Michael C. Goodwin's Blog, page 26

Waterloo

A couple of months ago when we visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., I came upon this rather magnificent portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. For some reason this struck a note in my aging brain and I finally remembered that 200 years ago, (June 18, 1815), an epic battle began near the small Belgium town of Waterloo. Most historians consider this battle to be one of the most important in recent history. French forces under the command of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte fought against a collation of European forces headed by the British army under the command of Duke Wellington and the Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blucher. Napoleon lost the battle, and was exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic and the monocracy was restored to rule over France. Most people consider it a good thing that Napoleon lost, but on closer examination, there was a down side to it. Napoleon, in his most recent, and short time back in France, had presented some quite advanced and democratic laws for the people of his country. Most of the monarchies of Europe were quite alarmed at these revolutionary ideas and desired that Napoleon should be put away for good. Napoleon had been defeated the previous year by another collation of European armies and forced to give up the throne of France. He was exiled to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean. The fact that he came back to a huge welcome in France and could possibly reconquer Europe by military force again, alarmed the other European countries tremendously. However, it was not his fate to rule again for long. Napoleon, in his military career, had fought 60 battles, in that he had won 48 of them, had five draws and seven losses. Waterloo was his greatest loss and his most famous. After the battle was fought and Napoleon was defeated, there was a relative peaceful 50 years for Europe and it was quite safe for the ruling aristocracy all the way up until World War I, when the old order, quite catastrophically, came crashing down around them.

Take me to the movies

I was quite interested recently when I read that HBO was working on an adaption of Isaac Asimov’s classic ‘Foundation’ series of novels. The books cover, no less, the future fall of the galactic empire. These books, however, do not have a whole lot of sex and violence, (as opposed to the current Game of Thrones series), actually they don’t have any, so it will be interesting to see if they can do an intellectual sort of treatment. Having said that out loud, I am now wondering about my own intelligence. At any rate we can hope for the best. I have for a long time enjoyed to some extent almost any science fiction movie that was produced. Back 40 or so years ago there wasn’t a lot to choose from. And certainly, not a whole lot of movies were made that were based on good SF novels. 2001, A Space Odyssey was made from a short story, Blade Runner from another short story, A Clockwork Orange, Starship Troopers, I Am Legend, Contact, I, Robot, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Time Machine and of course, The War of the Worlds were all made into sometimes fair or sometimes awful movies. I wonder if anyone will ever get any of these great books right. Perhaps the only thing to do is create your own SF world and make movies out of them. Certainly Star Trek, Star Wars and the Mad Max series of movies are much better to watch as there are no great expectations based on the original book because the books came after the movies. But maybe they will do better in this modern age of CGI, where you can create almost anything you or any author can imagine. Classics such as Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (and 3001), Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in High Castle, Andy Weir’s The Martian and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War are currently being made into movies. These complicated books require more then just a quick treatment and a bunch of special effects, hopefully the people producing these wonderful books as movies can see beyond that. As for me, right now, I think I will stick with Star Wars and Star Trek, no expectations beyond some fun, some adventure, some thrills and reliable, (if sometimes shallow) characters. If I want something more I will sit down in my best easy chair and read a good book. (Below is an illustration I painted from my favorite classic Star Trek movie, Star Trek II, the Wrath of Kahn.)

Secrets

Late last summer I was talking with an old friend of mine, Ron Thornburg, former managing editor at the newspaper where I used to work and he had an Idea for a book. Foolishly I said that I would help out. Eight months later we have published that book. It is titled ‘Secrets of the Ogden Trails.’ It is a book about how the beautiful and extensive trail system around Ogden City came about. I was the designer of the book, David Owen was the photographer and Ron was the writer and editor. It is not a large book, so the three of us were able to work closely together and quickly. The writing and research part took the longest, though laying out the book wasn’t easy either. As most books do, it evolved during the process and many things were lost and many more were added as we went along. It started out mainly as a photo book, coffee table sort of thing. But the further Ron got into the stories and history behind it all, it became more antidotal and better balanced. Of course, I began the design to accommodate mostly photos with small spaces on each ends of the pages for the stories, but they grew until some of them took up a good part of the pages. It broke up some of the cohesiveness of those pages but I was able to redesign most of them and keep it all together. I know it sounds odd to describe it that way but books can become almost living things that grow in ways that you cannot foresee. Even though it took up a lot of my spare creative time over the last few months I had a lot of fun putting it together, mostly because of my clever and easy to work with fellow authors. I also enjoyed the design challenge of taking something I was not too familiar with and making it readable and beautiful to look at. I didn’t make any money from it, all proceeds go towards maintaining the trail system, but as they say, the exposure will be good for me. Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before. Anyway, as they say, ‘ars gratia artis.’

Glen and me

At some point in our lives almost every one of us can point to someone and say, “this person made it possible for me to earn a living.” Such is the case with my old illustration instructor who taught me at Utah State. I graduated from there more then 40 years ago, but when Glen Edwards had an exhibit here in Ogden at the Union Station gallery recently, I was more then excited to go to the opening. Glen is retired, of course. But when he taught illustration at USU he was a brand new instructor, only a few years older then most of his students. (He even married a friend of mine in the same year as I was, Barbara, who was also at the opening and was a great pleasure to see and talk to once again.) I certainly wasn’t one of his greatest students, but I was good enough to earn a living as an artist and that was all I ever wanted to do. I was rather shy back then, (hard to believe, isn’t it?), and Glen quickly figured out that he would have to bring me along slowly and a little more carefully then normal. It took me a couple of years, but with his help, I managed to grow into a fairly confident, creative person. The most important thing that Glen taught me, was how to actually paint, the technical aspects of using board, paint, brushes and all the other stuff that goes along with creating the finished work. I had a pretty creative mind but knowing how to translate the idea into finished art was very important to me. The most amazing thing about Glen is that he loves to paint; I have never known anyone else on this planet that has a passion to put paint to board the way that Glen does. He would often do as many as 3 or 4 portraits in our 8-hour illustration studio class. I still have a portrait he did of me in class once, hanging on the family room wall. Glen is not a big guy, as you can see from the photo and I am actually not as tall as I look there. But for a small fellow he has an enormous heart and an incredible talent. Thanks Glen for helping me become an artist.

Return of the Brontosaurus

I have to admit it, I was somewhat excited about the recent announcement that scientists were going to reinstate the Brontosaur as a viable species of dinosaur. Confused? You never knew that the Brontosaur was not a real dinosaur? Relax, you are definitely not alone on this, only crazy amateur paleontologists like me even care. The real story starts in the late 1870’s, oh yes, back in the darker ages of our country’s scientific history.

There was a dinosaur bone war going on back then, Edward Dinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, each representing prestigious museums back east, used underhanded methods to out-compete each other using outright theft, bribery of diggers and attacks in scientific publications to try to discredit and ruin each other. Why? Who knows? But between them, in their scientific duel, they discovered over 142 new species of dinosaurs out west in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah. Their discoveries lead to a huge public interest in dinosaurs and an awareness of a rich fossil history of life on Earth. Of their discoveries, only 32 of those dinosaurs turned out to be valid species, the other bits and pieces and the outsized reputations of the discoverers at the time, served to confuse paleontology for almost a century. Such was the case of the Brontosaur. Everyone loves this huge lumbering plant eater; its image in 20th century society was everywhere, from gas pumps and stamps to colorful characters on early morning Saturday cartoon shows, (and my favorite Cary Grant movie, ‘Bringing up Baby’).

Marsh found the first skeleton of a Brontosaur in Wyoming in 1879 and when it was finally put it together in 1905 at the American Museum of Natural History, it lacked some of the feet, leg, shoulder and tail sections. Parts from other dinosaur fossils were used to fill in the gaps. One of the main missing parts was the head of the animal. Marsh substituted another completely different dinosaur skull (likely from a Brachiosaurus), and so the Brontosaurus was born. The skeleton eventually turned out to be an Apatosaurus whose real skull was found to resemble a longer snouted Diplodocus. Camarasaurus, similar in body to Brontosaurs and Apatosaurus, turned out to have shorter faces and were some of the only, early skull parts found of these huge dinosaurs, adding to the confusion. It wasn’t all sorted out until the 1990’s when scientists finally decided that there was no such thing as Marsh’s made-up Brontosaur and canceled the species name. But wait, now in 2015, more specimens have been dug up and there is enough difference between several Apatosaurus skeletons that a new species, Brontosaurus, has returned to the scene. I know that you are as excited as I am over this. Back in the late-90s I designed two descriptive panels for a dinosaur exhibit at Treehouse Children’s Museum. On one panel I used an illustration I did of some Camarasaurs and another colored ink drawing I did of some Apatosaurus, (along with other photos and material I had on dinos). The results are very nice and fairly good looking and, more importantly, I had them labeled correctly, (for then). At least until scientists decide to change their minds again or dig up another similar dinosaur skeleton.

Assassination

On our recent trip to Washington DC we found that our hotel was only two blocks from Fords Theater. It is today, an active theater and we went to see a fairly decent musical there, “Freedom’s Song,” which was about life and hardships during the civil war. There is also a pretty good museum in the basement centered around president Abraham Lincoln and the period during the civil war. Fords Theater was the place where well-known stage actor at the theater, John Wilkes Booth, a confederate sympathizer, assassinated President Lincoln. The assassination occurred on Good Friday, April 14th, 150 years ago and Lincoln died the next morning, April 15. The war had just ended five days earlier when general Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to general Ulysses S. Grant, bringing hostilities to an end. A policeman assigned to guard the box was across the street in a bar and Booth, being a very famous actor of the time, did not arouse any suspicion as he made his way to the where Lincoln, his wife and another couple were watching a comedy on stage. At the point where the funniest line of the play was uttered, and loudest laughter occurred, Booth shot the President in the back of the head. After a brief struggle with the other man in the box, Booth leapt to the stage and made his escape from the theater. He injured himself in the jump and looking at where the seats were in the theater I can see why, it is a good 12 or more feet above the stage. Almost two weeks after the assassination, Booth was tracked down to a farm in Virginia where he was hiding with a co-conspirator. Union soldiers set fire to a barn to flush out Booth, and another soldier shot and killed him. The box at the theater has been preserved in the manner it was decorated in when Lincoln was killed. Hearing that the president was coming to the theater that evening, a portrait of George Washington was placed in front of the box because apparently there was no photo of Lincoln available on such short notice. The theater was forced to close due to public outrage and eventually became an office building and then a warehouse. In 1968 it became a museum and the theater was restored to working condition. (The photo below shows the presidential box, which is, of course, never used during plays.)

Gettysburg 3

My third in a series on Gettysburg was delayed due to a nasty bout of flu, but here is it at last. At the time, the battle of Gettysburg was not considered a major event, just one more massive engagement in which thousands more troops were killed or maimed. What northern enthusiasm there was for the victory, was soon lost in the realization that the southern army had survived and that the war would continue for much longer. Overall, Gettysburg was a lost opportunity for the south. Some of Lee’s generals were fairly new and not familiar with his command style, they failed to attack as quickly and forcefully during critical points of the battle as Lee would have wished. The Union forces were able to occupy some of the better ground at the beginning of the battle and held a slight advantage throughout. Gettysburg was an accidental meeting, neither side would have willingly fought there, and once engaged, Lee refused to leave. So what would have happened if Lee had been able to carry the day as he always did in previous campaigns? A Confederate victory at Gettysburg would have allowed the southern forces to continue to wreak havoc on Pennsylvania and would have allowed them to menace Washington D.C., giving rise to thoughts of a settlement with the south and encouraging foreign support for the confederacy. The United States could have remained split, and much like Europe, given rise to several different countries on the North American continent. Certainly California and the west coast could have become independent and the Mormons, well-settled in Utah, Idaho and Arizona would have taken the opportunity to establish a Kingdom of God in their mountain isolation. How would World War I and II have developed without American intervention of troops and material? The north and south would have remained carefully poised to oppose each other for many, many years. Without American efforts in the world wars, would Germany have won? Or would have the Soviet Union eventually defeated the Nazis and conquered Europe, spreading communism throughout the world. Would Imperial Japan have expanded unopposed in the Pacific? Thankfully these are questions that we do not have to ask now, all because Union troops occupied a small hill in Pennsylvania a few minutes before the southern troops did. (Below, I try out a northern look. Having been born in Illinois, I would most likely have been for the Union.)

Gettysburg 2

With the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War on April 9 and my recent visit to Gettysburg I am sharing my thoughts on this battle and why it was important. By the third day of the engagement all remaining Confederate and Union forces had finally arrived at Gettysburg, there were 72,000 southern forces arrayed against 94,000 union troops. The new commander of the Union army, General George Meade was cautious but was gaining confidence as his troops held their own against the strong Confederate attacks of the first two days, he chose to stay put and fight on. The commander of the southern forces, General Robert E. Lee decided that an all-out assault on the union army’s center along Cemetery Ridge would break the army in two where he could then destroy the remaining pieces. Beginning with a 2-hour artillery bombardment of the Union positions, 12,500 men, largely from a division commanded by General George Pickett, stepped out of the line of trees where they had waited for the artillery barrage to end. It was a bit more then three-quarters of a mile across open ground to Cemetery Ridge where the Union army waited. During our tour of the battlefield I was able to stand at both ends of the fields where the southern army would have to cross. I must say, that you would need to have a lot of confidence in your commanders to even consider crossing that open space under fire. It goes quite a bit beyond bravery. I know that I could not have done it. (Below, the Union position on Cemetery Ridge looking west to the line of trees where Pickett started his attack).

The Confederate artillery barrage had not knocked out the Union cannons or killed a lot of the defenders on Cemetery Ridge. As Pickett’s forces started across the fields, the Union artillery began to pound the attacking men. Cannons that had been hauled up to Little Round Top and the adjacent Big Round Top swept the Confederate troops from the side with devastating results. When the massed Union troops began firing on the advancing southerners they caused heavy causalities. The attackers briefly made it to the Union lines and broke through temporarily but were turned back. Almost half of Pickett’s attacking force had been killed, wounded or captured. Realizing his mistake, General Lee rode out to meet the retreating troops saying that it had been all his fault. After the assault, Lee went into a defensive position to counter the expected Union counterattack, but Meade decided against the risk. Lee began retreating late on July fourth back to Virginia. The town of Gettysburg was awash with thousands upon thousands of wounded troops and nearly 8,000 dead. 3,000 horses had also been killed, adding to the stench of decay in the hot summer sun. Meade would allow the Army of Northern Virginia to escape largely intact, insuring that the war would continue for almost two more years.

Gettysburg

My wife, Lynne, recently traveled to Washington D.C. to accept a national award from Head Start on behalf of Treehouse Children’s Museum and I was able to go with her. On one of our free days we decided to take a bus tour to Gettysburg National Military Park. As an amateur historian with an interest in the causes and effects of war, I was eager to go. On April 9, 2015 it will be 150 years since Lee surrendered to Grant to end the war. The battle of Gettysburg, oddly enough, had it roots in the battle of Chancellorsville, which occurred two months earlier. It was there that General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia inflicted a major defeat on the Union Army of the Potomac. Lee however, lost his best commander, General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and almost a quarter of his army. Short on supplies, Lee decided on a bold move, invade the north and live off the rich countryside of Pennsylvania. He also hoped to destroy the Union Army and pressure the Northern government to consider a peace settlement. Swinging up north through Pennsylvania and behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, some of the troops eventually turned southeast looking for more supplies in the small crossroads town of Gettysburg. The Union cavalry got there first, it was July 1, 1863. Recognizing that the rolling fields and hills around the town offered excellent ground to fight on, the cavalry engaged the confederate columns northwest of Gettysburg. After a several hours-long fight they retreated to positions southeast of the town at Cemetery Hill. The cavalry had delayed the southern forces long enough to for the Union Army to begin to arrive with enough men to hold the positions there. Some 15,000 men had been killed, wounded or captured on the first day. (Below, union positions northwest of Gettysburg).

General Lee was unsure of what forces he faced and his second-in-command urged Lee to find a better place in which to engage the Union forces but Lee decided to stay. On the second day he began moving some of his forces south to get around the Union flanks where he found that the Union army was over-extended and attacked them at what was called the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield and Devils Den. The southern troops succeeded in driving the union forces back to positions along Cemetery Ridge. At the southern end of the Union line there was a small hill called Little Round Top, both sides recognized that from this position they could control the southern part of the battlefield. In a race to reach the top, the Union soldiers beat the Confederates by only a few minutes. The Union forces defended this hill from repeated attacks by Lee’s troops and the union held strong, this was to have a dire effect on the third day of battle for the Confederates. By the end of the second day of battle, some further 19,000 men had been killed, wounded, or captured. (A rough, pieced together overall view from Little Round Top. Spring has not started in Pennsylvania in these photos).

Leonard

One of our favorite science fiction characters died recently. I say ours because I don’t know anyone who didn’t like the man or the character he played. I am referring, of course, to Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. When Star Trek premiered in 1966 I was a young teenager and it was my first exposure to science fiction. I couldn’t have asked for a better guide. Star Trek took on many of the social issues in the sixties and believe me, there were a heck of a lot of social issues back then. (Not that there aren’t any now, but people didn’t talk about them before, much less do television shows.) This show happened during the exciting days of the Gemini and Apollo space programs and Star Trek not only depicted us successfully living in space but we were already exploring the galaxy! There was a multinational crew and there were also aliens working with us. Mr. Spock, (from the planet Vulcan), was mostly human because his father married a human, so he was half-vulcan and half-human. This set up a quite interesting dilemma for poor Mr. Spock, he could sympathize with humans but he preferred to be Vulcan and Vulcans were logical, unemotional people. Being thrown into a crew of emotional humans was quite a chore and as an actor who had to act without showing emotion it was also very difficult. Leonard Nimoy appeared to do this with ease, creating a surprisingly sympathetic alien character and so won our hearts and minds.

Over the years I was able to meet almost every major Star Trek actor at science fiction conventions around the country. Unhappily, I never had the chance to meet Mr. Nimoy. I have, however, used his image in some of the paintings that I have done. The one below was for a fan-published book about the character whose title escapes my mental recall at the moment. It was a fun painting and yes, the farmhouse had something to do with the story. There must be many, many thousands of paintings of the character, Mr. Spock, done over the years. But I have to say that I like mine pretty well, and that of course, is only logical.