

The weather forecast looks good for the week ahead, mid-thirties for the next seven days.

I had a surprise phone call yesterday just as I was putting on my shoes to go out for supper.  Mary ran back upstairs when the phone rang, read the screen, and hollered, "Don Bender."  "Answer," I said.  It was an old friend from graduate school - University of Northern Colorado - calling to say he and his wife have been following my Facebook posts.  Such good times we had down there in Greeley, a favorite hangout being The Driftwood Lounge.  Anyway, I enjoyed the visit.

For most of the past three years I have been writing weekly columns for various newspapers, but that is coming to an end.  I submitted my last for publication this week.  Over those past 150 articles, I've discovered a lot of characters and incidents that I want to write about in more depth and now plan to do.  The weekly column takes a lot of time, and I want to spend it concentrating elsewhere.  As of now I'll submit an article once a month instead of for that weekly grind.

Some of those characters went through quite the times never thinking much about it since that was the norm for them.  I like to bring them back to new readers.

What Teddy Roosevelt Thinks...

Teddy Roosevelt's philosophy is sadly out of tune with supporters of Dear-Leader-Donald, but it's happening just the same.  I wonder if Teddy could be elected today?

Protest As a Matter of Course

I found the following poem on a newsletter I receive each week and wanted to share it with you.  Read into it what you wish, but I’ve made my interpretation regarding these century old thoughts.  In many respects, it could have been written today.  The frog is an extra bonus.  LB

“Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850–October 30, 1919), from her 1914 book Poems of Problems (public domain | public library), written at the peak of the Women’s Suffrage movement and just as WWI was about to erupt.

PROTEST

To sin by silence, when we should protest,

Makes cowards out of men. The human race

Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised

Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,

The inquisition yet would serve the law,

And guillotines decide our least disputes.

The few who dare, must speak and speak again

To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,

No vested power in this great day and land

Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry

Loud disapproval of existing ills;

May criticise oppression and condemn

The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws

That let the children and childbearers toil

To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast

Of independence in this mighty land.

Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.

Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.

Until the manacled slim wrists of babes

Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,

Until the mother bears no burden, save

The precious one beneath her heart, until

God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed

And given back to labor, let no man

Call this the land of freedom.

as found in "Brain Pickings by Maria Popova: Weekly Newsletter"

Some Thoughts ~

I just read a good posting on Facebook - a map showing a solid black wall to keep migrants out of the country.  In red lines boat routes embarking from Mexico to any other US points beside the wall.  One of the comments was that the wall will just create lots of boat people.  So much for a few billion dollars to build a wall.

We're in Fargo babysitting the little granddaughter.  Brandon had a bad accident falling on the ice, landing full force on his elbow, breaking it and the bone above.  A surgeon operated yesterday and he is recuperating now with painkillers and lots of ice.  We bought a tube of sand and spread on the "danger zone."  It sure helps, but too late.