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Atticus Finch<\/a>: A quintessential “intelligent Southerner” – of a type now\u00a0Gone with the Wind<\/a>?<\/em><\/p>\n * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n But then I went on to take a look at “this time last year.” As a result of that<\/em><\/strong>, I did a combination-post using three draft projects I started a year ago. (“This time last year.”)<\/em> That is, I combined those three draft-posts into\u00a0Early post-mortem<\/a>, to make one long<\/em><\/strong> post on those long-forgotten projects. (Plus the canoe “early post-mortem.”)<\/em> Those three draft posts were on: 1) <\/b>Gerrymandering<\/a>, 2) humor as a weapon, and 3) – briefly – an ongoing book-project I’m working on, “My Adventures In Old Age.”<\/p>\n And why did I do that? Mainly because a “full\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>postmortem account<\/a>” of the canoe trip would “take time, and I\u2019m long overdue to submit a new blog-post.” So here’s another<\/em> <\/strong>delay in doing that full post-mortem.. But as it turns out, this project led to a “foreshadowing” post that I did about an earlier canoe-trip adventure…<\/p>\n To explain, once I got back home I started re-reading\u00a0American Home Front: 1941-1942<\/a>. In doing so I found a great quote for these challenging times. I’ll get to that quote later, but first want to note that two<\/em><\/strong> years ago I also started a review-post of the\u00a0Home Front<\/a>\u00a0book. And in reviewing it<\/em> <\/strong>I found some notes relating to my recent canoe-trip. Plus some good historical tidbits.<\/p>\n I wrote this first rough-draft paragraph for that review-post back in September, 2018:<\/p>\n For my recent long drive up to Canada – for my\u00a0\u201cRideau Adventure\u201d<\/a>\u00a0– I borrowed a book-on-CD from the local library:\u00a0The American Home Front: 1941-1942<\/a>, by\u00a0Alistair Cooke<\/a>.\u00a0(Most people “of a certain age<\/a>” know Cooke for his\u00a0America: A Personal History of the United\u00a0States<\/a>. I have both the book and DVD version of the 13-part\u00a0BBC<\/a>\u00a0documentary<\/a>\u00a0television series first broadcast in 1972.)<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And today, aside from having both the book and DVD version of Cooke’s “America<\/a>” docu-series<\/a>, I now have the book version of his American Home Front<\/a>. (Published in 2006, two years after his death.) <\/em>And as noted,\u00a0I started re-reading it again, once I got back from my latest canoe trip. In doing\u00a0I found the following particularly relevant passage. It’s particularly relevant to me<\/em><\/strong> anyway, and I suspect to other people as well. People who may wonder “where did that guy go?”<\/p>\n The intelligent Southerner gives an impression you seldom meet elsewhere in America of having his own standards and of respecting you as a mature stranger while he keeps his own reserve.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n “Intelligent Southerner?” “Respecting you as a mature stranger?” “Keeps his own reserve?”<\/p>\n Cooke compared his intelligent Southerner (now mythical?)<\/em>\u00a0to the swarms of young people he saw as civilians in\u00a0Louisville<\/a>. And to\u00a0the swarms of soldiers around town, from nearby Fort Knox. He said the civilian high-school boys he saw were “gawky and lifeless,” while the faces of their female companions were “innocent of any flicker of intelligence.” But to his credit, Cooke admitted – of this American<\/em><\/strong> town – that this was “an atmosphere that\u00a0 no European need feel strange in. For it is the seeping seediness of English provincial towns.”<\/p>\n And just as an aside, it seems to this<\/em><\/strong> Old White Man – old but not grumpy – that way too many Americans these days have chosen that “seeping seediness.”\u00a0But as for me and my house<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0– or at least for me – “I will choose the way of the Intelligent Southerner.” Or try to anyway.<\/p>\n Nope, this “Georgia Wasp”\u00a0still gets a kick out of life. And from now on I’ll cling to my own standards, while at the same time keeping my own reserve, and also trying to respect other all Americans as mature strangers. That’s going to be the hard part…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n But getting back to\u00a0my\u00a0\u201cRideau Adventure<\/a>.” Here’s a quote from the notes:<\/p>\n Another note: For the next canoe trip I\u2019m getting a bigger tent and a cot. (No more sleeping on the ground for me.) But that trip won\u2019t happen until at least 2020, as next summer my brother, his wife and I plan to hike the\u00a0Portuguese Camino<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Which turned out to be right on point. The next canoe trip did<\/em><\/strong> happen in 2020, and it happened despite the fact that I fully intended – this summer of 2020 – to either join my brother and his wife on another Camino hike in Spain.\u00a0Or<\/em><\/strong> – if that didn’t happen – to fly back to Israel to\u00a0Walk the Jesus Trail<\/a>. Of course neither overseas flight-plus-adventure happened this year, because of the\u00a0COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>. But who could have seen that coming, back in 2018?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Which brings up an email exchange shortly before we both left home to meet up in South Sioux City. (My brother from Utah, me from the ATL<\/a>.)<\/em> He reminded me of things I needed to bring, including a tent. He then added, “There would also be room for a folding cot…”<\/p>\n I wrote back: “A folding cot would be nice, but I only have that small two-person tent. Of course I could get a bigger tent, what with my stimulus check and all, but I’m wondering how many more canoe trips we’ll be doing. (Cost-benefit-wise.)<\/em>” He answered,\u00a0“I too wonder\u00a0about how many more canoe trips. But I would imagine we’d\u00a0be able to canoe great distances longer (age-wise)<\/em> than walk great distances. The question is, is the interest still there.”<\/p>\n Just for the record: First, that was a good point about being able to canoe great distances longer than walking great distances. (At our age.)<\/em> And second, the interest is definitely still there. That combination of\u00a0Coleman Trailhead II Camping Cot<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ozark Trail 6 Person Dome Camping Tent<\/a>\u00a0made all the difference in the world. (Measuring 8-by-12 feet, instead my old 7-by-7 feet “two person” tent.*) <\/em>That larger tent came in very<\/em> <\/strong>handy on Saturday night, July 11. That was the night after<\/em><\/strong> my brother’s tent got destroyed by an 80-mile-an-hour windstorm…<\/p>\n * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n This gives some<\/strong> idea what happened at 1:10 a.m., early July 11…<\/em><\/p>\n * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n The upper image is courtesy of\u00a0Atticus Finch\u00a0–\u00a0Image\u00a0Results<\/a>. Which leads to the question: “Why don’t we see more Southern Gentleman like him anymore?”<\/em><\/p>\n The “intelligent Southerner” quote is at page 40 of the Grove Press paperback edition of “American Home Front,” first published in 2006 “by the estate of Alistair Cooke.” <\/em>For a New York Times review, see The\u00a0American\u00a0Home\u00a0Front:\u00a01941-1942<\/a>, “<\/em>Alistair Cooke’s America, Explored in Wartime,” or\u00a0The American Home Front: 1941-1942\u00a0(Smithsonian<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n Re: “Fort Knox<\/a> \u2026 above right.” Wikipedia caption: “A tank driver at Fort Knox in 1942.”<\/em><\/p>\n Re:\u00a0Walking the Jesus Trail<\/a>. A hike offered by\u00a0Saint George’s College Jerusalem<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n This course, new to St. George\u2019s College in 2020, offers an exciting opportunity for pilgrims who wish to experience the land from an entirely different perspective: walking. The course will spend five days following segments of the Jesus Trail in the Galilee [(www.jesustrail.com<\/a>] from Sepphoris (Zippori) near Nazareth to Capernaum, staying each night in a guest house or hotel along the way. Walkers will only carry day bags; luggage will be sent to the next guest house via the bus.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The lower image is courtesy of\u00a0Windstorm In A Tent\u00a0–\u00a0Image\u00a0Results<\/a>. It was said to be accompanied by an article in the\u00a0Kathmandu Post<\/a>,\u00a0“Storms compound lives under tent.” But when I clicked on “View Page,” I was advised, “Sorry, the page you are trying to access does not exist. But maybe the search gods can help you find what you\u2019re looking for.” So I typed in the “storms compound” headline and got kathmandupost … storm-compounds-lives<\/a>, from May 23, 2015. The subhead read, “High winds and thundershowers on Saturday evening added to the hardships of people taking refuge in tents in open spaces after the April 25 earthquake displaced them.” I’ll explain the differences in the two situations in a later post, but for now let’s just say that our situation involved only my brother and I, two people in two separate tents. But the photo does<\/strong> give you some idea what we went through, from 1:10 to 1:50 a.m., that Friday night\/early Saturday morning, July 10-11, 2020. (Also, note the alternate spelling, “Katmandu | Bob Seger<\/a>.”)<\/em><\/p>\n * \u00a0 * \u00a0 * \u00a0 *<\/p>\n For some reason I put this note from a “president unfit<\/a>” search in an early version of this post: “I got to that article (3\/30\/20) in\u00a0The Boston Globe<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by starting to\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0‘a president ignored,’ based on a Washington Post article I’d just read. (See\u00a0<\/strong>A president\u00a0ignored: Trump\u2019s outlandish claims increasingly met with a collective shrug<\/a>.) But right after I typed in ‘a president’ the Google-phrase ‘<\/em>president unfit for a pandemic’ came up.\u00a0<\/em>That led in turn to a number of media outlets reporting the Globe’s story; I saw 34,800,00 ‘search results’ from the Google-phrase.\u00a0<\/em>(Incidentally, the subtitle to the Globe article: ‘Much of the suffering and death coming was preventable. The president has blood on his hands.'”<\/em><\/p>\n![\"1651350\"](\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1328822350l\/1651350.jpg\")
My last post –\u00a0An early post-mortem<\/a>\u00a0– started with a note about my brother and I just finishing a four-day, 115-mile canoe trip down the Missouri River.\u00a0(From Sioux City to Omaha, on July 12.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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Those phrases don’t come readily to mind today, whether after a session on Facebook or viewing a host of bumper stickers with sentiments like “Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder<\/a>.” (To which you might reply, at least rhetorically, “Of course the only thing worse is a grumpy, bloated old white man threatened by change in the world.”) <\/em>Which brings up Cooke’s comparison of that intelligent Southerner to most of the civilians he found around\u00a0Louisville<\/a>,\u00a0the nearest big party town to\u00a0Fort Knox<\/a>\u00a0– illustrated above right* – in March, 1942.<\/p>\n\n
But more on that in a later post!<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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