dual personalities

Tag: Craig Johnson

September 22, 2020

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

Craig Johnson’s newest Longmire mystery, Next to Last Stand, releases today and I should be getting it in the mail shortly. The plot hinges on a famous American painting:

One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer’s Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over a million prints a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946… Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart-attack at the Sailor’s & Soldier’s Home of Wyoming, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a hauntingly familiar, partial painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars both found in the veteran’s footlocker. Encountering some nefarious characters along the way, Longmire strives to make sure the investigation doesn’t become his own Next To Last Stand.

Interestingly, (at least to me) this large painting hung in our father’s classroom for many years. Someone gave it to him I suppose. I think our brother has it now. As a child I thought it was rather shocking, because you will note, there are some near-naked men in the painting. There are also several soldiers being scalped. All rather too graphic for my taste.

Much more to my liking as a child was the Disney movie Tonka (1958). This story takes place in the territory of the Dakotas in the 1870s, where a young Indian brave, White Bull, captures a wild stallion and names him Tonka. Yellow Bull, the brave’s cousin, is jealous and mistreats Tonka so that White Bull frees the horse once more. The horse’s new master, Capt. Myles Keogh, rides him into battle with General Custer in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where Keogh is killed by Yellow Bull.

In retaliation Yellow Bull is stomped upon and killed by Tonka, who is the only survivor of the battle. He is officially retired by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry on April 10, 1878, to be ridden only by his exercise boy, his beloved master…White Bull! Directed by Lewis R. Foster, the film stars Sal Mineo (White Bull) and was filmed at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon by Loyal Griggs, who had filmed such famous westerns as Shane. Released on video in 1986, it is no longer available, no doubt because it is so politically incorrect. Indeed, there aren’t many of those “Wonderful World of Disney” movies that we watched on Sunday night TV available on their new streaming channel. I guess they’d have to put too many warnings about the pre-enlightened attitudes of yesteryear to make it worthwhile.

I had the Golden Book…

Anyway, I am really looking forward to reuniting with Sheriff Longmire and Henry Standing Bear et al. I have been setting the stage by re-reading Land of Wolves, the 2019 offering and enjoying it.

The idiot actually leaned in. “I said, do you know who the f–k I am?” Henry peered at him and actually looked concerned. “Do you not know who you are?”

I’ll let you know how it goes.

7 Comments
October 1, 2019

Walking along in the changing-time

by chuckofish

Last Sunday was the Pedal the Cause bicycle event which the boy participated in for the third year, riding 20 miles in the PTC Classic. It was very hot.

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I did not go this year, because there is a little too much walking involved, but I was thinking of him and proud of him per usual.

My weekend was quiet. Daughter #1 was home and accompanied me to my chemo treatment, along with the boy who comes with me every Friday. I am very grateful to have such support! We stopped at Chik-fil-a on the way home. Then the boy went to work and daughter #1 went to Ikea and I went to bed.

I read a lot of Longmire.

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I hung up a new wreath (from Etsy) because fall is here.

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I have always loved those “Chinese Lanterns,” don’t you? One of these days I’m gong to try growing my own.

News flash: not only is fall here, but it is October! Zut alors!

“When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits.

They went down again and soon the smell of the river spread over the woods, cool and secret. Every step they took among the great walls of vines and among the passion-flowers started up a little life, a little flight.

‘We’re walking along in the changing-time,’ said Doc. ‘Any day now the change will come. It’s going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog that’s ripe and have fresh meat to eat. Come one of these nights and we can wander down here and tree a nice possum. Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. Hickory tree there will be yellow. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow.’ He went along rapping the tree trunks with his knuckle. ‘Magnolia and live-oak never die. Remember that. Persimmons will all get fit to eat, and the nuts will be dropping like rain all through the woods here. And run, little quail, run, for we’ll be after you too.’

They went on and suddenly the woods opened upon light, and they had reached the river. Everyone stopped, but Doc talked on ahead as though nothing had happened. ‘Only today,’ he said, ‘today, in October sun, it’s all gold—sky and tree and water. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold.’

“The Wide Net”
― Eudora Welty

Have a golden week.

 

3 Comments
August 23, 2017

Yep

by chuckofish

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The Cheyenne Nation warmed to the old man. “What did you do? For a living.”

He gestured toward the book lying on the counter to our left, Herodotus’s The Histories. “I taught world history at Black Hills State.”

“‘Men trust their ears less than their eyes.'”

He nodded and looked sad. “He is rather one-sided, but he’s still the most reliable historian of the ancient world.” The old scholar considered me. “I find it hard to believe that a Wyoming sheriff quotes Herodotus.”

“It’s a magnificent book.”

He placed a wrinkled hand lovingly on the tome. “I read it periodically to convince myself that we live in more civilized times.”

“Yep.”

–Craig Johnson, An Obvious Fact

(The picture is of Virginia Woolf’s retreat at Monk’s House)

7 Comments
July 31, 2017

Steadfast resolution

by chuckofish

We had perfect flyover weather this weekend–and to think, it was 108-degrees last Saturday! Anyway, we had a pleasant weekend, although we did very little. I went to a few estate sales and got a few things,

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including this book which I have been looking for for quite some time.

I also found a nice Hitchcock table and four chairs for daughter #1 who will now have room in her flyover apartment for such things!

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After taking the table apart, the OM and I wrestled everything into my Mini Cooper and his Accord and were pretty proud of ourselves for doing so.

I also sat outside and read a good deal of Longmire #9, which was excellent. It includes exchanges like this:

I opened the volume to the title page and read: “The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume XXV, History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming 1890.” I gently closed the heavy, leather-bound hardback and rested it against my chest. “Is this book for sale?”

She smiled at me with all the warmth of a Moroccan rug salesman. “Do you know what it’s worth?”

“I do.”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

I studied the marbled edges of the pages. “That’s not what it’s worth.”

“I wasn’t negotiating a price; I was simply trying to see if you knew the value.” She sighed deeply and picked up another from one of the towers near her. “I’m past the point of caring what things cost; I just want to know that beautiful and important objects are in the hands of people who will appreciate them.”

…I stood there holding the two books and looking at the piles around us–they were like literary land mines just waiting to explode minds…

And this:

He smiled, and a line settled alongside the upturned corner of his  mouth as he popped the lid on the center console–he knew all my caches and cliches–and pulled out an extra box of shells. “What other weapons do we have?”

I started the Bullet and pulled the gear selector down into drive. “Steadfast resolution.” I turned and looked at him, not as if he would take the option, but it had to be said. “If you want out now would be the time.”

He actually laughed as he reloaded the round. “I try never to miss an episode of Steadfast Resolution–it is my favorite program.”

Having finished Longmire #9, I am now reading Cheyenne Autumn by Mari Sandoz, a classic novel published in 1953 about the 1,500-mile flight of the Northern Cheyenne from the Indian Territory back to their home in the Yellowstone region in 1878–because Henry Standing Bear put it on his list of 10 Books to Read. Is it weird to take literary suggestions from fictional characters?

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I don’t think so either.

Meanwhile we continued to receive adorable pictures of the wee babes in Florida

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We also heard from daughters #1 and #2 enjoying one last weekend together in NYC!

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I went to church because I was reading and was treated to this lesson:

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.  28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?  33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”  37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:26-39)

I don’t know about you, but I cannot read verses 35-39 without a tear coming to my eye. Great stuff.

Have a great week!

3 Comments
July 25, 2017

“And the moral of the story is?”

by chuckofish

“What is it with you white people and morals? Maybe it’s just a story about what happened.” He paused for a moment. “If an Indian points at a tree, you white people are always thinking, What does that mean? What does the tree stand for? What’s the lesson in this for me? Maybe it’s just a tree.” (Virgil White Buffalo in Hell Is Empty)

While waiting for cabs and resting between long walks and Big Events last weekend, I sought solace in the company of Walt Longmire in the Wyoming mountains.  Hell Is Empty is amazingly apropos reading for wiling away hours in LaGuardia Airport! (“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”–Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Anyway, at the beginning of this novel we are told that one of Walt’s deputies, regretting a stint in higher education devoted almost exclusively to criminal justice, is attempting to fill in some of the literary gaps. Walt and his deputies, plus the dispatcher and the lady who runs the diner have all made book lists for him. Dante’s Inferno plays a big part in the rest of the story.

Craig Johnson, understanding that his readers would want to know, thoughtfully includes the different lists in an appendix to the novel.

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Of course, Ruby, the dispatcher and my soul sister, includes The Holy Bible (NT), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Antonia, The Scarlett Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, and Our Town.

How great is that? I guess I’ll have to read My Friend Flicka!

I love lists.

My list would include: The Holy Bible (NT), The Book of Common Prayer, Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye, O Pioneers!, The Big Sky, The Waters of Kronos, The Big Sleep, Gilead, Lonesome Dove…

I’m sure I’m forgetting something important that I really love. You know how that goes.

Here’s Frederick Buechner on a similar theme:

THE WRITERS WHO get my personal award are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly as they know how and then of telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through. We need the blood of writers like that in our veins.

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was one of the first books I read that did it to me, that started me on the long and God knows far from finished journey on the way to becoming a human being—started making that happen. What I chiefly learned from it was that even the slobs and phonies and morons that Holden Caulfield runs into on his travels are, like Seymour Glass’s Fat Lady, “Christ Himself, buddy,” as Zooey explains it to his sister Franny in the book that bears her name Even the worst among us are precious. Even the most precious among us bear crosses. That was a word that went straight into my bloodstream and has been there ever since. Along similar lines I think also of Robertson Davies’ Deptford trilogy, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond, George Garrett’s Death of the Fox, some of the early novels of John Updike like The Poorhouse Fair and The Centaur, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I think of stories like Flannery O’Connor’s “The Artificial Nigger” and Raymond Carver’s “Feathers” and works of non-fiction, to use that odd term (like calling poetry non-prose) such as Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm and Geoffrey Wolff’s The Duke of Deception and Robert Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb or plays like Death of a Salesman or Our Town.

What 10 books would you put on your list of must-reads? Think about it.

But excuse me, I have to get back to Absaroka County…

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6 Comments
July 10, 2017

“Stay calm, have courage and wait for signs”*

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2017-07-09 at 2.01.32 PM.pngWell, there is bound to be a big let-down after a big event that you have planned for so long…IMG_5623.JPG.jpegIMG_5935.JPGIMG_5933.JPGIMG_5934.JPGIMG_5936.JPGIMG_5940.JPG…and I am in the middle of it. Good grief, two weeks of non-stop socializing with family and friends and people staying in your house…IMG_5585.JPG.jpeg

IMG_5596.JPG.jpegBut c’est la vie. This past weekend I did very little but straighten up the house and do laundry. I still have more straightening to do, but I made a lot of progress.

I also spent a good amount of time with my new best friend Walt Longmire, who has joined the ranks of my small club of Best Fictional Characters Ever (Holden Caulfield, Philip Marlowe, Dick Summers…). The book (NOT to be confused with the television show) I just finished was As the Crow Flies, which ends with Walt’s daughter getting married in a traditional Cheyenne ceremony.

…the two birds I’d noticed were crows circling right above the meadow, the primaries of their wing tips spread like fingers as they rode the thermals that lifted them into the cloudless sky.

Maybe it was an omen, but I decided to take it as a good one. I’d heard that crows mate for life and are known to raise their young for as long as five years.

Sometimes you don’t get that long.

I thought about Audrey Plain Feather and how her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped–maybe nobody’s did.

My wife Martha’s hadn’t. Mine hadn’t. Even Henry’s hadn’t.

Maybe Cady’s would.

It’s hopes like this that you cling to at major turning points in your life and, more important, the lives of your children. You keep going, and you hope for the best, and sometimes, maybe not very often, your hopes come true.

I also watched Red Beard (1965) directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune. I had read about this film on the Mockingbird website and knew it was a favorite movie of the Rev. John Zahl, but had never seen it or really heard much about it. Indeed,  the British Film Institute’s 2015 list of “10 Essential Kurosawa Films” did not feature Red Beard. But there is a Criterion Films DVD and so I got it from Netflix.

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And let me tell you, this is a great, great movie! It poses the question, “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” The answer is illusive, as we know, but there is solace to be found in knowing that there are, indeed, good people in the world. This is the lesson learned by several characters in the movie including the protagonist, a young, arrogant doctor played by Yuzo Kayama. Red Beard, Toshira Mifune, is one of the good people.  He has learned to overcome his own arrogance in order to love people where they are and to help them. It reminded me of Sunday’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11: 30)

Indeed, the movie is about love and grace and is absolutely amazing. There are so many great scenes–I tear up just thinking about them!–such as the scene where the clinic serving women scream the name of the dying child (“Chobu!”) down the well to pull his soul back from the dead. Do not put off seeing this great movie because it is three hours long and you think you are not in the mood for a “downer” movie. It is inspiring. Also, I was struck by the acting in this movie, which is so, so good and rather subdued by Japanese standards.

Anyway, I just loved it and highly recommend it to you. I watched it alone, of course. The OM left after half an hour to water the shrubs. I guess he wasn’t in the mood.

But, hello. Someone left this “toast prop” at my house!

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It’s the simple things, right?

*Cheyenne motto

5 Comments
May 31, 2017

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

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Someone at work has been cleaning out his bookshelves recently and I have been the recipient of several good mystery novels. First I read an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Moseley which was well written and held my interest.

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Then I started the first Longmire mystery with low expectations and was rewarded with a real prize.

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I am enjoying this book so much! It is well-written and character-driven and the characters are all fascinating individuals. It is slightly humorous, and by that I mean, it does not take itself too seriously, as I think the television version tends to. Plus, bonus: Walt is a lawman with a literary bent. He is always making literary references, but not in a pretentious, stuffy way. Rather, he is always kind of kidding when he does so.

“I took a sip of my coffee, sat the folder on the counter, and began reading the newspaper. “In the cold, gray dawn of September the twenty-eighth . . .” Dickens. “. . . The slippery bank where the life of Cody Pritchard came to an ignominious end . . .” Faulkner. “Questioning society with the simple query, why?” Steinbeck. “Dead.” Hemingway.”

“You know, Balzac once described bureaucracy as a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

“What’d your buddy Balzac have to say about inadmissible evidence?”

“Not a lot. I think he considered the subject beneath him.”

“I wandered past Vic’s office and looked in at the explosion of legal pads. The display was daunting, and I would be cursed at if I messed up any of what I’m sure was a carefully detailed arrangement. We were little but we were mighty. I thought of Don Quixote, being far too powerful to war with mere mortals and pleading for giants.”

That is just how his mind works.

I am happy to note that as of May 2017, Craig Johnson has written 12 novels, 2 novellas and a collection of short stories featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

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My kind of guy.

One of these days I am going to quit my job and move to Wyoming and get a job as the admin to an overworked sheriff. You think I’m kidding?

(The painting at the top is by Mary Cassatt.)

6 Comments